Every photographer knows about APS-C sensors, but what about APS film? This week, Chris and Jordan take a stroll down memory lane and try out the original APS format, short for 'Advanced Photo System', a technology that promised to streamline the film workflow, but which ultimately lost out to digital technology. Tune in to see what made APS so interesting, and whether 15-year-old expired film is still up to the task.
Our son was given an APS camera and roll of film by a relative. We took one look at the film and processing costs and decided that he wouldn't be using it; he got a 35mm camera instead. More money for a much smaller negative? Um, no.
Really enjoyed this. APS film came at a time I was not very active in photography. I vaguely knew about it but what work I did at the time was with my Olympus 35mm system. This was most informative and interesting. Well done and thank you.
When I was between studios in the mid 90s, I did a stint as an equipment salesman at a very well known (and still active) NYC photo retailer. I dissuaded customers from APS, reminding them that a bigger negative is always better than a smaller one. Most customers understood, and opted for 35mm despite the hype, and were thankful for the honesty.
Oh, and I also showed how bogus the "panorama" feature was on point and shoot cameras -- the simple mask that would slip over the film frame...what a joke.
I used to work in a photoshop in the early 2000´s, and we received alot of APS film. My personal opinion after handling hundreds of those rolls, is that it was properly bad...
The aspect-ratio thing was just a little "metadata" on each frame which could easily be changed in print. This could be done on 35mm as well... The cases kept braking, giving us proper headaches. And the film had to winded on a proprietary, highly expensive, weird little machine that also kept braking. The imagequality was also nothing to write home about. An ISO 200 film would be grainy beyond acceptance for your average customer if they wanted anything printed above 10*15cm (5*6inch). To me the death of APS film was a welcome one...
Yes! I was remembering that too. They were supposed to be easy to process, but the machine I used was a POS too. I can't remember some of the weird things we had to do, but I think I remember having to transplant the film to blank cases when they'd break.
As a young person growing up in the 90s in a consumer photography household, my experience was that APS was a huge hit amongst my parental units and most of friends' families (that weren't into any serious photography, of course).
I remember my dad selling it to my mom on precisely because it was 'so easy to load the film' and easier to reorder because of the printed thumbnails lol. What a time to be alive. Of course didn't know much about anything aside from how cool the Panoramic mode was - until I got my first 'real' DSLR - T1i and i learned about the crop sensor...
Yes, I had a Canon APS camera, but not for long. I forget the model, but it had a moderately long zoom starting at 28mm equiv. We were backpacking around South America, and I had shot just a couple of rolls when it was stolen at 16,000' above sea level in the refugio on the active volcano Cotopaxi. That was not my only camera stolen on that trip, Oh well. The APS thief must have been disappointed to discover that APS film was not to be found in Ecuador. The camera was probably discarded.
As someone who still primarily uses film my work, I saw APS primarily as Kodak's attempt at an end-run around the oncoming digital onslaught, as well as Just One More trip to the proprietary-format feeding trough. The major Japanese players at the time kinda-sorta went along, but at the same time kicked a bit of sand in Rochester's eye by releasing some *seriously* techy 35mm auto-everything compacts at surprisingly reasonable prices, and which, both performance- and value-wise, left most APS cameras in their wake. But then, digital got better...
I had a Minolta Vectis S-1 and S-100 with 4 lenses, 28-56, 56-170, 50 Macro and 400mm. I loved the system! Thought the pictures were great and it was easy to use. Plus being smaller than 35mm (which I also had), it was lighter and easier to carry and travel with.
My mom was the family amateur photographer growing up. Forgot the camera but knew we had to go to Target just to process the negatives when I was younger. Film loading was easy for my little hands!
APS was really cool. Funnily enough I 'discovered' it only less than 10 years ago, bought some cameras and films and used them for a few years.
