Indeed, I think the no effort part is he was already fully versed in the subject and it didn't take long to assemble what he wanted to say about it. After all, it's among his hobbies he's had since a kid. All the other stuff he usually does, like cut always, closeups etc, are all part of his usual video shoots. He didn't even have to leave his house to do this video!
@@yonathanraviv1063 dude wtaf are these streams, a friend of mine is a fan of watching people sleeping or eating on twitch.. how much of a psycho u must be to watch these explain please please
I really love the "Friend who spent a little too much time on the Internet last night after getting hooked on some random topic waiting on you to wake up the next day to tell you about it" vibe that No Effort November brings.
I think of it more like "friend who has a hobby and he's been waiting to tell you about a niche aspect of it and now is the one time he's gotten you to sit down for twenty minutes with him"
@@tinyderppotato5410 if it makes you feel better, I did this to my partner about fire extinguishers. I spent like 6 hours researching different kinds of fire extinguishers and when they woke up the next day, I started my presentation on why we'd be purchasing these two specific fire extinguishers.
Jesus Christ is the propitiation for the whole world's sins. They that believeth and are baptized (with the Holy Spirit) shall be saved; but they that believeth not shall be damned. Those led by the Holy Spirit do not abide in wickedness. 👍🏾 *God is ONE manifesting himself as THREE;* the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit! Bless him! *For these three are one.* As I am led by the Holy Spirit, nothing I state is a lie, but the truth of God. Anyone who tells you differently is misinformed or a liar. They do not know God, nor led by him. Anyone who *claims* to be a Christian and is against what I am doing, and where I am doing it; the Holy Spirit does not dwell within them, they lack understanding. They know not God, read his word, and their religion is in vain. Do not hear them, they will mislead you, the lost cannot guide the lost.
My dad worked for the company that printed the outside casing for films for Kodak in the UK. They were a relatively small firm, and Kodak had made a big deal about the specifications and the accuracy etc. , it was a really important contract for my dads firm. Shortly before the launch of the films with DX, they were approached by someone from another company asking if they could do some printing for them too, after the first meeting it was obvious this was exactly the same DX encoding. They all panicked, and didn't know what to do, but decided they had to contact Kodak and tell them that this other firm had their technology and it didn't come from them. Well kodak were both delighted and completely non-plussed, they had forgotten to tell my Dad's firm that it was going to be an open standard and that they could go ahead and bid for the other contract as well.
Sounds like Kodak. worked for them in the late 90's North of Nottingham used to see the sheets go through the press tools to make the film castes. never worked on them. I have 7 years of press tool experience, But then that's Kodak. don't do anything cheap when you can spend lots of money before doing whats easy and cheaper after.
I have not touched a film camera in over a decade and a half. I am unlikely to ever touch one again in my lifetime. And yet, I just watched a 17 minute video about markings on film canisters, and enjoyed every second of it. Your channel never fails to impress.
I haven't touched film since the Nikon D100 came out in 2002. By today's standards the pixel count (6 megapixels), notoriously poor dynamic range and useable speed up to 200 ISO was, well, a digital camera made in 2002. Still, I was so happy getting away from film that it was my only camera for years. BTW, I was working in a photo lab as my second job at the time. I have probably 20 thousand pictures from it and some are great. I can't believe that people still, twenty years later, want to f.... fiddle around with film cameras. I have tens of thousands of pictures on film as well and almost all of them black and white that I developed and some enlarged from scratch myself. Now I use Nikon D850 with Zeiss prime lenses and the results easily surpass 4x5" image quality. I used to have a 4x5" and took pictures with it. I am not switching to the Z format, what I have now is more than I need or will need in the future. Actually, I use my phone quite a bit for serious work. You can find my photography website if you care to google.
"I don't know why Canon overcomplicated this" is an evergreen sentence echoing through the annals of time in the hairline-reducing world of camera repair
Actually, I have a suspicion: if you took a lot of photos, it is somewhat likely that you bought your film in bulk reels, and after developing you re-loaded your film canisters. When that happens, the DX encodings are more likely to wear out and/or be wrong. I *think* Canon might have been designing for that sort of edge case here. Edit: should have finished watching the whole video before commenting.
I worked all through high school in a Fuji-based photo shop. All of the "leniency" and "will be fine" you described was on the technician printing them. We manually adjusted every print exposure.
For a while I worked at a photo shop and exhibition company. The printing machines were quite good but we usually had a few to be reprinted on each film. Then the company got new owners who told us that checking and reprinting was a waste of time, money and materials so was not to be done. "Don't think about it, just send it out, if the customer doesn't like it then they will bring it back." Well the customers stopped coming back. In two or three years the company was closed. Maybe that was their long term plan, they owned the site which was then converted into flats.
I've got to be 100% honest with you, because we're on the internet and it's easier to be brutally honest here, this was not a no-effort production. You most certainly showered, dressed, took multiple takes, did some B-roll, and edited this video. Next year, I'm going to have to insist that you roll out of bed, skip showering, and do a one-take UA-cam Live Stream in your pajamas. Reading chat takes effort, so you can mostly skip that unless they throw money at you. The best part is if enough people do that, you'll start wondering if you've picked the right UA-cam business model! XD In case I haven't said it before, I love the content and always get excited when I see a new video! TY!
Wow, the effort that you put into these videos is truly incredible! I can't imagine doing all of that research, procuring all of the props necessary, coming up with such simple and relatable explanations behind the way things work, and not to mention the actual filming itself. It's wonderful that we have creators dedicated so much to their craft that they never, not for an instance, fail to put in the required effort in to create such great content.
Don't be so hard on him. It's surprisingly difficult to do things which require even a small amount of effort without making any effort whatsoever. Even famous actors actually have to get up and act sometimes. Give him the whatever the opposite of a break is. He's trying his worst!
@@Jrasta111 It's all in good fun. I only commented because he seems to get so wound up over the fact that people are still ascribing a significant effort on his part in No Effort November. It's enjoyable, and I like to see how each progressive video he finds a way to put even less effort into it. And then points it out, of course.
I love that Technology Conections acknowledges and addresses the nuance of these topics without needing to fully explain the complexity. Simply mentioning the fact that detail has been skipped over allows viewers to conduct their own research without starting from scratch. Thank you for making complicated topics exciting and accessible without over-simplification!
Some later cameras would fully spool the film when first loaded, so when pictures were taken, they'd immediately get spooled back into the film canister, so accidentally opening the back of the camera would only ruin your last picture, and some of your unused film.
I'm not sure about 35mm, but later I had a camera for APS-film (the size that mid and low cost DSLRs use today) which did exactly that. The manual also said that you could rewind and reload the film at any time thus switching the ISO at any time!
I wonder if Canon's dual contacts are for redundancy. Otherwise a dirty contact could ruin a whole roll of film, which would be disastrous for a professional photo shoot. You should try covering one up and see if it still reads the DX code correctly. Edit: Actually I was wrong, as some have pointed out. He clearly says and shows (7:40) that the Canon does not have contacts for the common ground. So there is no redundancy.
Another possibility is that it is to better handle a scratched spot on the ink square allowing one contact to touch metal. If the other contact doesn't connect it can then assume a scratch and register that square as painted. Do they have any patents filed for it? Could be a clue there if it's not in the camera documentation, ad copy, reviews, or articles. But I figure covering one contact in a pair would be a good test of that too.
Was that an early implementation from Canon? My first thought was the engineer responsible for it just misread the spec or didn't think about the film cartridge having a common ground that would eliminate the need for both pins, which was fixed on a later re-think and cost-cutting exercise. They may have thought of it too late to change the design.
Alec, thank you from the bottom of my heart for making November my favorite month, and for making me a smarter person overall. Oh yeah, and for making the world smarter too. You're up there with PBS in terms of sheer public-good.
@@MetallicMutalisk is condemning PBS as "the people's" state run media. they are intending to criticize the comparison to PBS as a compliment, although it comes off more like calling Tech Connections a commie.
I worked in a photo retail store for a year, so bought a staff discount, cost price dark box. I would load my film at home in the dark box so I wouldn’t lose the first two frames, and would carefully force the film right to the end. As most labs charged by identified film length, getting 28 frames for the print cost of 24 meant I got a whole film for free after every sixth.
As a photographer who got into the business in the digital age and has been wanting to explore back to my film youth, this hit the spot. Thank you for sharing this low effort with us. It's one of my favorites!
This channel never fails to show that the past was far more advanced than we remember it being. I never even thought that cameras would automatically compensate for film speed.
I do like that about the past. We always pushed every technology as far as it could go. Like, in Baghdad like 700-800 years ago they had really complex water-powered mechanical automata, all for the purpose of pouring wine (well, those were powered by the wine they poured) or playing music. I’d always thought of automata like that as a Victorian thing, but apparently manufacturing was precise enough much earlier in some parts of the world!
There's at least one camera that would add exposure information onto the film after a shot, so it's right there on the border. Others stored the data on board and needed a special cable and sometimes a CF card to connect to a computer
Homebrew your conductive stickers for your homebrew/niche film cartridges: aluminum duct sealing tape with vinyl electrical tape squares. I too remember film. And am grateful every day for my digital cell phone cam (gasp) and digital point and shoot (clutch pearls). I do enjoy learning about the art an history in the way you present it. Much respect to those taking the time to master the craft. Thank you.
