Some of the films I've used over the years.
As I said in my previous post, I photographed on film for 35 years before switching over to digital photography in 2003. It's safe to say I burned through thousands of rolls of many different kinds of film in those years. Some of them are in the picture above.
In the early years, when I was still a teacher and yearbook sponsor obsessed with photography, I bought many out-of-date rolls of Kodachrome X, the predecessor to Kodachrome 64, and Kodachrome II, the predecessor to Kodachrome 25. I still have many of those slides, and they still look good.
In 1970, we moved to Chattanooga. Throughout that decade I shot many rolls of Kodak's Ektachrome 200, especially after I began working for Continental Film Productions in 1972.
In those days I could buy rolls of Agfa black and white film in 120 size for 25 cents at a local discount store. I shot many rolls of it in my Rolleicord and Yashica TLRs and developed it in Diafine at my kitchen sink. It was easy to do because Diafine's processing temperatures were not critical.
After I opened my own business in 1978, I continued using Ektachrome 200 for color work, gradually moving to Kodachrome 64 in the early '80s. K-64 was a beautiful film, but had to be sent out for processing. Which was expensive, and required several days turnaround time.
In 1986 and '87, I did two major audio-visual projects for a local college and began using Fujichrome 100D film. It offered several advantages: the colors were rich, rivaling K-64's; it was 1/3 stop faster; I could send it out to a lab or process it myself, which I had been doing with Ektachrome 200 for a long time; and I could buy it in 100-foot rolls and load it into cassettes myself, which was a major saving.
I stayed with Fujichrome 100 as long as I continued to use film.100D eventually morphed into two films, Provia and Astia, which are still available. Provia has what many would consider purer colors, but I prefer the warmer color rendition of Astia, which is more like the original 100D. I never cared for the exaggerated color saturation of Velvia and shot very little of it.
Actually, I would have been content to keep using film for the rest of my life. The move to digital was a business decision forced by my competitors, who were able to offer clients faster service as well as lower prices because they no longer had to charge film and processing fees.
I'm finding that I have much more to say on the subject of film than I realized. I haven't even begun to talk about black and white. I'll continue this discussion in my next post.
(The boxes of Kodachrome X and Ektachrome 200 came from my souvenir shelf.)
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