Of course people may ask - why not just use 35mm? APS actually gave me several advantages over 35mm cameras, in particular:
- compact cameras with wider lenses. Within 35mm compacts, 35mm lenses were standard and anything wider was usually expensive (e.g. Nikon 28Ti). Canon Ixus II has a ZOOM lens that starts at about 29mm.
- tiny, light and high quality cameras. I just visited my drawer: Canon L1's - ultra light, fixed lens of about 33 mm, I have 2 and like them more than I've liked my Olympus Mju II's. Canon Ixus II - tiny, light yet built like a tank, superb quality. Nikon Pronea S - ok not as cool, but it's a modern SLR with the size of a modern MILC.
- great film stock. B&W Kodak is amazing (different from 35mm BW400CN) and my favorite B&W film ever. Fuji 800 beats any ASA 800 35mm film by a mile.
Also, APS came extra handy during the time when compact digital cameras were still sh*tty and getting worse and worse, while the really good ones were still far away. There were 1" or 4/3 sensors at the time. I had Sigma DP1 but it was really impractical for general use.
Say a decent enough digital compact cost 400 € at the time. APS gave me comparable or even better IQ and with the crazy low prices of cameras, films and processing/scanning it would take 1 or 2 years for APS to cost as much.
Never got into APS and saw very few rolls come into the lab I worked at.
The 16:9 conspiracy theory. Yep, that's what I believe. I LOVE shooting 16:9. Anything "smaller" is a waste of my widescreen monitor space! (Hahahaha...)
High confusion! The end of times! Stories of photographic film abound as digital cameras are facing their own Kodak moment brought on by portable telephones. Twisted.
Nice walk down memory lane. My first real camera was an APS Fujifilm Endeavor 100ix that I got for my 11th birthday, and it went with me everywhere. The C-H-P option and quick loading/unloading made it very simple to use.
why is this article on dpreview? Who sponsored it and who is the beneficiary. It's a waste of time. Photographers want to see more relevant review rather than look at some old underexposed negatives. The review itself is a failure if we look at it from the technical point of view. It should have been reshot with properly exposed negatives - it's like saying we effed up the film but look at the results anyway
Why do you care? Why waste your time? this is a photography site and some might find this interesting as it relates to photographic history. Considering apsc film hasn’t been made for years you cannot get fresh film. This has nothing to do with exposure, it has to do with the fact that the film is expired. This is a fun article. Why be a killjoy making irrelevant points.
We occasionally like to deviate from camera and lens reviews, just to keep things interesting for the audience and ourselves. I was surprised to find a number of younger photographers had no idea what APS film was, so we thought this would be interesting for some DPReview readers.
Sure, we could reshoot the images, but the episode is about the experience of shooting APS, not critiquing the image quality (which would be useless as all the film is now expired anyways). Sorry you didn't find the video interesting, we'll be back with a gear review next week.
I thought it was interesting, entertaining, and relevant, as it deals with the era of transition from one medium to another. Gear reviews are great, but some history behind the gear can also be very informative. More historia! :)
Why was APS developed, follow the money, it had to do with collecting licensing fees and per unit royalties from everyone but the Big 5 that came up with APS; Kodak, Fuji, Nikon, Canon and Minolta. Kodak had developed a clear magnetic coating that would cover the APS film; more advanced cameras would be able to put info on that magnetic coating to help improve the image when printed: was the camera held vertical or horizontal, if flash was used, exposure comp, and more. The APS printing equipment could read the info the camera put on each image and the printer would add the exposure info for each print on each negative so reprints would look like the original, saving reprints if the customer like the original or reprints better. The 'Other' camera, film and processing equipment companies did not want to send their production numbers to the Big 5 who were their competitors, so the Big 5 formed a separate company to handle the royalty payments. 5 years to develop APS, Big Fail.
Great video taking one back in history. When the format came out I wasn't convinced that it would take off. And then soon after the first digitals came out. 11 years ago my then digital SLR Canon 400D (xti) broke and I went into that same seneal store where I bought a refurbished one. Still works today :-) Thanks for your great video. More of these please.