As soon as he got to that point I was thinking something like this... But instead of taping it to the canister, I'd tape it to a thin, stuff plastic sheet (or maybe even medium weight paper) cut to snug against the canister bet let you set the values to whatever you wanted. Reusable, probably less then $1 a peice, and simple. I mean, if you bought some of the plastic ones with the conductive sticker, you could probably upcycle them but carefully removing the label from the film canister and sticking it on a sheet...
I had a similar thought. I have some copper tape I bought for a little project a few years ago. I needed less than two inches at the time and bought two 66 foot rolls for just $6. That would be more work, but cheaper than the stickers he showed.
As a technophile, this is one of my favourite channels. I like to think that I am up to speed with things technical, yet most of the content is new ground for me.
And them here just cuz I can't sleep at night and i have a brain that can remember a lot of stuff for very long periods so I often got bored of my brain isn't learning a lot stuff I won't even need xD this channel has been one of ny favorite earlier this year I'd watch 4 videos ever day until I just got extremly sleep each time cuz my brain memorized every thing he said in all those past videos . man sometimes idk if my brain being like this is a good thing or a bed thing hahahaha
Dammit! I just now learned what I needed to know back in 82 when I was tasked with taking the pictures on a school trip and I messed them all up because ... well, I had no idea what I was doing but was the only one with access to a nice, fancy Yashika camera, not just a cheap compact (which, ironically, would have made actual pictures instead of 3 rolls of bright, white prints) Yeah, I was NEVER allowed to be in charge of ANYthing again.
I used to work at FotoMat in the early 90s and would save every roll that had the encoding patterns on them to resell to people who would refill their film because it was significantly cheaper than buying new.
My brain is too full today to absorb this, so I'm putting it on the watch later. Technology Connections is one of the few channels I go back and actually do watch later. It's like having a sassy science teacher. Even though I've got a bad brain day, I never feel talked down to, merely informed of things I didn't know before. I think that's really nice.
I've found as long as you develop the film for the speed it was shot you can ignore the iso printed on the cassette. For example if you have 100 speed film but find you need 400, just shoot the roll at 400 speed and develop for 400 and you'll get the same result as if you actually had a 400 speed film.
When I was in HS back in the early 80's, the school had a very nice telescope, complete with a dome. I used to use 1000-speed film for astrophotography (I don't remember 1600 being available). The only problem I had was getting the development place to actually do prints of every shot-they'd typically develop it and then tell me "We didn't do any prints, because the negatives just had a bunch of black spots on it".
In 2004, I shot photos of Boston's 4th of July fireworks on 100 speed slide film. The processor (Ritz Camera) cut them at the half frame mark, then couldn't understand why I refused to pay for the slides.
Back in the day, the standard mantra that would be marked in astrophotography film packs sent to printing labs was _"Astronomy images - print all frames"._
I shot pics of Halley's Comet on my university's Schmidt-Cassegrain astrophotography telescope way back in Spring 1985, a year before it was visible to the eye. The reward of seeing a fuzzy blob amongst the stars was amazing! Our film was super fast, too.
I got a burned a few times by processing labs making assumptions like that, and one even screwed up my negatives by letting an idiot with scissors get a little too excited. When I take film to a lab now, I ask them not to cut the rolls and just do it myself on a light table later. Most of the time if it's black and white I just process it all myself, so I don't have to worry about some pothead screwing up a roll of film I shot on an expensive trip across the country.
My 1980s high school art teacher bulk rolled 17 exposure films for students using 1000 ISO black and white film. Fortunately the ancient full manual Exakta SLR I was using didn't care, I just had to set it right. Until today I had no idea that 1000 was an exotic speed. Thanks Alec!
My Pentax 1000 didn't have a setting for Kodak 1000, but the quality was terrible, and luckily, they correctly predicted Fuji 1600, which had deep blacks and almost invisible grain. I used it for handheld fireworks photos at a 1s exposure, when I had to use the manual B exposure with the ASA 1000 film.
Held hundreds of these film rolls in my hands over the years, had no idea about the encoding. You've enlightened me with a minimum of effort, and I applaud you.
Thank you for getting me into film photography, I found my parent's old Canon film camera from 1995 last year, and bought my first rolls of film and development chemicals in my life. I took the camera on multiple summer vacations, and I've gotta say, there's something about putting my phone away and hiking alone in nature without any digital stuff on me, yet still being able to take photos without having an LCD screen on the camera acting like a constant reminder of the tech we're all anchored to. It's just me, nature, and a mechanical device which captures photos the way they were taken for over a 100 years. Not to mention developing my first roll was the coolest experience ever as a chemistry lover. I also feel like now that I've seen the way a snapshot of a color-filled world translates into a black and white image, which is something which I had previously mentally reserved for "the olden days", it makes those old photos you see from the 1900s carry a lot more weight. I feel we subconsciously categorize the world in which old B&W photos from WW1 and WW2 for example were taken as different than our modern world as a coping mechanism, as if we have advanced so far from those times that we are not capable of committing such atrocities any longer, as if we're not the same human beings who have existed for so many years, simply because of the method in which we capture time's fleeting moments. It makes you realize that all those old photos are from a time not all that different to ours. those photos of the men in WW1 were taken not in a black and white world but under the same blue skies and on the same dirt with luscious greenery just as there is today. it my seem obvious but we seem to characterize and understand the experiences of past generations through the format in which they were preserved, so in order to truly understand their experiences we must use that same format to truly know what it was like to look through the viewfinder in 1945, or what it was like to look past the brushstrokes of paintings before photography to see the true image which was being preserved, and understand that their world was not so different then ours. We are capable of the same things, be it good or evil, yet we cannot fully understand this because we have become so used to our modern photography methods. The same way which people in the 1900s had become so used to their new film photography that they slowly lost the ability to truly interpret the paintings which were as close to photography as was possible at the time. Fast forward 300 years to today and those are no longer seen as depictions of reality
That's what I like about stereo photos, I have some from the late 1800s and early 1900s and although the photos are in black and white, because of the 3D effect it feels like you're there. I especially like the scenes of everyday life and spaces, while the places may look a bit different to now the people's actions are familiar, be it walking along a busy street, waiting on a pier or enjoying the waves at the beach. I've got a few old stereo cameras that I use, mostly taking pictures of common, normal places and maybe in 50 or 100 years someone will find my photos and see them as a window into another time. It's also one of the reasons I enjoy listening to old records and reading older books, while the music may sound a bit different, the books written in a different style, the subjects and experiences featured are usually quite relatable. It's interesting how we have this division, viewing people from the past as completely different, and that this perception has been going on for a while.
@@ooooneeee Yes, those colour photos are great. There are also some colour 3D photos from that time too which must be magnificent. Two-strip Technicolor films from the 1920s are also quite amazing as one usually expects old movies to be in black and white, not rather warm looking colour.
@@gavincurtis Not really, in the same way that a DOS machine with 640K of memory isn't a 5242880-bit machine. Only 4 bits had to be dealt with at a time.
As someone who used to roll my own film way back in high school, and even sold it to my (more lazy, or... frugal but inexperienced) peers, using both plastic and metal reusable spools, it intrigues me to know that I could have added dx encoding to my stuff with just some aluminum tape and careful use of an exacto blade.... Makes me wanna whip out the old Olympus OM-2, then see if I can find my old roller and... shit, can you even buy hundred foot rolls of Ilford Delta 400 anymore?
I guess I could have just scratched the paint off the metal cartridges in the right spots too, but then they'd be less reusable later for different films...
@@mtgering A thin piece of cardboad like from a cereal box, with some aluminum tape, the kind you see on duct work, i think would be a great way to have a reusable DX encoder. I hope theres enough spare space for a single layer of cardboard though.
Maybe that's why the pro camera has two pins for each cell: If you manually added metal tape to a black plastic casette the ground plane wouldn't be connected to it, you'd need a continuous piece of metalic tape and mask off the insulated cells for it to work correctly.
@Technology Connections 6:25 The exposure tolerance IS important for long time exposure or for example sport photography, I took a very beautiful picture of a "smooth" waterfall on a Fuji Superia 200, I think, this was only possible, as I completely used up the whole exposure tolerance to expose the whole frame as long as possible, without any overexposure (my camera shows this on the display and at LED's inside of the viewfinder)... So, if you want to capture that "smooth watery feeling" or "lines of light" produced by cars on your (possibly) nearby road, then you will need it, at least according to my experiences!
I've been really loving the film photography series! It actually got me into the hobby and I've been shooting film for about a year now. One of the things that's so cool about it to me is how you can keep using 50, 60, 70, even 100 year old cameras to this day. Love to see the "simple" but robust technology behind it explained like this!
There's a trick you didn't talk about ! If you need your automatic camera to use a different exposure so you can push-process your film after, you can scratch the paint off the DX code (or add paint to cover the metallic part) in order to match another speed code !
I used to do just that when I shot Kodak E200 slide film in my Olympus Stylus Epic 35mm camera exposed as 800 speed film. That was a great camera with a fast lens, but it didn't allow manually setting film speed. When I sent the film to Chrome Works in San Francisco for processing, they push processed it by two stops. I got tons of great low light shots using that method.
Wow! I’m amazed at the effort you put into these wonderfully detailed and well-researched explanations recorded at such high quality in a very neat studio!
It’s pretty crazy how popular film photography has become, the local shop where I get my pictures developed has a 3 week processing time because so many people have picked it up as a hobby, and film prices have gone though the roof!
Don't forget we had this in the 50's also with notches on the edge of 4x5 sheet film. We had to feel them up in the darkroom to know what kind of film was in our hand lol... Good video, you put a lot of effort into it.
