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[from off-camera]
Every year we go through this.

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Every year!

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I tell you it’s No Effort November

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but you just… you don’t believe me!

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I…

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I dunno how we got here but, um…

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*sigh*
let’s try again.

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Hello and welcome to No Effort November,

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[said really fast]
a series of videos for the month of November in which no effort is made.

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Before digital cameras were a thing,
you had to buy this film stuff to take pictures.

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This film was available in a bunch of different varieties.

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The sensitivity of the film to light, or its speed,

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was one of a few factors you’d consider when buying film.

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Faster films, like ISO 800, were good for action shots since the camera could use a faster shutter speed and prevent motion blur.

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They were also good for lower-light situations,
making photography possible when it might otherwise not be.

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But faster films produced a grainier image,

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so if image quality is what you were after,

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you might have wanted to use a slower film like ISO 100, or even 50.

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Now, because changing the film’s sensitivity to light
will change how the camera needs to expose it for a given scene,

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cameras featured a setting for film speed.

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In manual cameras this would usually just
change how its light meter responds to light.

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But those were mostly used by professionals,
and consumer cameras from about the 1960’s onward

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would handle exposure automatically.

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But that can only work if the camera knows the film speed,

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so you had to match the camera’s speed setting to the film you were putting into the camera.

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That sounds like effort,

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and if you forgot to change this when you put in a new roll of film
that was a different speed from the last one,

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all the images on that roll would be under or overexposed,

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and wouldn’t that be embarrassing and/or devastating.

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Clearly, we need to make this a No Effort process.

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There were many potential ways to do this,

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for instance we could come up with a new kind of film cartridge that could communicate its speed to the camera through some sorta physical means like,

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like maybe the longer a little sticky-outy bit is,
the faster the film is inside.

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But despite Kodak’s best and repeated efforts
to come up with a more convenient film product,

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the venerable 135 format consisting of 35mm film 
(essentially the same stuff used in the movie business)

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spooled and encased in a simple round cassette with a light-proof tangential exit slot so it can poke out like a weird tongue

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just would not die.

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A big part of this was likely due to the fact that camera manufacturers had made the process of loading 35mm film much easier with time,

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which largely negated the benefits of self-contained film cartridges
like 126 or 110.

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This Ricoh FF-3 AF Super, for instance,

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is an automatic point-and-shoot camera design dating from 1982.

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And it features easy film loading.

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Look there’s film in here, OK, I’m not gonna open it to show you

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but it’s just plop the cassette here, pull the film out of it and up to a little orange mark inside,

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close the back and press the shutter button.

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The camera will load it automatically.

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In addition to auto-loading the camera also features
auto-focus, auto-exposure, a built-in flash,

48
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really this is a very competent point-and-shoot camera but!

49
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You still have to set the film speed manually
with this control on the front.

50
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Luckily by this time we had little windows on the camera back that let you see a portion of the film cassette where it would...

51
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usually list its characteristics

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(and also so you could tell if it was, y'know if there's film in there or not)

53
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but you could still screw this up and ruin an entire roll
if you weren’t just a bit careful.

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So, in 1983 — almost 50 years after it officially
became a format

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— Kodak would introduce DX Encoding to 135 format film cassettes.

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DX, for “Digital IndeX” served to make film handling easier
for both the photographer and the photo finisher.

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It did this in three ways:

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first, this barcode on the cassettes identifies the specific film emulsion inside,

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and film processing equipment which could read this barcode could automatically determine developing times

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and ensure a roll of film wasn’t about to go through the wrong development process.

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Secondly, DX encoding was also present on
the film itself.

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Once developed, film edge marking and barcodes
(exposed onto the film when it was packaged)

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also identified the film stock,

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which could be used in printing and scanning equipment
for automatic color correction.

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Additionally, it encoded the frame numbers
which was useful when ordering reprints and whatnot.

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But the third and final part of DX encoding is, to me, the most interesting.

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DX Camera Auto Sensing would finally make loading a camera a
(mostly) No Effort experience.