Like others have said APS was too late to do any good in the film arena. Add to that most manufacturers only paid it lip service and NEVER stood behind it with any commitment. APS had the ability to do a lot more than it ever did with the magnetic layer and the ability to record digital data. I had one of the first APS cameras and one of the first photo labs for processing the film and if we did 4000 rolls total in the life of the film that would shock me, probably closer to 2000 roll max (as a comparison we did 500 rolls of 35mm per day). It was also a PAIN to process with having to reload it into a second canister before processing then load back into the original canister after processing. Not sorry to see it go!
There were some excellent top of the range slrs from the likes of Canon, Minolta and Nikon. I added the three systems (selecting the top model in each) to my camera collection because they could be picked up for peanuts, but I do know what you mean. Interesting to read your experience as a processing lab, too. The Canon was best as it could mount standard Eos slr lenses
Did I read somewhere back then that labs were forced by Kodak to accept APS-C processors? Or have I got this wrong?
APS was pushed on the labs, We were Fuji and they REALLY pushed it by offering incentives to upgrade. C-41 machines were not an issue as they came up with the intermediate canister that we could reuse. Some printers were able to be upgraded with new APS carriers to at least print. The issue was the carriers also did not take advantage of all the APS functions OR we turned them off. One function that I remember was the "Customer selected print quantity". When shooting the customer could select the number of prints they wanted from each shot. That lasted a couple days till it was shut off. Customers had no clue of what this did and getting 99 prints from a shot of your foot was an issue!
MUCH EASIER.... we sent out to another lab to do :-) :-) as we did not have a processor that would take the disks.
I did do them at a friends place - you took the disc into the dark box, cracked the case, removed the film, slid the disc onto a spindle. After he just put into a envelope.
Printing was the same in that you needed a different carrier and with the smaller neg (like 110 as well) the exposure time was longer than 35 or even 126.
The APS system could have been a big hit if it weren't for two things:
1. The image quality was pretty poor 2. Digital kept getting better and cheaper
It really was the last gasp of a dying film industry. It was an attempt to prevent a mass switch to digital, but the attempt failed. I guess they had to "try something" even if it didn't work as hyped.
I remember paying $650 for my Canon IXUS Lite SLR kit, and today you can find them on ebay for $5. This is a risk all early adopters and gadget freaks take.
We remember it this way, but at the time digital wasn't good enough--there were 1.7 megapixel cameras costing hundreds of dollars. Even people who wouldn't go to the effort to buy and process film were not going digital (except some scientists and realtors.)
The two things that sealed the deal were small film/poor quality and the fact that consumers saw the new APS features as unnecessary or not worth paying a premium. This wouldn't happen today; give people a new digital feature and they will find a use for it.
You're both right. But Kodak had a track record of foisting new film formats on to the public, and which in many ways weren't really needed, and all saw a dramatic loss of IQ. Remember 126, 110 and Disc? Volume sales were in 35mm and roll film, but demand overall was relatively static with little room to grow in face of the new digital technology. After all, if one had a decent camera why change? So, let's get the public to buy into a new system, and which would also help out a flagging film camera industry. But we have to offer something over and above what 35mm provides. And the system did, but at a price and with lower IQ. Also, the system wasn't amenable to home d&p. Top of the range slr's from Canon, Minolta and Nikon were indeed quite advanced, but many would baulk at the price.
1. IQ was comparable or better than 35mm (when we talk about same categories of cameras/films) because the manufacturers put a lot of R&D into the format.
2. While digital was getting better, at the time was still very poor. Even the Canon D30 mentioned in the video was just a lowish-end SLR. It wasn't until around 2004 when digital became both good enough and inexpensive for anything but the pros and early adopters.
Digital of course won because it was more convenient in the first place, just like phones are winning over standalone cameras today - for convenience, even though the quality is not even within the same galaxy.