I am well aware of how DX code works and how you can tape over parts with non conductive or conductive tape if you want to change how your camera acts or if you have rerolled new film in an old container. But I clicked this video as soon as I could simply because of your high production quality and way of presenting things is top notch! Always excited to watch your videos!
Man, this RICOH I can remember holding in my hands and playing with very fondly. About 25 years ago. I loved the design and the sounds it made. And I loved putting films in and taking them out ruining not only a few of my mother's photos back then.
That is such an elegant solution. I saw those square patches and instinctively though huh those could be used as a power plane for vcc. Quite lovely thinking by the engineers.
Once you get good enough, a quick and dirty one still ends up looking good! I still remember the days my art and music finally got like that, where I’m actually reasonably impressed by something I bashed out in 5-10 minutes.
The title card saying “That’s Data” is such a great teaser. Also, I feel like I could point at anything in the world, say “that’s data” or “there is a reason that exists” and you could make a very interring episode about it!
I really like that even with a relatively mundane topic, you do put all this effort in to make it interesting; Find the topic and hash it all out, getting the studio all ready to go, acquiring a bunch of cameras and researching their history, doing all those takes, getting the B-roll edited... And because it's this "no-effort November", you even picked the topic to be something that makes your life easier😋
Man… taking me back to my childhood messing around with my mom’s camera. Dad always had the video camera and mom had the photo camera. I was always so fascinated by the film cartridges.
Whoa. Never thought I'd recognize the person making the comment. I've been following your videos forever. Your talk on elevators... So cool to see you here!
Tbh, as someone who listens rather than watches to a lot of UA-cam content, this style of video, with good scripting, entertaining presentation, and info clearly explained audibly, is excellent, imo! :) Cheers for another very enjoyable video! Happy Thanksgiving!
I LOVE your low effort productions! Good content, amusing, interesting, informative, funny but not cheesy funny and just that perfect amount of geeky. Thanks!
I BELIEVE IN NO EFFORT NOVEMBER and also in your underrated photography videos "Latent image of vaporization" was an absolutely out of pocket line that I will never forget
All kinds of stuff I had forgotten from my HS photography class in the 90s and some stuff I didn't know. We only used B&W film and processed and printed our own photos. We also discovered how easy it was to manipulate or screw up photos at any step in the process and that because of the self-contained air system in the development room we could get away with smoking in there. We used older cameras, no auto-wind on ours! And the film cases were perfectly sized for quarters.
A lot of people used to put marijuana in film canisters too. Somewhere along the way, they switched from an aluminum canister with a screw-on lid, to a plastic one with a snap-on lid.
That brings back memories. I remember how impressive it seemed when I got my first 35mm camera as a kid and it had DX. Before that I had a 110 camera and my mom's 35mm camera was older and had manual ISO so this was new to me. It also had auto rewind though I'm pretty sure it didn't use the DX exposure count, it just waited until it encountered resistance when advancing then rewound, so I still got the bonus exposures if a roll had them.
Technically, 110 film cassettes also had a scheme for the camera to read the ISO: a ridge at one end of the cassette that had a certain length for a specific ISO. But most cheap cameras did not use them.
Regarding the weird DX contacts on your T90 at 7:20, the service manual indicates that each pair of pins is electrically continuous, so each position is in fact being tested against the common position at the top of the roll, rather than each contact pair acting like a single SPST switch. The doubling up of contacts was almost certainly to improve the reliability of the connection.
4:41 Fun detail, the camera used with this film took half-size photos to use half a frame of film per photo. Normally the photos lay horizontally along the film, but these half-frame photos are vertical instead. The photo printer just enlarges them when they make prints. You get twice as many photos, but at half the resolution. The bottom half of the film has the half-frames numbered with an "A" suffix.
Ah, yes. I remember the process of trying to squeeze as many shots out of a roll of film as possible. The threshold of either 24 or 36, and the hope/desire to be able to get at least one more shot out of it, and the semi-smug feeling that you were getting, 'free', exposures once you got it developed. It didn't always work, of course. And even if it did, some developers were too stingy to print any after the allotted number of exposures. Bah, humbug. Interestingly, though, once film scanners became a thing, getting to see those extra shots that weren't printed all those years ago, (that you'd completely forgotten about even existing), are finally visualised. Generally, they're nothing different to what you'd already took, as they were usually taken to use up the film so you could get it developed! I've had one or two interesting exceptions though that have jogged memories of what I was doing at the time.
Kodak was actually pretty cool about it if you were shooting slides, even mounting the #37 and #38 for you. But if you tore out the sprocket holes you'd get the damaged part of the filmstrip back with some empty cardboard mounts and a note to the effect of "too bad, you broke it, you are on your own". If I could load the camera in the dark I could shoot a frame before #1 (on the "leader") and they seemed OK with that too.
Usually it worked, but I remember them printing a big number plate across my girlfriend's face. In retrospect, I should have taken 2 frames, but I was too cheap to do that.
I enjoy seeing these videos talking about film. As far as it being a 'niche' hobby it certainly seems to have grown so much that much of the film you've shown is difficult to comeby or wildly overpriced as supplies have dwindled in the face of rising demand. Your videos seem to come up at a time when film photography is experiencing a significant revival - a lot more people are shooting film now than they were 4-5 years ago when I started. Keep going at it!
7:45 are you sure it does not use ground? It makes more sense to me that it uses double pins to avoid dirt read errors. Ie, to avoid single contact points.
It clearly uses ground, just a single pad above speed bits though, it just dropped last speed bit and first two length bits, based on pin locations and row shift.
@@Gameboygenius No, the columns are supposed to have the same height and max of 6 contacts (including ground), so it's clear that right column misses last contact and where left column should start if not missing it's contacts. Would love to paste easier image explanation, but YT doesn't like random links in comments, so here's text attempt, strikenthrough are missing contacts in camera: -G- G -L1- S1 -L2- S2 L3 S3 T1 S4 T2 -S5-
@@bar10005 Comparing with the next shot of the Samurai, and the Wikipedia reference for the DX code, I think you've got the orientation wrong, and what we're looking at is actually this: -T2- S5 -T1- S4 -L3- S3 L2 S2 L1 S1 G -G-
I dug up the service manual and each pin pair is electrically connected together and acts as a single electrical contact. So the top ground pad is in fact used as a common, rather than each position being individually checked for local continuity. The double pinning is just for reliability.
Consistently amongst the best content on UA-cam. Only issue I have is that the older I get, the more I go back to analogue devices. I'd already started an unhealthy obsession with expensive, finicky, analogue tape based recording equipment - you with your great analogue camera based videos has started me off on another expensive and fiddly journey! Yoinks!
Honestly, I appreciate the limited scope and concise writing of this video. And it's not like it wasn't researched. It really covered the subject well.
You and LGR have helped blossom my enthusiasm for retro and antique tech! I love being able to learn about, touch and even sometimes use examples of human innovation through history.
Can we expect this series continuing into the digital photography realm? I do digital photo as a hobby for years but inner workings of a camera are mysterious to me and it seems there's little to no resources which explain them other than just the very basics every photo buff should know
It would be interesting but the workings of a digital camera are simplified ten fold over a film camera. Most DSLRs have the same shutter mechanisms as a normal film camera but theres no film advance mechanism and it has a huge screen. The lens projects the picture on the image sensor and thats how you get the picture
@@tencents49 This statement only reinforces the fact that people need to be educated on digital cameras. You are talking only about the mechanical stuff while electronically, all the hardware and algorithms, there's some real black magic stuff happening most people can't even begin to comprehend (neither can I), and sadly even the nerdiest digital photography/cinematography channels don't even scratch the surface of it
@@tencents49 For example: how CCD and CMOS sensors are different and why CCD has become a niche thing, how is a BSI sensor built compared to a regular CMOS, why do camera sensors go for a larger pixel size while phone sensors go for larger number of pixels with greater averaging between those pixels, what exactly does the RAW format record and how it allows such a vast control over the picture, what exactly are logarithmic formats - all the genuine questions I have and that's only related to sensors alone! There's entire universe of mystery here and no channel has the balls to uncover it, what I'm saying is that a channel like Alec's can spin this topic into a year worth of videos and make it super engaging in the process
Almost certainly, he loves photography! However, it may not, at least for a long time, get into the nitty gritty of how every camera system works unless that makes a very interesting topic for his style of video, he tends to love covering niche systems and clever workarounds for his videos.
@@mihan2d my own understanding is the overall process goes something like: sensor -> analysis -> adjustments -> compression -> storage. For each part: Sensor: lookup how ccd and cmos sensors convert photons (light) to electrical voltage. Analysis: this is where the black magic is for me, but I'm sure there are many image analysis systems you can learn from that could apply here. I'd imagine some of this data (like focus detection and exposure) is passed to another system to prepare for the next image to be captured too. Adjustments: this is where white balance, exposure correction, sharpening, etc. from the analysis stage and any set filter modes are applied. If storing raw mode, this is skipped and the analysis info goes to the next step along with the image data. Compression: if storing as jpeg, that is pretty public info and look that up. For raw images, lookup info on lossless compression, like zip compression. Storage: basically lookup how flash memory works I'm not sure a deep dive into these would work for this channel, but I could be wrong.
Fuji 200 film used to be my favourite. ISO 200 gave you that extra stop for poor light without the graininess that 400 would give, and I liked the Fuji colours.
i think the market agreed. iirc Fuji 200 was the canon pun unintended for generalized consumer use. Fuji was touted internally and externally as having the best color quality.
