Haist is an absolute legend in the film photography world for sure! But the reason I recommend the Film Developing Cookbook over Modern Photographic Processing is because Film Developing Cookbook is much more applicable to film photography in the 2020s. It includes tons of lessons learned from Haist directly, including some of his recipes, but is designed for the film stocks we have now - not what we had in the 80s.

Thanks for this, that's really cool to hear! I'd love to try out the walnut husks.

@@LearnFilmPhotography black tea should be easier and I used both to tan fish leather which came out great. I just started film photography and I'm looking into environment friendly developing and fixing methods

I think with the advent of AI, film photos will be more valuable in the future, just because that's the only way to ensure authenticity and limited editions - doubly so in the art world.

It's a good analogy! But being divisible in your head, and matching weights with volumes is insanely useful. 1L of water being 1kg, 100°c with boiling and 0°c with freezing, 1cm equalling 10mm, or 1/100th of a meter - it's beautiful, and you'd love it over here.

I know professional photographers who travel the world to create panorama photos. Quite often, because he's traveling for the purpose of photography, or he's traveling on a commissioned project, he's unable to get the perfect weather conditions for an amazing photo. So he changes the sky, adds fog, and sometimes sun rays. He will remove distractions, and otherwise do everything he can to make the perfect image that'll sell. He is a fine art photographer, so he does have some license for this, but at the end of the day, sometimes you have to edit and make alterations like that. In fact, I don't know any professional, working photographers who don't make edits like this. And thank you for that! I do have a version with and without the boats. Personally, because of all the red hues in them, I find they take attention away from the rock. My test is to close my eyes, open, and see where my eye lands. If it falls somewhere I don't want it to, or I struggle to look where I want, then I remove the part causing the distraction.

I get where you're coming from. I'm actually one of those analog photographers who shoots and develops film, but scans and edits my film photos digitally. I still call myself a film photographer, because it's the workflow I like the most - I've done so much digital photography that picking up that camera feels like work, where film feels fun and artisanal. Definitely not doing it for the tones. As for the darkroom, I think the digital workflow is actually what's keeping film alive right now. I don't know if you've seen the prices, but it's getting so expensive to print. The papers have doubled in price since 2020, and it's a lot harder to get the look you want without going through many sheets. I still do it, because I want to get good at it, but that's never going to be my main mode of creating images, because it just isn't sustainable anymore in terms of time (~45 minutes to an hour per good print) and money.

@@LearnFilmPhotography Yeah the prices are sykrocketing for everything in film. I know the arguments from around the internet comparing "editing" from analog days to today's manipualtions with Lightroom et al. Of course it's never the print alone that counts. Pretty much everything we consume from film photographes from back in the day is scanned photos from them. I just see a barrier here where film editing ends and where digital editing takes over. Of course no one could tell people to stop at over or underexposing in Lightroom. As I said in my comment, there are no rules, I just think it should be part of transparency and honesty when people share their supposed "film" photos that they ad, that they were digitally altered. But that would only truly apply to galleries or media that showcase some work and maybe even want my money to see it. Of course everyone can do on the internet what they want. I just am very suspicious if people try to sell something that isn't truly what it is.

Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it. Hope you'll dive deeper into film over time! Most people who gravitate to it do for the process, rather than the result, I find. At least that's how it was for me - wanting to make photos with my hands rather than on a screen.

I do agree with you here, which is why I brought up the bit about Dorothea Lange - because in her case, editing the photo was the least problematic issue there. For journalistic photos there are a lot more rules - for example, I believe it's AP that requires their photographers to shoot in jpeg mode, which I fundamentally agree with. The problem is that new photographers as well get trapped into thinking they also need to follow these rules, or that 'real' photography is unedited, SOOC, uncropped, and onto the wall. But that line of thinking makes the medium so much harder to get good at that a lot of people will end up quitting before they ever take a photo they're happy with. And worst of all, there's very little precedent for that kind of photography (Nan Goldin, and a few others are exceptions, but they're far from the majority, and were looking for chaos in their photography).

@@LearnFilmPhotography Yeah I appreciated that point about how the bias can be much more in where we choose to point the lens. For an artistic context, I also think it's silly for purists to hold others to any dogmatic standard. As you also pointed out, the image capturing process, between choice of lens to chemical development, is necessarily going to be a departure from reality itself anyway.

I totally agree! And sometimes you just have to be too quick to be perfect in the moment (or you'll miss the shot entirely).

