Just finished collecting film June 2023 price data across international retailers. Looks like the average price has gone up by 3.49% since January.
The worst offenders were Kodak T-Max 100 (+15.29%) and Kodak Ektachrome (+12.86%). T-Max 400 and Tri-X are trailing with just over 12% price hikes since January.
But a few films went down in price considerably; Fujifilm Superia X-Tra 400 now costs 15.06% less — although this may be due to the discontinuation of this particular emulsion and stock clearances. In the following report, I will remove or replace this film with Fujifilm’s presumably rebranded ISO 400 emulsion.
Other films that are still in full production and cost less than six months ago are Kodak UltraMax 400 (-3.30%), Kosmo Foto Mono 100 (-3.32%), and Fujifilm Fujichrome Velvia 50 (-0.93%).
Oh yeah, they are surprisingly expensive! Half-frames are a relatively rare breed tho and I haven’t yet seen any other than the Recorder that are pocketable point-and-shoots.
The one I held in hand was actually a little bulkier than some of the full-frame point-and-shoots I tried. But it still looks very nice and makes 72+ frames. I have a really nice scanner that could produce 60MP images from half-frames, so it could really be something.
The Konica Recorder is very high up on my list but for a few years now the cheapest copy I can find with a seller that guarantees it works costs approximately USD300. From what I have read the manual ISO selector takes priority so in essence you can play with underexposure or overexposure.
Even though the process tends to decrease the film’s exposure latitude (less detail) in the darkest corners of the image, the colours can still be made to look good. In this image, it’s pitch-black on either side of my long dog, Noodle. Yet there are no casts, and the colour balance looks natural; as you’d expect, places where the eye can’t see are black, and so they are too in this image.
This is in contrast to the blue and purple hues I saw in Jason’s video, which may be the result of the work done automatically by Negative Lab Pro. (This app usually does an excellent job with colour negative scans, but as the case is with all black-boxed scanning software, it can also diminish the scan’s potential without an easy way to fix the issues).
Just watched grainydays (Jason) push Portra 800 +1 to EI 1600. He didn’t seem to like his results, but I think this film is still worth a push if needed. If you do that, I advise using better scanning techniques and beware of the sharp falloff in the shadows.
I happened to have recently shot mine pushed +2 stops to EI 3200: analog.cafe/r/kodak-portra…. Coincidentally, I also used XPan with it (reviewed here: analog.cafe/r/hasselblad-x…), which indeed needed those extra stops of light sensitivity in the dusky Vancouver winter.
Whereas some shots didn’t work out as well as I hoped they would, I had no trouble getting rid of the colour casts and haven’t found the grain that bad in my scans.
To get my results to look as they do now (no colour casts in the shadows, accurate overall colours), I inverted the negatives by hand and added a touch of colour balance adjustment in Photoshop. This is what I do with most of my colour film. And this is the guide I wrote on how to do this, should you like to push your Portra 800 and get results that do not suck: analog.cafe/r/how-to-scan-….
And I think you’re right about the prices too. This and most Japanese cameras that weren’t exported to the US/EU seem to be all priced strictly by condition.
I actually just went through a streak of bad luck with the three “new” cameras in a row (analog.cafe/microblog/qopx). I thought I got good deals, but they all had to be sent back. So my new strategy is to spend a little more to avoid returning them later.
Here’s a close-up of the Reclaimed Blue frame after having removed the transparent plastic layer (left) and before in its original shape (right).
You should see the darker, slightly purple highlights on the right where the plastic covered the emulsion. This artifact is eliminated after deconstructing the Polaroid frame (left):
Unfortunately, that didn’t work out. I tried making one out of a frame exposed 10 minutes before, which ended up having the emulsion and a lot of the white crumbly stuff stuck to the front of the frame. But the film that I exposed about two hours prior ended up splitting in a way that let me remove just the clear front plastic cleanly (to do this, I followed the technique described here: analog.cafe/r/polaroid-emu…)
I happened to have scanned the frame before opening it up and I made another scan with the clear plastic gone, which I then overlayed digitally to compare the results (attached). On the left is the scan with the plastic gone and on the right is the original frame.
Even on a crappy flatbed, I could see that the highlights were a lot clearer, there were obviously no Newton rings, and the dirt and scratches were gone (with the protective plastic). And I am sure the results would yield even better sharpness/resolution on a decent scanner as well.
If your negatives look good (not too dense or thin), you may get decent images after re-scanning, i.e., something that looks like the samples in this article.
I do struggle with this film. Got my first roll developed earlier this year and the scans looked absolutely awful. I still have to rescan at home and see if I can get better results.
Fujifilm’s Cardia Tiara II is another camera that I thought looked really cool. I love the thin sliding door piece and its film-loading mechanism is particularly interesting: the film door opens only a sliver — unless you disconnect a hinge. It’s almost as if they wanted it to have the same experience of sliding a roll of film in as with a vintage Leica camera but with the convenience of an automatic film-winding motor.
Dmitri Jun 14, ‘23, edited on Mar 13, ‘24
Dmitri Jun 12, ‘23
Katie Yang Jun 12, ‘23
Dmitri Jun 10, ‘23
Dmitri Jun 10, ‘23, edited on Apr 27, ‘24
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Katie Yang Jun 9, ‘23
Dmitri Jun 7, ‘23
Dmitri Jun 7, ‘23, edited on Apr 27, ‘24
Dmitri Jun 4, ‘23
aladsto Jun 4, ‘23
Dmitri Jun 3, ‘23
Dmitri Jun 3, ‘23
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Gary Heppell Jun 3, ‘23
Dmitri Jun 2, ‘23, edited on Jun 2, ‘23
mattweinberg100 Jun 2, ‘23
Dmitri Jun 1, ‘23
Dmitri Jun 1, ‘23, edited on Jun 1, ‘23