I’m just barely old enough to have used film cameras, and I had always wondered what those silver and black boxes were on the film rolls. Cool stuff, this is why I love old technology. The creative ways that companies found to solve problems is fascinating.
Great video, back in the army we used to change ISO speeds mid-roll, just wrote the last frame number exposed on the roll. Just mind the feeder end, make sure you dont wind it into the canister. We were issued the Nikon F4, ISO was manually selected. A proper combat cameraman was proficient in both the C-41 process and hand processing film.
Pretty glad that with digital the risk of messing up is reduced. I was nervous enough when pushing a whole role 1-stop and hoping that the didn't ruin it when developing... And that just a hobbyist!
As someone that grew up during the back end of the film era, I never knew what this was until I brought a Nikon F4 and was wondering what the 'DX' option is on its ISO selector. Thanks for the amazing video!
Definitely a 'low' effort and not 'no' effort. More interesting and better quality than a lot of vids on YT. - Awake and coherent. - Dressed, groomed and at the set. - Variety of physical props instead pictures. - Research done.
When I worked for the university paper, I bulk-rolled film into reusable cartridges. While most of our camera gear lets has the ability to set the ISO, one didn't and relied on DX codes. I don't know if DX stickers existed in the 90s, I looked and asked about such a thing but know one knew if there was such a thing. We used this camera mostly for less important photos (i.e. wide shots of crowds, streets, etc.), but still, there were a few shots that I had to compensate for in the darkroom.
It's funny seeing all of the options in the old cameras. You had so many options, even as a consumer! It's a little humorous because most phones have this photo data present in their camera apps, but it's largely inaccessible to the user. You basically just get a bunch of presets, then AI over-saturates it afterwards for you. The only exception to this, naturally, are the Sony Xperia phones, particularly the 1 II & 5 II. But I think they deserve a video of their own, if you can source one.
Interesting info. I recently developed my first few rolls of b&w films, and they turned out not too bad. Despite it's easy to mess up with loading a film in my old soviet camera and I ripped it few times... Anyway I'm writing this to say that I have find pretty interesting stuff. There are few small companies that reuse old film cartridges, and put there new film from big reels for movie cameras. Those are the cheapest options to get a film. It costed me about $4 for a roll (with DX code). So yeah, film photography is a pretty interesting hobby.
Would you consider making a video on what the heck QR codes really are and how they work and how we mortals can make better use of them in our daily life
...They're square barcodes bruh. You can use them for... all the things we use barcodes for. It's not new technology. What the heck are you talking about lol no offense
I grew up using those things and always wondered why the heck there was a barcode and metallic squares in the cartridge. I thought the barcode was for the cash registers but made no sense since it's inside a box and it would need to be take it out. I was just a kid ok? Also, usually, there's a lot of old tech in this channel that was far beyond my reach. At first I was "oh that looks a neat feature..... wait a minute, I remember those things" is such a cool feeling lol This was amazing, thanks. One of the best no effort november videos (for me at least)
You always manage to talk about things I don't care about, and then make it so interesting that I start caring about them. And that's the best possible content if you ask me. I love you.
I kept passing by this notification, like why in the hell would I care about some production code on some film... then I watched all 17 minutes with great interest!
There are so few establishments that will even process film for you which makes film shooting a fairly inaccessible hobby as most ppl can’t dedicate the space/time/money to a whole dark room for diy film processing. I have such a love hate with digital photos because it’s kind of expensive and time consuming to get prints. Low key missing the 90’s/00’s disposable camera era. Or Polaroid/instant cameras. Such fun!!
DIY film processing these days doesn't require a dedicated dark room though. Maybe if you want to run an enlarger but getting negatives even colour negatives isn't that restrictive an activity. Then the enlargement process is replaced with digital scanning. At least that's my approach. I use a darkbag and light proof tank and just develop the negatives at home, using a scanner to get the final image. I don't have space for an enlarger and my kit all sits in a box in my kitchen cupboard until I need it.
@@livelongandprospermary8796 Polaroid still make new cameras and they still sell instant film. I'm fairly sure I've seen disposable cameras in some shops as well, mainly limited to tourist areas in big cities though. Much less common than when I was a kid in the 2000s and you could buy disposable cameras in ASDA and get your photos developed in Boots.
This reminds me of the newer APS film format. It was pretty nice really with a few nifty features. The cartridge had extra info, such as if the film was exposed, or partially exposed, or even processed. It could take photos in various aspect ratios too.
By the rubric 'Has a video been made and published' I find that more effort than none has been expended this November. As that is a rather low bar to pass, I offer no guarantees except the observation that this channel is awesome year-round.
The most fun job I ever had was when I worked as a 24 hour Photo Development pick up/delivery driver. The job went extinct with the invention of digital cameras. That job was so much fun!
Your no-effort November just shows how enthusiastic you are about these subjects. You do all the research for fun on your own time well in advance of a video.
This brings me back. I took some photography classes in high school (early 2000's) and used to buy large B&W 35mm film canisters to load into re-usable plastic cassettes. The problem was: my (parent's) Minolta didn't have the ability to manually set the ISO. I ended up making these codes by hand using tinfoil and electrical tape and re-using old brand-name cassettes that matched my film speed.
One thing missing here is that you can "hack" the code by scraping the black parts and by taping the silver ones. Very useful should you want to push, pull or run a roll overexposed.
This looks like no effort... in comparison to others in your channel, but that's where your knowledge and experience comes from, those two things makes your videos look very elaborated. You're a really wise and qualified person, thanks for sharing your knowledge with us.
If this is no effort, half of UA-cam must be asleep when they upload 😂
Fancy seeing you here. I guess quality creators tend to find each other though.
Wait till he hears about sleep streams
Indeed, I think the no effort part is he was already fully versed in the subject and it didn't take long to assemble what he wanted to say about it. After all, it's among his hobbies he's had since a kid. All the other stuff he usually does, like cut always, closeups etc, are all part of his usual video shoots. He didn't even have to leave his house to do this video!
@@yonathanraviv1063 dude wtaf are these streams, a friend of mine is a fan of watching people sleeping or eating on twitch.. how much of a psycho u must be to watch these explain please please
Like you 😛
I really love the "Friend who spent a little too much time on the Internet last night after getting hooked on some random topic waiting on you to wake up the next day to tell you about it" vibe that No Effort November brings.
I think of it more like "friend who has a hobby and he's been waiting to tell you about a niche aspect of it and now is the one time he's gotten you to sit down for twenty minutes with him"
I feel called out........🤣
Same!
@@tinyderppotato5410 if it makes you feel better, I did this to my partner about fire extinguishers. I spent like 6 hours researching different kinds of fire extinguishers and when they woke up the next day, I started my presentation on why we'd be purchasing these two specific fire extinguishers.
Jesus Christ is the propitiation for the whole world's sins. They that believeth and are baptized (with the Holy Spirit) shall be saved; but they that believeth not shall be damned. Those led by the Holy Spirit do not abide in wickedness. 👍🏾
*God is ONE manifesting himself as THREE;* the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit! Bless him! *For these three are one.*
As I am led by the Holy Spirit, nothing I state is a lie, but the truth of God. Anyone who tells you differently is misinformed or a liar. They do not know God, nor led by him.
Anyone who *claims* to be a Christian and is against what I am doing, and where I am doing it; the Holy Spirit does not dwell within them, they lack understanding. They know not God, read his word, and their religion is in vain. Do not hear them, they will mislead you, the lost cannot guide the lost.
When "no effort" content is more interesting and better produced than 99% of UA-cam
I wish I could make videos as good as his no-effort ones
For starters, he has a studio building.
Just that is a level above many content creators (including myself, I don't have a studio lol)
Exactly. The lad definitely has a future. 🧐😁
Right? Weird flex, but... we all love weird 😂
I was thinking TikTok and Facebook Shorts.
My dad worked for the company that printed the outside casing for films for Kodak in the UK.
They were a relatively small firm, and Kodak had made a big deal about the specifications and the accuracy etc. , it was a really important contract for my dads firm.
Shortly before the launch of the films with DX, they were approached by someone from another company asking if they could do some printing for them too, after the first meeting it was obvious this was exactly the same DX encoding. They all panicked, and didn't know what to do, but decided they had to contact Kodak and tell them that this other firm had their technology and it didn't come from them.
Well kodak were both delighted and completely non-plussed, they had forgotten to tell my Dad's firm that it was going to be an open standard and that they could go ahead and bid for the other contract as well.
Nice!
Sounds like Kodak. worked for them in the late 90's North of Nottingham used to see the sheets go through the press tools to make the film castes. never worked on them. I have 7 years of press tool experience, But then that's Kodak. don't do anything cheap when you can spend lots of money before doing whats easy and cheaper after.
Very cool story and life experience!
Such an interesting story, thanks for sharing.
I have not touched a film camera in over a decade and a half. I am unlikely to ever touch one again in my lifetime. And yet, I just watched a 17 minute video about markings on film canisters, and enjoyed every second of it. Your channel never fails to impress.
You can find them at goodwill. You can still go to the Walmart photo center and get the film processed.
Film is seeing a renaissance lately, if you ever wanted to do it again this is probably the best time to do so.
