Perhaps that’s understandable, since Plus-X was merely one of numerous B&W films which Kodak has made over the years. And even Kodak’s own advertising rarely highlighted the film. Compared to Tri-X, the 125-speed Plus-X offered finer grain; but T-Max 100 (which remains available) uses tabular crystals with a grain structure even smoother still. So some may scarcely notice when Plus-X disappears.

1950s Plus-X packaging. Image courtesy Tony Delgrosso

Yet Plus-X is even older than Tri-X. In fact its production run was almost as long as Kodachrome’s—just one year briefer, if my math is right.  Plus-X first reached the market in 1938, originally (like Kodachrome) as a stock for movie cameras, not snapshots. By 1939, Plus-X was offered for still cameras in 35mm and 828 sizes; and the Weston Electrical Instrument Corp. rated it as “50″ on their own film-speed scale (the ASA standard did not even exist then).  It was a finer-grained, panchromatic film aimed at enthusiast users of “minature” cameras.

But when Kodak axed the cine version of Plus-X in April 2010, speculation began that the still-camera version was next. Now that’s happened.

Kodak has been pummeled by bad press throughout the fall of 2011. They’ve only made money in one year out of the last seven. And as Kodak discontinues more emulsions, photographers are becoming jittery—even wondering whether Kodak might drop film entirely. New markets like inkjet and commercial printing seem to be where the company sees its salvation.

A while back I got a copy of Robert Shanebrook’s nice 2010 book, Making Kodak Film. While this text probably goes into more technical detail than the average photographer would ever need to know, I found it fascinating. Among the tidbits found there is the actual size of a Kodak production run, once they’ve set the machines to coat a particular emulsion type. The clear film base is manufactured in rolls 54″ wide; and a roll can be up to two miles long. (No doubt this varies a bit based on its thickness.) After applying all the emulsion layers, drying them, and winding up the completed film, this is known as a “master roll” and it goes on to the slitting and packaging stages.

That’s a huge amount of film—more than an acre. In 35mm  terms, it’s roughly 100,000 rolls. If it takes Kodak more than a year to sell that much of a particular emulsion, the likelihood they’ll coat another master roll becomes extremely doubtful.

Kodak built their immense, sophisticated, Building 38 production line in 1990. It helped them keep costs low at a time when the world was still buying film by the mile for their family & holiday snaps. But today, that massive plant has become something of an albatross. It means a particular film type is toast, once sales drop below a certain threshold. (Remember that Kodak is a publicly-held company, answerable to its stockholders.)

But there’s another ominous trend for Kodak, one I think most photographers aren’t aware of.

Kodak actually sells much more film for motion pictures than for stills. This includes the highly-respected Vision camera stocks, as well as the film that goes into thousands of movie distribution prints. (As I understand it, each movie release print costs about a thousand bucks to make, using 8,000 or 10,000 feet of film.)

Unfortunately, all that is changing fast. I found this article from CreativeCOW quite chilling: it claims that in 2008, movie emulsions were 92% of Kodak’s film business. Yet today, on both the production and theatrical-release ends, movie-film use is tumbling. Conversion of theaters to digital display has finally gained traction (the cost savings are obvious). And the price of pro-quality digital cinema cameras continues to drop, with attention-grabbing announcements just this month from Red and Canon.

Kodak ad, April 1939 Popular Photography. Scan courtesy Nesster

Kodak’s film-coating plant is the size of a couple of football fields (see it on Google Maps). Can you imagine its heating bill, or the electricity to run its pumps and motors? The wages to keep all that equipment maintained? Or the capital costs to build it? (At least “keeping the lights on” is not a concern here!) This is on top of the historically-high price of silver we are currently experiencing. All those costs must be recovered from the sales-price of film.

So as sales volumes drop, the cost per roll inevitably rises. The shrinking market for movie emulsions affects all of us.

There’s no question that Kodak is in the weakest shape of the the major film manufacturers. The other giant in the film world is Fuji: And while film is a shrinking part of Fuji’s business, overall that company is better diversified and still profitable. It’s tragic and baffling that Kodak, the best-known name in photography, failed for so long to leverage that advantage into new and growing markets.

And for us B&W shooters, what about Ilford?

There’s a nice interview at filmwasters.com with Steven Brierley of Harman Technology (Ilford Photo), where he speaks candidly about the state of the company. (His interview follows 15 minutes of introduction.) If you care about the future of black & white film, it’s well worth 45 minutes of your time. Obviously he needs to spin the positive side of the story; but I ended up pretty reassured that Ilford will be around for a while. The scale of Ilford’s coating plant is much smaller and more nimble than Kodak’s (since they never made mass-market color films). The company is owned just by 6 of its managers, who don’t need to pump up shareholder values by taking short-term decisions. Ilford is currently profitable, and monochrome photo materials are their core business.

Most encouraging is that they’ve seen sales of  120 film increase this year! I worry what fraction of that is driven by Lomography scenesters with ironic sideburns (will they still care about film in 2015?). Yet for now, they’re keeping film manufacture subsidized for the rest of us.  But as a smaller-volume producer, Ilford needed to raise prices this year, and it’s hard to see that trend changing.

So the news for film is mixed. We might see Kodak exit the film business, although that would be a painful and historic loss. But film per se seems ready to endure for the medium term at least.

As always, the lesson is: Buy the film you use, and use the film you buy!

The “perky pinhole.” Yes, it really works.

Longtime readers of Silverbased.org will know that pinhole photography is dear to my heart. (You can see some of my own pinhole images here. I have to admit that the pinhole mood strikes me randomly; I’ve been a bit erratic at observing the “official” date over the years.)

The other evening I saw some very beautiful work that a friend made using the Holga wide-angle pinhole camera. Still, I can’t help finding it preposterous that a hollow plastic box should cost almost sixty dollars. The whole beauty of pinhole cameras is that they’re so simple anyone can build one for themselves. All kinds of designs are possible, and Flickr’s Homemade Pinhole group will give you more inspiration. The only possibly-tricky aspect to building a camera is poking the pinhole itself, but my own how-to instructions should get you over that part if need be.

