Photojournalist shoots film at Daytona 500

Neat story. The look may not be for everyone, but at least it's different than the zillions of other shots from any modern event. It doesn't hurt that he's got a pros eye and a credential to shoot from the good spots.

http://petapixel.com/2016/03/03/shot-expired-film-daytona-500/

Neat!

Meh. Last week I ate a tuna sandwich that expired in 1974. Try that, tough guy.

That's awesome, I kinda miss taking pictures on film. You had to plan the shot and not just spray and pray. Each have their merits and digital is much more versatile but something about good film photos or analogue recording just has something that resonates.

I remember taking pictures with my parents camera at an airshow back in 96. I tried to switch lenses but 10 year old me was too much of a novice and my mom took it away before I broke anything. I should try and dig that thing out if she still has it.

Some spectacular images, there. Love the guys in overalls and Joe Dirt mullet wigs!

I need to get my AE-1 fixed again. Digital is great, but film is magical.

Some of pictures looked like they were taken through a time machine! Curiously, I tried to copy one to paste here, and it wouldn't copy? I wonder if my android phone can't comprehend an analog image?

HappyAndy wrote: Some of pictures looked like they were taken through a time machine! Curiously, I tried to copy one to paste here, and it wouldn't copy? I wonder if my android phone can't comprehend an analog image?

Dunno if you're serious or not, but no, they're all digital if you're going to put them on a computer.

Perhaps I'm just overly cynical but I totally don't get the appeal of film, they just look like crappy pictures to me. :) Digital is better than film in every way, and if you really want something with that look, well, that's what photoshop is for.

In reply to codrus:

I get the appeal, to a point where I wouldn't mind dabbling with it at some point (like actually put a darkroom together), but not the way a lot of people seem to treat it now. That is shoot film, scan negatives, then endlessly mess with it in photoshop until happy. There's no resolution advantage in 35mm, and in the realm of still photography, probably everything but large format at this point. So it seems like a very expensive way to avoid applying a grain filter in photoshop or whatever. Seems like a bit of a waste if aren't going to fully embrace the format and work analog top to bottom, used enlargers can be had pretty cheap.

So while looking at the penultimate photo, I noticed that the car says Fed Ex Express. So, Federal Express Express?

But yeah, this makes me want to shoot film again. I haven't picked up my old Argus in too long.

I love film (and the cameras that use it) and still shoot it 95% of the time, so the article was particularly interesting to me. It's nice to see that some others here feel similarly. Beyond the obvious technical differences, there's something about the process of shooting film that I find far more engaging than digital, and I feel that my results show it.

codrus wrote: Digital is better than film in every way

This is not actually the case. Though the latest sensors are getting better, negative film retains superior dynamic range, allowing a wider range of exposure values to be recorded in a scene than in a single digital capture. You may prefer the advantages and aesthetics of digital, but there is still an area where film remains objectively superior.

I'll have to look in our camera drawer and see how many part rolls of 35 mm are still in cameras.We paid a good buck for all the extra lenses and filters decades ago and now it's basically worthless antiques. I took a lot of race photos back in the 80s with them. Great fun.

Saw this on my FB feed this AM. The inherent "filters" from the aged film gives some cool texture.

DeadSkunk wrote: I'll have to look in our camera drawer and see how many part rolls of 35 mm are still in cameras.We paid a good buck for all the extra lenses and filters decades ago and now it's basically worthless antiques. I took a lot of race photos back in the 80s with them. Great fun.

May not be as worthless as you think, depending on what you have - there's still an active market for old film gear. Check ebay sold prices for ideas on value; if nothing else, you can probably sell to KEH with no hassles.

When my grandfather died, my parents found a roll of developed 35mm film in a drawer. He'd been their wedding photographer and they'd left from the reception for two years in Australia. He'd printed some of the shots and sent them on, but not all. Of course, we had them all printed, something like 35-40 years later. How cool is that?

As much as I love digital, it takes a concerted effort to keep the images alive over the long haul.

