Where could film have gone if Nasty Digital hadn't arrived !

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First off Nasty Digital is a little tongue in cheek before anyone loses it ! But if digital hadn't arrived where could analogue/film have gone ? Was there any room for improvement ? One method I thought of was to record analogue images on magnetic tape as VHS/beta max did (maybe this was done) this would at least cut the cost of film and maybe you could have viewed it/deleted it with modern tech, may be even used in a wider range of light as digital now can. Can you think of other things ?
 
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I had a 'Snappy' Play gizmo that converted analogue video from VHS or Betamax tape into digital stills through the printer port on the PC before I had access to a digital camera (that was a Sony Mavica that took 3.5inch floppy disks in 1998). It gave you 625 lines resolution vertically !
 
A general improvement in grain & acutance would have been nice, plus 'intelligent' enprint machines that could do better than an average 18% grey density print.
 
32,000 (or 64K) ISO film would be useful.......there was a rumour many years ago that Kodak were exploring the possibility of a new film.
 
how about the Ilford school to help Donuts take better pictures with what we have already improvement ?
 
I would have liked to have seen instant slide film. Transparent Polaroids. Not a Medical condition....

It did exist. as did black and white negatives. as did instant colour cine film.
 
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A general improvement in grain & acutance would have been nice, plus 'intelligent' enprint machines that could do better than an average 18% grey density print.


IIRC there was a reasonable step forward in finer grain on faster (400 ASA/ISO colour print) films when APS came along - the smaller format made the grains look bigger when they were blown up that bit more.
 
I would have liked to have seen instant slide film. Transparent Polaroids. Not a Medical condition....

I've used it. I still had some of the film a few years ago, but passed it on (together with the dedicated processor) to someone on another forum. The problem I found was that the processing was basically a manual wind through (to break the chemical pods at a guess) and unless you were very consistent in winding rate, uneven development resulted. If I could be bothered to go through 4 filing cabinet drawers of hanging files containing slides, I could probably find some.
 
I think this has been the first time I've seen this question asked... anywhere.

My only gripe with film was the hairs, specks, scratches and the like that I saw on my pictures when they came back from development and in fact it was this that drove me to give up and go digital. I don't know if the process could have been refined to make these things less likely but if I hadn't got sick of this sort of thing I might have stayed with film for years more.
 
Not so; I can recall replying to the same question somewhere in the last year or so. Probably on a now dead forum (Pixalo).

My reply was along the lines of:

Incremental improvements can always be expected - better speed/grain ratio, higher speeds. Sudden disjoints are by their nature unpredictable (think tabular grain type films).

In chemistry - several lines of research were mothballed or even scrapped with results destroyed. They might have lead to improvements.

Modern films are less easily scratched than older ones - this might have been further improved.

Anyone for reciprocity failure and improvements there?

Slide films with the capacity to hold detail over a greater subject brightness range?

Greater imperviousness to film storage conditions and less need to process rapidly after exposure (some current films are worse than others here).

I doubt that this is more than scratching the surface.
 
I do find it interesting that in the early days digital cameras were generally quite faecal in performance, and for some time I defended film as being a better medium. Not really sure when the change-over took place, but I'm glad it did.
 
I do find it interesting that in the early days digital cameras were generally quite faecal in performance, and for some time I defended film as being a better medium. Not really sure when the change-over took place, but I'm glad it did.

With the arrival of such cameras as the Canod 40D and the Nikon D300
At that point Digital became full functional in most peoples mind.
That was the point at which I bought my First DSLR. and retired my more basic compacts.
 
Assuming that digital cameras hadn't progressed but the ubiquity of other digital tech was unchanged then I think we would have seen some major improvements in film with the emphasis being on film optimised for colour balancing and high quality digital scanning at labs - with the normal lab output becoming downloadable images - with the option to select prints.

We'd have seen something like Fuji 'Digia' or Kodak 'Digichrome' or Ilford iXP4.

Optical lens stabilisation would be the only option - without a practical IBIS to compete I suspect that lens manufacturers would have kept it as a premium feature for longer focal lengths rather ahn let it filter down to 'standard' zooms and the like.
 
Assuming that digital cameras hadn't progressed but the ubiquity of other digital tech was unchanged then I think we would have seen some major improvements in film with the emphasis being on film optimised for colour balancing and high quality digital scanning at labs - with the normal lab output becoming downloadable images - with the option to select prints.
I think that's where Kodak were going with Ektar 100. Minilabs like the Fuji Frontier and the Noritsu were already hybrid digital systems at that point, so most films were being scanned routinely and the images adjusted before printing. CDs of jpgs were available to the customer (though usually not at the high resolution the scanners were capable of providing).
 
With the arrival of such cameras as the Canod 40D and the Nikon D300
At that point Digital became full functional in most peoples mind.
That was the point at which I bought my First DSLR. and retired my more basic compacts.

