I find that typically, the higher the production value of a video, the worse the content of the video. Super high production value on low quality content screams they’re trying to make up for it
It really makes me think of the old "joke" of "1+1=3, for large values of 1." His definition of "effort" is already so large that "No effort" is still really impressive.
I have not touched a film camera in over a decade and a half. I am unlikely to ever touch one again in my lifetime. And yet, I just watched a 17 minute video about markings on film canisters, and enjoyed every second of it. Your channel never fails to impress.
I miss them. One EMP and all your digital pics will be lost forever. Never mind all the privacy and safety issues you have with everything digital. But let's hope that never occurs...
I didn't think I'd ever touch them again after last touching them as a 10 year old either, but as a now-photographer I really wanna experience what it feels like It might just get harder the longer you wait, the more "antique" their price becomes
My dad worked for the company that printed the outside casing for films for Kodak in the UK. They were a relatively small firm, and Kodak had made a big deal about the specifications and the accuracy etc. , it was a really important contract for my dads firm. Shortly before the launch of the films with DX, they were approached by someone from another company asking if they could do some printing for them too, after the first meeting it was obvious this was exactly the same DX encoding. They all panicked, and didn't know what to do, but decided they had to contact Kodak and tell them that this other firm had their technology and it didn't come from them. Well kodak were both delighted and completely non-plussed, they had forgotten to tell my Dad's firm that it was going to be an open standard and that they could go ahead and bid for the other contract as well.
Sounds like Kodak. worked for them in the late 90's North of Nottingham used to see the sheets go through the press tools to make the film castes. never worked on them. I have 7 years of press tool experience, But then that's Kodak. don't do anything cheap when you can spend lots of money before doing whats easy and cheaper after.
Dammit! I just now learned what I needed to know back in 82 when I was tasked with taking the pictures on a school trip and I messed them all up because ... well, I had no idea what I was doing but was the only one with access to a nice, fancy Yashika camera, not just a cheap compact (which, ironically, would have made actual pictures instead of 3 rolls of bright, white prints) Yeah, I was NEVER allowed to be in charge of ANYthing again.
@Live long and prosper mary In which country do you live? In germany you can develop your film in every grocery shop ("dm" or "Rossmann") for 7-8€. BW film costs around 5€, only colour films are expensive (around 8+ €). you also can buy disposable cameras for fun, but they're always sold out because of hipster girls :D
@Connor J. Finlayson unfortunately, it is also becoming very expensive. I can't find a decent local film developer (in Portland of all places), and I had to send my rolls to California to get decent prints. It cost me 150 dollars for four rolls of film. It's crazy.
I've got to be 100% honest with you, because we're on the internet and it's easier to be brutally honest here, this was not a no-effort production. You most certainly showered, dressed, took multiple takes, did some B-roll, and edited this video. Next year, I'm going to have to insist that you roll out of bed, skip showering, and do a one-take Clip-Share Live Stream in your pajamas. Reading chat takes effort, so you can mostly skip that unless they throw money at you. The best part is if enough people do that, you'll start wondering if you've picked the right Clip-Share business model! XD In case I haven't said it before, I love the content and always get excited when I see a new video! TY!
@Retro Gifts UK But these moments need to be totally accidently, or else he would have had to make the effort to mutter these things exactly while passing the streaming setup!
As someone who used to roll my own film way back in high school, and even sold it to my (more lazy, or... frugal but inexperienced) peers, using both plastic and metal reusable spools, it intrigues me to know that I could have added dx encoding to my stuff with just some aluminum tape and careful use of an exacto blade.... Makes me wanna whip out the old Olympus OM-2, then see if I can find my old roller and... shit, can you even buy hundred foot rolls of Ilford Delta 400 anymore?
Maybe that's why the pro camera has two pins for each cell: If you manually added metal tape to a black plastic casette the ground plane wouldn't be connected to it, you'd need a continuous piece of metalic tape and mask off the insulated cells for it to work correctly.
@Matt Gering A thin piece of cardboad like from a cereal box, with some aluminum tape, the kind you see on duct work, i think would be a great way to have a reusable DX encoder. I hope theres enough spare space for a single layer of cardboard though.
I guess I could have just scratched the paint off the metal cartridges in the right spots too, but then they'd be less reusable later for different films...
Wow! I’m amazed at the effort you put into these wonderfully detailed and well-researched explanations recorded at such high quality in a very neat studio!
@Technology Connections 6:25 The exposure tolerance IS important for long time exposure or for example sport photography, I took a very beautiful picture of a "smooth" waterfall on a Fuji Superia 200, I think, this was only possible, as I completely used up the whole exposure tolerance to expose the whole frame as long as possible, without any overexposure (my camera shows this on the display and at LED's inside of the viewfinder)... So, if you want to capture that "smooth watery feeling" or "lines of light" produced by cars on your (possibly) nearby road, then you will need it, at least according to my experiences!
Wow, the effort that you put into these videos is truly incredible! I can't imagine doing all of that research, procuring all of the props necessary, coming up with such simple and relatable explanations behind the way things work, and not to mention the actual filming itself. It's wonderful that we have creators dedicated so much to their craft that they never, not for an instance, fail to put in the required effort in to create such great content.
@Jrasta111 It's all in good fun. I only commented because he seems to get so wound up over the fact that people are still ascribing a significant effort on his part in No Effort November. It's enjoyable, and I like to see how each progressive video he finds a way to put even less effort into it. And then points it out, of course.
Don't be so hard on him. It's surprisingly difficult to do things which require even a small amount of effort without making any effort whatsoever. Even famous actors actually have to get up and act sometimes. Give him the whatever the opposite of a break is. He's trying his worst!
7:45 are you sure it does not use ground? It makes more sense to me that it uses double pins to avoid dirt read errors. Ie, to avoid single contact points.
I dug up the service manual and each pin pair is electrically connected together and acts as a single electrical contact. So the top ground pad is in fact used as a common, rather than each position being individually checked for local continuity. The double pinning is just for reliability.
@bar10005 Comparing with the next shot of the Samurai, and the Wikipedia reference for the DX code, I think you've got the orientation wrong, and what we're looking at is actually this: -T2- S5 -T1- S4 -L3- S3 L2 S2 L1 S1 G -G-
@Gameboygenius No, the columns are supposed to have the same height and max of 6 contacts (including ground), so it's clear that right column misses last contact and where left column should start if not missing it's contacts. Would love to paste easier image explanation, but YT doesn't like random links in comments, so here's text attempt, strikenthrough are missing contacts in camera: -G- G -L1- S1 -L2- S2 L3 S3 T1 S4 T2 -S5-
It clearly uses ground, just a single pad above speed bits though, it just dropped last speed bit and first two length bits, based on pin locations and row shift.
Man, this RICOH I can remember holding in my hands and playing with very fondly. About 25 years ago. I loved the design and the sounds it made. And I loved putting films in and taking them out ruining not only a few of my mother's photos back then.
10:03 I remember my dad handed me his old SLR camera to use and it uses that data, that's the first thing I noticed lmao I think it said something like 00/36 on the little digital display...
"I don't know why Canon overcomplicated this" is an evergreen sentence echoing through the annals of time in the hairline-reducing world of camera repair
Since a Canon T-90 was shown, I would also add that the back-up battery for retaining exposed frame numbers can be replaced, but it required close to a full disassembly to reach it. Minolta's 7000 has one as well, but it is user-replaceable quite easily.
I love that Technology Conections acknowledges and addresses the nuance of these topics without needing to fully explain the complexity. Simply mentioning the fact that detail has been skipped over allows viewers to conduct their own research without starting from scratch. Thank you for making complicated topics exciting and accessible without over-simplification!
This would work if you used electrically conductive paint used to repair circuit boards, and if all the contacts were connected to the common ground plane, but it would probably be easier to use aluminum foil tape, and insulate the black squares with a couple coats from a black paint pen. The black paint could be stripped later with a solvent, or you could use a new piece of tape.
I used to work at FotoMat in the early 90s and would save every roll that had the encoding patterns on them to resell to people who would refill their film because it was significantly cheaper than buying new.
If that is no effort, I would be interested in a video which would be explicitly be effort. Thanks for you videos, your mind of detail and great videos!
I worked in a photo retail store for a year, so bought a staff discount, cost price dark box. I would load my film at home in the dark box so I wouldn’t lose the first two frames, and would carefully force the film right to the end. As most labs charged by identified film length, getting 28 frames for the print cost of 24 meant I got a whole film for free after every sixth.
