WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

00:00:01.199 --> 00:00:03.112
[from off-camera]
Every year we go through this.

00:00:03.596 --> 00:00:04.218
Every year!

00:00:04.575 --> 00:00:07.525
I tell you it’s No Effort November

00:00:08.093 --> 00:00:10.591
but you just… you don’t believe me!

00:00:10.970 --> 00:00:11.470
I…

00:00:12.102 --> 00:00:14.520
I dunno how we got here but, um…

00:00:15.907 --> 00:00:17.541
*sigh*
let’s try again.

00:00:17.541 --> 00:00:20.282
Hello and welcome to No Effort November,

00:00:20.282 --> 00:00:24.016
[said really fast]
a series of videos for the month of November in which no effort is made.

00:00:24.016 --> 00:00:30.551
Before digital cameras were a thing,
you had to buy this film stuff to take pictures.

00:00:30.551 --> 00:00:34.267
This film was available in a bunch of different varieties.

00:00:34.267 --> 00:00:38.114
The sensitivity of the film to light, or its speed,

00:00:38.114 --> 00:00:41.565
was one of a few factors you’d consider when buying film.

00:00:41.565 --> 00:00:49.503
Faster films, like ISO 800, were good for action shots since the camera could use a faster shutter speed and prevent motion blur.

00:00:49.503 --> 00:00:54.933
They were also good for lower-light situations,
making photography possible when it might otherwise not be.

00:00:54.933 --> 00:00:58.379
But faster films produced a grainier image,

00:00:58.379 --> 00:01:01.192
so if image quality is what you were after,

00:01:01.192 --> 00:01:06.643
you might have wanted to use a slower film like ISO 100, or even 50.

00:01:06.643 --> 00:01:13.750
Now, because changing the film’s sensitivity to light
will change how the camera needs to expose it for a given scene,

00:01:13.750 --> 00:01:17.069
cameras featured a setting for film speed.

00:01:17.069 --> 00:01:21.960
In manual cameras this would usually just
change how its light meter responds to light.

00:01:21.960 --> 00:01:27.716
But those were mostly used by professionals,
and consumer cameras from about the 1960’s onward

00:01:27.716 --> 00:01:30.142
would handle exposure automatically.

00:01:30.142 --> 00:01:33.300
But that can only work if the camera knows the film speed,

00:01:33.300 --> 00:01:38.984
so you had to match the camera’s speed setting to the film you were putting into the camera.

00:01:38.984 --> 00:01:40.993
That sounds like effort,

00:01:40.993 --> 00:01:46.249
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,

00:01:46.249 --> 00:01:49.939
all the images on that roll would be under or overexposed,

00:01:49.939 --> 00:01:52.951
and wouldn’t that be embarrassing and/or devastating.

00:01:52.951 --> 00:01:57.096
Clearly, we need to make this a No Effort process.

00:01:57.096 --> 00:01:59.223
There were many potential ways to do this,

00:01:59.223 --> 00:02:06.218
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,

00:02:06.218 --> 00:02:11.634
like maybe the longer a little sticky-outy bit is,
the faster the film is inside.

00:02:11.634 --> 00:02:17.863
But despite Kodak’s best and repeated efforts
to come up with a more convenient film product,

00:02:17.863 --> 00:02:24.602
the venerable 135 format consisting of 35mm film 
(essentially the same stuff used in the movie business)

00:02:24.602 --> 00:02:31.789
spooled and encased in a simple round cassette with a light-proof tangential exit slot so it can poke out like a weird tongue

00:02:31.789 --> 00:02:34.483
just would not die.

00:02:34.967 --> 00:02:43.520
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,

00:02:43.520 --> 00:02:50.162
which largely negated the benefits of self-contained film cartridges
like 126 or 110.

00:02:50.162 --> 00:02:53.582
This Ricoh FF-3 AF Super, for instance,

00:02:53.582 --> 00:02:57.595
is an automatic point-and-shoot camera design dating from 1982.

00:02:57.595 --> 00:03:00.220
And it features easy film loading.

00:03:00.220 --> 00:03:02.752
Look there’s film in here, OK, I’m not gonna open it to show you

00:03:02.752 --> 00:03:08.744
but it’s just plop the cassette here, pull the film out of it and up to a little orange mark inside,

00:03:08.744 --> 00:03:10.726
close the back and press the shutter button.

00:03:10.726 --> 00:03:13.112
The camera will load it automatically.