Surely the Canon 300D and 5D deserve a mention as watershed moments. The 300D for me surpassed anything I got from film. I was never truly happy with the bulk and weight of DSLR's though. They always felt too big and heavy over the film cameras I had.
 
Surely the Canon 300D and 5D deserve a mention as watershed moments. The 300D for me surpassed anything I got from film. I was never truly happy with the bulk and weight of DSLR's though. They always felt too big and heavy over the film cameras I had.

They were indeed watersheds and the next step up the quality ladder

However, so has the arrival of Mirrorless been the start of a new revolution.

Also the performance and size and weight of the Fuji X cameras has shown that the advantage is not all with Full Frame, when it come to image making.
 
I was never truly happy with the bulk and weight of DSLR's though. They always felt too big and heavy over the film cameras I had.
This is where digital triumphed over film. Smaller sensor size has only a limited quality penalty. On the other hand if you compare a 8x11 Minox frame with a 24x36 frame the quality penalty is very clear. A camera like a Panasonic TZ70 or a Sony HX90 can fit in your pocket yet still cover a range of focal lengths equivalent to 24-720 while letting you make very acceptable prints to A4 or bigger. Unfortunately that was a development too far for emulsion technology.
 
As far as image quality is concerned, there's still argument that digital has yet to achieve the 'ultimate' IQ that film might... its just a question of cost and convenience....

'Consumer' film cameras were headed down that avenue for decades before digital, with ever smaller and cheaper film cameras, coming down from 10x8" plate cameras to 120 roll-film, shrinking to movie-format 35mm and beneath that to 110 cartridge, and then competition to maximise the area under the curve of the compromise, with 'better' lenses and stuff used to compensate for the smaller film.

Polaroid was probably the most intriguing leap forwards in halide photography, the film 'self-developing' to direct print. Mass market scale was employed to sort of keep costs reasonable, but 'consumer' grade cameras offered it at the expense of IQ, whilst pro grade MF cameras got some back at extra cost.
So, where could halide photography have gone, that it actually didn't? Most things were and still are possible, its just whether the 'market' will buy it.

Analogue electronic cameras existed.. as said they were Video cameras, and they were on the high-street, in volume by the 1980's, probably the height of popular film photography... they just didn't make 'stills', very often... but then did the market want them? Back to that area-under-the-compromise-curve... cost vs convenience vs quality.

Digital, and the proliferation of consumer electronics gave huge advantage to digital-photography to start exploiting some of the convenience benefits over halide film.... B-U-T... what has mostly promoted wide-spread uptake of digital photography, I think, is the Smart-Phone.

Go back quarter of a century and there were digital cameras. Go back twenty years and they were on the high-street, and not so exorbitantly expensive.... But, I remember showing my Gran my first one, and she was perplexed, peering at its postage stamp sized back-screen, as to how and when she could see the 'Prints', and when trying to explain that I didn't have to get the 'film' developed, asking how I could plug it into the TV then?

What has pulled the more wide-spread adoption of digital, then has been the wired world, and the fact that now, I could take the SD card out of my camera and slot it in the side of a TV to show her the pictures, or, I can e-mail them, or post them on farce-broke..... Digital photography has evolved and been adopted to fit with digital, well, LIFE really.

IF the internet hadn't evolved the way it has, if digital consumer devices hadn't evolved with the amount of convergence it has, with transmission and distribution and display of media on electronic devices... 'Consumer' digital photography probably wouldn't exist.
So if Digital photography hadn't evolved, would there have been anything to 'drive' any significant evolution of halide film photography in any particular direction?

The APS Advanced-Photo-System, as the last real development in pre-digital film-photography, sort of suggests where evolution may have gone...
And an interesting case study; the system was developed to try and offer something that was better than the very small format 110 cartridge, and cheaper than 35mm, but curiously as much as anything, the imperative was pandering to the environmental lobby, where the smaller film area, begged less chemicals to make and develop, hence less pollution, the same imperative that saw the evolution of Dry-To-Dry processing systems and the mini-lab.

Technology does not evolve in isolation... its cause and effect at every stage.

I like motorbikes.... its almost utter serendipity, though that any-one ever built one! I mean, you want to make a self propelled vehicle? WHO in their right minds starts with something with just two wheels that will fall over! You give it three or four so it doesn't And you give it more than one seat, so you can carry a passenger or three. In fact, you build a TRAIN.

The motorbike exists, because when Gottenlib Daimler unbolted one of his bosses gas-engines from the bench and took it out-side and got it to run on furniture polish..... it wasn't powerful enough to pull anything bigger or heavier than a kids hobby-horse that was lying around, hence Einspur, the first internal combustion engine vehicle! And later pioneers, faced with similar problems and dilemmas, came to the same conclusion, and strapped small De-Dion engines to push-bikes!