Ah, yes. I remember the process of trying to squeeze as many shots out of a roll of film as possible. The threshold of either 24 or 36, and the hope/desire to be able to get at least one more shot out of it, and the semi-smug feeling that you were getting, 'free', exposures once you got it developed. It didn't always work, of course. And even if it did, some developers were too stingy to print any after the allotted number of exposures. Bah, humbug. Interestingly, though, once film scanners became a thing, getting to see those extra shots that weren't printed all those years ago, (that you'd completely forgotten about even existing), are finally visualised. Generally, they're nothing different to what you'd already took, as they were usually taken to use up the film so you could get it developed! I've had one or two interesting exceptions though that have jogged memories of what I was doing at the time.
Usually it worked, but I remember them printing a big number plate across my girlfriend's face. In retrospect, I should have taken 2 frames, but I was too cheap to do that.
Kodak was actually pretty cool about it if you were shooting slides, even mounting the #37 and #38 for you. But if you tore out the sprocket holes you'd get the damaged part of the filmstrip back with some empty cardboard mounts and a note to the effect of "too bad, you broke it, you are on your own". If I could load the camera in the dark I could shoot a frame before #1 (on the "leader") and they seemed OK with that too.
I have a question for you. I have 1 roll of film kodac 400 24 exposures and 1 disk same speed and exposures. Now the question I'm 57 yrs old now and I took these pictures back when I was around 23 yrs old, where can I get these developed and do you think they're still good? thanks for any help.
@Me, an intellectual The cameras themselves are not particularly interesting as they just used four half-frames simultaneously, after Nimslo's closure the system was revived by another firm producing the Nishika (not Niskika) but the camera was cheapened to the point that a piece of metal was added under the camera's baseplate to add some weight. Then a three-lens version was produced. What's interesting about the Nimslo (or the Wonderview) was not the camera, but the technology that produced the lenticular pictures.
@Seele2015au i know what a nimslo or niskika does, the issue is other than their gimmick, they aren't very interesting. they're just 4 fixed leaf shutters synchronised.
@Me, an intellectual What's interesting about the Nimslo, developed by Allan Lo, was that it produced lenticular stereo prints. I remember in the 1970s a camera called the Wonderview WT-102, created by a man called Lo, was launched which also produced lenticular pictures; in fact I remember the launch very well, and its showroom in one of the brand new malls in Kowloon. I never managed to discover if they were designed by the same person, although the timeline appears plausible.
I really love the "Friend who spent a little too much time on the Internet last night after getting hooked on some random topic waiting on you to wake up the next day to tell you about it" vibe that No Effort November brings.
When you trust in God and cast your cares (worries, anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts) upon him, they will be NO MORE! Know that there is power in the name Jesus Christ! His name casts out demons and heals! The world is wicked, evil, and of the devil. I too, was a wicked sinner of the world before I opened my heart to God. I am living proof of God's work and fruitfulness! He is an active God who hears the prayers of his! God's children are set apart (holy) and righteous. The devil is a liar that comes to steal, to kill, and to destroy; that includes your relationship with God. Open your heart to God, repent of your sins (he will forgive you), and let him direct your path. Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands and purify your heart, lest you walk with the devil and follow him to hell.
Jesus Christ is the propitiation for the whole world's sins. They that believeth and are baptized (with the Holy Spirit) shall be saved; but they that believeth not shall be damned. Those led by the Holy Spirit do not abide in wickedness. 👍🏾 *God is ONE manifesting himself as THREE;* the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit! Bless him! *For these three are one.* As I am led by the Holy Spirit, nothing I state is a lie, but the truth of God. Anyone who tells you differently is misinformed or a liar. They do not know God, nor led by him. Anyone who *claims* to be a Christian and is against what I am doing, and where I am doing it; the Holy Spirit does not dwell within them, they lack understanding. They know not God, read his word, and their religion is in vain. Do not hear them, they will mislead you, the lost cannot guide the lost.
@tiny derp potato if it makes you feel better, I did this to my partner about fire extinguishers. I spent like 6 hours researching different kinds of fire extinguishers and when they woke up the next day, I started my presentation on why we'd be purchasing these two specific fire extinguishers.
That is such an elegant solution. I saw those square patches and instinctively though huh those could be used as a power plane for vcc. Quite lovely thinking by the engineers.
Would you consider making a video on what the heck QR codes really are and how they work and how we mortals can make better use of them in our daily life
I'm going to recommend that if you like this video on film. (See what I did there?) Smarter Every Day's series on Kodak's manufacturing process is endlessly informative. I recommend this as both a service to other film geeks and in hopes the algorithm will pair both channels together in future recommendations to the mutual benefit of both. I was quite pleased to learn this today as I don't recall that this very interesting tidbit was mentioned at all the Kodak manufacturing series. Quite the feat! Anything for channels thriving without thumbnails with moronic youtube faces or vapid sharts. 📸
Just a comment to find yours easier, hopefully in the next few days to show it to my 11yo. Then later again as an English lesson (not only your comment, but it is really well said), since he is not that good in the language yet.
My 1980s high school art teacher bulk rolled 17 exposure films for students using 1000 ISO black and white film. Fortunately the ancient full manual Exakta SLR I was using didn't care, I just had to set it right. Until today I had no idea that 1000 was an exotic speed. Thanks Alec!
My Pentax 1000 didn't have a setting for Kodak 1000, but the quality was terrible, and luckily, they correctly predicted Fuji 1600, which had deep blacks and almost invisible grain. I used it for handheld fireworks photos at a 1s exposure, when I had to use the manual B exposure with the ASA 1000 film.
Now try to explain this to the kids that see a micro-floppy diskette and ask if you 3d printed the "save" icon. (Micro floppy diskettes are the 3 1/4" ones in the rigid plastic carriers)
Whoa. Never thought I'd recognize the person making the comment. I've been following your videos forever. Your talk on elevators... So cool to see you here!
As a photographer who got into the business in the digital age and has been wanting to explore back to my film youth, this hit the spot. Thank you for sharing this low effort with us. It's one of my favorites!
Man… taking me back to my childhood messing around with my mom’s camera. Dad always had the video camera and mom had the photo camera. I was always so fascinated by the film cartridges.
Having been a film photographer in the distant past, I do remember when the automatic film speed setting came out, but I has no idea how it worked. I don't think I ever owned a camera that used it though. The film speeds being mostly in a series of doubled speeds wasn't always the case. I remember when Kodak revamped their color film lineup (probably at the same time they introduced the DX system). When I started, color films available (IIRC) were Kodachrome II, ASA/ISO 25 slide; Kodachrome X 64 slide; Ektachrome X 64 slide; High speed Ektachrome 160 slide with push processing available to make it 400, and Kodacolor X 80 print. When they revamped the lineup, they discontinued the Kodachrome line, and offered Ektachrome for slides and Kodacolor for prints, both in 100, 200 and 400.
This channel never fails to show that the past was far more advanced than we remember it being. I never even thought that cameras would automatically compensate for film speed.
There's at least one camera that would add exposure information onto the film after a shot, so it's right there on the border. Others stored the data on board and needed a special cable and sometimes a CF card to connect to a computer
I do like that about the past. We always pushed every technology as far as it could go. Like, in Baghdad like 700-800 years ago they had really complex water-powered mechanical automata, all for the purpose of pouring wine (well, those were powered by the wine they poured) or playing music. I’d always thought of automata like that as a Victorian thing, but apparently manufacturing was precise enough much earlier in some parts of the world!
This reminds me of the newer APS film format. It was pretty nice really with a few nifty features. The cartridge had extra info, such as if the film was exposed, or partially exposed, or even processed. It could take photos in various aspect ratios too.
I look back on some of the film pictures my parents took when I was a child, and I am shocked by the quality of some of them. Some have depth of field and blurred background and good color, and I can’t help but wonder if that was by accident or what. Because they definitely didn’t have a pro camera at the time, and it has only really been in the last ten years or so that iPhones have gotten the portrait feature that create depth of field. My parents did more with a 1990s film camera than I did for the first ten years of having an iPhone.
Very interesting. I love my film cameras and just picked up an Olympus penn ee2. The fact that I can take film pictures with the same effort as digital is brilliant. But I still lovey old manual and auto cannon cameras
I wonder if Canon's dual contacts are for redundancy. Otherwise a dirty contact could ruin a whole roll of film, which would be disastrous for a professional photo shoot. You should try covering one up and see if it still reads the DX code correctly. Edit: Actually I was wrong, as some have pointed out. He clearly says and shows (7:40) that the Canon does not have contacts for the common ground. So there is no redundancy.