As part of my new Camera-wiki.org activities, I had a chance to completely revise our wiki article “Pinhole camera,” and add a new one, “Homemade pinhole camera.” The second article gives some general design guidance for pinhole cameras, but isn’t a step-by-step project like my posts here on Silverbased.

A few folks have seen the Pin-O-Rama design I did for MAKE magazine a few years ago. This is a pinhole camera which wraps 120 film around a curved film gate, giving an image 6×12 cm and more than 100° wide—the resulting photos are pretty entertaining. For some mysterious copyright-violating reason, the entire article is available as a PDF file here. But be sure to check out the errata on MAKE’s talkback page.

But whether you build something from scratch, hack up some old unused camera, or just go buy one of the commercial pinhole cameras now on the market, I hope this year you’ll give pinhole photography a whirl.

Seriously though: I have probably done more writing about photography in the past two months than ever before in my life. It’s all because of my involvement in a new project, Camera-wiki.org.

What is that? Well, it is a free, user-written encyclopedia which tries to document all of the world’s cameras.

Heiland Pentax H1. My first SLR—and now, a wiki illustration!

Does that sound eerily familiar somehow? It should. For the past five years or so, there was a project called Camerapedia.org which had the same goal.

Founded as a wiki, Camerapedia was entirely created by volunteers. Naturally this meant there were all kinds of omissions and rough pages, but it was still a very cool idea. Your humble author even contributed a few articles, like one about the tiny little Yashica-44 twin-lens reflex, made for 127 film.

The site’s founder had been hosting and maintaining all this on his own dime for a number of years. Eventually something had to give. Unfortunately, the “solution” was a back-room deal to sell the site’s URL to the company Wikia, who would take over all hosting and maintenance.

Wikia is a wiki farm: A company that hosts wikis, and makes money from their site traffic by placing advertising on their pages. If you want to start up a Muppet Wiki, Wikia will give you a page template, maintain the software—then kick back to profit from the page views your user-created content attracts.

Things get more sinister when Wikia notices an existing, thriving wiki, and approaches the owner of its domain name. That tiny handful of letters is the conduit for every inbound link on the internet; it can represent a lot of traffic. It’s worth cash. While it’s pointless for me to speculate on motives, suffice to say that in January, 2011 “camerapedia.org” stopped existing as a site. Instead, that URL now directs to “camerapedia.wikia.com.” Wikia controls the page layout & fonts the public sees, and can change those at will. Their placement of ads can be quite garish and distracting.

Needless to say, this business model has attracted its share of critics. None of Camerapedia’s volunteers had any input about the sale. The howls became deafening.

You can read more here and here (if you’re really curious) about how Camerapedia’s contributors rebelled, and successfully split off an independent “fork.” But the happy ending is that our new, non-commercial Camera-wiki.org is alive and vigorous; and we have enough donations to get us through our next few months. (Feel free to chip in to our hosting kitty if you’re so inspired.)

So if you’ve missed your Silverbased fix, there is a new place to look.  If you appreciated my Kodachrome tribute, I’m proud to have created a whole new wiki article about the legendary film. If you dug some of my techier pieces, I’ve added lots of details the wiki article on “Film.” Of course, since the site is a wiki, both those pieces have since been mercilessly red-penciled by one of Camerapedia’s other editors. If you follow those links a few months from now, other authors may have expanded them even further.

Camera-wiki also has its own blog. Besides general site-news updates, sometimes I post an interesting story unearthed from the pages of the wiki.

A Cry for Help

No, it’s not me that needs the help (although some friends would disagree). If  you click the random article link at Camera-wiki.org, you’ll find many attractive and well-researched pages… and others that aren’t. As a volunteer project, there are still lots of incomplete sections. Some article authors have native tongues other than English, so you might find some choppy prose. Surprisingly, certain whole brands (Leica!) have very uneven coverage.

So we’d be happy to have your help. If you own some uncommon old cameras, look at their pages in the wiki. If needed, we would love for you to contribute a good photo to our Flickr group (and join the discussions there). If you want to help add information to an article, or phrase it more clearly, you can create a login and have at it. The wiki markup syntax to create pages is a little funky behind the scenes, but we have some help pages and a FAQ to get you started.

Hope to see you over there!

OkCupid harvested all this camera information from the EXIF data embedded in their members’ digital photos. This means, unfortunately, that we can’t get numbers proving that being photographed on film is the sexiest of all—but I assure you it’s true.

Since I often sputter about how harsh and unflattering on-camera flash is, I’m tickled to finally see hard numbers spelling out how bad the damage really is. Having your picture taken with flash is equivalent to adding 5 or 10 years to your age, as far as your attractiveness goes. (Hmm, plotting my age on that graph, I fear I’d better be photographed in total darkness.)

The analysis also showed an effect where viewers preferred photos taken at wide lens apertures—notice all the green boxes for f-numbers f/2.8 and below? Of course, taking shots at wider apertures means shallower focus, allowing a photographer to de-emphasize extraneous background clutter.

But I think OkCupid misunderstood something about the f/stop effect. Point-n-shoot cameras and DSLR kit zooms generally don’t offer apertures of f/2.8 or larger. Only a photographer who went out and bought a different, more advanced lens will ever have “f/1.4″ show up in their EXIF data. Such people are more engaged, and presumably more skilled, as photographers—thus, they probably shoot somewhat more flattering portraits.

Another problem is that without knowing the sensor size and the subject distance, the f/number alone will not tell you how blurred the background actually was.

Selective focus—will it get you more dates?

Nonetheless, when Christian Rudder comments, “because the photos with the low f numbers feel more intimate and personal, they get a better viewer response” I do agree. A portrait where twinkling eyes are sharp, but beyond is a soft halo of blur… it does look very stylish and appealing—even romantic.