Fact that they existed was some-what serendipitous, too! The hobby horse evolving out of a stick with a stuffed toy horses head on the end, used in masques re-enacting jousts, and given to the kids to play with! Becoming the hobby-horse when the grown ups decided to have drunken races around the lawn after the kids had gone to bed, and boys being boys wanting a better hobby horse for the next party, culminating in the penny-farthing.... along the way, the 'in tension' wire spoked wheel evolving in favour of the 'in compression' wooden spoked wheel; the chain drive being adopted from a sewing machine, the innovation of the india rubber tyre, that developed into the pneumatic tyre.... one advance begged by another.

The precept, how would film photography have evolved if digital hadn't, is like most historical 'What ifs'.. what if Napoleon had won at Waterloo? What if Margret Thatcher had backed down to the miners? What if Harold Hadrada had cornflakes for breakfast instead of Kippers? So much is down to fluke, chance and serendipity.... leading into the very very esoteric science of 'Chaos-Theory' and the suggestion that any apparently chaotic or unpredictable situation, regardless of the statistical im-probability will have a tendency to trend to a statistical probability... and we start getting very Douglas Adams, that suggests that ultimately there's no escaping fate, and what will be will be, and that really there isn't a historical alternative, all roads lead to Rome, and whatever the what-ifs, nature would have its way and it would get to the same place one way or another regardless..... At which point the philosopher pointed to the Babel-Fish and promptly dissapeared in an ethereal puff of logic.....

Where could film have gone?

Well, environmentally unfriendly, it PROBABLY wouldn't have gone anywhere! As regulation started to bite, like with cars being dogged by emission controls, its only the now very very limited use of film and all the necessary use of the associateted chemicals that keep the environmental impact within tolerable limits to the regulators. The market saturation and wide-spread adoption of consumer cameras, probably wasn't sustainable, anyway, and that market would have been under pressure to shrink, without the alternative of digital being there to take up the demand.

The market had already concluded an 'acceptable quality level' centred somewhere on that of 35mm, and if you wanted 'better' it was already there in Medium Format, but at a price not many were prepared to pay. If you wanted cheaper or more convenient, that too was already there in 110 cartridge instamatics, but the mass market had centred on 35mm, as 'good enough' for most and a pretty good area under the curve compromise.

Evolution that was taking place in the last high-street film cameras, was significantly an increase in 'automation' such as auto-focus, and the compromise smaller format APS film, between 110 cartridge and 35mm... but that was probably a bridge too far for most, and didn't offer enough area under the compromise for many buyers, and never gained the take-up to garner the economies of scale that 120 or 35mm or 110 cartridge did, even before digital reared its head.

Personally, then? I think that the market would have shrunk. As a luxury product you don't really need, the consumer would not have demanded much more of the manufacturers, and certainly not been prepared to pay much for anything they did develop. Enviro regulation would have bit, and the pressure on the market would have seen popular photography probably shrink, and manufacturers loath to invest in development, leading to a stagnation, and likely 35mm film continuing the accepted norm, with escalating costs as the market shrank.

Evolution of analogue electronic cameras, would probably have continued, but, as video cameras not stills..... again, technology does not evolve in isolation... so, with VHS-C tape sort of setting the bench mark for the acceptable quality level and size of the device? Without 'Digital' computing driving the evolution, and mass market economies to develop the 3.5" floppy diskette, let alone large capacity hard drives, or flash-drives? Where would the 'pull', the necessity is mother of invention, come from to evolve analogue electric photography in ANY direction? It was there, but peculiarly restricted to video, not stills, and even there, it was probably close to saturation and not gone much further, were it not for digital.
 
As far as image quality is concerned, there's still argument that digital has yet to achieve the 'ultimate' IQ that film might... its just a question of cost and convenience....

'Consumer' film cameras were headed down that avenue for decades before digital, with ever smaller and cheaper film cameras, coming down from 10x8" plate cameras to 120 roll-film, shrinking to movie-format 35mm and beneath that to 110 cartridge, and then competition to maximise the area under the curve of the compromise, with 'better' lenses and stuff used to compensate for the smaller film.

Polaroid was probably the most intriguing leap forwards in halide photography, the film 'self-developing' to direct print. Mass market scale was employed to sort of keep costs reasonable, but 'consumer' grade cameras offered it at the expense of IQ, whilst pro grade MF cameras got some back at extra cost.
So, where could halide photography have gone, that it actually didn't? Most things were and still are possible, its just whether the 'market' will buy it.

Analogue electronic cameras existed.. as said they were Video cameras, and they were on the high-street, in volume by the 1980's, probably the height of popular film photography... they just didn't make 'stills', very often... but then did the market want them? Back to that area-under-the-compromise-curve... cost vs convenience vs quality.

Digital, and the proliferation of consumer electronics gave huge advantage to digital-photography to start exploiting some of the convenience benefits over halide film.... B-U-T... what has mostly promoted wide-spread uptake of digital photography, I think, is the Smart-Phone.