I remember when it came out. A good idea on paper but lower quality than 35mm so it wasn't taken very seriously. And we knew it was a stop-gap as digital matured. Bought an APS camera for my then-new wife, a nice small Canon that fit in to her handbag easily. Took decent photos but nothing earth shattering. A year later it was replaced by a small Casio digital camera that despite having only 4MP worked very well and the Canon APS camera was sold on ebay. Still have a bunch of APS film in the freezer that I have no idea what to do with, it will probably be tossed in the bin.
I would find a history of video cameras interesting as well, since contemporary still cameras are basically also considered video cameras. There was quite an evolution for that to happen. Dedicated video cams for VHS/beta to dv tape to recordable cd's/DVD's to internal hdd's to flash, then finally the inclusion of still cameras memory cards. Not to mention the standards in resolution improving over time. Jordan Drake would be able to walk us through a history of videography quite well I think.
Yes....hard to know if the Fujifilm stock was refrigerated and maybe the Kodak film wasn't, for example. I had an old camera with a partially exposed roll of Kokacolor....I forgot about it, and it was in the camera for about 5 years, I think. For fun, I had it developed and most of it was terrible, all orange, and you could barely tell what the photos were.
The heavily tint images present two problems. First, it isn't even across the image in all images, and of one color, and second, it is so heavy that there is not color information left in the images to create a normal looking image. The best you could do is create black and white images out of them, and even then they would be uneven and missing a lot of detail.
The APS was never that good compared to the good old fashioned 35mm film. The worst was the disc film where images always came out grainy and not resolving good details even in good light. The scanned images only confirmed what I've seen when I scanned mine.
And now we have digital sensors that can resolve more details even though they're MUCH smaller than disc films and can do well in low light.
And the current APS digital sensors are already doing way much better than APS film such as being able to change its ISO from 100 to 25,600 which was simply unheard of back then and having the ability to resolve much more details especially in low light.
It's quite amazing how far we've come. I remember the first time digital cameras finally had 1.2 megapixel sensors... but they were still not as good as APS film. Now, we have cameras with over 24 MP sensors doing so much better than APS film.
Yep, thin negatives. The ones that don't have horrible color shifts and tints would have been perfect with much more exposure. Best way to make negative film look horrible is to underexpose it.
What memories. I was working at Ritz Camera at the time these came out. The Elf was pretty popular but the others not so much. Obviously APS stood for Advanced Photo System, but selling them we called them a (APS) A Piece of Sh**. Wasn't too long after that we got our first digital camera in for sale. It was a tiny Casio not even 1MP and was over $600.
I was always curious about APS-C (which never took off in my country, but was still popular in Europe when I travelled to Germany in 2003), so I loved the video! I guess it was bound to fail because of the small surface area (damn that thing is noisy!), but why they never developed the same cartridge for 35mm is odd. Still, it’s amazing to see that it was noticeably inferior to modern 1” sensors, which goes to show that even MFT is well above the technical results of 35mm film. We’ve come really far!
I've scanned a lot of 35mm film on dedicated film scanners over the years and I can easily say that a 1" sensor delivers better quality than 4000dpi scans from 35mm film, and especially so at higher ISOs. That's one of the reasons why I have settled on a Sony RX100 V.
What I don't understand is why it takes a larger camera body to house a 35mm sensor. Back in the film days you could have something tiny like an Olympus Stylus Epic using 35mm film. We will come much farther when we can do the same with 35mm sensors.
I think it is because of the angle that light passing through the lens hits the Sensor. Light passing through the centre of the lens hits the centre of the Sensor directly so the full value is registered. Light passing through the outer regions of the lens hits the sensor at an angle. This does not matter much to the light-sensitive surface on film but makes a big difference to the amount of light registered by the light-sensitive electronics on a digital sensor.
A partial fix is to use a layer of micro lenses above the sensor surface to refract the light so that it hits the sensor surface in a more perpendicular fashion. I assume that this is not a complete fix because we would have full frame equivalents of the Olympus XA.
