A new video celebrating the composition style of director Wes Anderson is currently making the rounds on the Internet: a beautiful ode to the power of symmetry and Anderson's ability to use it better than just about anybody in cinema.
I hope you have some tissues nearby, because this short film by Nathanael Matanick, known better as "Heschle," makes the term "tear-jerker" seem innocent. Having amassed well over a quarter of a million views on Vimeo and YouTube, ReMoved aims to bring awareness to the importance of foster care programs and the desperate need for quality foster parents.
At a time when digital production workflows are becoming more and more ubiquitous within Hollywood, the news of a director utilizing an analogue workflow on a big production always seems to strike a chord with those who appreciate the aesthetic and feel of film.
Thankfully, for those of you who do enjoy such news (myself included), two major directors are choosing film over even the highest-of-res digital for their upcoming (and already released) blockbusters.
Queue up Queen's Another One Bites the Dust, because it's time to mourn the loss of two more analog films. Despite talk that certain segments of the analog market are doing well, specific types of film that are having a hard time selling continue to kick the bucket.
The most recent of these are Fujifilm's Neopan 400 PRESTO 35mm black-and-white and Fujicolor PRO 400 120 color film.
Continuing to uphold the "gold standard" of film emulation, Visual Supply Co. has released its fifth series of film emulation presets. Called VSCO Film 05: The Archetype Films Collection, this emulation palette is based on some of the film stocks that defined the consumer analogue photography market of the past two decades.
The National Parks Services and Gigapan recently put together a photography project that takes a comparative look at two of America's best-known pieces of land and how they've changed over the course of 80 years.
Our reviewer Colin Peddle is currently the envy of the rest of the PetaPixel staff (including, wouldn't you know it, the Editor in Chief) because he gets to play around with the ZEISS 55mm f/1.4 Otus that has everybody in the photography world salivating.
Not having a dedicated film scanner is no barrier to being able to digitize your slides, but DIY methods we've presented in the past tend to be time-consuming. Even if it's an easy DIY solution that will let you, say, use your desktop all-in-one to scan them in, it'll still take you a long time to digitize the hundreds of slides you might have lying around.
Well, we've finally stumbled across a rig that fixes this problem: All you need is a modified slide projector, a macro lens, and an intervalometer to digitize hundreds of slides in minutes.
Britons are seeing a new side of the nation's World War I experience thanks to the publication of a small treasure trove of negatives that were only recently discovered tucked away in someone's attic.
The Impossible Project, the ongoing effort to keep classic Polaroid cameras alive and well-fed, has added a splash of color to its catalog with three new special edition SX-70 that films sport gold, silver and colored borders instead of the usual white.
You, of course, are an analog purist who will forever be devoted to film. Other folks, however, may be wondering what they're going to do with a bunch of darkroom equipment that's getting lonelier by the year.
When it comes to the film vs. digital debate, many people are fairly entrenched on one side or the other. But can you really tell the difference between RAW digital footage and film footage? What about when the digital footage is made to look like film using filters in post? PBS Digital Studios wants to put you to the test.
If you're shopping for a young person who'd benefit from learning a little more about the principles of photography, you may want to consider the LAST Camera: a build-it-yourself 35mm film camera that could well outfreak Lomography for quirky build and artfully distressed images.
A lot of film people have deep connections to Super 8 cameras, once the medium of choice for everyone from film school students to porn directors. But it's getting harder and harder to actually use the things, as stocks of film cartridges dwindle.
To the rescue comes Nolab, a project to build a digital adapter that will allow any Super 8 camera to shoot 720p HD video.
Fujifilm has confirmed that it will soon stop production of its FP-3000B film, which means that the only black-and-white instant film currently available in the 3x4 format will soon disappear forever.
Analog photography buffs can rest a little easier: Photographic film is now supported by the combined economic majesty of Lomography and the photographic offshoot of post-bankruptcy Kodak.
First comes hype, then comes the announcement, and last comes the post-release marketing. In regards to the Nikon Df, we've officially moved into the last of those three steps, and right on cue, Nikon has released three videos of big time photographers endorsing the Df by talking about their experiences shooting with it.
Every two years, the lighting of the Olympic Flame amidst the ruins of the Temple of Hera is a pretty interesting performance. The torch is lit from the light of the Sun, using a parabolic mirror to focus the Sun's rays on the fuel in the torch and set it ablaze... but what exactly is that fuel? By the looks of it, at least a small part is a piece of
Photography has a rich history that is really fun to peer back into once in a while when you have a spare minute to stop oogling over the next piece of gear (*cough* NEX full-frame *cough*) that'll steal your heart and most of the funds in your bank account.
On that note, check out this awesome old review of the Pentax Spotmatic. It was written in 1965 by the late Fred Springer-Miller, and it might make you think twice before you take today's technology for granted.
