I recently received a box of exposed photographic dry plates shot in the late 1800s. The plates, made by the M.A. Seed Dry Plate Company, are photographic negatives on glass since plastic didn’t exist at the time. We can date them because, in 1902, M.A. Seed became part of the burgeoning Eastman Kodak Company. Plates sold after 1902 would have borne the Kodak brand.
Remarkably, despite being around 130 years old, these plates have held up well. They were faded with age and showed some minor damage from handling and fungus. Each plate was meticulously cleaned and restored before being scanned.
Each plate was carefully inspected and cleaned using a solution that will not harm the delicate emulsion.
Once cleaned, each plate was placed on a special light source for digitizing negatives. The plate was then captured in a series of very close images spanning the entire surface of the plate. This resulted in a digital file equivalent to approximately 400 megapixels.
The focus peaking function (red) of the Fujifilm camera ensured extremely precise focus
Each high resolution digital image was then brought into ON-1 Photo Raw where it was carefully examined and using the wide variety of tools in ON-1 chunks of missing emulsion and scratches were repaired.
Finally each plate was printed to make a final hard copy of the image.
Here is a gallery of the plates. We don’t yet know who these people are. Their names may be lost to time, but we’ve had instances in the past where someone recognized a face, allowing us to eventually reunite the photographs with the descendants. It’s quite possible that these individuals were a family that lived in the Vancouver area around 1900.
If you have any tips or think you recognize anyone in these photos, please contact me.
This is one of the most common questions I am asked by my students. When was the best time to be a film photographer? Surely it must have been in the 70’s or 80’s at the peak of photography popularity among the general public.
Back in my early days of photography, I would shoot my roll of film and head straight into the darkroom. The film would be processed, and a contact sheet printed to determine which shots were worthy of printing. The next several hours would be spent making prints of my keepers. Once those prints were made, unless destined for a magazine or other publication, generally, the only ones who ever saw them were myself and maybe a few friends. Many of these prints were filed away in dusty albums, never seeing the light of day again.
Cameras were very expensive back then. A high-quality Nikon, Canon, Olympus, or Pentax SLR was comparable in price to a high quality camera today. Film was plentiful, and TV shows and magazines were filled with Kodak and Fujifilm advertisements. One-hour film processing shops seemed to be on every street corner. And film—oh my was it cheap! But was it really? I remember hearing photographers constantly lamenting about the price of film. Let’s talk about that in a bit.
In the 2010s, digital cameras stormed the market, causing film to fall out of popularity like a lead weight off a table. Camera companies retooled to produce digital cameras, and the phrase “Film is Dead” was everywhere. Kodak, Ilford, and Fujifilm drastically reduced production and canceled entire lines of film. But this wasn’t the end of the story.
Here we are in 2024. Entire generations have grown up in a heavily computerized era, where everything from the watch on your wrist to your refrigerator is digital. Machines make decisions for us as we go through our day. Even the art of photography has become heavily automated, with machines enhancing our images. These same generations are now longing for something that doesn’t involve a keyboard or voice interface. Many are picking up old film cameras, blowing the dust off, and shooting a roll. They are discovering film photography anew in the 2020s. They can make art themselves with just their brains, eyes, and hands. They can hold something in their hand that they truly created. This is unique and new for many and it’s spurring a fascination with film that is reinventing the entire industry.
How about film itself? As I type this post, I have a roll of Ilford HP4 (the predecessor of modern-day HP5) from 1979 sitting in front of me. It still has its original London Drugs price sticker of $1.75, which equates to roughly $8 in 2024. Today, a roll of HP5 costs $11 at London Drugs. So, film has indeed become a bit more expensive over 45 years, but not as drastically as some might think. Companies like Kodak and Ilford are struggling to meet customer demand, which is a good thing. Kodak has even reopened an entire factory that had been mothballed for years, and Ilford has expanded their manufacturing. We also have newcomers like Flicfilm, Cinestill and others, repurposing cine film into 35mm canisters for still photography. Some companies are even manufacturing new stocks of film or reviving old ones that were previously discontinued. In 2024, we arguably have more variety of film available than we did in the 1980s.
The market is also rich with beautiful old cameras at amazing prices. Today, you can buy a premium professional-grade SLR like a Nikon F2 for about $300-$400. Back in the day, that camera would have been out of reach for anyone but a working professional. In front of me, I have my Hasselblad 500cm and Leica M6. Both are top-tier cameras. In the 1970s, purchasing a Hasselblad would have cost roughly a year’s gross salary for the average person. It was far out of reach for the average hobbyist. While still expensive today, these cameras are now within reach for dedicated enthusiasts. The Leica M6 is similarly prestigious and costly. In the 1980s, owning even one of these cameras would have been unthinkable for me, much less both.
Let’s talk about processing and sharing. Today, I still have to process my film, either myself or at a photo lab. The corner one-hour photo shop is pretty much gone, but I still have a couple of labs within a few minutes’ drive. I choose to develop my film at home because it’s significantly cheaper, and I enjoy the process. Here is where a huge difference lies: back in the day, I would spend hours in the darkroom proofing my film and printing the chosen keepers. Today, I can scan or digitize the entire roll and handle them as digital images. This allows me to share my photos on social media or send them to friends and family anywhere in the world with the click of a button. While they are now digital, these images still retain the unique look and characteristics of film that digital still can’t accurately replicate. Occasionally, some of my images catch my eye, and I choose to take them into the darkroom for traditional wet processing. You don’t need a darkroom to enjoy processing your own film today. Hybrid photography processes the film in daylight and combines that with digital processing of the final images. The key difference is that today, I have choice! I can process my images entirely in a darkroom or entirely digital, or as in my case I can use a mix of the two. In addition I can share my images with an audience that would have been unimaginable in previous years. Every time I share a photo, it is seen by thousands on my social media accounts, and I engage in meaningful conversations about them. This level of exposure and interaction has never existed before in history.
So, when was the best time to be a film photographer? As someone who has been shooting film for 50 years, I can say without hesitation that the answer is today!
