RECEIVED: 35mm SLR MANUAL camera for college kid

Bryan S

Bryan
Corporate Member
Hey all...can anyone recommend a NC store that carries a well stocked variety of fresh B/W 120 roll film and/or 4x5 sheet film - at reasonable prices.
Partial to ASA 100 - 160.
Would also consider any, out of state, store that isn't more than a 2 hr drive from greensboro. NOT interested in chromogenic film. Am leery of ordering online and getting outdated or poorly stored stuff.

Not far from you. Camcor 2273 S Church st in Burlington. (336) 228-0251 They have always been great to deal with and can get what you need

Projectors - Digital Cameras | Camcorders - Audio Equipment | Camcor.com
 

smallboat

smallboat
Corporate Member
Camcor in burlington lists film as well as darkroom supplies on their website. They only show color film, both slide and negative. 35mm and 120, Last time I had B/W film processed was at a place in Kernersville, just off of 40. Can't recall the name.
 

TBoomz

New User
Ron
looked at camcor website. just seem to carry color neg film. Went there 4? yrs ago; took such a long time to find their film display, wondered if they were embarrassed at having any film [just a few rolls] to sell at all. On the upside, website shows color print chemistry available. The only thing I didn't process at home was color neg film - mastercolor did that for me.

Checked adorama & B&H websites. I may give them a chance (especially while weather is still cold).
Finally found a source for printing out paper (pos.) Been looking for yrs. My very first "serious" MANUAL mode camera was a DIY quaker oats pinhole, with a sheet of P.O.P taped inside.

Ilford's fairly well represented: film/paper. Noticed the absence of Oriental enlarging paper. B&H has a better supply of darkroom chems. My darkroom became a storage closet long ago. Was planning on doing it over as a potting "shed"....I may be able to do both, with some careful planning.
The main difference atwixt film vs digital is image storage life. I've lost countless images on HDs that went bad and USB drives. CDs and DVDs are only guaranteed to last 30 yrs - but film and photographic paper have staying power. I've photos of [forgotten] relatives taken before the 1920's....anyway....
thx for the suggestions, y'all.
 

Charles Lent

Charley
Corporate Member
There are special Archival DVD drives and DVDs available now that are supposed to keep data safe for 100 years, but I doubt by then, that there will still be a way to read them with technology changing so rapidly. Newer printing inks are holding up quite well in Sunlight, so maybe some recently made digital prints will last a generation or two if kept in storage boxes, like we have all been doing with our old photos. I have some digital prints that I made 20 years ago that are fading, even though kept out of Sunlight. A lot of ink technology improvements have been made in the last 20 years, so the newer prints should do much better.

Charley
 

TBoomz

New User
Ron
Back in '90? "91? I pestered my lab manager into buying a computer, 2 months after I'd bought one. In no time at all, he'd run all sorts of stuff thru his home printer - 2 C what he could print on. We were running a lot of Agfa RC b/w paper thru the printers & roller transport processors. He ran some processed, but unexposed paper thru his hewlet-packard printer [which used dyes]. He'd printed a photo with text - and it looked like a regular color photograph. One had to hold it inches away to see the dots of ink.

I ran the same paper thru my canon printer. Messy! The ink beaded up, stayed wet, and smeared going thru the rollers. No one in my photography group [AOL] nor even the world famous photographer who moderated the group, had thought to try it. (He emailed me later asking for more details.)

I was browsing Dalmatian photo lab's website today & noticed they're offering inkjet prints on enlarging paper. Altho calling them
Silver Gelatin prints probably makes it easier for customers to cough up xtra $$$.
But I'd wonder that since their printer uses pigment based inks, those inks are just sitting on the surface of the gelatin. And as time goes by and the gelatin dries and gets brittle as it ages, it would seem that the pigment would be in danger of flaking off,..and never reach the 200 year mark. ....So, Charley, as you've come from a background of
the old and new, ever run any enlarging paper thru yur wide format printers? And if so, comments?
 

Charles Lent

Charley
Corporate Member
Never tried that and don't any longer have any old paper to even think of trying it. I switched to digital in 1998, so the old analog photo equipment and supplies are long gone. I'm on my 4th DSLR camera now. My newest printer is a Canon X6820 and does far better than my Epson printers. There are more expensive Canon printers available, but I fell in love with this one. I have always used the matching brand of paper for the best results, so the Canon Pro Platinum is my choice for paper up to 13 X 19" for this Canon printer. There is an ideal combination of chemicals between the paper face surface and the printer inks. Using other brands of paper just does not make the best combination chemically when the ink is applied to the paper, so I learned long ago not to mix printer and paper brands. Some appear to work and might be a bit cheaper, but I no longer look for economy when printing photos. I make them the best that I can.