@Slouch. "Also: battery size and heat dissipation are problems inherent to digital, but not film, cameras."
Only because they have turned still cameras into video cameras too. I wish I could simply be able to buy a modern still camera without all the video baggage and extra expense and weight that goes along with it.
Phil: To remove heat dissipation as an issue, one would need to make a DSLR devoid of live view, and also curtail its long-exposure capability. Can you get any more niche than that? :/
Not really, long exposure noise artifacts have been a problem for a long time, and 35mm digital cameras all need some form of heat dissipation. Still, the Sony RX1 proves that a compact camera with a 35mm sensor is indeed possible. The lens is huge, of course, because it’s made to perform at a very high standard, and perhaps that’s the true problem: with our current high resolution sensors, the lenses just can’t be that small anymore, which in turn invalidates the raison d’être for a small camera in the first place.
Totally awesome video. I have that very same camera. Obviously I haven’t used it in over a decade as I don’t have film. I did however removed the batteries. So I’m sure it’s still in great condition.
APS was at first introduced as a Kodak Processing Lab only service. The idea being that APS would be the product that would stop the erosion of processing volume that was increasingly going to one hour labs.
When they finally opened it up to independent processors there were some advantages to the labs in that they could encode processing info into the magnetic coating such as aspect ratio and print quantity. However it required a lot more fiddling and storage of the negs was awkward and nearly impossible to find a specific image if you mixed up your cartridges or lost your index print. As I vividly remembered the costly debacle for indy labs adopting disc processing, I did not by APS capable machines until the digital Fuji Frontier was introduced. Meanwhile, many colleagues who had expensive payments on optical APS machines suffered greatly by not being able to print digital files. APS was doomed form the start and sadly hurt a lot of businesses in its slow descent into irrelevance.
Yep. There was a lot of acrimony in the lab world when Kodak announced APS. I noted to my rep that there was zero possibility the independent labs would cooperate in helping Kodak get the system off the ground. Thus Kodak had created, overnight, a vigorous and vocal opposition to the format with labs strongly recommending 35mm to their customers when asked about this new "digital" format.
The advantage to labs was that the exposure print data from when the original prints were made was recorded on the film, so when a customer ordered reprints, they would look like the original prints. With all other formats, reprints could look different and the customer would want the reprints or originals redone, which was a loss to the dealer. Kodak had a invisible magnetic coating covering the film that the camera and lab could put data on.
@mandm. Correct. But only if the lab paid attention to their process control. In addition some labs upgraded older equipment that could not take advantage of all the features of APS. Thus some labs printed APS-H prints only to the consternation of customers who were convinced they had shot a lot of panorama images.
APS was a major flop, everyone lost money on it, camera companies & dealers. The Big 5, Kodak, Fuji, Canon, Nikon & Minolta all figured the other camera & film companies plus any company that made film & print processors would have to pay a $100,000. licensing fee per product plus a per unit royalty fee. A new printer was $125,000. US $. The Big 5 also claimed the consumer could never open the back of their APS camera like they could do with most 35mm cameras & destroy their images; while true, if an APS camera jammed, you had to send the camera in for service! The Big 5 planned for APS to be 5% of camera sales the 1st year, it didn't even do 5%, it's best year was year 3 and it did 8%. 100,000's of APS cameras were piling up at the factories & destroyed, why throw away more money shipping them to their distributors & paying duties is some countries when they would not be ordered or shipped to dealers. Dealers just put the APS processor in the basement next to Disk unit!
The worst new format film experience I ever had was 110 film. Not understanding then the difference in a format change, I expected it to be like 126 film. It wasn't. The quality, even with 5x3 (old standard) prints was obviously worse. Disc film was too. APS was fine as it still provided enough surface area to produce a good print..
I rather like the photos. Does anyone else read the photos in the samples gallery as conveying a search for meaning and an underlying feeling of despair?
