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Kodak Alaris warns the TSA's new airport CT scanners can damage undeveloped film

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Re: Kodak Alaris warns the TSA's new airport CT scanners can damage undeveloped film

#81

Post by rhizome »

minikites wrote: post #5
colejohnson66 wrote: post #2

Genuine question: Why do people still use film anymore? I know some big movie studios do sometimes use it (The Hobbit comes to mind), but I don’t understand why anyone would use film when we have DSLRs that can have resolutions over 30 megapixels. EDIT: added “why” at beginning

For the same reason some people still listen to vinyl records now that lossless music formats exist or who play NES games now that VR exists: it's about enjoying that particular technology for it's own sake, or the ceremony, or the memories and associations it provides.

Vinyl and NES are a little different.

Lossless audio formats still have a sample rate and a bit depth that limits the maximum fidelity, while vinyl is always improving, or I should say record players are still improving. For instance, records made in the e.g. 1940s sound much better on modern equipment than they did when they were new, and in the future might sound even better. On the other hand, digital formats (audio and visual) have a fixed resolution and will never supply more detail than they do now.

So, it's not "for its own sake," but because it does actually sound different. Sure there's a little bit of "for its own sake" in the acts of handling a record and operating the equipment, which I think is what connects with NES: sometimes you just want to sit on a couch with a little controller. But at the same time, there are games that don't exist outside of NES, or are emulated in distasteful way, or something else that makes playing the actual device the best way to enjoy a game. Vinyl has this also, there is lots and lots and lots of music that has not been digitized, neither for CD nor File, and having a turntable is the only way to experience it.

Re: Kodak Alaris warns the TSA's new airport CT scanners can damage undeveloped film

#82

Post by Seenso »

cm2187 wrote: post #68
ohazi wrote: post #37

How much radiation would it take to flip a bit on an SSD? What about RAM (many people send their laptops through in a suspended-to-RAM state)? I would assume that RAM is more susceptible, since we still store a single bit per RAM cell, while some SSDs now store multiple bits per cell, but I've never tried to do the math on "what would it take to actually make these problems start to appear?" Might be a fun exercise..…

Don't SSD have some kind of cyclic redundancy check?

> Don't SSD have some kind of cyclic redundancy check?

Yes, but they're pushing the the technology so far to get higher densities that error correction is required for normal operation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-level_cell

> The primary benefit of MLC flash memory is its lower cost per unit of storage due to the higher data density, and memory-reading software can compensate for a larger bit error rate.[5] The higher error rate necessitates an error correcting code (ECC) that can correct multiple bit errors; for example, the SandForce SF-2500 Flash Controller can correct up to 55 bits per 512-byte sector with an unrecoverable read error rate of less than one sector per 1017 bits read.

Making the cells smaller and cramming more bits per cell reduces the amount of energy/radiation required to trigger a bit flip, making the data more vulnerable. It sounds like they may also be increasing the energy put out by the scanners. Not a very good combination if you care about your data. Maybe they'll push the fraction of storage reserved for error-correction data even higher to compensate.

IIRC, radiation-hard chips often used processes with larger feature sizes and different materials in order to be more resistant to the effects of radiation.

Re: Kodak Alaris warns the TSA's new airport CT scanners can damage undeveloped film

#83

Post by mark-r »

welly wrote: post #39
colejohnson66 wrote: post #2

Genuine question: Why do people still use film anymore? I know some big movie studios do sometimes use it (The Hobbit comes to mind), but I don’t understand why anyone would use film when we have DSLRs that can have resolutions over 30 megapixels. EDIT: added “why” at beginning

Why do people use hand saws and chisels when powered table saws, compound saws and biscuit joiners are available to us? As someone who shoots film, there are a number of reasons, one being the asthetic you get from film that you can't (even with x hours in Photoshop) get from digital. I shoot large format and there are no (within my budget, at the very least) 8" x 10" digital sensors. Film also more or less forces yo…

An 8" x 10" digital sensor would take a whole silicon wafer. Doubt you'll see one, ever.

Re: Kodak Alaris warns the TSA's new airport CT scanners can damage undeveloped film

#84

Post by lm28469 »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #2

Genuine question: Why do people still use film anymore? I know some big movie studios do sometimes use it (The Hobbit comes to mind), but I don’t understand why anyone would use film when we have DSLRs that can have resolutions over 30 megapixels. EDIT: added “why” at beginning

It's fun and it looks good. Sure, if you only look at the technical specs it's inferior in almost every way, resolution [0], no image stabilisation, poor autofocus, slow shutter speeds, poor high ISO performances, 10 to 36 shots per roll &c.

I bought a d3400 to get into photography, never really liked it. One day I visited my parents and my dad showed me an old Nikon FE, the one he used to take my childhood pics with. Slapped two batteries in and it worked just as good as 30 years ago, I haven't shot digital since then.

Good luck shooting medium format digital if you don't have $15k+ to burn. I got a bronica SQ + two lenses for less than what you'd pay for a good aps-c digital camera. If you dev and scan yourself it's good fun and not too expensive, you can experiment with different film stocks, different developers, different techniques. I personally find it much more rewarding, you can't spray n pray, you can't fix a 2 stops under exposure in post prod, you just have to know what you're doing and get it right. It's more of a creative process in a way.

There are also many quirks that you can't really replicate :

Infrared photography isn't really easy on digital: https://fstoppers.com/film/humanitarian-conflict-beautifully...