They're not shown here, but every film roll sold would individually come in at least a plastic bag, if not a small plastic container, to protect the film and roll canister right up until you use them. Dirt and damage wouldn't really be a huge concern. My guess: the first two being used as a common ground for the other bits suggest Kodak intended the system to work with the bits pulled-high and the film canister bringing them to active-low for the chip that's reading them. If the Canon camera doesn't have those ground pins, my first guess would be that Canon bought chips that were proprietary and were pulled-low and the film would bridge the source to drive them active-high. Further speculation that I have not done any research into: this would allow Canon to benefit from Kodak's format without having to advertise a competitor on the box, since it's TECHNICALLY not using the Kodak DX system. It's also possible it was done as a marketing gimmick to try and make the cameras seem more Professional and Failure-resistant, that happens sometimes. But I'm less inclined to believe that.
Redundancy would still work here. Each connection has its own ground but the common conductor would still connect them all together. Not only would the good ground contacts be the ground path for the missing one, the camera could still notice the anomaly and at least show a film error message.
@Caleb D Yep, people don't think of cameras as ruggedized devices, but pro SLRs are meant for journalists and nature photographers and the like and benefit greatly from that sort of thing.
Seeing the Canon T90 made me yell “YEAH!” at my screen. I’ve been a professional photographer since 1989, and my three T90’s were my only film cameras. In late 2004, I went completely digital - and I haven’t touched my T90’s since. Seeing the T90 in your video was like seeing an old, close friend again.
The most fun job I ever had was when I worked as a 24 hour Photo Development pick up/delivery driver. The job went extinct with the invention of digital cameras. That job was so much fun!
I used to use my 35 mm cameras a lot and I always wondered what the silver squares were for, and seen the DX logo, but never gave it any thought as to what they were for. I think I have that same Canon A1 camera. I miss using them. They were so great to take photos with.
I worked with photography, editing and some analogue (film development) for 5 years. The old-timers at the lab didn't know how to read the DX Code - but it's super easy! But not very useful! I think Fuji frontier Scanners actually read the DX code and/or the Barcodes. You could make different Scanner profiles for different films based on the DX codes (automated). Ie it's still relevant in printing when using minilab (much better than flatbed and ink jet's using cheap paper - in my opinion). I think them codes was even more important on APS films (they also used some magnetic registration as well). APS isn no longer made and were pretty crappy + slow to scan. The auto film development machines from Fuji never read the DX or film speed. To push the film you had to increase the strength of the solution or crank the film by hand. In my opinion you have no use for the DX codes. I use manual cameras and a light meter! I develop my own B&W film = easy. C41 and E6 is also possible to develop your self. To iterate, the only use for DX and Barcodes today are in minilab Scanners (highly recommend Fuji Frontier). Tell me if I'm wrong!
Some later cameras would fully spool the film when first loaded, so when pictures were taken, they'd immediately get spooled back into the film canister, so accidentally opening the back of the camera would only ruin your last picture, and some of your unused film.
I never found loading 35mm film to be all that difficult anyway. Pull out the leader, stick it in the slot on the takeup spool, and make sure the holes in the film line up with the sprockets. Then again, I started with roll film, where dropping the spool at the wrong time could ruin the whole roll.
Wow, the effort that you put into these videos is truly incredible! I can't imagine doing all of that research, procuring all of the props necessary, coming up with such simple and relatable explanations behind the way things work, and not to mention the actual filming itself. It's wonderful that we have creators dedicated so much to their craft that they never, not for an instance, fail to put in the required effort in to create such great content.
I do remember film rolls and I always wondered why they came with those weird squares, no one knew, but I think it was by the early 2000s people only had those plastic point and shoot cameras and they were almost completely manual, so I don't remember seeing a camera with those sensors, but regardless, it is quite the interesting tech for sure.
14:00 Back in the early 80s, when I was learning photography, we used either recycled or generic black plastic film cartridges that we bulk loaded ourselves to save lots of money. so they either had no or incorrect DX markings. OTOH, we were also shooting with either fully or semi manual cameras, so it wasn't an issue.
He puts more effort into a single weekly "No Effort November" video than I expend in the entire month of November. Also, I imagine Canon did that in case someone used an "off-spec" version of the code where it the paint wasn't underlaid with a single electrically-continuous strip of foil but instead stuck separate small foil rectanges on the canister.
I always found the relationship between the film technologies and the very simplest single use cameras fascinating. In the end, those single use cameras, which are the ultimate evolution of the old brownie cameras, drove the development of film technology. The ultimate goal was to have ever increasing exposure latitude on the print films. This was needed for the cameras to produce printable negatives in a wide variety of situations with essentially fixed aperture and shutter speed. max 400 and 800 were the ultimate examples of this for Kodak.
I was very little when film cameras were a thing, so I've never come across these DX thingies. by looking at a video thumbnail I thought it was just a print and a camera had an internal camera that read that code like a QR code and decoded it lol using metal conductivity is so much simpler
I remember my FujiFilm camera from the mid 90s would unwind the film when you loaded it, and shoot the pictures "in reverse" on the roll. Pulling it back in to the cartridge one frame for each picture you took. That way if someone opened the camera by mistake, you would only lose your last picture or two.
I remembered when DX coding came out. I'm sure I read a magazine article about it at some point. But this was much more detail than I'd remembered! Thanks, enjoy my thumbs-up and no-effort applause :D
14:59 instead of these replacement stickers you could also buy a conductive ink pen. If you know the spots you need to cover then it should be the cheaper option
I thought you would have touched on expired film! Many need an extra stop or two to create a proper exposure, and many consumpers with PnS that do want to try out expired film for that look can't expose it well. I've resorted to masking tape and scrapping the printed ink for such occasions lmao
Great video! I enjoyed photography class in high school. No idea what speed to use. Teacher sold us the black and white film for like 3 bucks. And we would just pop it into any camera we could find. Take pics and develop it ourselves in the dark room. The only thing i could never do and had to bribe some buddies was loading the film into the spool to expose it. You do it in the dark over a sink. Forgot what it was called. This was prior to taking it to the other dark room where you can hang it from a laundry clip like a detective.
I worked all through high school in a Fuji-based photo shop. All of the "leniency" and "will be fine" you described was on the technician printing them. We manually adjusted every print exposure.
For a while I worked at a photo shop and exhibition company. The printing machines were quite good but we usually had a few to be reprinted on each film. Then the company got new owners who told us that checking and reprinting was a waste of time, money and materials so was not to be done. "Don't think about it, just send it out, if the customer doesn't like it then they will bring it back." Well the customers stopped coming back. In two or three years the company was closed. Maybe that was their long term plan, they owned the site which was then converted into flats.
This was such nostalgia. I knew the photo count and ISO meanings. I didn't know the exposure 2 bits. I do remember seeing most of my film with "UL" on the side, meaning ISO 100, 24 exposure (although I could almost always get 27 photos on a roll). Now I know the extra 2 bits meant +3 -1 ability. Thank you.
I remember seeing the weird part on the film cartridge. I never thought that it provided information to the camera. Now, I want to go back and look at my old Fugi 110 telephoto. Thanks!
Alec, thank you from the bottom of my heart for making November my favorite month, and for making me a smarter person overall. Oh yeah, and for making the world smarter too. You're up there with PBS in terms of sheer public-good.
@Triturate is condemning PBS as "the people's" state run media. they are intending to criticize the comparison to PBS as a compliment, although it comes off more like calling Tech Connections a commie.
I think that my experience with film cameras has been something of an edge-case since I don't think that I've ever used a camera that could read these. Either they were too old (Nikons, Nikkormats, and Minoltas with the classic 2-tone bodies), the wrong type (110 cartridge-loader cameras), or too primitive (Kodak Star 435). So my-incorrect-assumption since childhood was that those coded areas were only there to help with automated film processing. Also, somewhere in the world someone will probably end up using Alec's klaxon yell (from the bloopers) as their car's horn sound! 😆
We always love the effort you put into production year round. These are still valuable videos, though. Please enjoy your one month “off.” Keep up the good work.
I LOVE your low effort productions! Good content, amusing, interesting, informative, funny but not cheesy funny and just that perfect amount of geeky. Thanks!