So will running out and buying that f/0.95 Leica Noctilux convert you into an irresistible sex bomb? (Albeit one with an empty bank account?)

Anything relating to Depth of Field inevitably turns out to be a bit more complicated than you might imagine. As I mentioned, f/numbers alone are not the whole story.

Now, Dr. Hubert Nasse of Carl Zeiss has helped us out tremendously here, by writing a detailed analysis (1.7 Mb PDF) regarding focus depth, background blur, and bokeh. It’s published in the Zeiss newsletter Camera Lens News No. 35. This document is a humbling read, for anyone who innocently believed they already understood depth of field.

But perhaps I can spare you the 45 pages of graphs and diagrams. Regarding the topic at hand, “how can I blur the background the most,” let’s jump straight to Dr. Nasse’s answer (on page 30):

If by “bokeh’ you mean principally the ability to be able to represent the  background as very blurred, soft and lacking detail, it is necessary to have an entrance pupil which is sufficiently large.

[Misusing "bokeh" just to mean "blurry background" is regrettably widespread today, despite my blog's futile protests],

And:

The decisive parameter for the quantity of the blurriness is therefore the physical size of the entrance pupil.

Hmm, what is this “pupil” thing Dr. Nasse is talking about?

Well, we all know that the pupil of your eye is the black part, where the light gets in. Likewise, a lens’s entrance pupil is just the apparent diameter of its clear opening, looking from the outside.

Entrance pupils of two lenses

The lens on the left is the one I used to make the portrait shown above. As you can see, the clear opening is quite large.

Imagine all the rays of light originating from one point on the subject which fall into that opening: They form an imaginary cone. The “fatter” that cone is, the bigger the disk of blurred light becomes in the un-focused parts of the image.

On the right side we have a very standard “kit zoom,” ubiquitous on today’s DSLRs. I set it to give the widest possible entrance pupil; but even so, that’s nowhere close to the diameter of the front element. So we see at a glance this lens can’t give us much background blur.

And point-n-shoot cameras, whose entrance pupils are practically pinholes, will be utterly hopeless. (Perhaps another reason OkCupid users found those cameras’ snapshots less appealing?)

Now, is this just because the left-hand lens can open all the way to f/2.0? The zoom as shown above is a couple of stops dimmer.

Not so fast. Entrance pupil diameter also depends on the focal length. Or to be precise, an f-number is defined as the focal length divided by the entrance pupil width, at a given diaphragm setting.

So different lenses can have different entrance pupil diameters, even when they’re all set to the same f/number. See here:

Three lenses, all at f/2.8: Focal lengths 24, 50, 100 mm

Each doubling (roughly) of the focal length requires a doubling of the entrance pupil diameter. If you’d like to click on the photo above to open a larger version, you can measure and confirm that yourself.

So even though all these are set to/2.8, it’s clear that the 100 mm will blur the background the most.

Thinking in terms of entrance pupils, not f/numbers,  helps resolve one classic paradox in understanding depth of field:

As you switch focal lengths, you must move nearer or farther away to keep your subject the same height in the frame. When you take this into account, and play with a depth of field calculator, suprisingly you discover that changing lens focal lengths has practically no effect on the DOF (as long as you maintain the same f/number).

Yet that seems nutty! Our common-sense experience tells us that for blurring distracting backgrounds, you’d always reach for the telephoto first.

The answer to the paradox is simple. Yes, the depth of sharp focus depends simply on the f/number. But the amount of blurring of distant backgrounds (say, 25 feet or more behind the subject) depends largely on the lens’s entrance pupil size. This the distinction Dr. Nasse was trying to clarify.

We now understand why many lenses considered classics for portraiture are both bright in f/ratio and longer in focal length. For pleasing portraits, I tend to reach for the first two lenses shown below: First, the Olympus Zuiko 85/2.0; next, the Canon new-FD 100/2.0.

Quartet of blur kings

Both remain sought-after gems from their respective lens lineups; on eBay you would expect to spend a couple hundred dollars for either. So alongside those, I’ve shown a couple of alternatives you might find interesting.

While lens #3 does not quite match the entrance pupil diameter of the Canon, it’s still pretty respectable. This is a Mamiya 110 mm f/2.8 lens, for their 645 medium-format system. And it only cost me $60 from KEH. As I’ve written before, medium format systems can give you nice background blur at quite an affordable price.

Even more entertaining is the fourth lens. My apologies that its engravings are dingy and hard to read—I estimate it’s at least 70 years old, maybe more. That’s a Kodak Projection Anastigmat, which “only” opens to f/4.5. But its ten-inch focal length means it has the widest entrance pupil of all. (10″ = 254 mm)

That one came from an eBay auction, where the word “projection” scared off every other buyer but me. So my low starting bid won it: Just eleven bucks, shipped.

I admit, it’s not very convenient to use a 1.5 pound, shutterless large-format lens. But oh! Isn’t the background blur lovely?

4×5 sheet film; Kodak 10″ Projection Anastigmat

Lets compare that to the blur from the plasticky DSLR zoom I showed you before. To make this a fair fight, I actually stopped down the old Kodak to f/5.6, the best the kit lens can manage when zoomed in.

Background blur with an undersized entrance pupil

Now I promise you: These are both f/5.6 shots, taken from the same distance. It’s just the entrance pupil diameter that changes the background blur. You need a longer focal length lens on the bigger 4×5 film format; thus at any given f/number, the entrance pupil will be larger.

It’s unfortunate that “entrance pupil” is such geeky-sounding optical jargon. If we could spread awareness of its importance, photographers would automatically know how to get that lovely, soft, selective-focus look.

Maybe we could just talk about “wide eyed” lenses instead?

After all, everyone knows—wide open eyes are sexy!

Yet there is still a powerful draw to recapture some of the “analog soul” of chemical photography. You can see this in the surprise popularity of the Hipstamatic iPhone app, the success of Lomography-branded cameras at retailers like Urban Outfitters, and the recent re-launch of Polaroid-compatible film by The Impossible Project.