I know, a weird—trite?— comment for this site (and perhaps in general). But I just can’t shake it. Maybe APS film is just so frustrating to use that one just can’t help but produce these types of photos.
I still have a Konica Revio. I can't get the film door open and an old battery lit the display, but not much else. If I can get some film in there, I gave an unexposed roll of Kodak advantix asa 200 film. I would live to give it a try
Thank you for this look into the past. I bought into the APS system due to its size when it first came out, around 1999 as I recall. Specifically I bought the Nikon Pronea S with the kit lens. I was super disappointed. I used the slowest Kodak film available, 100 or 200 ISO as I recall. I shot some pix in Hawaii with the Nikon F adaptor with prime F mount lenses at F/8 on a tripod and the image quality was just terrible. Absolutely terrible. I didn't even have to enlarge to 8x10 or bigger. Going through the some stuff in my garage I found some exposed and developed rolls in a special Kodak APS holder. I just threw it in the trash. Fast forward to 2018 and I still love small cameras. My Canon M3 is amazing. I've enlarged images to 12x18 and they look amazing. Will still probably buy the FF Canon mirrorless, but I've lived the whole progression of film and digital technology from 35mm ektar, ektachrome, velvia, aps, then 6, 10, 12, 18, 24mp APS sensors to full frame. Still love my M3!
One of the points made in the video was how the film format and related gear tech contributed to the "digital revolution". I personally found the piece interesting, informative, and entertaining. I worked in a large photography store when the APS film system was introduced, and watched it die an ignoble death as digital cameras began to occupy the display shelves. No one ever seemed truly interested in the format, and while the camera gear companies may have benefitted from the technological advances it brought, able to transfer the tech to digital gear, the film companies watched their hundreds of millions of R&D money go spinning down the drain. I think that marked the looming end of Kodak, Agfa, etc.
I couldn't really care less about the nostalgia of yesteryear's analogue gear. I come to this site to learn about what's here now and what's going to be here soon. I don't live in the past. I live in the present and for the future.
Yeah absquatulate is right. It's pretty ignorant to not care about past technologies. That's like trying to use the quadratic formula without understanding adding and subtracting. Digital is a derivative of film and with that notion you clearly need to understand film to really know digital. If you don't care about past technologies does that mean you don't know what full frame means? I am generally interested because you're coming off as an asssshole.
That's about a stupid as saying I can't understand a CD if I didn't own or at least celebrate the gramophone.
Go in the basement and break out your reel-to-reel. LMFAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Honestly, if that old crap is so important to you then go make your own website. APReview. This is DPReview!
DIGITAL Photography Review, in case you didn't understand what DPReview meant. I'm generally interested because you're jumping onto a bandwagon simply because there are more people attacking with a mob mentality and you got sucked in. You're a follower.
This is DIGITAL Photography Review. We don't need film. It's OLD!
Oof that's rough. You kinda just messed up that analogy. If you were engineering the album and creating various exports then I would say that knowledge would benefit you.
Every time new tech is released it's based on all the tech that proceeded it generally speaking. I mean the gramophone was revolutionary and there's clearly going to be aspects of that tech that stuck throughout the years.
Knowledge of film is only going to help you. I know you're just trolling and being annoying but what you're saying is just stupid. Also I am still convinced that you don't full frame means or what it even means to have a 35mm sensor.
i'm not a follower. The same can be said about yourself and the digital purist. I realize that all versions have importance and I want to indulge in that. If you want to live in your cushy ignorance, that's cool. Just stop being annoying.
May I recommend listening to some of the classes that Steve Yedlin teaches. He goes though resolution and perceived quality.
"We don't need film. It's OLD!" ... Hmm, in the past 18 months Kodak has announced they'll bring back T-Max P3200 and Ektachrome. Also the following NEW films have come to market in the past 18 months... JCH Streetpan 400, Zorki Mono 100, Cinestill 50D 120, Rollie Vario, Ferrania P30 film, Foqus Type D200 film, Dubblefilm Bubblegum/Monsoon, ect. This all indicates to me that there is a new and growing interest in film photography. So yes, film as a technology might be 'old' compared to digital, but film photography as an industry seems to be in the midst of a small, but tangible rebirth.