I haven't touched film since the Nikon D100 came out in 2002. By today's standards the pixel count (6 megapixels), notoriously poor dynamic range and useable speed up to 200 ISO was, well, a digital camera made in 2002. Still, I was so happy getting away from film that it was my only camera for years. BTW, I was working in a photo lab as my second job at the time. I have probably 20 thousand pictures from it and some are great. I can't believe that people still, twenty years later, want to f.... fiddle around with film cameras. I have tens of thousands of pictures on film as well and almost all of them black and white that I developed and some enlarged from scratch myself. Now I use Nikon D850 with Zeiss prime lenses and the results easily surpass 4x5" image quality. I used to have a 4x5" and took pictures with it. I am not switching to the Z format, what I have now is more than I need or will need in the future. Actually, I use my phone quite a bit for serious work. You can find my photography website if you care to google.
They’re honestly better than phones. No bullshit with storage and compression, and no intrusive metadata or malware.
What was your favorite second of the video?
"I don't know why Canon overcomplicated this" is an evergreen sentence echoing through the annals of time in the hairline-reducing world of camera repair
I think that's from our perspective.
There's a chance it was easier/cheaper to manufacture that way
7:49
Maybe it's for redundancy in case some of the pins get dirty and not make a good electrical contact... I dunno
Actually, I have a suspicion: if you took a lot of photos, it is somewhat likely that you bought your film in bulk reels, and after developing you re-loaded your film canisters. When that happens, the DX encodings are more likely to wear out and/or be wrong. I *think* Canon might have been designing for that sort of edge case here.
Edit: should have finished watching the whole video before commenting.
overcomplicated yet somehow forward thinking.
I worked all through high school in a Fuji-based photo shop. All of the "leniency" and "will be fine" you described was on the technician printing them. We manually adjusted every print exposure.
For a while I worked at a photo shop and exhibition company. The printing machines were quite good but we usually had a few to be reprinted on each film. Then the company got new owners who told us that checking and reprinting was a waste of time, money and materials so was not to be done. "Don't think about it, just send it out, if the customer doesn't like it then they will bring it back." Well the customers stopped coming back. In two or three years the company was closed. Maybe that was their long term plan, they owned the site which was then converted into flats.
I've got to be 100% honest with you, because we're on the internet and it's easier to be brutally honest here, this was not a no-effort production. You most certainly showered, dressed, took multiple takes, did some B-roll, and edited this video. Next year, I'm going to have to insist that you roll out of bed, skip showering, and do a one-take UA-cam Live Stream in your pajamas. Reading chat takes effort, so you can mostly skip that unless they throw money at you. The best part is if enough people do that, you'll start wondering if you've picked the right UA-cam business model! XD
In case I haven't said it before, I love the content and always get excited when I see a new video! TY!
I kinda want to see this now lol
I second this!
Sounds fine by me. As long as he wears pajamas. Otherwise UA-cam isn't gonna like that.
With the seconded, the motion moves to a vote. All in favor?
@@jedispartan AYE!
Wow, the effort that you put into these videos is truly incredible! I can't imagine doing all of that research, procuring all of the props necessary, coming up with such simple and relatable explanations behind the way things work, and not to mention the actual filming itself. It's wonderful that we have creators dedicated so much to their craft that they never, not for an instance, fail to put in the required effort in to create such great content.
Don't be so hard on him. It's surprisingly difficult to do things which require even a small amount of effort without making any effort whatsoever. Even famous actors actually have to get up and act sometimes. Give him the whatever the opposite of a break is. He's trying his worst!
You have this wrong. As he pointed out this is no effort November so no effort was put into this video.
@@Jrasta111 It's all in good fun. I only commented because he seems to get so wound up over the fact that people are still ascribing a significant effort on his part in No Effort November. It's enjoyable, and I like to see how each progressive video he finds a way to put even less effort into it. And then points it out, of course.
The phrase is "not for an instant" lol and this kinda came on slowly, took me a few reads to realize it was a joke
I love that Technology Conections acknowledges and addresses the nuance of these topics without needing to fully explain the complexity. Simply mentioning the fact that detail has been skipped over allows viewers to conduct their own research without starting from scratch. Thank you for making complicated topics exciting and accessible without over-simplification!
Some later cameras would fully spool the film when first loaded, so when pictures were taken, they'd immediately get spooled back into the film canister, so accidentally opening the back of the camera would only ruin your last picture, and some of your unused film.
I didn`t know that one. It's simple yet quite ingenious.
@@Bob-1802 Yep. I believe Fuji had a line of cameras that did this. I had one back in the day.
I'm not sure about 35mm, but later I had a camera for APS-film (the size that mid and low cost DSLRs use today) which did exactly that.
The manual also said that you could rewind and reload the film at any time thus switching the ISO at any time!
@@dietmarmarek2979 Yeah, APS was interesting!
@@Nabeelco canon aswell i have a rebel G that does this
I wonder if Canon's dual contacts are for redundancy. Otherwise a dirty contact could ruin a whole roll of film, which would be disastrous for a professional photo shoot. You should try covering one up and see if it still reads the DX code correctly.
Edit: Actually I was wrong, as some have pointed out. He clearly says and shows (7:40) that the Canon does not have contacts for the common ground. So there is no redundancy.
That's what I was thinking.
Another possibility is that it is to better handle a scratched spot on the ink square allowing one contact to touch metal. If the other contact doesn't connect it can then assume a scratch and register that square as painted.
Do they have any patents filed for it? Could be a clue there if it's not in the camera documentation, ad copy, reviews, or articles.
But I figure covering one contact in a pair would be a good test of that too.
man canon was really thinking ahead!
Or if cannon have for some reason multiple isolated circuits (no common ground) it would be solution too...
Was that an early implementation from Canon? My first thought was the engineer responsible for it just misread the spec or didn't think about the film cartridge having a common ground that would eliminate the need for both pins, which was fixed on a later re-think and cost-cutting exercise. They may have thought of it too late to change the design.
Alec, thank you from the bottom of my heart for making November my favorite month, and for making me a smarter person overall. Oh yeah, and for making the world smarter too. You're up there with PBS in terms of sheer public-good.
Well, PBS and the Soviet Union
@@MetallicMutalisk W H A T?
@@MetallicMutalisk what in the world are you talking about?
He's a Russian troll. Ignore him or roast him. Either choice is sufficient.....
@@MetallicMutalisk is condemning PBS as "the people's" state run media. they are intending to criticize the comparison to PBS as a compliment, although it comes off more like calling Tech Connections a commie.
I worked in a photo retail store for a year, so bought a staff discount, cost price dark box. I would load my film at home in the dark box so I wouldn’t lose the first two frames, and would carefully force the film right to the end. As most labs charged by identified film length, getting 28 frames for the print cost of 24 meant I got a whole film for free after every sixth.
As a photographer who got into the business in the digital age and has been wanting to explore back to my film youth, this hit the spot. Thank you for sharing this low effort with us. It's one of my favorites!
This channel never fails to show that the past was far more advanced than we remember it being. I never even thought that cameras would automatically compensate for film speed.
I do like that about the past. We always pushed every technology as far as it could go. Like, in Baghdad like 700-800 years ago they had really complex water-powered mechanical automata, all for the purpose of pouring wine (well, those were powered by the wine they poured) or playing music. I’d always thought of automata like that as a Victorian thing, but apparently manufacturing was precise enough much earlier in some parts of the world!
The idea that progress is linear and that technology has steps is completely made up in general
There's at least one camera that would add exposure information onto the film after a shot, so it's right there on the border. Others stored the data on board and needed a special cable and sometimes a CF card to connect to a computer
It's like a similar video I just watched on a vintage tool. A spark plug tire inflator tool. I think they were more creative back then.
Homebrew your conductive stickers for your homebrew/niche film cartridges: aluminum duct sealing tape with vinyl electrical tape squares.
I too remember film. And am grateful every day for my digital cell phone cam (gasp) and digital point and shoot (clutch pearls). I do enjoy learning about the art an history in the way you present it. Much respect to those taking the time to master the craft. Thank you.
As soon as he got to that point I was thinking something like this... But instead of taping it to the canister, I'd tape it to a thin, stuff plastic sheet (or maybe even medium weight paper) cut to snug against the canister bet let you set the values to whatever you wanted.
Reusable, probably less then $1 a peice, and simple.
I mean, if you bought some of the plastic ones with the conductive sticker, you could probably upcycle them but carefully removing the label from the film canister and sticking it on a sheet...
I had the same thoughts re: aluminum & electrical tape followed by "I'm surprised someone isn't making stickers.." just before he mentioned them!
I had a similar thought. I have some copper tape I bought for a little project a few years ago. I needed less than two inches at the time and bought two 66 foot rolls for just $6. That would be more work, but cheaper than the stickers he showed.
As a technophile, this is one of my favourite channels. I like to think that I am up to speed with things technical, yet most of the content is new ground for me.
At least you’re up to speed on film speed now.
And them here just cuz I can't sleep at night and i have a brain that can remember a lot of stuff for very long periods so I often got bored of my brain isn't learning a lot stuff I won't even need xD
this channel has been one of ny favorite earlier this year I'd watch 4 videos ever day until I just got extremly sleep each time cuz my brain memorized every thing he said in all those past videos . man sometimes idk if my brain being like this is a good thing or a bed thing hahahaha
Dammit! I just now learned what I needed to know back in 82 when I was tasked with taking the pictures on a school trip and I messed them all up because ... well, I had no idea what I was doing but was the only one with access to a nice, fancy Yashika camera, not just a cheap compact (which, ironically, would have made actual pictures instead of 3 rolls of bright, white prints)
Yeah, I was NEVER allowed to be in charge of ANYthing again.