For those who want to dip a toe into shooting the real thing, there is much to recommend a basic Holga 120N camera. It’s cheap, widely available, and gives images with a distinctive dreamy flavor. And in general, any camera with the same large film format will give a noticeably different feeling from digital (something I’ve written about before).

We’re talking about shooting the 120 film size, often referred to as medium format.

Even if you’re an old hand with 35mm film, 120 has some quirks which can trip you up. So today I’ll give a visual step-by-step on how to load it, and how frame-counting works with 120 cameras.

120 film is sold in many different emulsion types, both color and B&W—although there’s definitely more varieties available in 35mm. If your local camera shop doesn’t sell 120 (and sadly, many don’t) there’s still lots of choices online, e.g. from B&H or Freestyle. The “Arista” black & white film shown here is Freestyle’s inexpensive house brand—it’s a relabeling of some pretty decent Fomapan film from the Czech Republic.

Tear open the box, and the film itself is sealed in a foil or plastic wrapper. And why have I also torn off the box end? I’ll get back to that in a bit.

The rolled-up film is kept from unwinding by a paper band around the spool. Slide a thumbnail under the folded-over flap to rip the band; then peel off as much of the paper strip as you’re able to.

Now the tongue of the backing paper is free. Be sure to hang on to the rest of the spool, so it doesn’t unravel and expose the film.

Notice that the backing paper has one printed side—and with different manufacturers, this can be different colors, white, or black. But the unmarked, dull black side must always be loaded facing the lens.

The backing paper protects the actual film emulsion from light. Here I’ve unwound the first two feet of a roll, so you can see the beginning of the film itself. Exposing film to light like this ruins it, of course! But I sacrificed an old expired roll for our photo here.

What actually advances the film is a tab in the camera, which matches the slot in the film spool. The tab might be directly connected to a simple knob, or to a more elaborate geared winding mechanism.

You may come across vintage cameras (like Kodak Brownies) made for the very similar, but now extinct, 620 film size. While 620 film and paper are virtually identical to 120, the spools are skinnier and have a smaller slot for the winding tab. So it takes some fussing before you can use 120 film in these cameras.

What Frame Is This?

When you buy 35mm film, the number of exposures is printed right on the box. It gets a little more complicated with 120—because the same film is used in cameras with various different image sizes. So the frame count is different for different types of camera.

Above is a nice Zeiss folder from roughly 70 years ago (and “B2″ is just an older European designation for 120). As it tells us, it shoots 6×9 cm rectangular shots (or 2-1/4 x 3-1/4 inches—these dimensions are all just approximate). However, many medium-format cameras shoot square 6×6 cm photos; and some shoot even smaller 6×4.5 ones.

So, how do you wind the film the right distance for each of those sizes?

The trick is in how the frame numbers are printed onto the backing paper (here I’ve shown two different film brands):

The frame counter on many 120 cameras is simply a red-filtered peepsight on the back, which lets you stop winding when you get to the next number. (And the printed dots just warn you when you’re getting close.)

But notice that the rows of numbers are in three sets, each for a different frame spacing. The trick is that each camera puts its red window at the correct height for its particular image format:

Here the Zeiss folder has its red window at the top—this counts off the frames for 6×9 format, where #8 is the last frame on the roll. (When the winder is on your right, it’s normal for the numbers to appear upside down.)

No Rewinding

When we buy 35mm film, it comes in a light-tight metal cassette. The film is pulled out to expose it, then rewound again to shield it from light before developing.

With 120 film there is no rewinding (and so, 120 cameras don’t have rewind cranks). You simply keep winding forward after the last shot is exposed. Just as at the beginning of the roll, extra backing paper at the end protects the film—and there’s another band you wrap around the spool to keep it from unraveling. Fuji uses a nice self-stick band; but for the other manufacturers you need to lick an adhesive strip.

This also means a fixed take-up spool is not built into a 120 camera. Instead, after you finish one film, you pull out its now-empty spool, then move it over to become the new take-up reel.

What if you don’t have a spool to start your first roll? Well, you can ask for a spare from a lab that develops film, or from another 120-shooting friend. (And if you’re ordering something else online anyway, you can even buy one—which seems kooky to me—but whatever.)

Many types of cameras hold their spools in place with little spring-loaded pegs. Every 120 camera is a little different on that score; so don’t worry if you need a bit of trial and error figuring out how to to get your spools in and out.

Move the empty spool to the take-up compartment—the one with the winding tab. Put the full roll of film into the other compartment, and draw the tongue of the backing paper across the film gate. Then thread the folded end of the tongue into the slot of the take-up spool.

Holding the tongue in place with your fingertip, wind the film a smidge until the spool seems to have grabbed the paper.

Advance the take-up spool by a couple of full turns, to be sure the paper is winding snugly. (With a Holga, you’ll probably need to stuff some bits of cardboard, etc., under the spools to so there’s some tension on the paper.)

Then it’s time to close up the back of the camera.

It can take quite a few turns to wind up all the paper leader, and reach the actual film (remember there’s about 16 inches of backing before the film starts). But most film brands are printed with various stripes and arrows to reassure you the spools are still winding correctly.

Then after a few last printed dots….  Finally we are at frame #1! Above, what I’ve shown is Kodak’s notorious, cruelly ambiguous #1, which throws off everybody. But yes, that’s really it.

Most Holgas are supplied with a plastic mask which lets you shoot a smaller, rectangular 6×4.5 frame if you chose. (I, and most Holga fans, would say “don’t bother.”)

But remember the business with the different frame numbers for different formats? The Holga lets you switch its red window between one setting (12 square photos) or the other (16 rectangular ones). What is totally confusing is that it’s not the red window you match to the number. It’s that (nearly invisible) molded arrow instead.

This will make sense if you scroll up and look a the backing-paper numbering again: The frame numbers for square 6×6 photos are the ones running down the center of the roll.

