Falling in love again with disposable cameras
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
But for film companies this is a great product. They can sell their film with added plastic bits and a flash for a decent markup.
it's an issue.
More people means more plastic is manufactured.
Note: I dont say anything against recycling, in fact we should do it.
These were kept separated, bagged up as needed, and the bags were picked up by the Kodak truck at night along with all of the send-out orders.
Film is so damn expensive these days too! A disposable 400TX with 27 frames is about £15, and a 36 of the same stock is about £12.50 I think.
It's no longer a mass produced item, so the same thing that makes a phone cheap is not available in the film business.
It feels like the same disease that hit GPUs then has spread not just to film cameras, but to every retro computing or digital gadget like CRT TVs/monitors, 15 year old laptops, consoles and DSLRs.
Everyone now thinks their old commodity e-waste that's not even rare is now worth it's weight in gold on ebay.
Your only choice of striking a good deal now is a yard sale or something, because online, the market ahs colluded to price fixing as if every customer is a nostalgic with deep pockets.
Personally, I'm not paying, because I refuse to fork up insane markups just to satisfy the nostalgia itch, but obviously some people are.
All of them?
By this reasoning, some random EU country could raise co2 emissions, stating that China is even worse. Problem is: the Planet does not care about artificial, man made boundaries.
To your last question: Yes, you should feel responsible. Who else could be? The point is to be conscious about what you do. Not everybody can be the best version of oneself, all the time, me included. However, denial is probably the worst of all reactions to this problem.
Not only does moralizing often backfire, it has an embedding effect that prevents actual progress.
Also, quite often non-disposable objects feel much more pleasant to use: Cutlery, glasses vs. plastic cups etc., just to name a few, so promoting reusable products over single-use plastic crap is a win-win in my book.
I'd definitely add film cameras to that list.
All of these can be true at the same time: Changes to individual consumption habits will not save the planet alone; these changes can still make an impact in aggregate; it can still feel nice to use a film camera while at the same time considering the environmental impact and maybe limiting their use to moments that really matter and not just a novelty thing.
And if people really (re)discover their love for film: Buy a used film camera! You'll get infinitely better results than from a disposable camera and will be able to resell it for practically no loss in value.
I've bought a couple of vinyl records of bands/records that I really like, but would feel quite bad about buying every record that I like that way, since producing them and shipping them around the world does seem like a pretty big resource expenditure for something that a file on my computer can achieve in much higher fidelity.
> guess which photos live in the cloud and which adorn our bookshelves?
You're aware that photo printing exists, right?
Dedicated cameras aren't purchased nearly as often because you need a pretty substantial jump in quality to compete with cell phone cameras at this point.
You could argue the rate of cellphone disposal is no good.
The former's market is almost certainly an order of magnitude larger than disposable cameras.
I can see either side of the argument, and probably the result would change based on bounding conditions; for instance, how many more people have 'cameras' in their pocket today compared to 20 years ago?
And a lot of chemicals in photo processing are reused over and over to develop rolls of film – maybe it's more efficient to have one central lab processing photos than a billion phone batteries going into landfill every year?
Also: "Five billion phones to be thrown away in 2022"
At this point it feels like little Timmy playing with fireworks next to the forest fire. Everyone and everything involved is terrible. Timmy still needs a scolding for being a moron.
* the environment will do just fine if we make all the vertebrates extinct. We just happen to feel otherwise.
Because it's half-frame it also takes twice as many photos per roll of film
Given that film is about $25 a roll to purchase and get lab-developed, cheap cameras are basically film toys. At least Lomo deliberately leans in to the aesthetic; it seems to be something people want.
I enjoyed the film handling, the dating of the prints, the size of the camera, battery life, etc. I even took advantage of being able to stop in mid-roll, and toss in a different one, and swap back.
It definitely went the way of the dodo, not all labs properly supported it (like not printing the date on the back of the photo).
But as a casual photo consumer, it worked really well for me.
One of my most cherished photos, and it's, honestly, a terrible photo, which is part of its charm, was taken with my APS camera.
It's a picture of my now wife and myself on a beach in Catalina from the weekend I proposed to her. The composition is terrible, we're way too small, and, even better, somehow, someway, there's a single shadow of a light pole that crosses the beach and right. through. us.