Charley
 
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TBoomz

New User
Ron
OOPS! ...my bad, and apologies to Dalmatian photo lab.

It was the "ppi" that threw me. I incorrectly made the jump from their use of inkjet to gelatin. The Lambda printer they use is a laser printer and not inkjet. and while they do indeed use inkjets had I looked further down their process description, I would have noted their use of non-phtographic paper for their "traditional" inkjet prints. Again apologies to dalmatian and to all others.

However, that said, I do stand by the experiments my former lab manager & I did using our inkjet printers with REAL silver gelatin [photographic] paper. We even tried processed color paper, but felt B&W paper was better. The lab didn't use fiber-based paper, so didn't try that in our home printers.
So, 40 years ago, inkjet nozzle technology - for some printers- like my canon weren't spraying the ink dry enuff onto the paper surface.
Years later I bought a different brand of printer[pigment based], redid the "experiment" [w/leftover photo scraps] and the resutling B/W print was good. But, I got away from photography and never got back into,......till now, maybe.

When my siblings' kids were still quite young [long spoiled w/their
I-phones] and visiting one day, I gave them each a loaded camera: Pentax MX [niece] and my mother's old Kodak box camera...fixed focus. Shutter button, no other controls [nephew].

Told them only good for twelve shots.[I pre-loaded the 35mm cartridges] Showed them how use the camera controls; said, shoot whatever they wanted. And subsequently, got them to process the film and print the shots - with chemicals [no inkjets]. It made for an interesting afternoon.

.........ahh, there's nothing quite like the smell of freshly mixed fixer in the morning............ Am hoping those archival dvds aren't too $$$.
 

nn4jw

New User
Jim
There are special Archival DVD drives and DVDs available now that are supposed to keep data safe for 100 years, but I doubt by then, that there will still be a way to read them with technology changing so rapidly. Newer printing inks are holding up quite well in Sunlight, so maybe some recently made digital prints will last a generation or two if kept in storage boxes, like we have all been doing with our old photos. I have some digital prints that I made 20 years ago that are fading, even though kept out of Sunlight. A lot of ink technology improvements have been made in the last 20 years, so the newer prints should do much better.

Charley

I don't have anything I particularly care about being archived for 100+ years, but I do have some documents and pics that I do care enough to want more than the 10 year life of typical digital media.

Frankly, I've fallen behind in keeping up with the state of the archival storage technology after retiring, so thanks for the nudge in mentioning the 100 year media. Turns out that when I built my current primary PC a couple of years ago I did install an LG M-Disc Blu-ray burner, so all I needed to do was order some BD-R media to be able to burn some 25g media to store in our safety deposit box.

Will they last 100 years? Who knows? I know I won't. But the media should last long enough to serve its purpose.
 

TBoomz

New User
Ron
I'm a bit curious as to why they are still teaching a completely obsolete process, and why she even needs to learn it. Even our X Ray machines have gone digital today, and Kodak, the once undisputed leader in film technology, is all but out of business, because of the sudden loss of demand for film technology. Even Fuji Film is now discontinuing many of their film products and will likely close their film business within a few years.

The school should be teaching digital photography now, because it's the present, and the future of imaging. Manual mode in a modern digital camera of today works exactly the same as the manual adjustments of old film cameras, but the low light capabilities and dynamic range of the new digital cameras far exceed that of the best old film cameras and film technology. I work in "Manual Mode" almost all the time. Another benefit with digital is that you can see the image that was just taken "instantly", so if it isn't right you can do it again. My present camera sends each image to my computers via WIFI, so it's there seconds after I take it. My photo lights are radio triggered from a transmitter on the hot shoe of my camera, and I can make adjustments to each light separately through it's radio receiver, all from the transmitter on the camera. There are no signal wires running around on the floor of my studio to trip over.

My "dark room" is completely within my computers, and has been for over 20 years now. I still develop, edit, and print all of my own photos, and the actual process of creating and printing images is the same, but I do it with my computers and wide format photo printers now. I'm on my fourth generation digital camera, since switching fully to the digital side of camera technology back in 1998, and my old "dark room" has become a storage room for additional studio equipment.

Charley
as a photographer and a woodworker - you ever make a wood VC, maybe something along the lines of a Deardorf?- or any manufacturer, for that matter.
Have noticed on youtube that the younger generation is "rediscovering" and embracing both medium and large format. The RB Pro, boat anchor, seems to be the choice for medium.
But the large format crowd is making their own.
 

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