00:03:13.112 --> 00:03:18.795
In addition to auto-loading the camera also features
auto-focus, auto-exposure, a built-in flash,

00:03:18.795 --> 00:03:22.739
really this is a very competent point-and-shoot camera but!

00:03:22.739 --> 00:03:28.133
You still have to set the film speed manually
with this control on the front.

00:03:28.133 --> 00:03:34.663
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...

00:03:34.663 --> 00:03:37.201
usually list its characteristics

00:03:37.201 --> 00:03:41.151
(and also so you could tell if it was, y'know if there's film in there or not)

00:03:41.151 --> 00:03:47.078
but you could still screw this up and ruin an entire roll
if you weren’t just a bit careful.

00:03:47.078 --> 00:03:52.751
So, in 1983 — almost 50 years after it officially
became a format

00:03:52.751 --> 00:03:58.293
— Kodak would introduce DX Encoding to 135 format film cassettes.

00:03:58.293 --> 00:04:07.526
DX, for “Digital IndeX” served to make film handling easier
for both the photographer and the photo finisher.

00:04:07.526 --> 00:04:09.233
It did this in three ways:

00:04:09.233 --> 00:04:15.208
first, this barcode on the cassettes identifies the specific film emulsion inside,

00:04:15.208 --> 00:04:20.520
and film processing equipment which could read this barcode could automatically determine developing times

00:04:20.520 --> 00:04:25.509
and ensure a roll of film wasn’t about to go through the wrong development process.

00:04:25.509 --> 00:04:30.102
Secondly, DX encoding was also present on
the film itself.

00:04:30.102 --> 00:04:35.359
Once developed, film edge marking and barcodes
(exposed onto the film when it was packaged)

00:04:35.359 --> 00:04:37.195
also identified the film stock,

00:04:37.195 --> 00:04:41.831
which could be used in printing and scanning equipment
for automatic color correction.

00:04:41.831 --> 00:04:46.896
Additionally, it encoded the frame numbers
which was useful when ordering reprints and whatnot.

00:04:46.896 --> 00:04:52.350
But the third and final part of DX encoding is, to me, the most interesting.

00:04:52.350 --> 00:04:59.463
DX Camera Auto Sensing would finally make loading a camera a
(mostly) No Effort experience.

00:04:59.463 --> 00:05:00.858
Here, take a look.

00:05:00.858 --> 00:05:06.063
This is my Canon T90, and when I insert this roll of Kodacolor 200 ,

00:05:06.063 --> 00:05:08.949
it knows that’s ISO 200 film.

00:05:08.949 --> 00:05:13.460
Stick in some Cinestill 50D, and it registers as ISO 50.

00:05:13.460 --> 00:05:17.426
This Fujicolor Superia 400 shows up as ISO 400.

00:05:17.426 --> 00:05:22.007
And this roll of ProImage 100 registers as - you guessed it -

00:05:22.007 --> 00:05:23.376
100.

00:05:23.376 --> 00:05:27.398
And apparently those are the only four speeds of film I ever buy.

00:05:27.398 --> 00:05:35.883
The camera determined the film speeds by using electrical contacts to read a series of patches on the surface of the film cassette.

00:05:35.883 --> 00:05:39.068
These patches can be shiny and electrically conductive,

00:05:39.068 --> 00:05:42.309
or covered with an insulating layer of black ink.

00:05:42.309 --> 00:05:48.940
There are 2 rows of 6 patches across the cassette’s length, 
however only 5 patches per row encode data.

00:05:48.940 --> 00:05:52.630
The five bits along the top row encode the film’s sensitivity,

00:05:52.630 --> 00:05:58.629
and the bottom row is split into a three bit section which encodes the number of exposures on the roll,

00:05:58.629 --> 00:06:02.531
and a two bit section which defines the film’s exposure tolerance -

00:06:02.531 --> 00:06:07.111
that’s how wrongly you can expose it before it affects the captured image.

00:06:07.111 --> 00:06:11.069
This simple arrangement, when detected and decoded by the camera,

00:06:11.069 --> 00:06:14.319
will tell it all it needs to know for automatic operation.

00:06:14.445 --> 00:06:16.887
Now, this is a professional camera.

00:06:16.887 --> 00:06:21.490
And as such, it’s capable of reading most of the encoded information.

00:06:21.490 --> 00:06:25.419
It will even rewind the film on its own when you shoot the last frame.

00:06:25.714 --> 00:06:28.846
However, it doesn’t read the film’s exposure tolerance.