I think you're right, that when we do object removal we are striving for perfection. I think the difference is if you don't believe in editing, you might become too critical of your photos, or you might not understand why one image works and another doesn't. I see a lot of photographers who are stuck at an early stage in their photographic development because they refuse to retouch, and spend time with their photos - that's what I'm really trying to hit here. Photography is not easy, and I don't think it's about having a gifted eye - the best photographers have developed that sense over time and meticulous effort.

How do you color correct Polaroids? Is it just the temperature you let them develop at?

@LearnFilmPhotography Oh I just take a high quality scan of them and adjust the balance digitally. My style with any photo I take including digital is to achieve a color profile as true to the eye as possible. Polaroid often skews much warmer or cooler than what the eye sees depending on the scene so I thought I'd see how difficult or easy it would be to adjust those photos to be more accurate. The basic temp and tint sliders in Lightroom are usually enough to get it close and then some basic exposure and contrast adjustments along with some vignette correction, saturation and sharpening is all that's really needed. The result ends up pretty good and from a technical perspective is definitely an improvement. However you certainly lose some of the appeal that comes from the natural qualities of polaroid film. So as an experiment it was definitely valuable as far as learning about photo manipulation and honing my style but now when it comes to Polaroids the most I'll do with the scans are subtle contrast and exposure adjustments along with saturation and some sharpening. Then what I like to do is make a large print. Seeing a polaroid enlarged and in high quality is probably my favorite way of enjoying my polaroids now.

@sambroughton5520 that's really cool! How is the quality of the Polaroid when it's blown up to large size like that? And what technique are you using to scan them? I have a pretty big collection of Polaroids, including a book project I've made from them with Soft Grain Books. So that could be a cool project to take on - especially for an exhibition.

@LearnFilmPhotography I use the scanner of a Canon MF4770n printer. It's probably not the best option out there but I was given it for free a couple years back and it works pretty well for my purposes. I make sure when I scan I set the highest DPI possible and save it as a .TIFF file to preserve as much detail as possible. Then in Photoshop I crop just the photo window making sure to use the exact aspect ratio for polaroid 600 film. I then bring the photo into Lightroom to make my final adjustments. After that I upscale the image also in Lightroom. Some people might not like this but it does a pretty good job increasing the resolution so that I get the best looking image possible when printed large. I might skip this step if I had a better scanner. The last step is personal preference but I'll then bring the image back into Photoshop to put a pure white border around the image in the same proportions as a real polaroid.

Afterthought: You could try distilling the source material. Although the heat may affect the results.

I found this as well - with the cedar, I actually did two extracts: one with water (that did barely anything), and a second one with 90% isopropyl alcohol that was 1000x better. That is definitely the way to go! And also, that vanilla bean extract sounds amazing!!

LearnFilmPhotography, The extract is amazing. It's so much more flavorful than even McCormick's. Anyway... Try at least 80 proof vodka when extracting; compare it to the isopropyl. They are different. Isopropyl is poison. Vodka is poison too, but you can drink that stuff 😁

Exactly! It's a bit ridiculous, and Polaroid's auto exposure system is still not great even after releasing a new version. Online reviews can be very misleading - nobody tells you if they were paid to say it or not.

It's a bit strange, right? Because I'm sure he would have absolutely loved digital photography and Photoshop, since they'd have given him more control over the photo.

Yet these attitudes towards photography exist everywhere! I see it come up all the time on forums, and even a bit in the real world, where some people believe real photographers shoot film since it's a more 'pure' process. But that can't further from the truth.

Totally agree! The only images that will survive us are the ones we print.

Especially when the cost is nearly the same!

Black and white filme expired in 2020 should be okay to use without making any changes. I don't have a video on that just yet!

Yes! There are a few really good ones. My favorite is Light Meter by WB Photo

The funsaver and portra stocks are easy to pick out, actually. Of the four stocks shown, the funsaver has the most greenish tint, the portra being a close second. I've been able to correctly identify those two in all of the examples except the last one, where I could have sworn the portra was the rightmost picture.

The secret is the light! In the city, even under street lights with CineStill 800t, it's pretty easy to get a fast enough shutter speed for hand holding - especially if you're using a 50mm f/1.8 or similar prime lens. They may underexpose by a stop or so, but that film can definitely handle it.

@@LearnFilmPhotography Thanks! I guess I should get out there and give it a shot!

It's on the books!

@@LearnFilmPhotography yay :) hope you do it soon!! think this year? this month???

Yes, this is Black and White film. Color film is actually just as easy, but requires temperature control.

The developer is usually okay to go down the drain, even in most septic systems (unless it's a pyro-type developer, or if you're using commercial quantities), but the fixer needs to be stored for sure because of the dissolved silver

There is one on making developers with flowers and tree bark, but not one on commercial developers just yet.