Back before I stopped using film, I always loved using Seattle Film Works film. I could shoot with any ISO/ASA I wanted, and the prints always came out perfect!
When I was in HS back in the early 80's, the school had a very nice telescope, complete with a dome. I used to use 1000-speed film for astrophotography (I don't remember 1600 being available). The only problem I had was getting the development place to actually do prints of every shot-they'd typically develop it and then tell me "We didn't do any prints, because the negatives just had a bunch of black spots on it".
@Michelle Harvey The trick was to shoot a fully lit frame at the beginning so the machine could align the rest. Or take them to a custom lab, or just ell them to give you back the uncut film and mount the slides yourself.
@Emily Adams The Backyard Astronomer's Guide (Dickinson and Dyer) in the section on keeping the Gremlins at bay had the suggestion to shoot something non-astronomical, though it came out in 1991 so they may have picked it up from an earlier author.
One book I had suggested that you shoot something normal on the first and last frames when shooting the sky, like your car's license plate if you were on location. I did that once, in 1986, and it worked. Two Kodachromes of my car's plate, bracketing 34 "blank" slides.
I got a burned a few times by processing labs making assumptions like that, and one even screwed up my negatives by letting an idiot with scissors get a little too excited. When I take film to a lab now, I ask them not to cut the rolls and just do it myself on a light table later. Most of the time if it's black and white I just process it all myself, so I don't have to worry about some pothead screwing up a roll of film I shot on an expensive trip across the country.
IDK about the old days, but now, you tell them about it, or label the cassette and they develop it correctly, if pushing or pulling was a service they offer.
Hopefully you told them or else the grains would not be developed large enough so the film would appear underexposed. Developing longer let the smaller number of grains grow larger. Also why pushed films looked grainy; they had larger grains. That is why you would use ISO 50 or 25 for extremely high resolution technical work.
Panotomic-X 25 was always my favorite to shoot and print with. I liked Ilford and Kodak papers. Still have prints from 35 years ago. I miss my darkroom! But I love the ease and chem-free goodness of digital!
Since you mentioned self-contained film cartridges, I'm reminded of Kodak Advantix. It was a weird attempt to modernize film cameras, just as digital was just starting to take over. Be interesting if someone did a video on that...
Made a blog post on it years ago lol it was a cool concept but was hindered by its low resolution compared to 135. It had some really good ideas though, like a magnetic strip that encoded the shutter speed and aperture of the image
I wasn't into analog photography, the thought to shelling out money for film and developing put me off it. Digital photography was great for me - my first digital pictures were taken with a Casio QV-10. That being said, I had no idea this was a thing - now I just dig out my inlaw's cameras and check for the contacts!
When I was little (probably around 6 or so) I got the Fisher Price 3.5 mm red/black camera (i think it was rather fresh released but no clue). Looking back at the kind of pictures i took then, they were surprisingly good (for a little child). I theoretically still have an older film camera, but I dont take pictures often (aside from pictures of pets), so its just (not) collecting dust in a drawer 😂
I used to "roll my own" in the early 80's. You bought a loading box that was light proof. Film was sold in 100' rolls, you load it in the box. It also had a small, isolated compartment you put the empty film cassette in. Start the roll by taping a leader to the spool, slide it in the can, put the cap back on the end of the can. Next slide it in and close the small compartment door. You then rolled by cranking a handle on the side until it was full or desired amount. BTW you open the can with a 'church key' or (bottle opener).
You could also nearly effortlessly add an Arduino with a display/button hat to your camera and connect the metal sensors to the gpio, then you can select the iso levels on the Arduino. So simple!
For the record the speed on the film is a recommendation. You can shoot slower or faster on purpose (e.g. by "pushing" a 400 film to 1600) and correct for it when developing
Homebrew your conductive stickers for your homebrew/niche film cartridges: aluminum duct sealing tape with vinyl electrical tape squares. I too remember film. And am grateful every day for my digital cell phone cam (gasp) and digital point and shoot (clutch pearls). I do enjoy learning about the art an history in the way you present it. Much respect to those taking the time to master the craft. Thank you.
I had a similar thought. I have some copper tape I bought for a little project a few years ago. I needed less than two inches at the time and bought two 66 foot rolls for just $6. That would be more work, but cheaper than the stickers he showed.
As soon as he got to that point I was thinking something like this... But instead of taping it to the canister, I'd tape it to a thin, stuff plastic sheet (or maybe even medium weight paper) cut to snug against the canister bet let you set the values to whatever you wanted. Reusable, probably less then $1 a peice, and simple. I mean, if you bought some of the plastic ones with the conductive sticker, you could probably upcycle them but carefully removing the label from the film canister and sticking it on a sheet...
I have a variety of film cameras including medium format ones. For various reasons I ended up using a professional lab. I took some film in. Later that day I realised I had under or over exposed it (can't remember which) and they corrected it in developing. It was chrome slide film, not print film so has less latitude than print film.
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When "no effort" content is more interesting and better produced than 99% of Clip-Share
ITS A FARCE. he left all of those failed shots out, i want a single take damnit leave all of the screwups in
I find that typically, the higher the production value of a video, the worse the content of the video. Super high production value on low quality content screams they’re trying to make up for it
@The Official Michael Jackson Educational Channel what the hell is your channel?
@MarkusTegelane this man deserves his studio
It really makes me think of the old "joke" of "1+1=3, for large values of 1." His definition of "effort" is already so large that "No effort" is still really impressive.
I have not touched a film camera in over a decade and a half. I am unlikely to ever touch one again in my lifetime. And yet, I just watched a 17 minute video about markings on film canisters, and enjoyed every second of it. Your channel never fails to impress.
I miss them. One EMP and all your digital pics will be lost forever. Never mind all the privacy and safety issues you have with everything digital. But let's hope that never occurs...
@Runed0S Say that to people in other countries, lol... Sad
And 35mm is still popular. Kodak has been growing again 17% every year. And yup its not going to die anytime soon
I think the last time I used a film camera was 24 years ago. Time flies
I didn't think I'd ever touch them again after last touching them as a 10 year old either, but as a now-photographer I really wanna experience what it feels like
It might just get harder the longer you wait, the more "antique" their price becomes
My dad worked for the company that printed the outside casing for films for Kodak in the UK.
They were a relatively small firm, and Kodak had made a big deal about the specifications and the accuracy etc. , it was a really important contract for my dads firm.
Shortly before the launch of the films with DX, they were approached by someone from another company asking if they could do some printing for them too, after the first meeting it was obvious this was exactly the same DX encoding. They all panicked, and didn't know what to do, but decided they had to contact Kodak and tell them that this other firm had their technology and it didn't come from them.
Well kodak were both delighted and completely non-plussed, they had forgotten to tell my Dad's firm that it was going to be an open standard and that they could go ahead and bid for the other contract as well.
Very cool story and life experience!
Sounds like Kodak. worked for them in the late 90's North of Nottingham used to see the sheets go through the press tools to make the film castes. never worked on them. I have 7 years of press tool experience, But then that's Kodak. don't do anything cheap when you can spend lots of money before doing whats easy and cheaper after.
Nice!
Dammit! I just now learned what I needed to know back in 82 when I was tasked with taking the pictures on a school trip and I messed them all up because ... well, I had no idea what I was doing but was the only one with access to a nice, fancy Yashika camera, not just a cheap compact (which, ironically, would have made actual pictures instead of 3 rolls of bright, white prints)
Yeah, I was NEVER allowed to be in charge of ANYthing again.
I used to process 600 rolls of film a day for my living, then digital struck and the film market collapsed in the UK.
@Live long and prosper mary In which country do you live? In germany you can develop your film in every grocery shop ("dm" or "Rossmann") for 7-8€. BW film costs around 5€, only colour films are expensive (around 8+ €). you also can buy disposable cameras for fun, but they're always sold out because of hipster girls :D
@Jeremy Umpleby This is why I do it myself now. B&W costs me less then a dollar. Colour is $3 or so.
@Connor J. Finlayson unfortunately, it is also becoming very expensive. I can't find a decent local film developer (in Portland of all places), and I had to send my rolls to California to get decent prints. It cost me 150 dollars for four rolls of film. It's crazy.
@Marmite Film photography is VERY popular again.
@Live long and prosper mary There's tons of places that develop film and more opening. I develop my film in my kitchen though. No darkroom needed.
