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Hey, let's develop that roll of film! Photography, part 2

Let's be honest, there was no way this was ever going to truly be a No Effort November video, but hey - it's enshrined as a thing now so... gotta keep it up. Also, that YouTube-generated thumbnail face... Oof.

https://youtu.be/WpgsITqoDXQ

But anyway, here we are! Folks on Twitter know that the roll of film we went through didn't turn out at all because it was bad, and because of that I went and re-did that bizarre photoshoot. Luckily I didn't have to explain to anyone at the park why I was boiling water and taking a picture of it...

I'm gonna do what I did last time with captions (and will going forward). There should be pretty-OK captions within the hour, and I'll polish them up between now and the video's wide release. Which should be Friday. Later I will actually have some low-efforts videos, so for those who look forward to that - you're in luck!

Hey, let's develop that roll of film! Photography, part 2

Comments

Have you ever gotten half way through rolling film onto the tank reel only to spot an item (that should be inside the bag), outside the bag? I'd be surprised if there wasn't a story there somewhere.

Norman Rasmussen

In a pinch, a tiny bit of dawn liquid dish soap will work too. ;)

yellerjeep

Uh...here's a link to the book: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/prints-and-visual-communication And thanks for tip on Photo Flow. I have hard water here, and water spots and squeegeeing moisture from my pin-hole prints are always a problem! Plus, I'm very impatient and careless... Oh, and your video on the daguerreotype prompted me to finally go out and buy one (HE has one...where'd he get it..?) on ebay. Just a fascinating object in so many ways. :-)

You spent a bit of time discussing film grain, resolution, and the relationship (or lack thereof) to pixels, so I thought you might be interested in my all-time favorite art history text, Prints and Visual Communication, by William Ivins. He traces the history of "visual grain," aka image quanta, aka pixels, etc. from woodcuts to mass printing of photos with screening. The book is an incomparable gem, I think.

Back in the day Kodak sold a kit to reversal-process TMAX (you'd expose TMAX-100 at 50 for this) and make positive slides, with the images made of metal. Was beautiful, and fun, but I haven't done that since the pre-digital days when you could just buy that stuff as a weird bit of just the normal way normal photography was done...

Michaela Pereckas

Me too!

Becka Pitts

Still got me onto the $5 tier with that effort, sorry.

Victor Engmark

I love no effort [but actually a lot of effort] November ;) edit: developers developers developers developers

Erik Granlund

Thank you, this was really interesting. I was only aware of Photo-flo, due to using it in record cleaner solutions , so it was nice to see what it was actually designed for.

Roland Smith

Hah! I just saw said visual, and stopped the video to come here to say exactly this! :)

Travis Snoozy

Again a superb explanation! And your humour cheers me up when I'm not feeling so well :-D It's getting better all the time! ;-)

MrHammond

That visual at 2:50 is fantastic, the concept of how film works has never been so clear to me.

Yakkers

Back when I worked at a 1-hour photo lab, we had a rigid changing bag. It had compressed poles inside that you'd expand. They were MUCH easier for changing emulsion paper. At some point they all ripped and the replacement was the stupid bag. I hate the bags.

Quinton Wilson

In addition to the ball bearing film tank reels, I've also got one with no latch mechanism at all and you use it in a similar fashion, but you press your thumbs on to the edges of the film to hold one side tight while advancing the other side. I've also got the stainless steel tanks with wire reels and haven't used them in years. Only got them because in my mind at that time using wire reels was the "honest, old-fashioned way" to load the film that "professionals" used rather than using plastic reels with those fancy ball bearings and that had to be the best way because it was harder. I've learned since then.

Mark Hesse

Since I used to be a Windows developer (heh), I laughed heartily at the Steve Ballmer reference :D

Michael Dunn

Ah yes, a 27-minute "no effort" video. Classic Alec... Thank you for putting in whatever effort you did! :D

Nick Loh

I've been anxiously waiting for this next video. Can't wait to watch.

Just a few minutes ago I was thinking to myself, “I wonder when the next Technology Connections video would come out?” Then I remembered it was “No effort November”, so I figured it could be a week or so. I’m excited to watch this. Thanks for what you do!


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