A few inches either way, and it would have not been an issue. We couldn't have staged it worse. It's a perfectly bad picture of a great day, and I love it.
Nothing to do with APS, mind, just that I took it with that camera. It had a timer :).
I'm not so sure it's actually helping their film business much. They've discontinued Superia and 400H, their two mainstay color negative films. The "Fuji 200" and "Fuji 400" sold today are known to be repackaged Kodak Gold and UltraMax, respectively. Fuji's slide films soldier on, but supply is extremely limited. To get a new 35mm roll of Velvia in the US, you're looking at a multi-week backorder through an online retailer, or you're going to a local shop and praying they have some in stock.
Neopan seems to be doing fine, but that's not saying much. If the only film they can make in-house at a volume commensurate with demand is a single black-and-white stock, that's a dire situation for such a huge operation.
(I never said Acros II was a relabeled Ilford product; I said Ilford was making Acros II for Fuji.)
What happens to the appeal of Fuji's film simulation as the real film stocks go away? Two of their most iconic brands are already defunct, and as already mentioned, the last two appear to be approaching a similar fate. The photography industry moves in cycles as the brands take turns being trendy (just ask Olympus- erm, OM System). Where does Fuji go from here?
There’s at least 20 in the classic Fujifilm film stock. Here’s some of the popular ones. Photographers will recognize them.
1. *Provia (Standard)* - General-purpose film simulation.
2. *Velvia (Vivid)* - Saturated colors and enhanced contrast, suitable for landscapes.
3. *Astia (Soft)* - Softer contrast and natural skin tones, ideal for portraits.
4. *Classic Chrome* - Muted colors and enhanced shadow tones, for a vintage look.
5. *Pro Neg. Hi* - High contrast and vivid colors, used for fashion and commercial work.
6. *Pro Neg. Std* - Balanced colors and softer contrast, suitable for portraits.
7. *Acros* - High-quality black and white with fine grain and deep blacks.
8. *Monochrome* - Standard black and white simulation.
9. *Sepia* - Warm, brownish tones for a nostalgic look.
10. *Eterna* - Cinematic look with low contrast and subdued colors.
11. *Classic Neg* - Mimics color negative film with muted tones and enhanced contrast.
12. *Eterna Bleach Bypass* - High contrast and desaturated colors, resembling the bleach bypass effect.
I don't buy this. I can crank green and magenta, pull red, throw in a little contrast, and just a hint of gaussian noise to make the raw files from my OM-5 MKII look damn near identical to Fuji 400H.
Fuji has copyrights on things like "Superia," "Velvia," and "Provia." They have patents on Superia chemistry, and nobody else knows how to make it. What Fuji doesn't have is patents on "vivid greens and magentas with cool-leaning daylight white balance, fine grain and high acutance." Fuji's own ability to accurately simulate their film stocks digitally is proof that digital simulation of arbitrary film stocks is feasible. Just don't call them by name if you don't own the copyright.
For anyone willing to put in even the slightest effort to learn the basics of photography, picking up an inexpensive used film camera will be much better than a disposable or the "reusable disposable" super-cheap new film cameras available now.
I have several 40–50 year old film cameras that continue to work just fine, and it's a pleasure to own a physical object that continues to function perfectly for decades, in stark contrast to disposable products and the planned obsolescence of virtually everything you can buy today.
Further, the UI/UX of most digital cameras is horrible, with dozens of confusing settings. It's much easier to use an all manual camera like (for example) a Pentax K1000 and set everything yourself than to figure out how to make a digital camera's dozens of settings and automatic functions do what you want them to. Most new DSLRs and mirrorless cameras have user manuals approaching 900 pages!
It somehow feels misleading. I guess it's just classic clickbait that bothers me more than usual.
She is going to use that for a permanently flashing art sculpture (I made sure to inform her about epilepsy and her need to inform people before they are exposed to the sculpture).
If you're photografing consider just getting a small second hand camera instead — less wasteful, better pics, even if you get a shitty camera.
The day I got an n-th hand East German 35mm SLR in the mid-80s the world was good again.
I use a polaroid camera these days. It is messy and wrong and dark and unreliable and bulky and expensive; the exact opposite of the (awesome! but also generic and boring) iphone in my pocket.