00:06:29.414 --> 00:06:34.684
Frankly, I don't know how much help that would be
for any camera to know outside of weird edge cases.

00:06:35.063 --> 00:06:39.720
But anyway, not everybody has a professional camera,
and Kodak knew that.

00:06:39.720 --> 00:06:42.233
So, when they designed this code scheme,

00:06:42.233 --> 00:06:51.887
they arranged the information so that a cost-cut consumer camera could set itself correctly for any speed between ISO 25 and 3200.

00:06:51.887 --> 00:06:55.587
This Yashica Samurai, for instance, is…

00:06:55.587 --> 00:06:58.314
a very weird camera, don’t worry too much about that —

00:06:58.314 --> 00:07:03.177
this is a half-frame SLR from 1987.

00:07:03.177 --> 00:07:09.412
Uh, it's definitely pretty high-end but also definitely still a consumer camera.

00:07:09.412 --> 00:07:16.752
And we’ll see that in the film compartment
there are only four contacts compared to the T90’s eight.

00:07:16.752 --> 00:07:24.183
Actually, the T90 has 16; Canon used a pair
of contacts for every bit of the code it could read.

00:07:24.183 --> 00:07:27.741
Which is weird because, like, the cassette is metal

00:07:27.741 --> 00:07:33.060
and it was designed so that the two patches closest to the spool post
are always bare.

00:07:33.060 --> 00:07:36.500
That’s why they don’t convey information,
they’re just a ground plane,

00:07:36.500 --> 00:07:44.081
and the camera only needs to check for continuity across
that ground and a single contact point at each bit location.

00:07:44.081 --> 00:07:49.291
The T90 doesn’t use the ground and instead
reads every data bit location individually.

00:07:50.364 --> 00:07:54.410
I don’t know why Canon overcomplicated this but anyway…

00:07:54.410 --> 00:08:01.789
The Samurai, with its four contacts (one of which is ground)
is only checking the first three bits of the first row.

00:08:01.789 --> 00:08:03.078
That’s all.

00:08:03.078 --> 00:08:07.648
That gives us 8 possible combinations which might not seem like enough

00:08:07.648 --> 00:08:11.410
but by the time DX encoding was a thing,

00:08:11.410 --> 00:08:18.722
consumer films were generally sold in doubles in speed, with 100 and 200 being perhaps the most common films,

00:08:18.722 --> 00:08:21.509
400 pretty common but less so,

00:08:21.509 --> 00:08:23.729
800 your “sports/action” film,

00:08:23.729 --> 00:08:26.561
and 1600 being pretty exotic.

00:08:26.561 --> 00:08:30.945
And see, even though we only have three bits
representing eight combinations,

00:08:30.945 --> 00:08:34.545
we can start at 25 and through doubling get to…

00:08:34.545 --> 00:08:35.220
50,

00:08:35.220 --> 00:08:36.010
100,

00:08:36.010 --> 00:08:36.665
200,

00:08:36.665 --> 00:08:37.359
400,

00:08:37.359 --> 00:08:38.088
800,

00:08:38.088 --> 00:08:39.379
1600,

00:08:39.379 --> 00:08:40.284
3200.

00:08:41.504 --> 00:08:42.707
That's eight!

00:08:42.707 --> 00:08:53.797
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.

00:08:53.797 --> 00:08:56.667
Speeds that pros might use with regularity,

00:08:56.667 --> 00:09:00.930
but casual photographers were unlikely to run across at the grocery store.

00:09:00.930 --> 00:09:04.170
This website I found has a chart of all the combinations

00:09:04.170 --> 00:09:12.353
and we’ll see that the first three bits are identical across three speeds and only change at the next whole stop in sensitivity.

00:09:12.353 --> 00:09:16.890
That makes bits 4 and 5 essentially irrelevant for consumer cameras.

00:09:16.890 --> 00:09:22.219
And here’s the other thing: if you mess up an exposure by a third of a stop

00:09:23.039 --> 00:09:24.800
it doesn’t really matter.

00:09:24.800 --> 00:09:28.828
Print film, especially, has amazing exposure latitude

00:09:28.828 --> 00:09:36.352
and so really if you were to expose an ISO 1000 film as if it were 800 speed film...

00:09:36.352 --> 00:09:37.841
you wouldn’t notice.

00:09:37.841 --> 00:09:43.107
Slide film needs exposure to be pretty on-the-nose
so it’s harder to get away with this,

00:09:43.107 --> 00:09:46.273
but negative film is generally very lenient.