I used to work at FotoMat in the early 90s and would save every roll that had the encoding patterns on them to resell to people who would refill their film because it was significantly cheaper than buying new.
I use to work at Fotomat too in my senior year in high school.
My brain is too full today to absorb this, so I'm putting it on the watch later. Technology Connections is one of the few channels I go back and actually do watch later. It's like having a sassy science teacher. Even though I've got a bad brain day, I never feel talked down to, merely informed of things I didn't know before. I think that's really nice.
I've found as long as you develop the film for the speed it was shot you can ignore the iso printed on the cassette. For example if you have 100 speed film but find you need 400, just shoot the roll at 400 speed and develop for 400 and you'll get the same result as if you actually had a 400 speed film.
@@markallen3088 Bad advice and probably a bot considering this comment has nothing to do with the one you replied to (or UA-cam just messed up).
When I was in HS back in the early 80's, the school had a very nice telescope, complete with a dome. I used to use 1000-speed film for astrophotography (I don't remember 1600 being available). The only problem I had was getting the development place to actually do prints of every shot-they'd typically develop it and then tell me "We didn't do any prints, because the negatives just had a bunch of black spots on it".
🤦♂️
In 2004, I shot photos of Boston's 4th of July fireworks on 100 speed slide film. The processor (Ritz Camera) cut them at the half frame mark, then couldn't understand why I refused to pay for the slides.
Back in the day, the standard mantra that would be marked in astrophotography film packs sent to printing labs was _"Astronomy images - print all frames"._
I shot pics of Halley's Comet on my university's Schmidt-Cassegrain astrophotography telescope way back in Spring 1985, a year before it was visible to the eye. The reward of seeing a fuzzy blob amongst the stars was amazing! Our film was super fast, too.
I got a burned a few times by processing labs making assumptions like that, and one even screwed up my negatives by letting an idiot with scissors get a little too excited. When I take film to a lab now, I ask them not to cut the rolls and just do it myself on a light table later. Most of the time if it's black and white I just process it all myself, so I don't have to worry about some pothead screwing up a roll of film I shot on an expensive trip across the country.
The tenacity of the "passed" stickers on cameras from that era never ceases to amaze me.
They should have said "This Is Not To Be Removed Under Penalty Of Law"... 😂
They're almost all right on top like that one, too... That or on the bottom. By the battery door?
I love this channel for answering weird questions I had like 15 years ago and never looked into.
My 1980s high school art teacher bulk rolled 17 exposure films for students using 1000 ISO black and white film. Fortunately the ancient full manual Exakta SLR I was using didn't care, I just had to set it right. Until today I had no idea that 1000 was an exotic speed. Thanks Alec!
Exaktas were great cameras, I wish I still had mine. I used it so much that at the end, after many years, it pretty much fell apart.
My Pentax 1000 didn't have a setting for Kodak 1000, but the quality was terrible, and luckily, they correctly predicted Fuji 1600, which had deep blacks and almost invisible grain. I used it for handheld fireworks photos at a 1s exposure, when I had to use the manual B exposure with the ASA 1000 film.
Held hundreds of these film rolls in my hands over the years, had no idea about the encoding. You've enlightened me with a minimum of effort, and I applaud you.
Thank you for getting me into film photography, I found my parent's old Canon film camera from 1995 last year, and bought my first rolls of film and development chemicals in my life. I took the camera on multiple summer vacations, and I've gotta say, there's something about putting my phone away and hiking alone in nature without any digital stuff on me, yet still being able to take photos without having an LCD screen on the camera acting like a constant reminder of the tech we're all anchored to. It's just me, nature, and a mechanical device which captures photos the way they were taken for over a 100 years. Not to mention developing my first roll was the coolest experience ever as a chemistry lover. I also feel like now that I've seen the way a snapshot of a color-filled world translates into a black and white image, which is something which I had previously mentally reserved for "the olden days", it makes those old photos you see from the 1900s carry a lot more weight. I feel we subconsciously categorize the world in which old B&W photos from WW1 and WW2 for example were taken as different than our modern world as a coping mechanism, as if we have advanced so far from those times that we are not capable of committing such atrocities any longer, as if we're not the same human beings who have existed for so many years, simply because of the method in which we capture time's fleeting moments. It makes you realize that all those old photos are from a time not all that different to ours. those photos of the men in WW1 were taken not in a black and white world but under the same blue skies and on the same dirt with luscious greenery just as there is today. it my seem obvious but we seem to characterize and understand the experiences of past generations through the format in which they were preserved, so in order to truly understand their experiences we must use that same format to truly know what it was like to look through the viewfinder in 1945, or what it was like to look past the brushstrokes of paintings before photography to see the true image which was being preserved, and understand that their world was not so different then ours. We are capable of the same things, be it good or evil, yet we cannot fully understand this because we have become so used to our modern photography methods. The same way which people in the 1900s had become so used to their new film photography that they slowly lost the ability to truly interpret the paintings which were as close to photography as was possible at the time. Fast forward 300 years to today and those are no longer seen as depictions of reality
That's what I like about stereo photos, I have some from the late 1800s and early 1900s and although the photos are in black and white, because of the 3D effect it feels like you're there. I especially like the scenes of everyday life and spaces, while the places may look a bit different to now the people's actions are familiar, be it walking along a busy street, waiting on a pier or enjoying the waves at the beach. I've got a few old stereo cameras that I use, mostly taking pictures of common, normal places and maybe in 50 or 100 years someone will find my photos and see them as a window into another time.
It's also one of the reasons I enjoy listening to old records and reading older books, while the music may sound a bit different, the books written in a different style, the subjects and experiences featured are usually quite relatable. It's interesting how we have this division, viewing people from the past as completely different, and that this perception has been going on for a while.
I'm copying and pasting this comment into Grammarly the next time I need to turn in an essay during November.
There are some colour photos from the 1910s around. They blow your mind to look at because you don't expect that decade to have colour.
@@ooooneeee Yes, those colour photos are great. There are also some colour 3D photos from that time too which must be magnificent. Two-strip Technicolor films from the 1920s are also quite amazing as one usually expects old movies to be in black and white, not rather warm looking colour.
Fun fact: the film industry narrowly avoided the bit wars of 1983 and never had to go above 8 bit
8 bit cpus only, thats why
You'd be surprised at the computers used to automate development.
The film he is showing us at 5:45 is 10 bit though.
Bit wars?
@@gavincurtis Not really, in the same way that a DOS machine with 640K of memory isn't a 5242880-bit machine. Only 4 bits had to be dealt with at a time.
As someone who used to roll my own film way back in high school, and even sold it to my (more lazy, or... frugal but inexperienced) peers, using both plastic and metal reusable spools, it intrigues me to know that I could have added dx encoding to my stuff with just some aluminum tape and careful use of an exacto blade.... Makes me wanna whip out the old Olympus OM-2, then see if I can find my old roller and... shit, can you even buy hundred foot rolls of Ilford Delta 400 anymore?
I guess I could have just scratched the paint off the metal cartridges in the right spots too, but then they'd be less reusable later for different films...
@@mtgering A thin piece of cardboad like from a cereal box, with some aluminum tape, the kind you see on duct work, i think would be a great way to have a reusable DX encoder. I hope theres enough spare space for a single layer of cardboard though.
Maybe that's why the pro camera has two pins for each cell: If you manually added metal tape to a black plastic casette the ground plane wouldn't be connected to it, you'd need a continuous piece of metalic tape and mask off the insulated cells for it to work correctly.
@@morgantrias3103 True. Those using pro cameras would be more likely to use boutique film that might not have the code on the cassette.
They never stopped selling bulk Delta. It's just insanely overpriced compared to ten years ago
@Technology Connections
6:25
The exposure tolerance IS important for long time exposure or for example sport photography, I took a very beautiful picture of a "smooth" waterfall on a Fuji Superia 200, I think, this was only possible, as I completely used up the whole exposure tolerance to expose the whole frame as long as possible, without any overexposure (my camera shows this on the display and at LED's inside of the viewfinder)...
So, if you want to capture that "smooth watery feeling" or "lines of light" produced by cars on your (possibly) nearby road, then you will need it, at least according to my experiences!
@@gregoryford2532 Absolutely :-D But that's the proof that exposure tolerance can be quite useful...
I've been really loving the film photography series! It actually got me into the hobby and I've been shooting film for about a year now. One of the things that's so cool about it to me is how you can keep using 50, 60, 70, even 100 year old cameras to this day. Love to see the "simple" but robust technology behind it explained like this!
There's a trick you didn't talk about ! If you need your automatic camera to use a different exposure so you can push-process your film after, you can scratch the paint off the DX code (or add paint to cover the metallic part) in order to match another speed code !
I used to do just that when I shot Kodak E200 slide film in my Olympus Stylus Epic 35mm camera exposed as 800 speed film. That was a great camera with a fast lens, but it didn't allow manually setting film speed. When I sent the film to Chrome Works in San Francisco for processing, they push processed it by two stops. I got tons of great low light shots using that method.
yeah, couple of years ago I used to also put electrical tape on canisters to simulate the iso I needed to push film. good times
I wonder if you could put metal tape onto a plastic cartridge to make your own bootleg DX codes.
Лол, я как раз подумал "надо наклеивать металлизированную фольгу в нужные места" ))
@@Raguleader 14:55
Man what an informative and well produced video. This guy must really work hard on these!
Apparently not so much. These are Alec's "no effort" series of videos.