I've got to be 100% honest with you, because we're on the internet and it's easier to be brutally honest here, this was not a no-effort production. You most certainly showered, dressed, took multiple takes, did some B-roll, and edited this video. Next year, I'm going to have to insist that you roll out of bed, skip showering, and do a one-take Clip-Share Live Stream in your pajamas. Reading chat takes effort, so you can mostly skip that unless they throw money at you. The best part is if enough people do that, you'll start wondering if you've picked the right Clip-Share business model! XD
In case I haven't said it before, I love the content and always get excited when I see a new video! TY!
I am literally crying/laughing at this. I agree.
This is my favorite channel.
Yeah. I agree. He sucks at no effort. He pisses excellence.
@Nachname Vorname good point. He'll just have to have cameras covering the entire house 24/7 to catch any random utterances.
@Retro Gifts UK But these moments need to be totally accidently, or else he would have had to make the effort to mutter these things exactly while passing the streaming setup!
do it from bed!
As someone who used to roll my own film way back in high school, and even sold it to my (more lazy, or... frugal but inexperienced) peers, using both plastic and metal reusable spools, it intrigues me to know that I could have added dx encoding to my stuff with just some aluminum tape and careful use of an exacto blade.... Makes me wanna whip out the old Olympus OM-2, then see if I can find my old roller and... shit, can you even buy hundred foot rolls of Ilford Delta 400 anymore?
They never stopped selling bulk Delta. It's just insanely overpriced compared to ten years ago
@Morgan Trias True. Those using pro cameras would be more likely to use boutique film that might not have the code on the cassette.
Maybe that's why the pro camera has two pins for each cell: If you manually added metal tape to a black plastic casette the ground plane wouldn't be connected to it, you'd need a continuous piece of metalic tape and mask off the insulated cells for it to work correctly.
@Matt Gering A thin piece of cardboad like from a cereal box, with some aluminum tape, the kind you see on duct work, i think would be a great way to have a reusable DX encoder. I hope theres enough spare space for a single layer of cardboard though.
I guess I could have just scratched the paint off the metal cartridges in the right spots too, but then they'd be less reusable later for different films...
Wow! I’m amazed at the effort you put into these wonderfully detailed and well-researched explanations recorded at such high quality in a very neat studio!
@Technology Connections
6:25
The exposure tolerance IS important for long time exposure or for example sport photography, I took a very beautiful picture of a "smooth" waterfall on a Fuji Superia 200, I think, this was only possible, as I completely used up the whole exposure tolerance to expose the whole frame as long as possible, without any overexposure (my camera shows this on the display and at LED's inside of the viewfinder)...
So, if you want to capture that "smooth watery feeling" or "lines of light" produced by cars on your (possibly) nearby road, then you will need it, at least according to my experiences!
@Gregory Ford Absolutely :-D But that's the proof that exposure tolerance can be quite useful...
“I don’t know how helpful that would be except for weird edge cases”
“Um actually here’s a weird edge case where that would be helpful”
Wow, the effort that you put into these videos is truly incredible! I can't imagine doing all of that research, procuring all of the props necessary, coming up with such simple and relatable explanations behind the way things work, and not to mention the actual filming itself. It's wonderful that we have creators dedicated so much to their craft that they never, not for an instance, fail to put in the required effort in to create such great content.
@Jrasta111 It's all in good fun. I only commented because he seems to get so wound up over the fact that people are still ascribing a significant effort on his part in No Effort November. It's enjoyable, and I like to see how each progressive video he finds a way to put even less effort into it. And then points it out, of course.
You have this wrong. As he pointed out this is no effort November so no effort was put into this video.
Don't be so hard on him. It's surprisingly difficult to do things which require even a small amount of effort without making any effort whatsoever. Even famous actors actually have to get up and act sometimes. Give him the whatever the opposite of a break is. He's trying his worst!
If this is no effort, half of Clip-Share must be asleep when they upload 😂
Seconded!
bruh, he would have a stroke if he went to my channel lol
It has B-roll, and everything 😅
I'm literally one of those people
@yonathan raviv That's a thing?
7:45 are you sure it does not use ground? It makes more sense to me that it uses double pins to avoid dirt read errors. Ie, to avoid single contact points.
I dug up the service manual and each pin pair is electrically connected together and acts as a single electrical contact. So the top ground pad is in fact used as a common, rather than each position being individually checked for local continuity. The double pinning is just for reliability.
@bar10005 Comparing with the next shot of the Samurai, and the Wikipedia reference for the DX code, I think you've got the orientation wrong, and what we're looking at is actually this:
-T2- S5
-T1- S4
-L3- S3
L2 S2
L1 S1
G -G-
@Gameboygenius No, the columns are supposed to have the same height and max of 6 contacts (including ground), so it's clear that right column misses last contact and where left column should start if not missing it's contacts. Would love to paste easier image explanation, but YT doesn't like random links in comments, so here's text attempt, strikenthrough are missing contacts in camera:
-G- G
-L1- S1
-L2- S2
L3 S3
T1 S4
T2 -S5-
@bar10005 it reads, what, all of the film speed bits, two of the length bits, and then there's one ground connection. I think?
It clearly uses ground, just a single pad above speed bits though, it just dropped last speed bit and first two length bits, based on pin locations and row shift.
Fascinating! I've only ever had manual-loading cams, I honestly assumed the barcodes were used for something but didn't realize they worked this way
Man, this RICOH I can remember holding in my hands and playing with very fondly. About 25 years ago. I loved the design and the sounds it made. And I loved putting films in and taking them out ruining not only a few of my mother's photos back then.
10:03 I remember my dad handed me his old SLR camera to use and it uses that data, that's the first thing I noticed lmao
I think it said something like 00/36 on the little digital display...
"I don't know why Canon overcomplicated this" is an evergreen sentence echoing through the annals of time in the hairline-reducing world of camera repair
@ElectroDFW Not everything can be made as analogies.
@Seele2015au so the T-90 was the iPhone of its day, and the 7000 was the Android? 😁
Since a Canon T-90 was shown, I would also add that the back-up battery for retaining exposed frame numbers can be replaced, but it required close to a full disassembly to reach it. Minolta's 7000 has one as well, but it is user-replaceable quite easily.
Canon hired ex- General Motors engineers, doncha know!
Not just Canon, also some Minolta and Kodak cameras were overcomplicated.
I love that Technology Conections acknowledges and addresses the nuance of these topics without needing to fully explain the complexity. Simply mentioning the fact that detail has been skipped over allows viewers to conduct their own research without starting from scratch. Thank you for making complicated topics exciting and accessible without over-simplification!
You could use one of those silver-paint pens to draw the correct code on the non-DX containers
This would work if you used electrically conductive paint used to repair circuit boards, and if all the contacts were connected to the common ground plane, but it would probably be easier to use aluminum foil tape, and insulate the black squares with a couple coats from a black paint pen. The black paint could be stripped later with a solvent, or you could use a new piece of tape.
i was just wondering about this ! thank you for making this video you’re tapped in to the zeitgeist lmao
I used to work at FotoMat in the early 90s and would save every roll that had the encoding patterns on them to resell to people who would refill their film because it was significantly cheaper than buying new.
I use to work at Fotomat too in my senior year in high school.
If that is no effort, I would be interested in a video which would be explicitly be effort. Thanks for you videos, your mind of detail and great videos!
Actually pretty damn interesting. Had to pop out old my camera to take look.
I worked in a photo retail store for a year, so bought a staff discount, cost price dark box. I would load my film at home in the dark box so I wouldn’t lose the first two frames, and would carefully force the film right to the end. As most labs charged by identified film length, getting 28 frames for the print cost of 24 meant I got a whole film for free after every sixth.
Ah, yes. I remember the process of trying to squeeze as many shots out of a roll of film as possible. The threshold of either 24 or 36, and the hope/desire to be able to get at least one more shot out of it, and the semi-smug feeling that you were getting, 'free', exposures once you got it developed. It didn't always work, of course. And even if it did, some developers were too stingy to print any after the allotted number of exposures. Bah, humbug. Interestingly, though, once film scanners became a thing, getting to see those extra shots that weren't printed all those years ago, (that you'd completely forgotten about even existing), are finally visualised. Generally, they're nothing different to what you'd already took, as they were usually taken to use up the film so you could get it developed! I've had one or two interesting exceptions though that have jogged memories of what I was doing at the time.
Usually it worked, but I remember them printing a big number plate across my girlfriend's face. In retrospect, I should have taken 2 frames, but I was too cheap to do that.