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Here, take a look.

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This is my Canon T90, and when I insert this roll of Kodacolor 200 ,

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it knows that’s ISO 200 film.

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Stick in some Cinestill 50D, and it registers as ISO 50.

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This Fujicolor Superia 400 shows up as ISO 400.

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And this roll of ProImage 100 registers as - you guessed it -

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100.

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And apparently those are the only four speeds of film I ever buy.

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The camera determined the film speeds by using electrical contacts to read a series of patches on the surface of the film cassette.

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These patches can be shiny and electrically conductive,

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or covered with an insulating layer of black ink.

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There are 2 rows of 6 patches across the cassette’s length, 
however only 5 patches per row encode data.

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The five bits along the top row encode the film’s sensitivity,

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and the bottom row is split into a three bit section which encodes the number of exposures on the roll,

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and a two bit section which defines the film’s exposure tolerance -

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that’s how wrongly you can expose it before it affects the captured image.

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This simple arrangement, when detected and decoded by the camera,

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will tell it all it needs to know for automatic operation.

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Now, this is a professional camera.

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And as such, it’s capable of reading most of the encoded information.

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It will even rewind the film on its own when you shoot the last frame.

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However, it doesn’t read the film’s exposure tolerance.

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Frankly, I don't know how much help that would be
for any camera to know outside of weird edge cases.

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But anyway, not everybody has a professional camera,
and Kodak knew that.

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So, when they designed this code scheme,

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they arranged the information so that a cost-cut consumer camera could set itself correctly for any speed between ISO 25 and 3200.

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This Yashica Samurai, for instance, is…

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a very weird camera, don’t worry too much about that —

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this is a half-frame SLR from 1987.

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Uh, it's definitely pretty high-end but also definitely still a consumer camera.

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And we’ll see that in the film compartment
there are only four contacts compared to the T90’s eight.

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Actually, the T90 has 16; Canon used a pair
of contacts for every bit of the code it could read.

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Which is weird because, like, the cassette is metal

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and it was designed so that the two patches closest to the spool post
are always bare.

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That’s why they don’t convey information,
they’re just a ground plane,

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and the camera only needs to check for continuity across
that ground and a single contact point at each bit location.

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The T90 doesn’t use the ground and instead
reads every data bit location individually.

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I don’t know why Canon overcomplicated this but anyway…

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The Samurai, with its four contacts (one of which is ground)
is only checking the first three bits of the first row.

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That’s all.

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That gives us 8 possible combinations which might not seem like enough

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but by the time DX encoding was a thing,

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consumer films were generally sold in doubles in speed, with 100 and 200 being perhaps the most common films,

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400 pretty common but less so,

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800 your “sports/action” film,

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and 1600 being pretty exotic.

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And see, even though we only have three bits
representing eight combinations,

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we can start at 25 and through doubling get to…

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50,

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100,

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200,

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400,

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800,

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1600,

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3200.

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That's eight!

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Kodak smartly used bits 4 and 5 in the five-bit code to distinguish the weird
in-betweeny speeds like ISO 160, 64, or 1000.

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Speeds that pros might use with regularity,

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but casual photographers were unlikely to run across at the grocery store.

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This website I found has a chart of all the combinations

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and we’ll see that the first three bits are identical across three speeds and only change at the next whole stop in sensitivity.

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That makes bits 4 and 5 essentially irrelevant for consumer cameras.

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And here’s the other thing: if you mess up an exposure by a third of a stop

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it doesn’t really matter.

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Print film, especially, has amazing exposure latitude

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and so really if you were to expose an ISO 1000 film as if it were 800 speed film...

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you wouldn’t notice.

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Slide film needs exposure to be pretty on-the-nose
so it’s harder to get away with this,

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but negative film is generally very lenient.

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These films are all coded as having +3 -1 sensitivity,

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so you can screw up exposure by a full stop in either direction
and be fine.

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ProImage 100, interestingly, can only take two stops of overexposure.