Go back quarter of a century and there were digital cameras. Go back twenty years and they were on the high-street, and not so exorbitantly expensive.... But, I remember showing my Gran my first one, and she was perplexed, peering at its postage stamp sized back-screen, as to how and when she could see the 'Prints', and when trying to explain that I didn't have to get the 'film' developed, asking how I could plug it into the TV then?

What has pulled the more wide-spread adoption of digital, then has been the wired world, and the fact that now, I could take the SD card out of my camera and slot it in the side of a TV to show her the pictures, or, I can e-mail them, or post them on farce-broke..... Digital photography has evolved and been adopted to fit with digital, well, LIFE really.

IF the internet hadn't evolved the way it has, if digital consumer devices hadn't evolved with the amount of convergence it has, with transmission and distribution and display of media on electronic devices... 'Consumer' digital photography probably wouldn't exist.
So if Digital photography hadn't evolved, would there have been anything to 'drive' any significant evolution of halide film photography in any particular direction?

The APS Advanced-Photo-System, as the last real development in pre-digital film-photography, sort of suggests where evolution may have gone...
And an interesting case study; the system was developed to try and offer something that was better than the very small format 110 cartridge, and cheaper than 35mm, but curiously as much as anything, the imperative was pandering to the environmental lobby, where the smaller film area, begged less chemicals to make and develop, hence less pollution, the same imperative that saw the evolution of Dry-To-Dry processing systems and the mini-lab.

Technology does not evolve in isolation... its cause and effect at every stage.

I like motorbikes.... its almost utter serendipity, though that any-one ever built one! I mean, you want to make a self propelled vehicle? WHO in their right minds starts with something with just two wheels that will fall over! You give it three or four so it doesn't And you give it more than one seat, so you can carry a passenger or three. In fact, you build a TRAIN.

The motorbike exists, because when Gottenlib Daimler unbolted one of his bosses gas-engines from the bench and took it out-side and got it to run on furniture polish..... it wasn't powerful enough to pull anything bigger or heavier than a kids hobby-horse that was lying around, hence Einspur, the first internal combustion engine vehicle! And later pioneers, faced with similar problems and dilemmas, came to the same conclusion, and strapped small De-Dion engines to push-bikes!

Fact that they existed was some-what serendipitous, too! The hobby horse evolving out of a stick with a stuffed toy horses head on the end, used in masques re-enacting jousts, and given to the kids to play with! Becoming the hobby-horse when the grown ups decided to have drunken races around the lawn after the kids had gone to bed, and boys being boys wanting a better hobby horse for the next party, culminating in the penny-farthing.... along the way, the 'in tension' wire spoked wheel evolving in favour of the 'in compression' wooden spoked wheel; the chain drive being adopted from a sewing machine, the innovation of the india rubber tyre, that developed into the pneumatic tyre.... one advance begged by another.

The precept, how would film photography have evolved if digital hadn't, is like most historical 'What ifs'.. what if Napoleon had won at Waterloo? What if Margret Thatcher had backed down to the miners? What if Harold Hadrada had cornflakes for breakfast instead of Kippers? So much is down to fluke, chance and serendipity.... leading into the very very esoteric science of 'Chaos-Theory' and the suggestion that any apparently chaotic or unpredictable situation, regardless of the statistical im-probability will have a tendency to trend to a statistical probability... and we start getting very Douglas Adams, that suggests that ultimately there's no escaping fate, and what will be will be, and that really there isn't a historical alternative, all roads lead to Rome, and whatever the what-ifs, nature would have its way and it would get to the same place one way or another regardless..... At which point the philosopher pointed to the Babel-Fish and promptly dissapeared in an ethereal puff of logic.....

Where could film have gone?

Well, environmentally unfriendly, it PROBABLY wouldn't have gone anywhere! As regulation started to bite, like with cars being dogged by emission controls, its only the now very very limited use of film and all the necessary use of the associateted chemicals that keep the environmental impact within tolerable limits to the regulators. The market saturation and wide-spread adoption of consumer cameras, probably wasn't sustainable, anyway, and that market would have been under pressure to shrink, without the alternative of digital being there to take up the demand.

The market had already concluded an 'acceptable quality level' centred somewhere on that of 35mm, and if you wanted 'better' it was already there in Medium Format, but at a price not many were prepared to pay. If you wanted cheaper or more convenient, that too was already there in 110 cartridge instamatics, but the mass market had centred on 35mm, as 'good enough' for most and a pretty good area under the curve compromise.

Evolution that was taking place in the last high-street film cameras, was significantly an increase in 'automation' such as auto-focus, and the compromise smaller format APS film, between 110 cartridge and 35mm... but that was probably a bridge too far for most, and didn't offer enough area under the compromise for many buyers, and never gained the take-up to garner the economies of scale that 120 or 35mm or 110 cartridge did, even before digital reared its head.