Kodak was actually pretty cool about it if you were shooting slides, even mounting the #37 and #38 for you. But if you tore out the sprocket holes you'd get the damaged part of the filmstrip back with some empty cardboard mounts and a note to the effect of "too bad, you broke it, you are on your own". If I could load the camera in the dark I could shoot a frame before #1 (on the "leader") and they seemed OK with that too.
if a roll has the wrong dx code i usually just scratch the ink away or cover the contacts with a piece of tape to change it
I have a question for you. I have 1 roll of film kodac 400 24 exposures and 1 disk same speed and exposures. Now the question I'm 57 yrs old now and I took these pictures back when I was around 23 yrs old, where can I get these developed and do you think they're still good? thanks for any help.
Ha! Bulk loading Fomapan! I used to buy cans and cans of that stuff. That and super cheap high contrast "document" papers.
It would be fun if you would do a video on the Nimslo 3D camera and process, and its derivatives.
@Me, an intellectual The cameras themselves are not particularly interesting as they just used four half-frames simultaneously, after Nimslo's closure the system was revived by another firm producing the Nishika (not Niskika) but the camera was cheapened to the point that a piece of metal was added under the camera's baseplate to add some weight. Then a three-lens version was produced. What's interesting about the Nimslo (or the Wonderview) was not the camera, but the technology that produced the lenticular pictures.
@Seele2015au i know what a nimslo or niskika does, the issue is other than their gimmick, they aren't very interesting. they're just 4 fixed leaf shutters synchronised.
@Me, an intellectual What's interesting about the Nimslo, developed by Allan Lo, was that it produced lenticular stereo prints. I remember in the 1970s a camera called the Wonderview WT-102, created by a man called Lo, was launched which also produced lenticular pictures; in fact I remember the launch very well, and its showroom in one of the brand new malls in Kowloon. I never managed to discover if they were designed by the same person, although the timeline appears plausible.
the problem is those cameras are super simple and straight forward
I really love the "Friend who spent a little too much time on the Internet last night after getting hooked on some random topic waiting on you to wake up the next day to tell you about it" vibe that No Effort November brings.
When you trust in God and cast your cares (worries, anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts) upon him, they will be NO MORE!
Know that there is power in the name Jesus Christ! His name casts out demons and heals!
The world is wicked, evil, and of the devil.
I too, was a wicked sinner of the world before I opened my heart to God. I am living proof of God's work and fruitfulness! He is an active God who hears the prayers of his! God's children are set apart (holy) and righteous. The devil is a liar that comes to steal, to kill, and to destroy; that includes your relationship with God.
Open your heart to God, repent of your sins (he will forgive you), and let him direct your path. Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands and purify your heart, lest you walk with the devil and follow him to hell.
Jesus Christ is the propitiation for the whole world's sins. They that believeth and are baptized (with the Holy Spirit) shall be saved; but they that believeth not shall be damned. Those led by the Holy Spirit do not abide in wickedness. 👍🏾
*God is ONE manifesting himself as THREE;* the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit! Bless him! *For these three are one.*
As I am led by the Holy Spirit, nothing I state is a lie, but the truth of God. Anyone who tells you differently is misinformed or a liar. They do not know God, nor led by him.
Anyone who *claims* to be a Christian and is against what I am doing, and where I am doing it; the Holy Spirit does not dwell within them, they lack understanding. They know not God, read his word, and their religion is in vain. Do not hear them, they will mislead you, the lost cannot guide the lost.
@tiny derp potato if it makes you feel better, I did this to my partner about fire extinguishers. I spent like 6 hours researching different kinds of fire extinguishers and when they woke up the next day, I started my presentation on why we'd be purchasing these two specific fire extinguishers.
Same!
I feel called out........🤣
10:21 Clearly cameras aren't made by the printer industry.
I love this channel for answering weird questions I had like 15 years ago and never looked into.
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That is such an elegant solution. I saw those square patches and instinctively though huh those could be used as a power plane for vcc. Quite lovely thinking by the engineers.
Would you consider making a video on what the heck QR codes really are and how they work and how we mortals can make better use of them in our daily life
I love the amount of effort you always put into your videos
I'm going to recommend that if you like this video on film. (See what I did there?) Smarter Every Day's series on Kodak's manufacturing process is endlessly informative. I recommend this as both a service to other film geeks and in hopes the algorithm will pair both channels together in future recommendations to the mutual benefit of both. I was quite pleased to learn this today as I don't recall that this very interesting tidbit was mentioned at all the Kodak manufacturing series. Quite the feat! Anything for channels thriving without thumbnails with moronic youtube faces or vapid sharts. 📸
Just a comment to find yours easier, hopefully in the next few days to show it to my 11yo. Then later again as an English lesson (not only your comment, but it is really well said), since he is not that good in the language yet.
My 1980s high school art teacher bulk rolled 17 exposure films for students using 1000 ISO black and white film. Fortunately the ancient full manual Exakta SLR I was using didn't care, I just had to set it right. Until today I had no idea that 1000 was an exotic speed. Thanks Alec!
My Pentax 1000 didn't have a setting for Kodak 1000, but the quality was terrible, and luckily, they correctly predicted Fuji 1600, which had deep blacks and almost invisible grain. I used it for handheld fireworks photos at a 1s exposure, when I had to use the manual B exposure with the ASA 1000 film.
Exaktas were great cameras, I wish I still had mine. I used it so much that at the end, after many years, it pretty much fell apart.
Now try to explain this to the kids that see a micro-floppy diskette and ask if you 3d printed the "save" icon. (Micro floppy diskettes are the 3 1/4" ones in the rigid plastic carriers)
📸 fascinating and fun and we appreciate the low effort ☺️
@Jack Baxter-Williams hi, Jack, nice to see you... And thanks ☺️👍
Yes, I've been a fan and patron of Alec for ages! 😁
Whoa. Never thought I'd recognize the person making the comment. I've been following your videos forever. Your talk on elevators... So cool to see you here!
This video was super useful and somehow well produced despite being "no effort"
As a photographer who got into the business in the digital age and has been wanting to explore back to my film youth, this hit the spot. Thank you for sharing this low effort with us. It's one of my favorites!
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Man… taking me back to my childhood messing around with my mom’s camera. Dad always had the video camera and mom had the photo camera. I was always so fascinated by the film cartridges.
Having been a film photographer in the distant past, I do remember when the automatic film speed setting came out, but I has no idea how it worked. I don't think I ever owned a camera that used it though. The film speeds being mostly in a series of doubled speeds wasn't always the case. I remember when Kodak revamped their color film lineup (probably at the same time they introduced the DX system). When I started, color films available (IIRC) were Kodachrome II, ASA/ISO 25 slide; Kodachrome X 64 slide; Ektachrome X 64 slide; High speed Ektachrome 160 slide with push processing available to make it 400, and Kodacolor X 80 print.
When they revamped the lineup, they discontinued the Kodachrome line, and offered Ektachrome for slides and Kodacolor for prints, both in 100, 200 and 400.
This channel never fails to show that the past was far more advanced than we remember it being. I never even thought that cameras would automatically compensate for film speed.
It's like a similar video I just watched on a vintage tool. A spark plug tire inflator tool. I think they were more creative back then.
There's at least one camera that would add exposure information onto the film after a shot, so it's right there on the border. Others stored the data on board and needed a special cable and sometimes a CF card to connect to a computer
The idea that progress is linear and that technology has steps is completely made up in general
I do like that about the past. We always pushed every technology as far as it could go. Like, in Baghdad like 700-800 years ago they had really complex water-powered mechanical automata, all for the purpose of pouring wine (well, those were powered by the wine they poured) or playing music. I’d always thought of automata like that as a Victorian thing, but apparently manufacturing was precise enough much earlier in some parts of the world!
This reminds me of the newer APS film format. It was pretty nice really with a few nifty features. The cartridge had extra info, such as if the film was exposed, or partially exposed, or even processed. It could take photos in various aspect ratios too.
I look back on some of the film pictures my parents took when I was a child, and I am shocked by the quality of some of them. Some have depth of field and blurred background and good color, and I can’t help but wonder if that was by accident or what. Because they definitely didn’t have a pro camera at the time, and it has only really been in the last ten years or so that iPhones have gotten the portrait feature that create depth of field.
My parents did more with a 1990s film camera than I did for the first ten years of having an iPhone.
Very interesting. I love my film cameras and just picked up an Olympus penn ee2. The fact that I can take film pictures with the same effort as digital is brilliant. But I still lovey old manual and auto cannon cameras
This was so good and exactly what I needed because I'm just about to get into film photography.