Maybe we should go back to the horse and buggy. Maybe we should go back to phones attached to walls with wires. Maybe we should go back to no internet. Maybe we should go back to having our milk delivered nearly curdled again. Maybe we should go back to using the telegraph. Maybe we should go back to telegrams. Maybe we should go back to standard UHF and VHF Television. Maybe we should go back to the civil war.
OR MAYBE, we can just stay in the 21st century and keep on topic with the company that has DIGITAL in its name for DPReview.
You're acting ridiculous. As if we are all trying to scheme to get rid of digital. We're not saying we want to go back to film but it's another tool and it's one that some of us like to utilize. Just because I like camping doesn't mean I think everyone should live in a tent. Also who cares if digital is in the name. I mean technically most film is handled digitally in terms of post anyways so it still falls under digital. My whole job is working with digital scans of film and we lead the cinema industry in film restoration. You think this stuff is dead but it's alive and you need knowledge of it or else you're going to be left behind.
I'm not going to be left behind from anything bro! I use a digital camera, Adobe CC, and my computer. I will *NEVER* require the use of film, *EVER*!!!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!111111 You're so much like news. Just repeating the same useless information that really doesn't apply. You should go work for the film department of CNN or FOX or something. I'm sure they need someone old who does archives.
LMFAO!!!!!! I don't need knowledge of film! I won't ever use film, EVER AGAIN in my life! And I'm not someone who enjoyed it. I embrace TODAY and look forward to the FUTURE, not holding onto the PAST.
The PAST is behind us. There is no reason to go back there. It's like toilet paper; also for behind us, and then flushed down the toilet and forgotten. Who would want to hold onto that @$)% anymore? Get it?
LOL!!!! Hilarious!
Man, keep on going. You really make me laugh out loud!!!! BIGLY!!!!!!!!!!
Don't call me bro first of all. Also I am not old. I am 26 so chill out.
Also you're continually missing the point. Keep laughing but clearly you're a difficult person to deal with. That's your problem and not mine.
Still you haven't proved to know what full frame/35mm sensor means. Which is pretty pathetic.
Your toilet analogy is sh**t by the way. Especially since I have explained several times that the past is severely relevant to the present.
I know I am never going to get to you but why the hell are you so annoying.
Who hurt you.
Did film kill your whole family?
Maybe you're upset because you have a hard time finding work.
Like all these tellings of looking into the future and not holding on to the past just sound like dumb Bed Bath and Beyond wall art. All that nonsense doesn't mean anything.
Look bro, all you have to do is turn around and walk away.
I'm enjoying your hilarious uselessness to the maximum degree possible.
Everything you say is a joke! When you talk about the past, it's funny. When you talk about film , it's funny. When you talk about me, it's funny. When you cry about me not answering your petty questions, it's funny.
I haven't laughed at someone so much in such a long time, that you're my medicinal humor repository. I'll be able to come back here and get a giggle anytime I want for quite awhile.
Even your name is hilarious! It's just so dumb. I guess it fits.
Anyway, like I said before; PLEASE CONTINUE! :)
Thanks again for all the humor. I hope others are enjoying this as much as I have been. I mean, it's like junior high with you. I laugh at you bro.
Focus Shift Shooting seems to be laboring under the notion that if he is not interested in something then a case must be made against that thing. This reflects a juvenile need for validation.
Understanding old technologies is often quite key to fully understanding present and future technologies, it gives you a much broader understanding. To use the old historical quote, "If you don't learn from the mistakes of the past you're doomed to repeat them in the future". This applies to many things in life. I've gone back to shooting film predominantly and I've learned loads that you can apply to the digital world, including how unimportant the best gear can be. So yes, to those being stupid about horses and carts and shouting the "past is irrelevant", you are indeed being ignorant.