00:09:46.273 --> 00:09:51.480
These films are all coded as having +3 -1 sensitivity,

00:09:51.480 --> 00:09:56.963
so you can screw up exposure by a full stop in either direction
and be fine.

00:09:56.963 --> 00:10:01.173
ProImage 100, interestingly, can only take two stops of overexposure.

00:10:01.173 --> 00:10:02.283
The weenie.

00:10:02.999 --> 00:10:08.439
Oh, and while it might be nice for the camera
to know how many exposures are on a roll of film…

00:10:09.196 --> 00:10:11.750
well, it’s not exactly critical info.

00:10:11.750 --> 00:10:16.740
There’s little point in complexifying a
point-and-shoot consumer camera to that extent.

00:10:17.035 --> 00:10:21.219
You’re just gonna shoot ‘till you get to the end of the roll then hit rewind -

00:10:21.219 --> 00:10:25.347
plus most of the time you could squeeze another exposure or
two out of a roll so

00:10:25.347 --> 00:10:29.737
you wouldn’t want the thing to rewind at “the end” anyway!

00:10:29.737 --> 00:10:34.685
And thanks to print film’s generous exposure tolerance
(particularly with over-exposure)

00:10:34.685 --> 00:10:42.284
some other camera manufacturers would cost-cut
even further and only look for continuity in one spot.

00:10:42.284 --> 00:10:49.046
This Minolta Memory Maker 2000 is a cheap
little plastic camera that my parents got me when I was

00:10:49.046 --> 00:10:50.800
maybe eight?

00:10:50.800 --> 00:10:54.000
I was young enough to go nuts with a blue sharpie and one point.

00:10:54.000 --> 00:10:57.872
Anyway, look inside its…

00:10:57.872 --> 00:11:01.293
backwards film compartment (that’s distressing)

00:11:01.293 --> 00:11:07.336
and you’ll find there are only two contacts pressing on the 3rd and 4th bit.

00:11:07.336 --> 00:11:09.785
If we go back to that chart I found,

00:11:09.785 --> 00:11:16.232
we’ll see that those two patches are never connected together until we get to ISO 400,

00:11:16.232 --> 00:11:22.552
after which point they remain connected for 800, 1600, and 3200 speed film.

00:11:22.552 --> 00:11:25.575
So basically, if these contacts aren’t bridged,

00:11:25.575 --> 00:11:28.965
which would be the case for any film less than 400 speed,

00:11:28.965 --> 00:11:34.863
the camera treats whatever film you put in it as if it were maybe ISO 100.

00:11:34.863 --> 00:11:39.541
You probably won’t notice at least with print film because of the exposure latitude.

00:11:39.541 --> 00:11:46.809
But if you load 400 or 800 speed film, well now it knows you’ve got some fast stuff in there!

00:11:46.809 --> 00:11:51.008
It’ll have to, like, speed up the shutter a bit!

00:11:51.008 --> 00:11:56.442
I would guess it probably just treats everything
“fast” like 800 speed,

00:11:56.442 --> 00:12:01.989
deliberately underexposing 400 speed film by a stop to get faster shutter speeds.

00:12:01.989 --> 00:12:05.489
And hey, as imprecise as this is,

00:12:05.489 --> 00:12:08.471
this did indeed work decently well.

00:12:08.471 --> 00:12:15.158
Its terrible plastic lens meant the images never looked that great
but they were exposed correctly!

00:12:15.158 --> 00:12:24.399
If you should happen to find ISO 500, 1000, 2000, or 4000 film, though,
they’ll get wildly overexposed in this camera.

00:12:24.399 --> 00:12:29.320
I don’t think Kodak intended the DX code
to be used as this camera uses it.

00:12:29.320 --> 00:12:32.774
I’m pretty sure this is what you might call a hack.

00:12:32.774 --> 00:12:37.920
As time went on, all of the film manufacturers
got onboard with this encoding scheme.

00:12:37.920 --> 00:12:41.705
From Ilford, to Fuji, to Kodak, to…

00:12:41.705 --> 00:12:42.495
others probably

00:12:42.495 --> 00:12:50.173
you could eventually expect any new film cassette to have these little boxes on them so your camera knew what it was.

00:12:50.173 --> 00:12:56.321
And now, this is becoming a bit of a problem
for many cameras from the ‘80s and ‘90s.

00:12:56.321 --> 00:13:03.820
See, lots of cameras — including this Yashica Samurai — have no ability
to set the ISO manually.