Personally, then? I think that the market would have shrunk. As a luxury product you don't really need, the consumer would not have demanded much more of the manufacturers, and certainly not been prepared to pay much for anything they did develop. Enviro regulation would have bit, and the pressure on the market would have seen popular photography probably shrink, and manufacturers loath to invest in development, leading to a stagnation, and likely 35mm film continuing the accepted norm, with escalating costs as the market shrank.

Evolution of analogue electronic cameras, would probably have continued, but, as video cameras not stills..... again, technology does not evolve in isolation... so, with VHS-C tape sort of setting the bench mark for the acceptable quality level and size of the device? Without 'Digital' computing driving the evolution, and mass market economies to develop the 3.5" floppy diskette, let alone large capacity hard drives, or flash-drives? Where would the 'pull', the necessity is mother of invention, come from to evolve analogue electric photography in ANY direction? It was there, but peculiarly restricted to video, not stills, and even there, it was probably close to saturation and not gone much further, were it not for digital.
brilliant post as always mike(y)
 
Two questions within the original question , one when did film processing become hybridized and How dangerous are film chemicals to the environment ? Are we talking quite deadly or are we taking as bad as all the other house hold chemicals that end up down our drains ?
 
Two questions within the original question , one when did film processing become hybridized

I'm afraid I don't understand this question.

I'm not an expert (far from it) in safety of chemicals, but bearing in mind what's actually in developers and fixers for black and white, I'd rate them as nowhere near as bad as household bleach and cooking oil. At any rate, I'd feel safer dipping my hand into developer, fixer and stop bath than into bleach. And anyone who tray develops sheet film without gloves does that...

The problems I assume come down to whether they degrade over time into something either harmless (good) or harmful (bad).

My chemistry comes from the days when health and safety didn't exist and we only learned the risks afterwards.
 
I'm afraid I don't understand this question.

I'm not an expert (far from it) in safety of chemicals, but bearing in mind what's actually in developers and fixers for black and white, I'd rate them as nowhere near as bad as household bleach and cooking oil. At any rate, I'd feel safer dipping my hand into developer, fixer and stop bath than into bleach. And anyone who tray develops sheet film without gloves does that...

The problems I assume come down to whether they degrade over time into something either harmless (good) or harmful (bad).

My chemistry comes from the days when health and safety didn't exist and we only learned the risks afterwards.

Putting your hands into processing chemicals is not a good Idea.. Though many of us did it over many years.
The result was usually softened and yellow finger nails and when sensitised to metol ( poisoning) then peeling and itchy skin.
Also most of the colour processing chemical were either poisonous or carcinogenic.
most processing could be done without touching the chemicals at all.

Though I often processed between 20 and 50 bromide prints in one go by shuffling them through the developer and then into the stop bath and fixer. it was quick easy and highly productive. Developer was dumped with the waste water, but spent fixer went for silver recovery. Today regulations prohibit the dumping of chemicals. Though the small quantities amateurs use is probably neither here nor there if well diluted.
 
As far as image quality is concerned, there's still argument that digital has yet to achieve the 'ultimate' IQ that film might... its just a question of cost and convenience....

I think that as far as image quality goes, they are about the same now for the same sensor/frame size with the laws of physics limiting both. Obviously, it's much easier to cut film to a larger size than it is to build larger sensors, so large format film will always have the edge in quality.

Despite many improvements in sensors, film still has the superior dynamic range though.

It's at a point now where I would rather use digital for colour and film for black and white.


Steve.
 
I'm afraid I don't understand this question.

I'm not an expert (far from it) in safety of chemicals, but bearing in mind what's actually in developers and fixers for black and white, I'd rate them as nowhere near as bad as household bleach and cooking oil. At any rate, I'd feel safer dipping my hand into developer, fixer and stop bath than into bleach. And anyone who tray develops sheet film without gloves does that...

The problems I assume come down to whether they degrade over time into something either harmless (good) or harmful (bad).

My chemistry comes from the days when health and safety didn't exist and we only learned the risks afterwards.
Putting your hands into processing chemicals is not a good Idea.. Though many of us did it over many years.
The result was usually softened and yellow finger nails and when sensitised to metol ( poisoning) then peeling and itchy skin.
Also most of the colour processing chemical were either poisonous or carcinogenic.
most processing could be done without touching the chemicals at all.

Though I often processed between 20 and 50 bromide prints in one go by shuffling them through the developer and then into the stop bath and fixer. it was quick easy and highly productive. Developer was dumped with the waste water, but spent fixer went for silver recovery. Today regulations prohibit the dumping of chemicals. Though the small quantities amateurs use is probably neither here nor there if well diluted.


Tbh given the amount of toxins that we all consume on a daily basis from the air that we breath,the food that we eat and the liquids ( all water based of course!) that we drink makes the potential ill effects of developing chemicals pretty irrelevant imo
 
I'm black and white, not colour; and I expect that the bleach/fix in colour processes is the nastiest solution. As far as I know, the only black and white developing agent that has problems with skin contact is metol - and even then, it's not the metol per se but impurities in the chemicals that cause the problems. And not everyone developed the sensitivity anyway. I'll admit that I wouldn't touch beer myself (see threads on beer as a developing agent) but then I'm cautious...