Sure, the 1980s isn't quite so far in the past as, say, the first photo, but the commercial above is classic nonetheless. It shows off the Nimslo 35mm 3D camera, the first consumer level 3D lenticular camera of the 80s and, if you believe the commercial, "the most important new camera of your lifetime."
We hate to contribute in any small way to the Miley Cyrus hoopla/shenanigans/ruckus (pick your poison) but when an old 35mm SLR that would normally go for about $60 starts bidding at almost $100,000 we can't help but take notice.
The camera in question is an old 35mm Nikon N80 SLR, and as you might have already guessed, the reason it's going for so ridiculously much is that ... well ... Miley is selling it.
Now that Eastman Kodak's bankruptcy woes are over and the company has switched its focus primarily to commercial printing, its name probably won't show up here as often as it once did. But that doesn't mean that the Kodak photographic legacy is dead.
One of the steps Eastman Kodak took to get out of bankruptcy was to sell its personalized and document imaging businesses to the UK Kodak Pension Plan (KPP), and that has birthed a company that plans to keep that legacy alive: Kodak Alaris.
Congratulations, new adopters of film photography -- you're now officially a subculture!
The defining point, of course, is having an independent documentary film about your movement, and that's just what mail-order processor Indie Film Lab is doing with "Long Live Film."
Long before there was any way to capture colors on film, filmmakers were hand painting their short movies frame by frame to breathe life into black-and-white productions. The desire to capture color, it seems, far precedes our ability to do so.
In the Filmmaker IQ video above, John Hess takes you through a comprehensive history of color in filmmaking. From hand-tinting, to Technicolor, to digital color manipulation, take a look and see just how far we've come when it comes to capturing the reds, greens and blues of our world.
Consumer film scanners don't provide enough detail, and professional models require too much money and pampering. What's a dedicated film nerd to do? For Peter De Smidt, the answer was to build his own high-res scanner using the Nikon D600 and 50mm Micro lens he already had on hand, a bit of lumber and a lot of patience.
San Francisco-based photographer and self-proclaimed super nerd Doctor Popular -- the same one that made this film canister valentines day card back in February -- started off his photographic career with an iPhone. Unlike many photographers, he moved backwards, eventually purchasing a film camera "strictly out of curiosity" at a yard sale and shifting his focus more and more to film.
His most recent endeavor, Glitch Double Exposures, mixes the two worlds of digital and analog by combining street photos with photos of purposely glitched images into ethereal double exposures.
Treasures are often buried under dirt. Well, that's usually the case, anyway. Treasures for photographers may mean finding a working copy of their dream camera at a flea market or on the second-hand camera market. However, more often than not, the camera may not be looking great.
Good news isn't always easy to come by in the world of film; more often than not, the stories we run have to do with film being discontinued. But that's not always the case, and the most recent news out of Ilford should give film lovers something to smile about.
You might not know this, but there was metadata before there was, well, metadata. Way back in 1914, Kodak introduced the Autographic system, a combination of autographic cameras and film that allowed you to permanently sign, date and title your negatives as you shot them.
I’ve seen lots of used film canisters repurposed as dangling bag accessories for sale in trendy parts of Hong Kong. The idea is to drill or burn a small hole in the top of the plastic spool and fit a keychain to that. I figured it would be a lot more useful to use the can to give a return contact address in case the bag is lost and found. What better way could there be than to use film?
Back in 1948, The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers defined high-speed photography as any 3 frames or more captured at a rate at or above 128 frames per second, but even back then high-speed cameras performed well past that mark.
The public domain video above gives us a short peek at how far high-speed photography tech had advanced by the mid-1960s, when Wollensak's Fastax models were some of the foremost high-speed cameras on the market, capturing action at speeds of up to 18,000fps.
British filmmaker Philip Bloom was recently in Frankfurt working with digital agency Szyygy, and while he was there, he was selected as the subject of a filmmaking exercise he assigned the students of the 3-day private workshop he gave.
The assignment was to film a mini doc, and the four students picked Bloom as the subject, choosing to interview him about the street photography he shoots during his time off.
I have been shooting a lot of film lately and enjoy it tremendously, so I thought I'd share some of the experiences I've had in the last year or so, mainly so you can learn from the mistakes I made, avoid them and then make your own.
For the sake of getting some kind of structure into this post I'll try and describe three typical scenarios of people shooting film today, differentiated by the amount of control you'll have over the image.
How do us elders separate ourselves from those who only know what it means to upload? Here are 17 tools and toys you’ll immediately recognize if you still remember the heyday of Kodak. Bring on the nostalgia.
Italian photography company Ferrania is ready to start making film again, years after giving up its primary business as a lost cause.
Film has seen better days. With legends like Kodak's Kodachrome gone, and staples like Fujifilm's Neopan 400 very recently following suit, most news about film is met with dismay and long drawn out "No's" (if you doubt it, check out the comment section on the Neopan 400 and Provia 400X discontinuation announcement linked above).