00:13:03.820 --> 00:13:07.710
When they were new, you could easily ask “why would you want that?”

00:13:07.710 --> 00:13:11.680
but now that film photography is the niche hobby it is,

00:13:11.680 --> 00:13:18.094
well there are plenty of films available which don’t have DX encoding on their cassettes.

00:13:18.094 --> 00:13:25.200
The big guys like Kodak, Fuji, and Ilford
are still making new film cassettes with full DX compatibility.

00:13:25.200 --> 00:13:30.414
And luckily the folks behind Cinestill are also sourcing proper cassettes.

00:13:30.414 --> 00:13:36.343
But other less expensive options like Freestyle’s Arista.edu line of films...

00:13:36.343 --> 00:13:38.725
Well, they're missing it.

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

00:13:44.004 --> 00:13:48.680
which often re-use cassettes - which to be clear, is a really cool idea!

00:13:48.680 --> 00:13:53.647
But they’ll be forced cover up the DX code
on whatever cassettes they get their hands on

00:13:53.647 --> 00:13:56.604
because it will usually be wrong.

00:13:56.604 --> 00:14:03.157
We are also starting to see plastic film cassettes
which can’t rely on the cassette itself to be a common ground plane -

00:14:03.157 --> 00:14:06.466
wait, was Canon thinking that far ahead?

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.

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,

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.

00:14:28.734 --> 00:14:30.811
That’s not a bad strategy necessarily

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

00:14:37.645 --> 00:14:40.389
or just happens to be 100 speed.

00:14:40.389 --> 00:14:46.468
And I’m lucky that I was able to find documentation
on what this will do with a blank film cassette.

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.

00:14:51.911 --> 00:14:54.272
Luckily, if you want to use such a camera,

00:14:54.272 --> 00:14:57.454
you can now get DX code stickers.

00:14:57.454 --> 00:15:03.738
That’s right, folks are making stickers now
which are electrically conductive and in just the right spots

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.

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.

00:15:20.217 --> 00:15:23.899
But it’s nice to know that that option is out there regardless.

00:15:24.257 --> 00:15:26.720
Anyway, I think that’s about it.

00:15:26.720 --> 00:15:29.526
Now look, I didn’t whip out the slider for B-roll.

00:15:29.526 --> 00:15:31.109
I didn’t do any research.

00:15:31.109 --> 00:15:34.312
I didn’t even warm up the set before I started shooting this.

00:15:34.312 --> 00:15:37.241
This was a low-effort production, alright?

00:15:37.241 --> 00:15:38.330
I phoned it in.

00:15:38.330 --> 00:15:40.410
This was in my back pocket for years.

00:15:40.410 --> 00:15:42.552
Just one day I was gonna talk about this.

00:15:42.552 --> 00:15:46.147
Well here we are, the video’s made, it didn’t
take that long,

00:15:46.147 --> 00:15:47.783
now go have your turkey or whatever.

00:15:48.632 --> 00:15:51.203
♫ 10-bit smooth jazz ♫

00:15:53.307 --> 00:15:57.079
…was available in a buncha different varieties ah deh…

00:15:57.458 --> 00:15:59.216
Well I screwed that up already!

00:15:59.216 --> 00:16:04.220
…was designed so that the two patches closest
to the spool post are always bare.

00:16:04.220 --> 00:16:06.180
That’s why they don’t contay…

00:16:07.526 --> 00:16:09.369
I did it again!

00:16:09.369 --> 00:16:12.000
Convey is the word I meant to say.

00:16:12.000 --> 00:16:13.930
[ guttural yell ]

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.

00:16:18.930 --> 00:16:20.852
[belches]

00:16:20.852 --> 00:16:23.380
I don’t know why Canon oversimplified this.

00:16:23.380 --> 00:16:25.329
I said “oversimplified?” Are you kidding me?

00:16:25.329 --> 00:16:28.170
The word is overcomplicated you… massive dingo.

00:16:28.170 --> 00:16:32.770
…same stuff used in the movie business,
spooled and encased in a simple round cassette…

00:16:32.770 --> 00:16:33.808
[ deflates ]

00:16:35.470 --> 00:16:36.505
Pooooop

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...

00:16:43.124 --> 00:16:45.448
yeah, well, you ain't getting much here.

00:16:46.184 --> 00:16:48.396
Just this.

00:16:48.670 --> 00:16:50.979
This is all you get.

00:16:51.291 --> 00:16:52.749
Good day.