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The weenie.

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Oh, and while it might be nice for the camera
to know how many exposures are on a roll of film…

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well, it’s not exactly critical info.

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There’s little point in complexifying a
point-and-shoot consumer camera to that extent.

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You’re just gonna shoot ‘till you get to the end of the roll then hit rewind -

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plus most of the time you could squeeze another exposure or
two out of a roll so

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you wouldn’t want the thing to rewind at “the end” anyway!

147
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And thanks to print film’s generous exposure tolerance
(particularly with over-exposure)

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some other camera manufacturers would cost-cut
even further and only look for continuity in one spot.

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This Minolta Memory Maker 2000 is a cheap
little plastic camera that my parents got me when I was

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maybe eight?

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I was young enough to go nuts with a blue sharpie and one point.

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Anyway, look inside its…

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backwards film compartment (that’s distressing)

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and you’ll find there are only two contacts pressing on the 3rd and 4th bit.

155
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If we go back to that chart I found,

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we’ll see that those two patches are never connected together until we get to ISO 400,

157
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after which point they remain connected for 800, 1600, and 3200 speed film.

158
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So basically, if these contacts aren’t bridged,

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which would be the case for any film less than 400 speed,

160
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the camera treats whatever film you put in it as if it were maybe ISO 100.

161
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You probably won’t notice at least with print film because of the exposure latitude.

162
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But if you load 400 or 800 speed film, well now it knows you’ve got some fast stuff in there!

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It’ll have to, like, speed up the shutter a bit!

164
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I would guess it probably just treats everything
“fast” like 800 speed,

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deliberately underexposing 400 speed film by a stop to get faster shutter speeds.

166
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And hey, as imprecise as this is,

167
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this did indeed work decently well.

168
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Its terrible plastic lens meant the images never looked that great
but they were exposed correctly!

169
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If you should happen to find ISO 500, 1000, 2000, or 4000 film, though,
they’ll get wildly overexposed in this camera.

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I don’t think Kodak intended the DX code
to be used as this camera uses it.

171
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I’m pretty sure this is what you might call a hack.

172
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As time went on, all of the film manufacturers
got onboard with this encoding scheme.

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From Ilford, to Fuji, to Kodak, to…

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others probably

175
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you could eventually expect any new film cassette to have these little boxes on them so your camera knew what it was.

176
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And now, this is becoming a bit of a problem
for many cameras from the ‘80s and ‘90s.

177
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See, lots of cameras — including this Yashica Samurai — have no ability
to set the ISO manually.

178
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When they were new, you could easily ask “why would you want that?”

179
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but now that film photography is the niche hobby it is,

180
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well there are plenty of films available which don’t have DX encoding on their cassettes.

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The big guys like Kodak, Fuji, and Ilford
are still making new film cassettes with full DX compatibility.

182
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And luckily the folks behind Cinestill are also sourcing proper cassettes.

183
00:13:30,414 --> 00:13:36,343
But other less expensive options like Freestyle’s Arista.edu line of films...

184
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Well, they're missing it.

185
00:13:38,725 --> 00:13:44,004
There are also an increasing number of sort-of
indie films out there in small production runs

186
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which often re-use cassettes - which to be clear, is a really cool idea!

187
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But they’ll be forced cover up the DX code
on whatever cassettes they get their hands on

188
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because it will usually be wrong.

189
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We are also starting to see plastic film cassettes
which can’t rely on the cassette itself to be a common ground plane -

190
00:14:03,157 --> 00:14:06,466
wait, was Canon thinking that far ahead?

191
00:14:06,466 --> 00:14:15,242
Uh, there has also always been the option for
frugal folks to bulk-roll their own film into re-usable cassettes like these.

192
00:14:15,242 --> 00:14:21,253
My Canon T90 has a button to select the ISO
when it can’t read the DX code,

193
00:14:21,253 --> 00:14:28,019
but the Yashica Samurai - well, if it doesn’t see a code,
it’ll just default to 100 speed.