Beyond the Red Window

Now, the “red window” method is mostly used by simpler and older camera models. As you go up in price and sophistication, medium format cameras usually have some automatic film-sensing roller, letting you simply wind forward until you hit a stop—and there’s your next frame.

But even with these, there’s one manual step at the beginning: You must get the film-counter mechanism started at the correct place.

What you do is to crank the film slowly until the printed “start” arrow lines up with a specific mark in the camera body (which, as here, might not be all that visible).

At that point, close the back. All the frame counting and film spacing should be automatic after that:

A few turns later, the crank comes to a stop and #1 shows in the frame-counter window.

After shooting the final frame, the wind mechanism will let you crank freely again, until the tail of the backing paper has wrapped up all the film. Then it’s safe to open the back again. Don’t forget to lick the stickum band to hold the spool wound up snugly.

A Final Tip

Remember that end of the film box I had torn off in the second photo? I find it really useful to tape that onto the camera body somewhere, just as a reminder of which film I have loaded. Otherwise, if you set aside a camera for a few months, it can be a bit of a mystery trying to remember which emulsion type it was.

Fancier medium-format cameras even provide a little slot so you can do this without getting tacky tape residue everywhere.

Have fun with your 120 camera!

In the summer of 2009, Kodak announced the end for their legendary Kodachrome slide film. The final batch of Kodachrome 64 carries an expiration date of 11/2010, and major retailers have long since sold out—although a few stray rolls can still be found on eBay, at high prices.

But the crucial point to know is this: There is only one commercial lab left in the world developing Kodachrome, and that is Dwayne’s Photo in Parsons, Kansas. And they will only develop Kodachrome through the end of December 2010. The price to develop and mount a 36-exposure roll (before shipping) is USD $10.

Kodachrome requires a complex and difficult process called “K-14″ —completely different from the E-6 developing used with all other slide films. Other color emulsions include the chemistry to produce color dyes within the film itself; but with K-14, each color layer must have dyes added to it during processing. (This raises the image in slight relief on the emulsion side, which is a useful way to ID unlabeled Kodachromes.) Balancing all the K-14 steps correctly is quite tricky—hence the worldwide consolidation of K-14 processing down to one final lab.

So, this year is your last chance to shoot Kodachrome. Dig around in the back of the freezer; check the bottom of your camera drawer. If you have any rolls remaining, shoot them soon—or give them to someone who will!

One part of the Kodachrome legend is its amazing colorfastness—unmatched by any other film created since. Here’s a Kodachrome “glamour” shot taken by my father in 1942 (scandalously, this is not my mother):

Kodachrome slide after nearly 70 years; scan colors only slightly adjusted

Will our hard disks and flash drives still be accessible in 2076? Kodachrome photos you shoot today will stay colorful and accessible for decades to come—and anyone can discover the images, just by holding them up to the light. If there are people or scenes in your world that you’d like to commemorate for the ages, Kodachrome is your film.

Now, before it is exposed, it’s a different story. Kodachrome that has been stored cold will behave fine, even a few years past its expiration date. But unexposed rolls that have been stored at warmer temperatures, or that have gone many years out of date, can begin to get funky:

Kodachrome 25 expired by 9 years; magenta highlights

Aside from the color shift, this roll also had lost some of its speed and contrast. But the results gave kind of an interesting otherworldly feel, which some might enjoy exploring. (And the color shift was within the range where I could still correct it when scanning.)

If you miss the December 2010 deadline, there’s no way to develop Kodachrome into a color positive after that. However you may be able to salvage some visible image by developing it using black & white negative chemistry. Apparently there are a few complications to doing this, and I’ve got no firsthand experience with it. But I’ll report back if I get around to trying it.

Meanwhile, I leave you with the back cover of the November 1950 Popular Photography magazine. [Click to see a larger version.] This dates from an era when Kodachrome had a sensitivity of ASA 10! It wasn’t until 1961 that Kodachrome II raised this to ASA 25. (The ASA film speed scale wasn’t adopted by the ISO until decades later.)

Don’t be ‘beset by unhappy doubts’—shoot your Kodachrome soon

Today, these retro strobes are practically being given away. So I’m sure many of you have asked the question: Are they still good for anything?

Now, if you started doing photography within the past decade or so, your camera probably included a built-in flash. With those, you might choose between a couple of different flash modes (or, the camera might pick for you); but the exposure settings are all figured out automatically.

But it wasn’t so simple back in the 1960s and 1970s. Flash was a separate, add-on accessory, usually made by a different company. And getting the exposure correct might require a little figuring.

Built-in flash may be easy to use. But light coming from directly above the lens gives a very stark, unflattering look. It’s not a very pleasant light for photographing people.

So my thinking is, a few cheap old flashes are a great way to start experimenting with different, more interesting styles of lighting.

Off-camera, diffused flash

I’m not going to start a longwinded discussion of lighting techniques here. You can look to the Strobist for inspiration and suggestions on that. Today, I’d just like to ID some different kinds of vintage flash gear, and explain a few points about how they’re used.

Warning, Warning!

But do I need to begin with this stern warning: Older flashes can damage modern cameras!

Before 1980 or so, camera shutters were entirely mechanical. The shutter mechanism included a couple of metal contacts, which touched together at precisely the right instant to trigger any flash that was connected.

A flash unit could use just about any trigger voltage, and this simple switch would still work fine. So many older flashes put out 200 volts or more on their trigger circuit! (Don’t worry, this can’t electrocute you—there is not enough current.)

This flash is powered by a single AA cell…

…but reads 150 volts across its sync contacts!

But throughout the 1980s, camera designs became much more “electronic.” Newer cameras commonly trigger the flash using a solid-state switch instead. These were designed to be used with a flash voltage of about five volts or so.

So DON’T go sticking random old flashes into your modern camera’s hot shoe.

Manufacturers are often maddeningly vague about what the maximum acceptable flash voltage is exactly; but you should always err on the side of caution. Here’s one attempt to compile sync voltages for various flash models.