*whoosh*
Fascinating! I've only ever had manual-loading cams, I honestly assumed the barcodes were used for something but didn't realize they worked this way
Wow! I’m amazed at the effort you put into these wonderfully detailed and well-researched explanations recorded at such high quality in a very neat studio!
It’s pretty crazy how popular film photography has become, the local shop where I get my pictures developed has a 3 week processing time because so many people have picked it up as a hobby, and film prices have gone though the roof!
Normal generational cycle of nostalgia.
Film prices should start to go down. In my local photo shop Kodak gold rolls cost 13 euros
@@Federico84 In BC Canada it cost $15 cdn per roll. :(
@@Federico84 36 shot E100 roll cost me $20 US last week
It’s just like how new vinyl records are $25-50 each now!
Don't forget we had this in the 50's also with notches on the edge of 4x5 sheet film. We had to feel them up in the darkroom to know what kind of film was in our hand lol... Good video, you put a lot of effort into it.
I am well aware of how DX code works and how you can tape over parts with non conductive or conductive tape if you want to change how your camera acts or if you have rerolled new film in an old container.
But I clicked this video as soon as I could simply because of your high production quality and way of presenting things is top notch! Always excited to watch your videos!
Man, this RICOH I can remember holding in my hands and playing with very fondly. About 25 years ago. I loved the design and the sounds it made. And I loved putting films in and taking them out ruining not only a few of my mother's photos back then.
That is such an elegant solution. I saw those square patches and instinctively though huh those could be used as a power plane for vcc. Quite lovely thinking by the engineers.
If *this* is your concept of "low effort", it's no wonder your videos are always high quality.
Once you get good enough, a quick and dirty one still ends up looking good! I still remember the days my art and music finally got like that, where I’m actually reasonably impressed by something I bashed out in 5-10 minutes.
I think he's talking about videos about technology that removes effort
The title card saying “That’s Data” is such a great teaser. Also, I feel like I could point at anything in the world, say “that’s data” or “there is a reason that exists” and you could make a very interring episode about it!
I really like that even with a relatively mundane topic, you do put all this effort in to make it interesting; Find the topic and hash it all out, getting the studio all ready to go, acquiring a bunch of cameras and researching their history, doing all those takes, getting the B-roll edited...
And because it's this "no-effort November", you even picked the topic to be something that makes your life easier😋
I'm pretty sure he just happened to have those cameras lol
@@maoman4855 Oh don't worry, I know😁
I was trolling😋
Man… taking me back to my childhood messing around with my mom’s camera. Dad always had the video camera and mom had the photo camera. I was always so fascinated by the film cartridges.
"No effort" was doggone awesome. Great work, as always and thanks for explaining our youths!
📸 fascinating and fun and we appreciate the low effort ☺️
Whoa. Never thought I'd recognize the person making the comment. I've been following your videos forever. Your talk on elevators... So cool to see you here!
@@jackbaxter-williams8059 hi, Jack, nice to see you... And thanks ☺️👍
Yes, I've been a fan and patron of Alec for ages! 😁
No effort... effort is worth it. Love watching your videos, they're so informative and easy to follow. More please! :D
I love November.
Real effort versions are great,
but the rant about no effort is wonderful, even if a bit of a lie.
Thanks
Tbh, as someone who listens rather than watches to a lot of UA-cam content, this style of video, with good scripting, entertaining presentation, and info clearly explained audibly, is excellent, imo! :) Cheers for another very enjoyable video! Happy Thanksgiving!
I LOVE your low effort productions! Good content, amusing, interesting, informative, funny but not cheesy funny and just that perfect amount of geeky. Thanks!
I BELIEVE IN NO EFFORT NOVEMBER and also in your underrated photography videos
"Latent image of vaporization" was an absolutely out of pocket line that I will never forget
All kinds of stuff I had forgotten from my HS photography class in the 90s and some stuff I didn't know. We only used B&W film and processed and printed our own photos. We also discovered how easy it was to manipulate or screw up photos at any step in the process and that because of the self-contained air system in the development room we could get away with smoking in there.
We used older cameras, no auto-wind on ours! And the film cases were perfectly sized for quarters.
That explains why my dad still has a few canisters full of change. I think the last time my mom used a film camera was 2006-2007.
A lot of people used to put marijuana in film canisters too. Somewhere along the way, they switched from an aluminum canister with a screw-on lid, to a plastic one with a snap-on lid.
@@russlehman2070 Yeah, the best film canisters sealed really well, and people would use them at the beach because of that.
That brings back memories. I remember how impressive it seemed when I got my first 35mm camera as a kid and it had DX. Before that I had a 110 camera and my mom's 35mm camera was older and had manual ISO so this was new to me. It also had auto rewind though I'm pretty sure it didn't use the DX exposure count, it just waited until it encountered resistance when advancing then rewound, so I still got the bonus exposures if a roll had them.
Technically, 110 film cassettes also had a scheme for the camera to read the ISO: a ridge at one end of the cassette that had a certain length for a specific ISO. But most cheap cameras did not use them.
Regarding the weird DX contacts on your T90 at 7:20, the service manual indicates that each pair of pins is electrically continuous, so each position is in fact being tested against the common position at the top of the roll, rather than each contact pair acting like a single SPST switch. The doubling up of contacts was almost certainly to improve the reliability of the connection.
4:41 Fun detail, the camera used with this film took half-size photos to use half a frame of film per photo. Normally the photos lay horizontally along the film, but these half-frame photos are vertical instead. The photo printer just enlarges them when they make prints. You get twice as many photos, but at half the resolution. The bottom half of the film has the half-frames numbered with an "A" suffix.
Ah, yes. I remember the process of trying to squeeze as many shots out of a roll of film as possible. The threshold of either 24 or 36, and the hope/desire to be able to get at least one more shot out of it, and the semi-smug feeling that you were getting, 'free', exposures once you got it developed. It didn't always work, of course. And even if it did, some developers were too stingy to print any after the allotted number of exposures. Bah, humbug. Interestingly, though, once film scanners became a thing, getting to see those extra shots that weren't printed all those years ago, (that you'd completely forgotten about even existing), are finally visualised. Generally, they're nothing different to what you'd already took, as they were usually taken to use up the film so you could get it developed! I've had one or two interesting exceptions though that have jogged memories of what I was doing at the time.
Kodak was actually pretty cool about it if you were shooting slides, even mounting the #37 and #38 for you. But if you tore out the sprocket holes you'd get the damaged part of the filmstrip back with some empty cardboard mounts and a note to the effect of "too bad, you broke it, you are on your own". If I could load the camera in the dark I could shoot a frame before #1 (on the "leader") and they seemed OK with that too.
Usually it worked, but I remember them printing a big number plate across my girlfriend's face. In retrospect, I should have taken 2 frames, but I was too cheap to do that.
Your videos are so often the best part of my days! I watch and re-watch. Always A+! 👍❤️
I enjoy seeing these videos talking about film. As far as it being a 'niche' hobby it certainly seems to have grown so much that much of the film you've shown is difficult to comeby or wildly overpriced as supplies have dwindled in the face of rising demand. Your videos seem to come up at a time when film photography is experiencing a significant revival - a lot more people are shooting film now than they were 4-5 years ago when I started. Keep going at it!
I love the amount of effort you always put into your videos
7:45 are you sure it does not use ground? It makes more sense to me that it uses double pins to avoid dirt read errors. Ie, to avoid single contact points.
It clearly uses ground, just a single pad above speed bits though, it just dropped last speed bit and first two length bits, based on pin locations and row shift.
@@bar10005 it reads, what, all of the film speed bits, two of the length bits, and then there's one ground connection. I think?
@@Gameboygenius No, the columns are supposed to have the same height and max of 6 contacts (including ground), so it's clear that right column misses last contact and where left column should start if not missing it's contacts. Would love to paste easier image explanation, but YT doesn't like random links in comments, so here's text attempt, strikenthrough are missing contacts in camera:
-G- G
-L1- S1
-L2- S2
L3 S3
T1 S4
T2 -S5-
@@bar10005 Comparing with the next shot of the Samurai, and the Wikipedia reference for the DX code, I think you've got the orientation wrong, and what we're looking at is actually this:
-T2- S5
-T1- S4
-L3- S3
L2 S2
L1 S1
G -G-
I dug up the service manual and each pin pair is electrically connected together and acts as a single electrical contact. So the top ground pad is in fact used as a common, rather than each position being individually checked for local continuity. The double pinning is just for reliability.
9:00 'this website I found' line had me chuckling for a good while
You should do a video on the early eye-controlled autofocus cameras like the Canon EOS A2e.
It's amazing to be able to make a 16 minutes video on a few simple squares ! Great video 👍
Consistently amongst the best content on UA-cam. Only issue I have is that the older I get, the more I go back to analogue devices. I'd already started an unhealthy obsession with expensive, finicky, analogue tape based recording equipment - you with your great analogue camera based videos has started me off on another expensive and fiddly journey! Yoinks!
Honestly, I appreciate the limited scope and concise writing of this video. And it's not like it wasn't researched. It really covered the subject well.
You and LGR have helped blossom my enthusiasm for retro and antique tech! I love being able to learn about, touch and even sometimes use examples of human innovation through history.
"....retro and antique...."
OW GOD MY HIP!!!!