194
00:14:28,734 --> 00:14:30,811
That’s not a bad strategy necessarily

195
00:14:30,811 --> 00:14:37,645
but it’s still really annoying that I can’t use this camera unless the film I want to use has a DX cassette

196
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or just happens to be 100 speed.

197
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And I’m lucky that I was able to find documentation
on what this will do with a blank film cassette.

198
00:14:46,468 --> 00:14:51,911
Loads of cameras from the ‘80s and into
the 2000’s might not have that info available.

199
00:14:51,911 --> 00:14:54,272
Luckily, if you want to use such a camera,

200
00:14:54,272 --> 00:14:57,454
you can now get DX code stickers.

201
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That’s right, folks are making stickers now
which are electrically conductive and in just the right spots

202
00:15:03,738 --> 00:15:12,130
to put onto film cassettes that are not DX-coded specifically for making your weird 80's and 90’s cameras work with weird film.

203
00:15:12,635 --> 00:15:20,217
I think the best use for these is when you’re bulk-rolling film,
as that adds significant expense to a film cassette you won’t reuse.

204
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But it’s nice to know that that option is out there regardless.

205
00:15:24,257 --> 00:15:26,720
Anyway, I think that’s about it.

206
00:15:26,720 --> 00:15:29,526
Now look, I didn’t whip out the slider for B-roll.

207
00:15:29,526 --> 00:15:31,109
I didn’t do any research.

208
00:15:31,109 --> 00:15:34,312
I didn’t even warm up the set before I started shooting this.

209
00:15:34,312 --> 00:15:37,241
This was a low-effort production, alright?

210
00:15:37,241 --> 00:15:38,330
I phoned it in.

211
00:15:38,330 --> 00:15:40,410
This was in my back pocket for years.

212
00:15:40,410 --> 00:15:42,552
Just one day I was gonna talk about this.

213
00:15:42,552 --> 00:15:46,147
Well here we are, the video’s made, it didn’t
take that long,

214
00:15:46,147 --> 00:15:47,783
now go have your turkey or whatever.

215
00:15:48,632 --> 00:15:51,203
♫ 10-bit smooth jazz ♫

216
00:15:53,307 --> 00:15:57,079
…was available in a buncha different varieties ah deh…

217
00:15:57,458 --> 00:15:59,216
Well I screwed that up already!

218
00:15:59,216 --> 00:16:04,220
…was designed so that the two patches closest
to the spool post are always bare.

219
00:16:04,220 --> 00:16:06,180
That’s why they don’t contay…

220
00:16:07,526 --> 00:16:09,369
I did it again!

221
00:16:09,369 --> 00:16:12,000
Convey is the word I meant to say.

222
00:16:12,000 --> 00:16:13,930
[ guttural yell ]

223
00:16:13,930 --> 00:16:18,930
But, you could still screw this up and ruin a roll
if you weren’t just a bit careful.

224
00:16:18,930 --> 00:16:20,852
[belches]

225
00:16:20,852 --> 00:16:23,380
I don’t know why Canon oversimplified this.

226
00:16:23,380 --> 00:16:25,329
I said “oversimplified?” Are you kidding me?

227
00:16:25,329 --> 00:16:28,170
The word is overcomplicated you… massive dingo.

228
00:16:28,170 --> 00:16:32,770
…same stuff used in the movie business,
spooled and encased in a simple round cassette…

229
00:16:32,770 --> 00:16:33,808
[ deflates ]

230
00:16:35,470 --> 00:16:36,505
Pooooop

231
00:16:38,461 --> 00:16:43,124
Gotta be honest, after the effort I went through with the closed captioning data gag last time...

232
00:16:43,124 --> 00:16:45,448
yeah, well, you ain't getting much here.

233
00:16:46,184 --> 00:16:48,396
Just this.

234
00:16:48,670 --> 00:16:50,979
This is all you get.

235
00:16:51,291 --> 00:16:52,749
Good day.