I wonder if Canon's dual contacts are for redundancy. Otherwise a dirty contact could ruin a whole roll of film, which would be disastrous for a professional photo shoot. You should try covering one up and see if it still reads the DX code correctly.
Edit: Actually I was wrong, as some have pointed out. He clearly says and shows (7:40) that the Canon does not have contacts for the common ground. So there is no redundancy.
They're not shown here, but every film roll sold would individually come in at least a plastic bag, if not a small plastic container, to protect the film and roll canister right up until you use them. Dirt and damage wouldn't really be a huge concern.
My guess: the first two being used as a common ground for the other bits suggest Kodak intended the system to work with the bits pulled-high and the film canister bringing them to active-low for the chip that's reading them. If the Canon camera doesn't have those ground pins, my first guess would be that Canon bought chips that were proprietary and were pulled-low and the film would bridge the source to drive them active-high. Further speculation that I have not done any research into: this would allow Canon to benefit from Kodak's format without having to advertise a competitor on the box, since it's TECHNICALLY not using the Kodak DX system.
It's also possible it was done as a marketing gimmick to try and make the cameras seem more Professional and Failure-resistant, that happens sometimes. But I'm less inclined to believe that.
Redundancy would still work here. Each connection has its own ground but the common conductor would still connect them all together. Not only would the good ground contacts be the ground path for the missing one, the camera could still notice the anomaly and at least show a film error message.
@Ben Thornberry For a 3 bit number?
@Caleb D Yep, people don't think of cameras as ruggedized devices, but pro SLRs are meant for journalists and nature photographers and the like and benefit greatly from that sort of thing.
Correct answer here.
Seeing the Canon T90 made me yell “YEAH!” at my screen. I’ve been a professional photographer since 1989, and my three T90’s were my only film cameras. In late 2004, I went completely digital - and I haven’t touched my T90’s since. Seeing the T90 in your video was like seeing an old, close friend again.
I always wondered how those worked! I love the film related videos.
The most fun job I ever had was when I worked as a 24 hour Photo Development pick up/delivery driver. The job went extinct with the invention of digital cameras. That job was so much fun!
I used to use my 35 mm cameras a lot and I always wondered what the silver squares were for, and seen the DX logo, but never gave it any thought as to what they were for. I think I have that same Canon A1 camera. I miss using them. They were so great to take photos with.
I miss being able to go to my grocery store, getting almost any speed, decent quality film for a good price.
Respect for the significant effort you put into your amazing videos - even in "no effort" november! 🙂
I must say I really appreciate all the effort that went into this, very interesting video!
I worked with photography, editing and some analogue (film development) for 5 years.
The old-timers at the lab didn't know how to read the DX Code - but it's super easy!
But not very useful!
I think Fuji frontier Scanners actually read the DX code and/or the Barcodes.
You could make different Scanner profiles for different films based on the DX codes (automated).
Ie it's still relevant in printing when using minilab (much better than flatbed and ink jet's using cheap paper - in my opinion).
I think them codes was even more important on APS films (they also used some magnetic registration as well).
APS isn no longer made and were pretty crappy + slow to scan.
The auto film development machines from Fuji never read the DX or film speed. To push the film you had to increase the strength of the solution or crank the film by hand.
In my opinion you have no use for the DX codes.
I use manual cameras and a light meter!
I develop my own B&W film = easy.
C41 and E6 is also possible to develop your self.
To iterate, the only use for DX and Barcodes today are in minilab Scanners (highly recommend Fuji Frontier).
Tell me if I'm wrong!
Some later cameras would fully spool the film when first loaded, so when pictures were taken, they'd immediately get spooled back into the film canister, so accidentally opening the back of the camera would only ruin your last picture, and some of your unused film.
I never found loading 35mm film to be all that difficult anyway. Pull out the leader, stick it in the slot on the takeup spool, and make sure the holes in the film line up with the sprockets. Then again, I started with roll film, where dropping the spool at the wrong time could ruin the whole roll.
@Lebenspiel It doesn't need DX encoding to do that. Just wind it till it stops, just keep taking pictures until the take-up spool stops turning.
I have a canon that does that
Nikons do this. That's why is important to have DX coding for number of exposures.
That is a nifty yet slightly terrifying idea... for some reason.
Wow, the effort that you put into these videos is truly incredible! I can't imagine doing all of that research, procuring all of the props necessary, coming up with such simple and relatable explanations behind the way things work, and not to mention the actual filming itself. It's wonderful that we have creators dedicated so much to their craft that they never, not for an instance, fail to put in the required effort in to create such great content.
I do remember film rolls and I always wondered why they came with those weird squares, no one knew, but I think it was by the early 2000s people only had those plastic point and shoot cameras and they were almost completely manual, so I don't remember seeing a camera with those sensors, but regardless, it is quite the interesting tech for sure.
14:00 Back in the early 80s, when I was learning photography, we used either recycled or generic black plastic film cartridges that we bulk loaded ourselves to save lots of money. so they either had no or incorrect DX markings. OTOH, we were also shooting with either fully or semi manual cameras, so it wasn't an issue.
He puts more effort into a single weekly "No Effort November" video than I expend in the entire month of November.
Also, I imagine Canon did that in case someone used an "off-spec" version of the code where it the paint wasn't underlaid with a single electrically-continuous strip of foil but instead stuck separate small foil rectanges on the canister.
When you discover a channel and obsessively watch everything they’ve ever uploaded.
So much useful information.
I always found the relationship between the film technologies and the very simplest single use cameras fascinating. In the end, those single use cameras, which are the ultimate evolution of the old brownie cameras, drove the development of film technology. The ultimate goal was to have ever increasing exposure latitude on the print films. This was needed for the cameras to produce printable negatives in a wide variety of situations with essentially fixed aperture and shutter speed. max 400 and 800 were the ultimate examples of this for Kodak.
I was very little when film cameras were a thing, so I've never come across these DX thingies. by looking at a video thumbnail I thought it was just a print and a camera had an internal camera that read that code like a QR code and decoded it lol
using metal conductivity is so much simpler
I remember my FujiFilm camera from the mid 90s would unwind the film when you loaded it, and shoot the pictures "in reverse" on the roll. Pulling it back in to the cartridge one frame for each picture you took. That way if someone opened the camera by mistake, you would only lose your last picture or two.
Fun fact: the film industry narrowly avoided the bit wars of 1983 and never had to go above 8 bit
@Kornaros Not a hipster.. just genuinely interested in film because I actually work with the stuff.
@PixelGaming 2020 then hipsters arrived...
Fun fact: the film industry almost got wiped off the map due to digital cameras, with a low point in 2009.
@Jesus Saves! Jesus Saves - I spend.
@Jesus Saves! I thank Baphomet and Hecate every day
I remembered when DX coding came out. I'm sure I read a magazine article about it at some point. But this was much more detail than I'd remembered! Thanks, enjoy my thumbs-up and no-effort applause :D
14:59 instead of these replacement stickers you could also buy a conductive ink pen. If you know the spots you need to cover then it should be the cheaper option
T͟h͟a͟n͟k͟s͟~͟~͟f͟o͟r͟ ͟w͟a͟t͟c͟h͟i͟n͟g͟!͟!͟
͟E͟n͟d͟e͟a͟v͟o͟r͟ ͟t͟o͟ ͟m͟e͟s͟s͟a͟g͟e͟ ͟m͟e͟ ͟o͟n͟ ͟w͟h͟a͟t͟s͟a͟p͟p͟✙͟➊͟➎͟➊͟➏͟➍͟➎͟⓿͟➐͟➊͟➎͟➊͟🔥͟🔥͟
I thought you would have touched on expired film! Many need an extra stop or two to create a proper exposure, and many consumpers with PnS that do want to try out expired film for that look can't expose it well. I've resorted to masking tape and scrapping the printed ink for such occasions lmao
Great video! I enjoyed photography class in high school. No idea what speed to use. Teacher sold us the black and white film for like 3 bucks. And we would just pop it into any camera we could find. Take pics and develop it ourselves in the dark room. The only thing i could never do and had to bribe some buddies was loading the film into the spool to expose it. You do it in the dark over a sink. Forgot what it was called. This was prior to taking it to the other dark room where you can hang it from a laundry clip like a detective.
I worked all through high school in a Fuji-based photo shop. All of the "leniency" and "will be fine" you described was on the technician printing them. We manually adjusted every print exposure.