Can we expect this series continuing into the digital photography realm? I do digital photo as a hobby for years but inner workings of a camera are mysterious to me and it seems there's little to no resources which explain them other than just the very basics every photo buff should know
It would be interesting but the workings of a digital camera are simplified ten fold over a film camera. Most DSLRs have the same shutter mechanisms as a normal film camera but theres no film advance mechanism and it has a huge screen. The lens projects the picture on the image sensor and thats how you get the picture
@@tencents49 This statement only reinforces the fact that people need to be educated on digital cameras. You are talking only about the mechanical stuff while electronically, all the hardware and algorithms, there's some real black magic stuff happening most people can't even begin to comprehend (neither can I), and sadly even the nerdiest digital photography/cinematography channels don't even scratch the surface of it
@@tencents49 For example: how CCD and CMOS sensors are different and why CCD has become a niche thing, how is a BSI sensor built compared to a regular CMOS, why do camera sensors go for a larger pixel size while phone sensors go for larger number of pixels with greater averaging between those pixels, what exactly does the RAW format record and how it allows such a vast control over the picture, what exactly are logarithmic formats - all the genuine questions I have and that's only related to sensors alone! There's entire universe of mystery here and no channel has the balls to uncover it, what I'm saying is that a channel like Alec's can spin this topic into a year worth of videos and make it super engaging in the process
Almost certainly, he loves photography! However, it may not, at least for a long time, get into the nitty gritty of how every camera system works unless that makes a very interesting topic for his style of video, he tends to love covering niche systems and clever workarounds for his videos.
@@mihan2d my own understanding is the overall process goes something like: sensor -> analysis -> adjustments -> compression -> storage.
For each part:
Sensor: lookup how ccd and cmos sensors convert photons (light) to electrical voltage.
Analysis: this is where the black magic is for me, but I'm sure there are many image analysis systems you can learn from that could apply here. I'd imagine some of this data (like focus detection and exposure) is passed to another system to prepare for the next image to be captured too.
Adjustments: this is where white balance, exposure correction, sharpening, etc. from the analysis stage and any set filter modes are applied. If storing raw mode, this is skipped and the analysis info goes to the next step along with the image data.
Compression: if storing as jpeg, that is pretty public info and look that up. For raw images, lookup info on lossless compression, like zip compression.
Storage: basically lookup how flash memory works
I'm not sure a deep dive into these would work for this channel, but I could be wrong.
Fuji 200 film used to be my favourite. ISO 200 gave you that extra stop for poor light without the graininess that 400 would give, and I liked the Fuji colours.
i think the market agreed. iirc Fuji 200 was the canon pun unintended for generalized consumer use. Fuji was touted internally and externally as having the best color quality.
I’m just barely old enough to have used film cameras, and I had always wondered what those silver and black boxes were on the film rolls. Cool stuff, this is why I love old technology. The creative ways that companies found to solve problems is fascinating.
Great video, back in the army we used to change ISO speeds mid-roll, just wrote the last frame number exposed on the roll. Just mind the feeder end, make sure you dont wind it into the canister. We were issued the Nikon F4, ISO was manually selected. A proper combat cameraman was proficient in both the C-41 process and hand processing film.
Pretty glad that with digital the risk of messing up is reduced. I was nervous enough when pushing a whole role 1-stop and hoping that the didn't ruin it when developing... And that just a hobbyist!
Right on the memory lane!!! I remember the DX code and also that we had a pen to change the dx code when we "pushed" a filme. :)
I always wondered what the weird little silver squares on film cartridges were about as a kid! Today I learned :)
15:49 "2-bit jazz" for those with captions and not binary fluent.
There are 10 types of people in this world
Those who understand binary
And those who don't
As someone that grew up during the back end of the film era, I never knew what this was until I brought a Nikon F4 and was wondering what the 'DX' option is on its ISO selector. Thanks for the amazing video!
Definitely a 'low' effort and not 'no' effort. More interesting and better quality than a lot of vids on YT.
- Awake and coherent.
- Dressed, groomed and at the set.
- Variety of physical props instead pictures.
- Research done.
When I worked for the university paper, I bulk-rolled film into reusable cartridges. While most of our camera gear lets has the ability to set the ISO, one didn't and relied on DX codes. I don't know if DX stickers existed in the 90s, I looked and asked about such a thing but know one knew if there was such a thing. We used this camera mostly for less important photos (i.e. wide shots of crowds, streets, etc.), but still, there were a few shots that I had to compensate for in the darkroom.
It's funny seeing all of the options in the old cameras. You had so many options, even as a consumer! It's a little humorous because most phones have this photo data present in their camera apps, but it's largely inaccessible to the user. You basically just get a bunch of presets, then AI over-saturates it afterwards for you.
The only exception to this, naturally, are the Sony Xperia phones, particularly the 1 II & 5 II. But I think they deserve a video of their own, if you can source one.
I've found you _can_ sometimes twiddle the settings to your taste or expectation under a "pro" mode, but your milage may vary!
Or "manual" mode. But yeah, it's often hidden, since everything it usually tries to figure it out by itself.
Interesting info. I recently developed my first few rolls of b&w films, and they turned out not too bad. Despite it's easy to mess up with loading a film in my old soviet camera and I ripped it few times...
Anyway I'm writing this to say that I have find pretty interesting stuff. There are few small companies that reuse old film cartridges, and put there new film from big reels for movie cameras. Those are the cheapest options to get a film. It costed me about $4 for a roll (with DX code).
So yeah, film photography is a pretty interesting hobby.
i've said it before, but tysm for making manual, high quality captions for your videos. it's just fantastic everytime i see it :))
love how it is no effort november, but subtitles are still a must. very great for silent viewing for any reason
thank you for your content
I love learning simple processes like this!
Seems like if you knew the code, you could use a piece a tin foil to connect the pins needed.
That's what the stickers are doing.
Would you consider making a video on what the heck QR codes really are and how they work and how we mortals can make better use of them in our daily life
...They're square barcodes bruh. You can use them for... all the things we use barcodes for. It's not new technology. What the heck are you talking about lol no offense
I grew up using those things and always wondered why the heck there was a barcode and metallic squares in the cartridge. I thought the barcode was for the cash registers but made no sense since it's inside a box and it would need to be take it out. I was just a kid ok?
Also, usually, there's a lot of old tech in this channel that was far beyond my reach. At first I was "oh that looks a neat feature..... wait a minute, I remember those things" is such a cool feeling lol
This was amazing, thanks. One of the best no effort november videos (for me at least)
You always manage to talk about things I don't care about, and then make it so interesting that I start caring about them. And that's the best possible content if you ask me. I love you.
I kept passing by this notification, like why in the hell would I care about some production code on some film... then I watched all 17 minutes with great interest!
This video was super useful and somehow well produced despite being "no effort"
I used to process 600 rolls of film a day for my living, then digital struck and the film market collapsed in the UK.
There are so few establishments that will even process film for you which makes film shooting a fairly inaccessible hobby as most ppl can’t dedicate the space/time/money to a whole dark room for diy film processing. I have such a love hate with digital photos because it’s kind of expensive and time consuming to get prints. Low key missing the 90’s/00’s disposable camera era. Or Polaroid/instant cameras. Such fun!!
DIY film processing these days doesn't require a dedicated dark room though. Maybe if you want to run an enlarger but getting negatives even colour negatives isn't that restrictive an activity.
Then the enlargement process is replaced with digital scanning.
At least that's my approach. I use a darkbag and light proof tank and just develop the negatives at home, using a scanner to get the final image. I don't have space for an enlarger and my kit all sits in a box in my kitchen cupboard until I need it.
@@livelongandprospermary8796 Polaroid still make new cameras and they still sell instant film. I'm fairly sure I've seen disposable cameras in some shops as well, mainly limited to tourist areas in big cities though. Much less common than when I was a kid in the 2000s and you could buy disposable cameras in ASDA and get your photos developed in Boots.
And now it has exploded again
@@livelongandprospermary8796 There's tons of places that develop film and more opening. I develop my film in my kitchen though. No darkroom needed.
This reminds me of the newer APS film format. It was pretty nice really with a few nifty features. The cartridge had extra info, such as if the film was exposed, or partially exposed, or even processed. It could take photos in various aspect ratios too.
I could listen to you for HOURS talking about anything and everything.
By the rubric 'Has a video been made and published' I find that more effort than none has been expended this November.
As that is a rather low bar to pass, I offer no guarantees except the observation that this channel is awesome year-round.
Always appreciate the effort you put into these. Well done. 👌
Just enough effort.
Oh, also thanks for reminding me to buy some DX stickers for my bulk rolls.
The most fun job I ever had was when I worked as a 24 hour Photo Development pick up/delivery driver. The job went extinct with the invention of digital cameras. That job was so much fun!
Your no-effort November just shows how enthusiastic you are about these subjects. You do all the research for fun on your own time well in advance of a video.
This brings me back. I took some photography classes in high school (early 2000's) and used to buy large B&W 35mm film canisters to load into re-usable plastic cassettes. The problem was: my (parent's) Minolta didn't have the ability to manually set the ISO. I ended up making these codes by hand using tinfoil and electrical tape and re-using old brand-name cassettes that matched my film speed.
I love how the camera is off center, peak no effort flex
One thing missing here is that you can "hack" the code by scraping the black parts and by taping the silver ones. Very useful should you want to push, pull or run a roll overexposed.
Great episode. As informative as ever
This looks like no effort... in comparison to others in your channel, but that's where your knowledge and experience comes from, those two things makes your videos look very elaborated. You're a really wise and qualified person, thanks for sharing your knowledge with us.
You're too talented. Your "no effort" is still a really high bar. (Also I'm waiting for the yearly Christmas light video)