One developer (which I can't recall off hand) produces a fetching shade of black finger nails; both Edward Weston and at least one of his sons used this, and I have somewhere a photo where the fingernails are clearly visible and suitably coloured.
 
Tbh given the amount of toxins that we all consume on a daily basis from the air that we breath,the food that we eat and the liquids ( all water based of course!) that we drink makes the potential ill effects of developing chemicals pretty irrelevant imo

Not so for me, I am now sensitive to metol and my hands blister and the skin peals at the least exposure to it. this seems to apply to all the metol derivative as well.
 
Tbh given the amount of toxins that we all consume on a daily basis from the air that we breath,the food that we eat and the liquids ( all water based of course!) that we drink makes the potential ill effects of developing chemicals pretty irrelevant imo
I must be living in a different country to you.

The country I live in (United Kingdom) has a combined life expectancy of 81.2 years. This ranks it at 20th out of 183 in the W.H.O. listing for 2015. The highest ranking country is Japan at 83.7 years. Sierra Leone is the lowest ranking country with a combined life expectancy of 50.1 years.

So all those alleged toxins must be really good for us. :thinking:
 
I must be living in a different country to you.

The country I live in (United Kingdom) has a combined life expectancy of 81.2 years. This ranks it at 20th out of 183 in the W.H.O. listing for 2015. The highest ranking country is Japan at 83.7 years. Sierra Leone is the lowest ranking country with a combined life expectancy of 50.1 years.

So all those alleged toxins must be really good for us. :thinking:

Alleged toxins???

Obviously you have no understanding how weather systems, rivers and oceans spread such poisons worldwide regardless of their origin.

Perhaps you are wandering around in some sort of bubble that safeguards your body and organs from consuming them…..if so please post a photo as I could do with a laugh atm:LOL:
 
Two questions within the original question , one when did film processing become hybridized and How dangerous are film chemicals to the environment ? Are we talking quite deadly or are we taking as bad as all the other house hold chemicals that end up down our drains ?
I was scanning halide photo's, and making desk-jet 'prints' from them in the mid 90's.. the dry-to-dry mini-lab was in the high-street by about the same time, and chemical-digital processing was probably starting to creep into mini-lab machines, by at least the millennium, along with thermal printing that sort of gives a photo like 'print'.
How hazardouse are photo-dev chemicals? There's a LOT of them! Which ones!
You do know that there is a Health and Safety 'Chemical' warning for an H2O spill, don't you?
Apparently you are to wash the effected area as soon as possible! SERIOUSLY!
To my pragmatic mind, over-the-counter dev-kit chems, are 'probably' no-more hazardous than anything else you can by over the counter in the super-market.... to people at least! Probably more corrosive or hazardous when undiluted, but even then, possibly 10x more concentrated than when mixed, they are probably still not as strong a solution as some of the potions you can buy to clean your cooker.... like Coke-a-Cola, that is essentially caramelised brick acid, you know!
Full environmental impact? Who knows.. I don't think any of the surveys are particularly unbiased.... You know that if you had a $10 bill in your pocket in New York, they could probably charge you with possession of cocaine... 'cos of the residues left by snorters and put into circulation with the bills....similarly London Tap-Water apparently contains enough birth-control pill active ingredients that four glasses a day reduces your chances of conception, because of the filtering and treatment techniques not completely getting rid of the stuff from effluent... makes you wonder, really how much else they don't manage to get out the effluent, actually.. but probably best not to ponder that!
Thing is, it's cradle to grave 'impact' that really matters, not necessarily the localised impact of one 'bit'. But even there, we are looking at parts-per-million of less 'traces' of dangerous chemicals in water-courses, diluted even more in open ocean, and not being alarmist about numbers selectively published or published without context. The sea is full of noxiouse chemicals, an awful lot of them naturally occurring, like when fish die and rot at the bottom, or sulphur-di-oxide seems out of volcanic fizzures in rocks.
It's a pretty open question, and a lot does depend not just on the specific chems in question, but the manufacture of them to start with, and the disposal afterwards, and the amount of 'exposure' any one has to them... Guns aint dangerouse.... its the idiot that pulls the trigger that is!... it's that sort of logic.
How dangerous is a motorbike?.. hint, like the gun, its an inert object, not a deadly snake! It will only 'help' you kill yourself, and then, only if you is daft! On its own, its no more or less dangerous than a garden rake... and I've stepped on more of them in my time than I have fallen off motorbikes! And I've fallen off motorbikes a lot... most often in off-road competition, where, yeah, its still a bit like its not the fall from an aeroplane that kills you, but the sudden stop at the end! Usually rocks or tree-stumps at the bottom of hills that do the hurting when I come off a motorbike.... BAN TREES! lol, that's my solution!
 