There's no doubt about that fact that street photography is wildly interesting. There's just so much to it that makes it appealing. Real people, real moments -- good and bad. Best of all, there's something new to capture every day. And while many of us don't have the courage to get out there and point our camera at a stranger, it's interesting to see it happen, especially in a metropolis.
Filmmaker Cheryl Dunn (who is a street photographer herself) is working on a documentary called Everybody Street, which features the master street photographers in America's most populated city -- New York City. The trailer above gives a taste of what it's about (note: it's slightly NSFW).
Unfortunately, the news that a particular type of film is being discontinued is anything but surprising these days. And even though we haven't had reason to report any such news for a little while, we can once again cue "Another One Bites the Dust" by Queen, this time in honor of Fujifilm's Neopan 400 B&W film and Provia 400X slide film.
Never underestimate the power of 212 Instagrammers. Now that might seem like a strange thing to say, but vehicle manufacturer Lexus quite literally put over 200 mobile-phone-toting-picture-takers on a lot with a 1,400-foot track and let them go to town on the 2014 Lexus IS F SPORT -- a vehicle we all would probably like to see sitting outside our front doors.
Film photography is similar in many ways to digital photography, and most of your standard digital photography techniques apply to film too. You just have to understand the peculiarities of film and its limitations and you’re good to go.
That will be explained in detail in this article, which presumes readers are already reasonably proficient at digital photography and are embarking upon film photography for the first time.
Don McCullin is a photojournalism icon. He's spent his life chasing haunting images that, more often than not, he's succeeded in capturing. And even though his career has taken him all over the world -- to Cyprus, the Congo, Biafra, Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh, El Salvador, and the Middle East among others -- one thing has sed the same throughout his journeys: he's always shot film.
In this short documentary put together for Canon Professional Network by ICE Productions, he takes his first go at using a digital camera and discovers the potential (and potential pitfalls) of the technology.
Back in 2011, we shared a series of "Genetic Portraits" by photographer Ulric Collette that showed portraits of various family members spliced together to show the similarities and differences of those who share DNA. Photographer Andrew Ryan did something similar for his project Base Pairs, except he ventured along the analog route instead of going fully digital.
About a month ago, we shared some stunning footage that showed what London was like all the way back in 1926. The original filming was done by Claude Friese-Greene, whose father William invented the 'Biocolour' technique of capturing color film footage.
That particular video was a compilation of snippets that Friese-Greene had filmed in London when he returned form a 2-year journey. He called the final product The Open Road, and it was a 26-part series that took him all over Britain. Fortunately for us, much of it has now been digitized and uploaded bit-by-bit to YouTube by The BFI National Archive.
At last year's Fall Photography at the Summit, the folks at the Summit Series of Workshops got a chance to sit down and speak with legendary photojournalist Bill Eppridge. They asked him about "the importance of the still image," and Eppridge responded by sharing the wise views on photography he has spent a lifetime acquiring.
It will probably come as no surprise to many that Kodak is planning to discontinue production of the acetate base, a primary component film, according to a WROC report published Tuesday.
Here's a great short film written and directed by Mumbai-based photographer Martin Prihoda that pays a touching tribute to photography. As he explains it, this short amounts to a "love letter to Bombay and to the good old 'film' days."
Color film first burst onto the scene in 1935 when Kodak introduced the world to Kodachrome, and the first of this film that was available to the public was the 16mm variety for home movies. Later, Kodak introduced similar 8mm and 35mm film for home movies and photography, respectively, but it was the 16mm film that had finally offered consumers the ability to easily capture their world in color for the very first time.
The above video is a rare clip released by the Romano Archives that shows what French tourist Jean Vivier was able to capture using the 16mm film all the way back in 1939, when he came to visit the Big Apple.
Photographer David Emitt Adams experiments with unique metal bases in his experiments with tintype photography. Last week we shared a project in which he used abandoned tin cans found in a desert to create tintype photographs.
36 Exposures is another project of his that uses unconventional materials for creating old school photos. It's a series of tintype photographs that were created using 35mm film canisters.
One of the advantages of digital photography is having information about how each photo was shot embedded within the photograph's file itself. This EXIF data is something photographers commonly jot down in notebooks as they walk around and shoot with their analog cameras.
Photographer Oriol Garcia wanted a better solution than manually writing down shot times and details. Since most people have smartphones now, why not make an extremely easy to use app that can document the info of every photograph taken? He ended up creating an app called PhotoExif that can do just that.
Thanks to the prevalence of digital photography and the fact that camera stores seem to be closing left and right, it can be hard enough to find film in the first place these days. But if you shoot with ultra large or specialty format films, your job is even more difficult. Thankfully, Ilford is here to help.
Harman technologies Inc. -- the folks behind the manufacture of Ilford film -- are opening their annual window during which photographers can order as much custom-manufactured specialty film as their hearts desire.