You can't shoot xpan panos on digital: https://i.redd.it/5184siubabv11.jpg & https://i.redd.it/ajrj8o38a1t21.jpg & https://i.redd.it/m7z6wm2idiw01.jpg

You can't shoot cinestill 800t either: https://i.redd.it/dnh3vi4u4s841.jpg & https://i.redd.it/x852qq3h43c41.jpg

etc. https://i.redd.it/5h74tuzocva41.jpg

[0] although you can get some pretty high res stocks these days, here is a 35mm frame: http://www.adox.de/Media/cms20test.jpg

Re: Kodak Alaris warns the TSA's new airport CT scanners can damage undeveloped film

#85

Post by mark-r »

mark-r wrote: post #19
hadtodoit wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I enjoy the mystery of taking a photo and waiting to see how it turned out, there is a charm to film photography that isn't captured by digital for me. Getting photos developed is equally exciting, and having the physical copies to hand out or place in an album is nice. It's a dying art, but being held together by enthusiasts.

For me it was the opposite - my photography improved greatly once I didn't have a huge delay between taking the shot and seeing the result. Physical copies are still easy to do too.

P.S. forgot to mention that not paying for film or processing has left me a lot more free to practice. I can take as many pictures in an afternoon as I used to take in a year with film.

Re: Kodak Alaris warns the TSA's new airport CT scanners can damage undeveloped film

#86

Post by tgflynn »

scblock wrote: post #8
colejohnson66 wrote: post #2

Genuine question: Why do people still use film anymore? I know some big movie studios do sometimes use it (The Hobbit comes to mind), but I don’t understand why anyone would use film when we have DSLRs that can have resolutions over 30 megapixels. EDIT: added “why” at beginning

I don't know that I believe this is a "genuine question", because it's quite easy to look up that yes, people still use film, and the article itself is a clear indication that Kodak still produces and sells film. As far as not understanding, there are things about film that are different than digital. It's may not necessarily be a technical discussion any more (though others may disagree with me), but artistic choice…

> Kodak still produces and sells film

Kodak Alaris != Kodak (ie. the original Eastman Kodak)

The later went into bankruptcy in 2012, selling off most of its remaining assets (though I think it still makes film for movie production). The reason for the bankruptcy is that the market for film died off in the 2000's. That, incidentally, had a huge impact on Kodak's (and my) home town of Rochester, NY. So yeah, I can see why people would be quite surprised that there's still this much interest in using film in 2020.

Re: Kodak Alaris warns the TSA's new airport CT scanners can damage undeveloped film

#87

Post by kgoltsov »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #2

Genuine question: Why do people still use film anymore? I know some big movie studios do sometimes use it (The Hobbit comes to mind), but I don’t understand why anyone would use film when we have DSLRs that can have resolutions over 30 megapixels. EDIT: added “why” at beginning

When switching from film to digital, we took a lot of steps back and are slowly catching up to quality. I guess around the 2010s, theaters started switching to digital projection, which I believe started with 1K (similar to 1080), then 2K, with a small amount of theaters showing 4K projection. Most high-quality 35mm film is equivalent to 4K resolution. Unfortunately, a lot of movies were shot and mastered at 2K or less, like Mad Max fury road, so there's no point of having them at 4K because the information was never there. With old 35mm, it was probably scanned for dvd or vhs at some point, but studios are going back and scanning movies to 4K with great results. Megapixels aside (an irrelevant number btw), dynamic range was pretty bad compared to film in the early days of digital, but it's starting to get there. The revenant was shot on digital and looks amazing.

Once you start watching on streaming though, you're losing so much to compression. Even with 4K HDR blu-ray, you're only getting 10 bits of color compared to 12 bits with DCP (digital projection).

Re: Kodak Alaris warns the TSA's new airport CT scanners can damage undeveloped film

#88

Post by ghaff »

klodolph wrote: post #72
modo_ wrote: post #45

I've never run into any trouble getting film hand checked while traveling within the US. Sadly it's a completely different story internationally. Indian security has been the strictest in my experience -- flat out refusal to do anything other than run the film through the X-Ray machine. I don't travel with fast film (800+ ISO) anymore. It's just not worth the stress.

I decided to switch to digital for anything where I want to go over 400 ISO. My personal feelings are that the image quality of 800 ISO film is just terrible. YMMV based on personal preference, I know people who really like the look of fast film.

Leaving aside the work associated with chemical processing generally, you could “coax” ISO/ASA 400 B&W films up to 1600. Maybe 2400. But you definitely lost a lot as soon as you started pushing.

For a lot of photography, especially basic journalist event stuff, I find the fact that I can go to about 3200 without even thinking about it a huge benefit of digital.

Re: Kodak Alaris warns the TSA's new airport CT scanners can damage undeveloped film

#89

Post by garmaine »

paulmd wrote: post #44
garmaine wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does. Just not as badly.

It doesn't. Once film is fixed it's insensitive to further radiation, by design. Light is just radiation at a different wavelength from x-ray, if the fixing didn't work then the negative would fade out very quickly from ordinary light. Yes, at some scale, if you put it in the jet of a black hole the radiation is going to destroy the image from physically blasting it off. That's not a reasonable concern to raise about…

The negative would fade out rather quickly if exposed to natural light, e.g. if left outside.

It is incorrect to say that radiation has no effect. The effect is just greatly reduced.

Re: Kodak Alaris warns the TSA's new airport CT scanners can damage undeveloped film

#90

Post by madflo »

anfractuosity wrote: post #47

On the topic of film, this little short video "Behind the Film - Inside the ILFORD factory" is cool - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXpoALotxf0 They also have a lab that do b&w prints from digital files on photo paper interestingly.

ILFORD is still selling photo paper in rolls with the specific chemicals required for regeneration of baths. It does allow a skilled lab operator to use Durst Lambdas or even a 1hour laser-based minilab like a Noritsu QSS or Fuji Frontier to print on real b&w paper!

However, the same skilled operator should be able to calibrate her minilab in order to obtain decent looking b&w prints on color-based paper (RA4 process - used by Noritsu & Fuji).

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