I'd forgotten this thread, but your revival spurred me to do a quick search.

 
I think camera's would have evolved much as they have done with electronics and microprocessor control taking over from the mechanical elements where possible. Newer film emulsions would have been developed in most respects but especially to tackle grain at high ISO's for sport and press photography along with the development of monobath developers both commercial and retail to speed up processing time. At least though we wouldn't be constantly looking for the next model as I doubt companies would release new models as frequently as they do with digital.
 
At least though we wouldn't be constantly looking for the next model as I doubt companies would release new models as frequently as they do with digital.
I don't think that's true.

To take just one of the more successful manufacturers, Pentax, they issued no less than 70 models of SLR between 1952 and 2003...
  • Ashiflex I (1952–1953)
    Asahiflex Ia (1953–1954)
    Asahiflex IIb (1954–1957)
    Asahiflex IIa (1955–1957)
    Asahi Pentax (1957)
    Asahi Pentax S (1958
    Asahi Pentax K (1958)
    Asahi Pentax S2/H2 (1959)
    Asahi Pentax S3/H3 (1960)
    Asahi Pentax S1/H1 (1961)
    Asahi Pentax SV/H3v (1963)
    Asahi Pentax S1a/H1a (1963)
    Pentax Spotmatic (1964)
    Asahi Pentax Spotmatic SL (1968)
    Asahi Pentax Spotmatic SP500 (1971)
    Asahi Pentax Spotmatic II (1971)
    Honeywell Pentax Spotmatic IIa (1971)
    Asahi Pentax Spotmatic Electro-Spotmatic (1971)
    Asahi Pentax Spotmatic ES (1971)
    Asahi Pentax Spotmatic SP1000 (1973)
    Asahi Pentax Spotmatic F (1973)
    Asahi Pentax Spotmatic ES 2 (1973)
    Pentax K2 (1975–1980)
    Pentax KX (1975–1977)
    Pentax KM (1975–1977)
    Pentax K1000/1 (1975–1978)
    Pentax K2DMD (1976–1980)
    Pentax ME (1976–1980)
    Pentax MX (1976–1985)
    Pentax K1000/2 (1978–1995)
    Pentax MV (1979–1981)
    Pentax MV 1 (1979–1981)
    Pentax ME Super (1980–1987)
    Pentax ME F (1981–1988)
    Pentax MG (1982–1985)
    Pentax LX (1980–2001)
    Pentax A3 with zoom lens
    Pentax A3 (1985–1987)
    Pentax A3000 (1985–1987)
    Pentax Program A/Program Plus (1984–1988)
    Pentax Super A/Super Program (1983–1987)
    Pentax P3 (1985–1988)
    Pentax P30 (1985–1988)
    Pentax P5 (1986–1989)
    Pentax P50 (1986–1989)
    Pentax P3n (1988–1990)
    Pentax P30n (1988–1990)
    Pentax P30T (1990–1997)
    Pentax SFX/SF1 (1987–1989)
    Pentax SF7/SF10 (1988–1993)
    Pentax SFXn/SF1n (1989–1993)
    Pentax PZ-1/Z-1 (1991)
    Pentax PZ-10/Z-10 (1991)
    Pentax PZ-20/Z-20 (1992)
    Pentax Z-50p (1993)
    Pentax Z-5 (1994)
    Pentax Z-5p (1995)
    Pentax PZ-1p/Z-1p (1995)
    Pentax PZ-70/Z-70 (1995)
    Pentax MZ-5/ZX-5 (1996)
    Pentax MZ-10/ZX-10 (1996)
    Pentax MZ-3 (1997)
    Pentax MZ-5n/ZX-5n (1997)
    Pentax MZ-50/ZX-50 (1998)
    Pentax MZ-M/ZX-M (1998)
    Pentax MZ-7/ZX-7 (1999)
    Pentax MZ-30/ZX-30 (2000)
    Pentax MZ-S (2001-2006)
    Pentax MZ-6/ZX-L (2001)
    Pentax MZ-60/ZX-60 (2002)
    Pentax *ist (2003–2006)
 
I doubt film would have changed very much at all as it had already had over one hundred years of constant research and development.
It is perhaps strange that Kodak the first first large scale commercial success in film Photography,. was also the first to come up with the Bayer array and developed arguably the first digital; camera. but was totally unable to capitalise on it. and became its largest victim.

Electronic or Digital capture of images had been the holy grail of photography for many years before it graduated as a viable alternative to film. However Television had led the way even before the universal adoption of colour film by a majority of Photographers. and predated the second world war.

Digital Photography was inevitable.
Chemical based photography and chemistry is now re-going over old ground again. the use of Mono bath development goes back to the 1920's. and the speed and grain of films has always been limited by the sensitivity and size of the various possible silver halide grain structures.
Recent film manufacture had depended on the rebuilding of previous generations of film coating machines, especially the repurposing of old test run coaters, that are more suitable for the relative short runs required today.