I had no problem with APS. I used a Canon EOS IX SLR, and got some pretty decent pictures. Things tended to be limited by the photo processors, though. I even had several rolls of the Fuji APS slide film processed, and those look AMAZING! My film scanner is in storage, otherwise I'd give you the best output. But I'll upload a small print scan to my gallery, and compare to a digital image of the same scene (albeit separated by a few years...)
I had two APS cameras. One was a Kodak p&s, which seemed to work, but it had one flaw -- it didn't actually work, the shutter was broken, or something, and all film came out either unexposed or overexposed, can't remember. It was 1998, and I was on a trip to France, shot four or five rolls. It really left a bad impression. Possibly the worst thing was that there was no reassurance whether it actually worked or not, there was no way to examine if the shutter worked in the first place. My second APS camera was a Minolta Vectis S-1, which I really liked. Minolta had quite a comprehensive APS system, actually, and back when I bought it (APS was already dying off), it was really cheap, too, so the camera with a high quality zoom (22-80) was very much affordable. Plus, the cameras and lenses were compact and splash-proof. Hence my observation that APS would do better if it were 135 format, and possibly Minolta wouldn't have spend a fortune on developing a dedicated system.
I have never been happy with the scans of APS negatives. The old 35mm stuff comes out fine, but the APS stuff is all pretty soft and noisy and I used several different APS cameras back in the day. APS format works fine in digital, but just not enough area for decent pictures with film.
I want to move to Canada. I'm totally ashamed of my government here, and I'm so sorry about the Apricot Pol Pot we're sending to the G7 talks. Please know that Americans in general harbor only good will towards our neighbors to the north.
@Mr Bolton - This is a story about the role APS film played in the evolution of photography, not some political opinion about the man sitting in the White House. Just leave it alone.
Very interesting comments about the popularity of the APS film cameras in Europe vs. their total failure in North America. I have watched the industry struggle mightily to get popular acceptance in the US for: auto-exposure in the 70s, auto-focus in the 80s, digital imaging in the early 2000s, and lately Mirrorless / EVF cameras. Part of this resistance was due to the shortcomings of the early technology (the early AF cameras and lenses were glacially slow), but it seems like the US market is stubbornly “traditional”. These struggles came as other parts of the world embraced those changes. It appears that North America is the final stronghold against the assault of the mirrorless cameras. It will be fun seeing what Canon and Nikon finally offer in mirrorless systems, and how quickly the US market embraces mirrorless. Caveat - my first mirrorless was an E-P2 Olympus, then a Panasonic GH4, and now a Sony a7iii. I’m all-in!
APS would have been a great standard to replace 35 mm film, if only it were the same image size, let's call it IX135 (to call out to IX240). Suppose you could load your dual-system camera with either IX135 film or with ordinary 135 film. If you loaded the former, you'd get automatic roll wind, rewind, mid-roll replacement, data recording, automatic batch scanning, whereas with ordinary 135 film, you'd get none such convenience... Well, ordinary film would die off pretty quickly.
@CTaylorTX Strange observations, if they are yours and real in the first place. Where may I ask are you from that you made these observations, because I'm American and old enough to remember no "stubbornly 'traditional'" resistance to any new tech? On the contrary.
APS was consumer friendly. But back then, all serious photographers used at least fullframe and if you could afford it a medium sized Mamiya 645, C330. (And for the happy few a 501Hasselblad) Simpel reason; APS was a poor standard. APS was also not adopted by the enthousiast, for best results you don't use color negative film but a positive one. There has never been slide films for APS. So ..
Slide film for the best results; Velvia 50, Agfa 50 both e-6 process. Or Kodachrome 64 K-14 process.
Imho Agfa was the better one for general purpose, Kodachrome most impressive with high contrast and ultra sharp. Fuji ... has always been to blue for me.
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