Films I Have Known

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In the early years, when I was still a teacher and yearbook sponsor obsessed with photography, I bought many out-of-date rolls of Kodachrome X, the predecessor to Kodachrome 64, and Kodachrome II, the predecessor to Kodachrome 25.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.) 

Visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $4.95 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Photography and text copyright 2025 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags:   photography    film photography     film processing    Kodachrome X film    Agfa black and white film     Kodachrome II film     Kodachrome 64 film     Kodachrome 25 film     Ektachrome 200 film     Fujichrome 100D film     Fujichrome Provia film     Fujichrome Astia film     Fujichrome Velvia film     Rolleicord TLR camera     Yashica TLR camera

The Joys (?) of Doing It Yourself

Film Processing Equipment

If you can bear with the ramblings of a senior flatulent (a few of you will get that), I'll tell you how it was back in the day when film was all we had.  

First, let's see what's in the picture. In the front are a few rolls of hand-rolled HP5+. The yellow things are two empty cassettes, ready to be loaded from the 100-foot roll of film in the daylight film loader, which is the black box with the red cap. The stainless thing on the left is a processing tank, and on the right are two 35mm film reels. The tank holds two of them or one 120 reel. I also have a larger tank that holds four 35mm reels or two 120 reels.

The long black tube in the rear is a Unicolor Film Drum. It can be used to process black and white film, but I only used it to process color slides -- seven rolls of 35mm or four 120 rolls at a time. I used it in a homemade water bath (a restaurant bus tray) with a fish-tank heater to regulate the temperature.

My photographic obsession began in 1968. Over the next 35 years I shot many thousands of rolls of film (not to mention some sheet film). Some of the film, including all color negative, was sent out for laboratory processing, but much of the color slide film I processed myself, using Unicolor or Kodak chemistry. I also processed all the black and white film in house.

Being thrifty (okay, cheap), I saved a lot of money over the years by buying my black and white and slide film in 100-foot rolls and loading it into cassettes myself. (You can do it while watching TV.) This, by the way, is something you can still do. The equipment is still available, as are many black and white films. Color is more problematic.

But it all ended in 2003, when I bought my first digital SLR. I've shot a few rolls of color transparency since then, but sent them out for processing. 

Do I miss it? I miss the days of shooting and processing film keenly. Would I go back to shooting film? No. It's far too expensive to shoot color these days, and I'm a color photographer. I could shoot and process my own black and white film at reasonable cost, and I love black and white. But color is the way I see. So no, no going back for me. YMMV.

Visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $4.95 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Photography and text copyright 2025 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags:   photography    film photography     film processing    Film processing equipment     black and white film     bulk film loading

Composition by Serendipity

 The church at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit, Conyers, Georgia. 

 

I could not have planned this composition. I would not have thought of posting two worshipers, in those positions, one on each side of the aisle.

 

Even if my mind could have conceived such a thing, it's not likely two people would have been there, dressed identically, and even more unlikely I would have thought of arranging them in this particular way -- or that they would have been willing to do as I asked.

 

No, this is all serendipity's doing. Remember her? I've written about her many times. She is the photographer's best friend.

 

 All I had in mind was making an architectural photograph of the church interior. It was serendipity who took over and arranged for two people in hoods to sit on opposite sides of the aisle to make the picture something more than an architectural record shot. 

According to Mr. Webster, serendipity is "an apparent aptitude for making fortunate discoveries accidentally." I can't do much about controlling fate, maybe, but I've found serendipity to be a most agreeable muse, and one who can be courted by the photographer who is willing to spend some time with her. I wrote extensively about her here.

  

The truth is, I owe serendipity for some of my very best photographs. All I have to do is be ready and recognize her gifts when she presents them.

 

The above photograph was made in the late 1990s with a Canon EOS A2 camera, the Canon EF 20-35mm f2.8L lens, and Fujichrome 100D film.

Visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $4.95 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Photography and text copyright 2025 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags:   photography     travel photography     Conyers, Georgia     Rockdale County, Georgia     Canon EOS A2 camera      Fujichrome 100D film     film photography     Catholicism    Monastery of the Holy Spirit     serendipity

The Weed that Ate the South

 

Buried under Cudzu. U.S. Hwy. 19, Lumpkin County, Georgia.

Visitors from the northern states who happen to travel the back roads (i.e. non-interstates) of the South are frequently surprised to see some kind of green vine that grows along the roadside, clogs the ditches, hangs from trees, covers small buildings and abandoned houses near the road, and sometimes, covers whole fields. It's cudzu, the invasive weed that ate the South.

It wasn't intended to be a weed, of course. With the best of intentions, cudzu (also spelled kudzu) was imported from Japan in the late 19th century for erosion control and as a cattle feed. My Dad, always a visionary, planted some on our farm in southern Indiana for both purposes around 1950. It was a bit of a gamble, because cudzu wasn't supposed to thrive in colder climes. But over the years, some we planted in a "wash" (eroded area) took hold slowly and grew, eventually covering that end of the field and traveling across the road to invade a neighbor's field. Years later, two of my brothers, who bought the farm from our Dad, leased some acreage to a farmer who finally managed to root out the pesty vine. 

Ours was the only cudzu I ever knew of to grow north of the Ohio river. In the South, as any traveler knows, the evil weed still covers large areas.

As for cattle feed? Our cattle never got hungry enough to eat the stuff.

Photo: Canon EOS 5D Classic, Canon 24-85mm USM lens.

Visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $4.95 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Photography and text copyright 2025 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags:   photography     travel photography    digital photography     Canon EOS 5D Classic camera     cudzu     Georgia     kudzu     Canon 24-85mm USM lens     Indiana