The voltage warning applies even for some film cameras of the 1980s. My rule of thumb is this: Does a camera’s shutter work normally even when there are no batteries installed? If so, its sync contacts are all mechanical, and you don’t need to worry about trigger voltage. Otherwise, proceed with caution.

But I’ll explain shortly one way old flashes can used safely with any camera—modern or vintage.

Check the Batteries

Unfortunately, a flash that was put aside and forgotten during the Reagan administration may have leaking, scungy batteries remaining inside it—so that’s the first thing to check.

Badly-corroded battery contacts can sometimes be cleaned; but my success rate hasn’t been all that great. Perhaps the corrosion rots the internal wiring too? With good batteries, you want to hear a high-pitched rising whine, then see the ready-light come on within 30 seconds or so.

Count the Contacts

The next place to look is at the bottom of the foot. Are there a few metal contacts, or just one?

A single foot contact, or several?

Flashes with multiple pins are so-called “dedicated” units. They are designed to match the hot-shoe contacts of one particular brand of camera. The extra pins send auto-exposure signals, add a flash-ready lamp in the viewfinder, and so on.

These extra pin locations are not compatible between brands. Mis-matching a dedicated flash with the wrong brand of camera might even damage something.

Each manufacturer’s system has slightly different capabilities, and I certainly can’t describe every one. But just remember, these extra features only help you when you use a matching type of camera (and when you can track down the manual, to explain how everything works).

Dumb is Good

But many flashes only have a single contact in the center of the foot. It’s simply the trigger which tells the flash, “fire now!” And these simple, bare-bones models are the easiest to understand. Many have no automation whatsoever—just an on/0ff switch.

“Dumb” flashes fire at the same brightness every time, no matter what the subject is. So how does the photographer know what exposure settings to use? Well, it is the distance from the flash to the subject which determines how bright the illumination is. So these simple flashes will have some kind of calculator dial or table, to tell you the proper f/stop to use at a given distance.

Notice that I said “f/stop.” With flash, a camera’s shutter speed doesn’t affect the exposure. The electronic pulse is much briefer than any shutter speed; and it’s usually much brighter than any room light.

However, there is one complication with focal plane shutters (the type most SLRs use): On the highest shutter speeds, there is not one instant when the entire film gate is uncovered. So to use flash, you must stay at or below the “sync speed.”

The shutter speed dial will indicate this somehow: e.g. “60″ is in orange, or one speed is marked with a lightning bolt or an “X.”

(Cameras with leaf shutters built inside the lens have no such restriction—this is one of their advantages.)

Okay then, how do you determine the right aperture?

Here’s the typographically-bewildering exposure table on the back of one cheapie flash. Not exactly user-friendly, eh?

But I’ve added some annotations to explain what you’re looking at:

The the red outline shows the settings when using a film speed of ASA 100, or DIN 21. (Today we would say “ISO” speed instead—but the numbers haven’t changed.)

The numbers in that column are the f/stops to use, when the subject is at different distances. The red arrow shows the row for 10 feet (or 3 meters)—showing that the lens should be set to f/5.6.

Slightly more legible is the “calculator dial” type. To use these, you begin by twisting it to match the film speed you are using (here, ISO 200). Then you read off the f/stops to use for different distances:

Now keep in mind these f/stop guides are not sacred gospel. They are based on typical indoor rooms with light-toned, reflective walls and ceilings. Otherwise, you might need to open up an additional f/stop or so. If you put a diffuser over the flash (like my Tupperware flash project), or bounce the light off a wall, you’ll also lose a couple of f/stops of brightness.

Plus, a 30-year-old flash may not have all the oomph it did when new. So I suggest shooting some tests first, before you rely on these indicated apertures.

And the Not-So-Dumb

Also extremely common are vintage flashes labelled “Auto” something-or-other. They might even include the magical word “Thyristor.”

I know, that sounds like some Star Trek mumbo jumbo—”Captain, I don’t think the Thyristor Crystals can take it much longer!” But a thyristor is just a device which cuts the flash pulse short, once a photocell sees sufficient light has bounced back from the subject.

The flash shown below represents one popular type. Note below the photocell, there’s a switch with two color positions and an “M” setting:

With an Auto model, the exposure settings work a little differently. On the back panel, slide the indicator until the correct film speed shows. (I’ve shown 400-speed film here.) Then the color-coded arrows give you two f/stop options: f/5.6 or f/8. You set the camera aperture to the f/stop matching whichever color the front switch is on—so for the red position, f/5.6.

The color bars show the distance ranges where auto-exposure will function. The red (wider) f/stop gives more distant reach; but you might use the blue (smaller) aperture shooting up close, or to maximize depth of field.

After you’ve set the lens aperture correctly, exposure should be automatic—even as you move closer or further from the subject.

(In the “M” mode, you’d need to change f/stops manually, to the ones shown above the different distance numbers. This works just like the “dumb” flashes I discussed above.)

With auto flash, even if you do something unusual like cover it with a diffuser or a colored gel, the length of the flash pulse gets adjusted automatically. You can even bounce the flash off a white ceiling or a wall, giving soft, diffused lighting. Just make sure the flash photocell stays unobstructed and points towards the subject, and you’re good to go.

With some auto flash models, the light sensor is not particularly visible; so you might not recognize that’s what you’ve got. Here’s one where changing the front switch from “M” to “A” uncovers a teensy little hole in the switch itself—that’s the photocell!

And I’m sure there are other weird variations out there I’ve yet to discover. But any “auto” flash will have a photocell somewhere on its front.

The Wonderful “Test” Button

With all my scary warnings about high voltages frying your camera, you may wonder why I’m still enthusiastic about vintage flashes.

Well, partly it’s because I own so many pre-1970s cameras, which can can use them with no problems. But old flashes can still help you make interesting pictures, even if they’re never connected to a camera:

Open flash: Hold shutter open on “bulb,” then fire the strobe.

This was taken in dim ambient light, around dusk. Holding the shutter open for a second or so (at about f/11) barely registered some blurry traces of the background.