Leave some room for frivolity in your life.
However, the refills are expensive and the camera itself is very rudimentary (manual focus, limited control). OTOH, thanks to the simplicity, it is very easy to take apart and fix.
I think, there is an early-digital point and shoot revival going on.
Atleast it will be much cheaper than film.
And you can take not shit photos with it as well!
A protest to the tune of approximately $1 per photo. I love my 35mm SLR but shooting on it is extremely cost prohibitive. Digital photography doesn’t have to be inhumane, it’s more about the user than the technology.
Slides/print film and processing did not used to be cost-prohibitive. But I shot a few rolls of 35mm on my old SLR a few years ago and was stunned at the costs to just have them processed and scanned to digital files.
I used to do my own (B&W) processing as a kid and paid for it with paper route and lawn-mowing money; I don't know what that costs these days but it sure seems that film photography is no longer a reasonably cheap hobby.
Unless there was some time sensitive event, I might not look at them for weeks. Then I'll discard nine in ten.
You’d think I’d burn hundreds on film but no. A roll might last days or weeks or even longer. Every shot is different. I spend more time framing and making sure the exposure is correct. It forces you to slow down and think. The cost becomes hardly a thing because if I start worrying about $25 a month if that on film and dev, I have bigger problems.
You answered your own question — because you'd "give [yourself] a headache of 4000 photos with dozens of near identical shots to sift through".
It isn't the dollar-cost; it is the attention-cost.
When I shoot digital I might take forty shots of the same subject because there's movement and fractional differences in subject distance will visibly miss focus, so 10 fps.
When I shoot digital I might take one shot because exposure correct for highlights can be post-processed, so frame and focus.
Very annoyed when we asked about that to find out they became a black hole for negatives.
If you have somehow made your phone inhuman, that's not on your phone.
If you feel like you can take pictures you couldn't take otherwise, start playing with the settings on your camera app.
I'm part of the trend - I have a couple Minolta SLRs, 8(?) lenses, a couple point-and-shoots, and even a medium-format camera. There's a Yashica Electro 35 sitting in my lap as I type this.
If you want to play around with film, do the planet a favor and dig up your (or your parents') old 35mm camera instead of buying disposables. It's better off used than collecting dust in a basement. That's just my two cents, though.
Whatever people decide to do, I agree with you about skipping disposables and getting something vintage. There are a lot of gems out there - your Electro is certainly one of them, though I'd probably look at a lot of the Olympus point and shoots, though pricing seems to reflect the fact that they were quite good and are becoming a bit scarce; it seems like we're long past the point where the mainstream has unloaded all their 35mm gear for cheap.
I'd love to be able to do my own prints, but I simply don't have a room suitable for darkroom printing. I think that's the situation for a lot of folks. It's rare for apartment dwellers (like me) to have that kind of space at their disposal.
Is it such a big commitment? You can find decent used point and shoot type film cameras for 10-20EUR on ebay, at least where I am – sure it's not a Leica or whatever but they work well, at least in my experience.
The chemicals used for developing color film are bad enough already, no need to add pollution by single use plastic to the problem again.
I’d probably start by trying to find a local camera club that probably has some camera gear to loan/rent.
AE-1s are notoriously fragile. Their light meters break pretty easily, and then there's the shutter squeak of doom. Plenty of more reliable SLRs can be had for less money. Then there's the price - they're stupidly expensive, in part because of the influencers causing beginners to flock to them on eBay. I find the AE-1's shutter priority mode less useful than aperture priority on other cameras.
If you already have an AE-1 and you like it, don't get rid of it because of my comment. If you haven't bought a 35mm SLR yet, take a good look at the Canon T70, Minolta X-700, and Nikon N2000. All of them match or beat the AE-1/AE-1P in feature set, all can be had for cheaper than an AE-1, and all of them are better-made.
I deeply dislike journalism shovelware.
Maybe it's more of a try to generate a trend then a real trend the journalist is describing?
It's like my childhood is just gone. Not the cameras, not the film. Just the sense of - yeah, man, go and do that cool thing.
Yes, disposable things cause trash. A thousand of these things could probably fit in my dustbin. Even back in the day with no other options we maybe used 20-50 of them in my entire childhood.
You're allowed to be happy, you know. Them and you too.
Time to log off.