That said, the linked article is a stunt. There's a difference between patina (wear from years of use) and distressed (artificial aging), and this is distressed. It looks like someone went over the top with trying to make something look old. Kinda like most of the "rat rods" out there and every VW with a rusty hood.

Cool pictures, gives me a bit of lens envy, and maybe an excuse to crank up the ISO next time I pick up my DSRL. I still don't want to mess around with film.

Keith Tanner wrote: As much as I love digital, it takes a concerted effort to keep the images alive over the long haul.

Hm. I'd say it's actually a lot easier to keep digital images intact than it is film. If the exposed film turned out OK after 30 years, then you got lucky -- properly preserving negatives requires temperature- and humidity-controlled environments. Digital data needs to be transferred to new media every 5-10 years, but that's cheap and easy by comparison.

Apparently the basement of my grandparents' house - it was built into a hill - was properly controlled. Actually, that sort of environment doesn't see swings in temperature or humidity much.

Digital data, as noted, needs continuous effort to keep "alive". You can't just leave it in a desk drawer for a couple of decades. For example, the images I have on my Zip discs will require a Zip drive to read, but my Zip drive is on a SCSI interface so I need to find some way to mount that puppy. That's assuming the digital media has not degraded.

Archivists are quite concerned about this sort of thing.

Keith Tanner wrote: That said, the linked article is a stunt. There's a difference between patina (wear from years of use) and distressed (artificial aging), and this is distressed. It looks like someone went over the top with trying to make something look old. Kinda like most of the "rat rods" out there and every VW with a rusty hood.

I agree that in the case of the article it's a novelty, but I don't think the images are digitally manipulated (if that's what you're implying - I'm not 100% clear). Expired film can produce some very strange color shifts, moreso if he's had any of it cross-processed (he doesn't mention one way or the other). I haven't shot a lot of it, but it's definitely capable of producing weird colors all by itself.

I wasn't implying it was manipulated, although it sure looks like a bunch of Instagram filters. Most of the pictures to me look like damaged ones, shot with a camera with internal light leaks or using really fast film to overcome crap lenses - thus the big grain in some of them. Basically, they look like he was trying too hard. They're fun in a nostalgic way, like looking through the pile of pics I took as a kid with my 110. But they're still pretty crappy pictures, just like the ones I took as a kid with my 110. Which is also what the Instagram filters are trying to emulate as well, right down to the square image format preferred on that platform.

This one, I like. The old film emphasizes the geometry. Color correcting it in Photoshop does take away from the picture as the woman's pink shirt becomes a bit jarring. It's a really interesting shot.

In reply to Keith Tanner:

I wonder if they make separation masters of digital movies.

Grain tends to increase with expired film, so I'm not too surprised by it. The leak that you see in a bunch of them is likely a camera problem, though I've seen leaks like that when rolls of film are left in direct light for a while - light filters through the light trap and creates a repeating band through a few layers of film.

As I said, the aesthetics are purely personal preference. I agree with you that the photo posted is the best of the lot for several reasons.

Keith Tanner wrote: Digital data, as noted, needs continuous effort to keep "alive". You can't just leave it in a desk drawer for a couple of decades. For example, the images I have on my Zip discs will require a Zip drive to read, but my Zip drive is on a SCSI interface so I need to find some way to mount that puppy. That's assuming the digital media has not degraded.

Right, the longer you leave it, the harder it is. If you transfer it to new media every 10 years, it's typically something you can still read. If you leave it 20 years you'll probably have to go spend some money on conversion adapters, if you leave it 30 years then you're scouring computer junkyards looking for old machines that will still boot and the software to boot them with. :)

For your zip disks, you can buy a USB to SCSI adapter today for around $100.

One nice thing is that computer storage gets cheaper every year, so keeping 10-year-old data sitting around just-in-case really doesn't take up much space on a modern machine.

On that topic, the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project is a fascinating read.

http://www.moonviews.com/

http://www.wired.com/2014/04/lost-lunar-photos-recovered-by-great-feats-of-hackerdom-developed-at-a-mcdonalds/