But almost all the exposure in the face comes from the flash. I simply held the camera in one hand and triggered the flash with my other one—no connection between them.

You could also set up a night shot, with the camera on a tripod: Hold the shutter open on “B” (with a locking cable release or a helpful assistant) and you can walk through the scene, “painting” different areas with multiple flash bursts. I’m sure you can start to imagine other possibilities, too.

But for this to work, the flash must have a “test” button. If it does, you’ll usually find it towards the bottom of the back side:

Or, sometimes, the lens of the “flash ready” lamp does double duty as the test button:

But often, the test button is anonymous and unlabeled:

Just remember if you’re using a manual flash, that it’s the flash’s distance from the subject (not the camera’s) which you use to figure the exposure setting.

Connecting

Now, if you have an older mechanical camera, so you’re sure it’s safe, you can let the camera trigger the flash too. The foot of the flash should fit into the camera’s accessory shoe:

Camera Accessory Shoes of the 1980s, 1960s, and 1950s

The camera at the left has extra contacts, to work with its own brand of dedicated flash. But simple flashes with a single contact pin will also trigger fine (although without any whizzy extra features). That’s because the central pad is always the standard sync connection—as shown in the plain, vanilla hot shoe of the middle camera.

But a camera from the early 1960s or before will generally have a “cold” shoe, lacking any electrical connections. What to do then?

For this, you’ll need a sync cord. And unfortunately, not every flash unit provides a socket for one. Plus, different brands use different connector styles—there isn’t one single standard.

But below we see one common plug style, fitting into the not-very-obvious hole in the foot of this flash:

(It’s is the same size as a 2.5 mm mono audio connector, if you ever need to homebrew something from electronics-store parts.)

Happily, on the camera side, the “PC” style connector is almost universal:

This abbreviation has nothing to do with personal computers (it predates them by decades). It comes from two German brands of shutter, Prontor and Compur—the original users of that style of sync connector.

If you get really stuck matching a cable to a particular flash, try Paramount Cords. You can also buy extension sync cords that are extra long (I own one that’s about 15 feet). This can be quite handy when working with studio/portrait setups.

More Magic

If you find a particularly wonderful old (but high-voltage) flash, and you’re really desperate to plug it into a modern camera, there is a solution: A little $47 device called a Wein Safe Sync. This isolates the flash trigger so the camera only gets a safe couple of volts. But it seems a bit expensive to me—though I admit, it’s much cheaper than the repair bill for a fried camera.

But recently I discovered another cute gadget worth mentioning: A vintage Honeywell “Foto-Eye”:

What is it? A flash slave trigger.

Its “eye” (the bluish photocell on the front) detects any other flash firing in the room. Another strobe plugged into its PC socket will trigger in sync with the first one.

I’ve found it to be surprisingly sensitive. Plus, it dates back to the dark ages of high-voltage strobes. So it’s a great way to trigger an old “dangerous” flash, using the light pulse from a safe one—with no danger to any camera.

More

Over the decades, manufacturers have attempted many solutions to the problem of flash exposure. I can think of about six different systems right off the top of my head. So I’ve had to leave out some of the weirder and odder possibilities you might come across. But I’ve tried to cover the vintage flash types you’ll see most often.

Light is the essence of photography. With some old unloved flashes, costing just a few dollars, I think you can have quite a lot of fun.

Of special interest is a 1901 ad for the Kodak No. 2 Brownie (see a larger version from the source). As many know (and as I’ve written about before), Kodak launched an entirely new roll size for this camera, now called 120—the same 120 film we’re still using today.

Kodak Brownie No. 2 ad, 1901 “Youth’s Companion” magazine

The No. 2 Brownie took 2-1/4 x 3-1/4 inch photos (aka 6×9 cm). But it’s interesting that the film length was originally shorter: Only 6 shots (today’s 120 would give 8).

Kodak had introduced an earlier Brownie using film size 117, at the startlingly low price of $1—making an all-out effort to sell cameras simple and cheap enough for children. So it’s not an accident that this ad uses an image of the curious little girl and her schoolbooks. (But what is the deal with that hat?!?)

The name “Brownie” and that scary figurine appearing on the table refer to a series of children’s illustrations drawn by Palmer Cox, very popular with children of the era. It’s not clear whether Kodak actually licensed any drawings from Cox, or merely created their own elf-like Brownie illustrations (which to be fair, had originated from Scottish folklore).

I have always wondered if the Brownie name was also a tip of the hat to Kodak’s original camera design wizard, Frank Brownell.

Compared to the original Brownie, the No. 2 took larger photos and, significantly, included a viewfinder! Two, actually—allowing you to frame photos horizontally or vertically. This helped justify the doubled, $2 price tag. With this addition, the No. 2 became the template for thousands of cheap box cameras to follow—both from Kodak, and its competitors, like Ansco.

Eventually the 120 size was taken up by other, top-quality cameras: First the Rolleiflex and later the Hasselblad. Both of these helped cement the reputation of 120 as a “serious camera” film.

But the association between 120 and Brownies remained, enough so that in Japan, many kept referring to the size as “Brownie film.” And in 1958, this inspired a name for Zenzaburo Yoshino’s innovative new 120 camera—called the Bronica.

Let’s hope 120 film survives somehow until at least the year 2021—in time to celebrate its 120th birthday.

A moment of thought should convince you that the curve must be a section of a sphere. That’s the only shape where the two surfaces will always stay in contact as they move. Any high points that deviate from a sphere would eventually be ground away.

This is the reason why a spherical surface is the easiest (and least expensive) curve to manufacture glass lenses to.

This insight is well understood by many old-school amateur astronomers, the ones who go through the long process of grinding their own telescope mirrors. But there’s a problem: the figure actually required for a telescope mirror is not a section of a sphere—it’s actually a parabola.

Although the difference between the two is infinitesimal, the telescope-builder needs to hand-polish subsections of the mirror to reach the right final shape. And the polishing and testing to reach this special curve accounts for a large fraction of the total labor required. The effort turns the optical surface into an aspherical one—simply meaning, any curve that deviates from a simple sphere.