It is highly unlikely that there will be any revolutionary developments. in either film or chemistry that had not already been tried and rejected.
One can expect Colour films to soon be assigned to history, as the old multi layer coating machines become worn out and uneconomic to repair. At the same time the highly complex chemistry required will be uneconomic for anyone to produce in the small quantities needed.
The simpler to produce Black and white film will probably continue into at least the next century. Though may be limited to single layer emulsions on an almost do it yourself production level. Large format will probably survive the longest, may be long into the distant future, But likely reverting to studio produced and coated glass or polymer plates.
The commercial development of photography will develop along the Digital and solid state directions. With the three main requirements of view finding, capture and output all becoming more and more unified by AI. Except for specialist needs Devices will become increasingly miniaturised with little if any distinction between cine and still capture.
The distinction between Ai produced images and the capture of reality will become increasingly difficult to unravel. with hybrid images becoming the norm.
Large format film will become our only remaining link with unadulterated reality
 
I don't think that's true.

To take just one of the more successful manufacturers, Pentax, they issued no less than 70 models of SLR between 1952 and 2003...
  • Ashiflex I (1952–1953)
    Asahiflex Ia (1953–1954)
    Asahiflex IIb (1954–1957)
    Asahiflex IIa (1955–1957)
    Asahi Pentax (1957)
    Asahi Pentax S (1958
    Asahi Pentax K (1958)
    Asahi Pentax S2/H2 (1959)
    Asahi Pentax S3/H3 (1960)
    Asahi Pentax S1/H1 (1961)
    Asahi Pentax SV/H3v (1963)
    Asahi Pentax S1a/H1a (1963)
    Pentax Spotmatic (1964)
    Asahi Pentax Spotmatic SL (1968)
    Asahi Pentax Spotmatic SP500 (1971)
    Asahi Pentax Spotmatic II (1971)
    Honeywell Pentax Spotmatic IIa (1971)
    Asahi Pentax Spotmatic Electro-Spotmatic (1971)
    Asahi Pentax Spotmatic ES (1971)
    Asahi Pentax Spotmatic SP1000 (1973)
    Asahi Pentax Spotmatic F (1973)
    Asahi Pentax Spotmatic ES 2 (1973)
    Pentax K2 (1975–1980)
    Pentax KX (1975–1977)
    Pentax KM (1975–1977)
    Pentax K1000/1 (1975–1978)
    Pentax K2DMD (1976–1980)
    Pentax ME (1976–1980)
    Pentax MX (1976–1985)
    Pentax K1000/2 (1978–1995)
    Pentax MV (1979–1981)
    Pentax MV 1 (1979–1981)
    Pentax ME Super (1980–1987)
    Pentax ME F (1981–1988)
    Pentax MG (1982–1985)
    Pentax LX (1980–2001)
    Pentax A3 with zoom lens
    Pentax A3 (1985–1987)
    Pentax A3000 (1985–1987)
    Pentax Program A/Program Plus (1984–1988)
    Pentax Super A/Super Program (1983–1987)
    Pentax P3 (1985–1988)
    Pentax P30 (1985–1988)
    Pentax P5 (1986–1989)
    Pentax P50 (1986–1989)
    Pentax P3n (1988–1990)
    Pentax P30n (1988–1990)
    Pentax P30T (1990–1997)
    Pentax SFX/SF1 (1987–1989)
    Pentax SF7/SF10 (1988–1993)
    Pentax SFXn/SF1n (1989–1993)
    Pentax PZ-1/Z-1 (1991)
    Pentax PZ-10/Z-10 (1991)
    Pentax PZ-20/Z-20 (1992)
    Pentax Z-50p (1993)
    Pentax Z-5 (1994)
    Pentax Z-5p (1995)
    Pentax PZ-1p/Z-1p (1995)
    Pentax PZ-70/Z-70 (1995)
    Pentax MZ-5/ZX-5 (1996)
    Pentax MZ-10/ZX-10 (1996)
    Pentax MZ-3 (1997)
    Pentax MZ-5n/ZX-5n (1997)
    Pentax MZ-50/ZX-50 (1998)
    Pentax MZ-M/ZX-M (1998)
    Pentax MZ-7/ZX-7 (1999)
    Pentax MZ-30/ZX-30 (2000)
    Pentax MZ-S (2001-2006)
    Pentax MZ-6/ZX-L (2001)
    Pentax MZ-60/ZX-60 (2002)
    Pentax *ist (2003–2006)
The plethora of models is mostly to do with marketing and sales. rather than major advances.
The images produced by professionals between 1945 and 2000 on the variously available cameras are of almost identical quality.
Whereas the hit rate for the general public has never before equalled the results available from a smart phone.

The " serious" photography enthusiast and professional has been the driver for a large part of the top end of the marketing effort,
While the Popular market has been driven by ease of use, simplicity, automation, and the consistent quality of results.
 
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