For a while I worked at a photo shop and exhibition company. The printing machines were quite good but we usually had a few to be reprinted on each film. Then the company got new owners who told us that checking and reprinting was a waste of time, money and materials so was not to be done. "Don't think about it, just send it out, if the customer doesn't like it then they will bring it back." Well the customers stopped coming back. In two or three years the company was closed. Maybe that was their long term plan, they owned the site which was then converted into flats.
our equipment was pretty good at reading the negative
I was wondering how they'd go about fitting a barcode reader into one of those... Having the barcode also be conductive is brilliant.
This was such nostalgia. I knew the photo count and ISO meanings. I didn't know the exposure 2 bits.
I do remember seeing most of my film with "UL" on the side, meaning ISO 100, 24 exposure (although I could almost always get 27 photos on a roll). Now I know the extra 2 bits meant +3 -1 ability. Thank you.
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I love the high amounts of effort you put into this!
I remember seeing the weird part on the film cartridge. I never thought that it provided information to the camera. Now, I want to go back and look at my old Fugi 110 telephoto. Thanks!
Alec, thank you from the bottom of my heart for making November my favorite month, and for making me a smarter person overall. Oh yeah, and for making the world smarter too. You're up there with PBS in terms of sheer public-good.
@Triturate is condemning PBS as "the people's" state run media. they are intending to criticize the comparison to PBS as a compliment, although it comes off more like calling Tech Connections a commie.
He's a Russian troll. Ignore him or roast him. Either choice is sufficient.....
@Triturate what in the world are you talking about?
@Triturate W H A T?
Well, PBS and the Soviet Union
I think that my experience with film cameras has been something of an edge-case since I don't think that I've ever used a camera that could read these. Either they were too old (Nikons, Nikkormats, and Minoltas with the classic 2-tone bodies), the wrong type (110 cartridge-loader cameras), or too primitive (Kodak Star 435). So my-incorrect-assumption since childhood was that those coded areas were only there to help with automated film processing.
Also, somewhere in the world someone will probably end up using Alec's klaxon yell (from the bloopers) as their car's horn sound! 😆
We always love the effort you put into production year round. These are still valuable videos, though. Please enjoy your one month “off.” Keep up the good work.
I LOVE your low effort productions! Good content, amusing, interesting, informative, funny but not cheesy funny and just that perfect amount of geeky. Thanks!
Back before I stopped using film, I always loved using Seattle Film Works film.
I could shoot with any ISO/ASA I wanted, and the prints always came out perfect!
When I was in HS back in the early 80's, the school had a very nice telescope, complete with a dome. I used to use 1000-speed film for astrophotography (I don't remember 1600 being available). The only problem I had was getting the development place to actually do prints of every shot-they'd typically develop it and then tell me "We didn't do any prints, because the negatives just had a bunch of black spots on it".
@Michelle Harvey The trick was to shoot a fully lit frame at the beginning so the machine could align the rest. Or take them to a custom lab, or just ell them to give you back the uncut film and mount the slides yourself.
@Emily Adams That was exactly what I ended up doing-as well as having them mark on the order to print all the images. It _usually_ worked.
@Emily Adams The Backyard Astronomer's Guide (Dickinson and Dyer) in the section on keeping the Gremlins at bay had the suggestion to shoot something non-astronomical, though it came out in 1991 so they may have picked it up from an earlier author.
One book I had suggested that you shoot something normal on the first and last frames when shooting the sky, like your car's license plate if you were on location. I did that once, in 1986, and it worked. Two Kodachromes of my car's plate, bracketing 34 "blank" slides.
I got a burned a few times by processing labs making assumptions like that, and one even screwed up my negatives by letting an idiot with scissors get a little too excited. When I take film to a lab now, I ask them not to cut the rolls and just do it myself on a light table later. Most of the time if it's black and white I just process it all myself, so I don't have to worry about some pothead screwing up a roll of film I shot on an expensive trip across the country.
Your videos are so fascinating. You really should do teletext, even without the personal connection.
What did the photo finisher do when I "pushed" the speed to 2x or 4x?
IDK about the old days, but now, you tell them about it, or label the cassette and they develop it correctly, if pushing or pulling was a service they offer.
Hopefully you told them or else the grains would not be developed large enough so the film would appear underexposed. Developing longer let the smaller number of grains grow larger. Also why pushed films looked grainy; they had larger grains. That is why you would use ISO 50 or 25 for extremely high resolution technical work.
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Panotomic-X 25 was always my favorite to shoot and print with. I liked Ilford and Kodak papers. Still have prints from 35 years ago. I miss my darkroom! But I love the ease and chem-free goodness of digital!
Got me thinking. Did you ever do a video on the disk film Cameras? I'd like to see that as I vaguely remember my parents having one.
Just wanted to point out that when I was bulk rolling my own film, DX coded, reusable blank cassettes were available
Wow, I never knew I lived in a world with DX Code Stickers! (and that´s what I love about this channel)
Since you mentioned self-contained film cartridges, I'm reminded of Kodak Advantix. It was a weird attempt to modernize film cameras, just as digital was just starting to take over. Be interesting if someone did a video on that...
@kabj06 low resolution? Well that's what you get when your method of alternate aspect ratios is to crop the image.
Made a blog post on it years ago lol it was a cool concept but was hindered by its low resolution compared to 135. It had some really good ideas though, like a magnetic strip that encoded the shutter speed and aperture of the image
I wasn't into analog photography, the thought to shelling out money for film and developing put me off it. Digital photography was great for me - my first digital pictures were taken with a Casio QV-10. That being said, I had no idea this was a thing - now I just dig out my inlaw's cameras and check for the contacts!
When I was little (probably around 6 or so) I got the Fisher Price 3.5 mm red/black camera (i think it was rather fresh released but no clue). Looking back at the kind of pictures i took then, they were surprisingly good (for a little child). I theoretically still have an older film camera, but I dont take pictures often (aside from pictures of pets), so its just (not) collecting dust in a drawer 😂
You can always use aluminium tape for the conductive part and use regular electric tape to mask the other bits.
I always saw those metal patches on the film and had no idea what it was. Interesting. My old camera always needed the ISO manually set.
I used to "roll my own" in the early 80's. You bought a loading box that was light proof. Film was sold in 100' rolls, you load it in the box. It also had a small, isolated compartment you put the empty film cassette in. Start the roll by taping a leader to the spool, slide it in the can, put the cap back on the end of the can. Next slide it in and close the small compartment door. You then rolled by cranking a handle on the side until it was full or desired amount. BTW you open the can with a 'church key' or (bottle opener).
Your "no effort" videos are still better than 99% of the content on Clip-Share!
You could also nearly effortlessly add an Arduino with a display/button hat to your camera and connect the metal sensors to the gpio, then you can select the iso levels on the Arduino. So simple!
I had that Samurai! It took decent photos without me knowing anything about photography and it just looked awesome with it's "futuristic" shape!
For the record the speed on the film is a recommendation. You can shoot slower or faster on purpose (e.g. by "pushing" a 400 film to 1600) and correct for it when developing
Homebrew your conductive stickers for your homebrew/niche film cartridges: aluminum duct sealing tape with vinyl electrical tape squares.
I too remember film. And am grateful every day for my digital cell phone cam (gasp) and digital point and shoot (clutch pearls). I do enjoy learning about the art an history in the way you present it. Much respect to those taking the time to master the craft. Thank you.
I had a similar thought. I have some copper tape I bought for a little project a few years ago. I needed less than two inches at the time and bought two 66 foot rolls for just $6. That would be more work, but cheaper than the stickers he showed.
I had the same thoughts re: aluminum & electrical tape followed by "I'm surprised someone isn't making stickers.." just before he mentioned them!
As soon as he got to that point I was thinking something like this... But instead of taping it to the canister, I'd tape it to a thin, stuff plastic sheet (or maybe even medium weight paper) cut to snug against the canister bet let you set the values to whatever you wanted.
Reusable, probably less then $1 a peice, and simple.
I mean, if you bought some of the plastic ones with the conductive sticker, you could probably upcycle them but carefully removing the label from the film canister and sticking it on a sheet...
I have a variety of film cameras including medium format ones. For various reasons I ended up using a professional lab. I took some film in. Later that day I realised I had under or over exposed it (can't remember which) and they corrected it in developing. It was chrome slide film, not print film so has less latitude than print film.
I always wondered what the Tetris shapes were on the side of the film cartridges. Thanks for the great video.