Camera lenses are made using multiple glass elements (at least three are needed for a reasonably aberration-free image). Those surfaces are typically all spherical. But an “aspheric” camera lens includes one of these specially-polished aspheric surfaces (or in rare cases, a couple of them).

Why Aspherical?

But since aspherical surfaces are harder to manufacture, they cost more. So why use them?

A recent aspherical lens

There’s a misconception, often repeated in internet discussions, that aspherical surfaces are needed to “correct spherical aberration.” This statement is very misleading.

We should back up and explain that spherical aberration is when light rays passing through the edge of a lens focus at a different distance than ones from the center. This is mostly undesirable, because then the fine details of your photo subject will lack contrast. (We should note, however, that a bit of uncorrected spherical aberration can improve a lens’s bokeh.) Spherical aberration is particularly hard to cure at fast f/ratios, since the ray paths must bend so steeply at the edges of the lens.

A lens designer needs to balance many factors when creating a new product. There are multiple aberrations to correct, across the whole image, including spherical aberration. But there are also issues of weight, size, and manufacturing cost to consider.

It’s easier to design a good lens when you have more “degrees of freedom.” The more different glass types you can add, and the more surface curvatures you can tweak, the more flexibility you have to cancel out aberrations.

So if a lens design has enough complexity, it can give perfect correction of spherical aberration—even using only spherical surfaces. But it may prove impractically large and expensive to manufacture.

What aspheric surfaces offer is simple: More degrees of freedom.

An aspherical surface can improve a lens design without adding extra glass. Computer ray-tracing can adjust the curvature across an element’s width, reducing all aberrations (spherical being just one). If an aspherically-polished surface can replace three or five spherical ones, it can justify its cost—yielding a smaller, lighter lens that may be be less prone to flare.

Long ago, aspheric lenses were pretty exotic: Polishing the special shapes required lots of extra labor. However technology has moved on, and now there are automated processes that can produce good-quality non-spherical surfaces. As a result, aspheric optics have gone mainstream.

A compact 35mm f/1.7 lens with one aspheric surface

So aspheric lenses aren’t made from some crazy unobtanium, and they don’t have magical powers. They’re just a way to build a better lens using fewer elements, and that’s all.

All the factory equipment was subsequently auctioned off and scattered to the four winds—seemingly spelling doom for Polaroid integral films (meaning the most popular, squarish 600 format; and the rectangular Spectra/Image type).

Why is the Polaroid lady twisting her own head off her body?

Fujifilm continues to produce “peel-apart” instant films which are compatible with some Polaroid cameras and backs. Ironically this means certain 1960s Polaroid cameras will remain usable longer than the ubiquitous recent Polaroid OneStep and One600 models. (The 1960s cameras do require a weird-sized battery, however.)

Fuji also makes its own line of integral instant films called “Instax.” However Instax technology is completely different from Polaroid’s, and none of those films are compatible with any Polaroid camera.

To re-create Polaroid’s 600 film from scratch would be a complex and costly process (remember that each pack also contains a special flat battery). It’s doubtful Fujifilm would have a motive to take on that challenge, when they already makes a competing product. There are not many other players in the market with the technical expertise to revive integral film; so unless some mystery savior appears, we should assume 600 and Spectra are disappearing for good.

Earlier this year, the best deal I could find on 600 film was from OfficeDepot’s online store. However for many weeks there has been no more stock available to my Zip code; and anecdotally that seems to be true for other regions of the US too.

So this week I stopped off at a local Target store—in my area, this is the last bricks-and-mortar retailer with decent quantities of 600 remaining. I got two serious shocks: First, the price had been raised to US $17 a pack (yes, that’s $1.70 per photo); and second, the expiration date on the packs was “09/09.”

09/09 is the mark of the End Times

Why is that date significant? A group of Dutch Flickr members toured the Enschede factory in May, two weeks before it shut down; and the date code they saw on finished packs was 09/09. Note that this is actually later than the “Aug 09″ final expiration date listed in Polaroid’s own phase-out announcement.

Apparently there may have been one final week’s production stamped with the expiration date “10/09.” Packs with that date are now available at the European “PolaPremium” website.

This new operation has made a splash selling small batches of various unusual Polaroid films, produced in the factory’s final days. (Some have questioned whether these special products were simply a way to use up old or substandard chemistry. I have no firsthand experience with these films; and considering the shipping charges to the USA, I don’t plan to try them.)

In any case, the message to Polaroid fans is clear. If you see packs with the date code 09/09, assume it’s your last chance to buy them. Ever.

(Well okay. I’m sure gouging profiteers on eBay will have packs to sell for the next few years—but at grossly inflated prices.)

So look deep within your soul (and your bank balance), and decide what it’s worth to you, to save a few final packs for special occasions.

Remember that the life of Polaroid films can be extended a few years past their expiration date by keeping them in the fridge. (Don’t put them in the freezer, because you can wreck the vital developer goo pods which form the image.)

Expired Polaroid film can lend interesting quirks to an image, due to color shifts and fading; or the image can be streaked or incompletely developed. But once film packs are many years out of date, they begin to fail entirely. Batteries die, or the developer pods dry out.

So don’t go hoarding more film than you would shoot in the next 2-3 years. You would just be taking precious shots away from another Polaroid-lover, who might be able to use it.

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Update 19 Dec. 2008: Just as I posted this, the Polaroid corporation announced it was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The reasons have little to do with instant photography; but the company’s troubles make the future of the Polaroid brand even murkier.

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Update February 2009: Yes, I have heard the excited talk about The Impossible Project to restart integral film production. It turns out some of the essential factory equipment was saved after all. I will be curious to see how it pans out. Here’s a good podcast radio interview with the technical head of the project.

Remember, they have numerous engineering hurdles to overcome before any film reaches shelves; once it does, it’s likely to be “quirky” emulsions at high prices.