Arlington Heights, circa 1940. My building is there, in the downtown area.

More aerial photos of Cook County from the same survey here

Via rubbishgoeshere

This thought came into my head during a photo walk this evening. When comparing actual surface area of film, do you get more from a roll of medium format or 35mm? I was shooting Ilford Delta 3200, a fairly expensive film. B&H sells a 36 shot roll of 35mm for $7.07 and a 120 roll for $4.69.

Clearly the 120 rolls is cheaper, but can only yield between 4 and 16 shots depending on the frame size. So the photos can come out to between $1/shot and roughly $0.29/shot. The figure for a 6×6 camera (12 shots) is $0.39/shot.

The 35mm on the other hand yields somewhere between 36 and 39 shots (unless you have a half frame or panoramic camera of some sort, but those are few and far between), so the cost per shot is about $0.20.

That makes each shot only about half the cost of a medium format shot. Not a far cry since you get better detail out of medium format, but these numbers still don’t answer the original question.

So let’s get to it. A 35mm frame is 24mm by 36mm, or 864 square mm. A 6×6 frame is actually 56mm by 56mm, or 3136 square mm.

So 864 square mm times 36 frames = 31104 square mm for 35mm film

And 3136 square mm times 12 frames = 37632 quare mm for 120 film

The surface area cost for 35mm then is $0.000227 per square mm, and is $0.000125 per square mm for 120 (Yeah, yeah, who cares about significant digits). This makes the total surface area cost of 120 roughly half of 35mm. So take your pick. Cost per frame is half for 35mm and cost per square mm of surface area is half for 120.

(This leaves out the fact that you may get a bad or missing frame every so often but maybe you need to learn to use your camera. This also leaves out the fact that most films don’t have such a price difference between 120 and 35mm. Maybe I’ll do a comparison of Tmax or Portra too.)

B&H has been out of their Tetenal C-41 Press Kit for way too long, which was starting to scare me a bit. I love these press kits because they can save me roughly $120 on film processing (figuring ~$8/roll times 16 medium format rolls and a few 35mm rolls).

Luckily it seems that Freestyle Photo has the cure. From what I can tell this is the same exact kit only rebranded as Unicolor. Granted the Tetenal kit isn’t really Tetenal anymore, it was Jobo, so maybe it was sold again. Whatever the case, it’s nice to have another place to buy it.

It also looks like Calumet has the Tetenal kit, but their stock is questionable, and I don’t feel like calling.

Someday I will print and frame this on my wall.

During the month of August 2009 I am displaying 18 photos at the Arlington Heights Memorial Library in Arlington Heights, IL. The photos will be displayed on a wall near the checkout desk (by the Dunton Avenue entrance).

The library is located at:
500 North Dunton Avenue
Arlington Heights, IL 60004

Get directions from Google Maps

Come out and see the photos if you have time. I can also meet you at the library (I live just a few blocks away) and give more details on each photo if you’d like, just let me know ahead of time via e-mail (john@photoentropy.com) Note that I work weekdays during the day.

The hours for the library are:
Monday – Friday: 9am – 10pm
Saturday: 9am – 5:30pm
Sunday: 12pm – 5:30pm

And now for the sales pitch. I don’t have room in my small apartment to store these prints, so please purchase one. Prices start at $60 and include framing. For more information, go to http://www.photoentropy.com/ahml or send me an e-mail me at john@photoentropy.com.

After a 2 month-long lull in photo taking I finally developed film from 3 different recent photoing sessions. I now have around 50 photos that I don’t know what to do with. I’m already posted on my photoblog for the next 2 months because I figured I wouldn’t have much time in the coming months with the pending wedding and honeymoon. I could put them on flickr, but I really don’t like flickr. That’s another story though, which I’ll write about when I have time. It’s a shame, but I think the photos will have to wait until August or September before they hit the blog. It’s nice to have a backlog sometimes, but it would also be nice to be able to post photos closer to the date I took them. The downside of using film…

Above is one of the few good shots I took at the photo show I did last weekend with Yvette, Vallen, and Mike. This one was taken after everyone had left and probably after we were done cleaning everything up. I accidentally used a roll of film that was a bit old. Luckily everyone else took photos with their crazy reliable digital cameras.

The show was a ton of fun and I would love to do it again. Getting ready for it was stressful, but also incredibly fun. It’s nice to see photos blown up and framed. They look a lot better than when they’re just on the computer monitor.

I met up with Yvette, Vallen and Mike again today to pick up our photos. It was pretty anticlimactic. We got there, talked for a couple minutes, took down photos, talked for a few more minutes, then parted ways. Thanks to the 3 of them for both doing the show, and including me in the craziness. Thanks to Archie for setting everything up. And thanks finally to everyone that came.

On a side note, this photo got a new title at the show: Baucis and Philemon.

It feels strange when people tell me the like my photos. It feels even stranger when people are interested in interviewing me about photography. This has happened twice in the past few months, 1 television interview and 1 blog interview. I’m not sure I came off that well in either one but at least it’s some good press.

A few weeks ago I was chosen as a Blog of the week on the Chicago’s Best Blogs blog on the Chicago Tribune. See that here:
http://weblogs.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chicagosbestblogs/2008/08/blogger_of_the_week_photoentro.html (no longer available)

A few months ago Mike Chu and I did an interview for the WCIU show 26 N. Halsted. See that here:

(Watch on YouTube)

I love old photos, especially when I can relate to them in some way. I could spend hours looking at old photos of Chicago, Minneapolis, or even Arlington Heights, IL. So last night when one of my neighbors brought out an appraisal from 1980 with a bunch of photos of the building I live in, I wanted to see more. I had done some searches before but never really turned up many results for Arlington Heights. I then decided to check out http://www.digitalpast.org Illinois Digital Archives. I had visited the site a couple years ago after seeing something about it at the library or local cable channel. It didn’t have a lot of content on it at the time, but now there is a plethora of old photos. Below are a handful of old photos that I found, including some of the apartment where I currently live.

1860: Union Hotel

This photo is showing the corner of Dunton Avenue and Davis Street. The hotel is bordered on the other side by Campbell Steet. Apparently this is one of the oldest photos of the city.

1911: Campbell Street (Facing West)

This is the oldest photo I could find of the street I live on. This is taken facing west near Evergreen Avenue. The street down the middle is Campbell Street and on the right is Davis Street. My apartment building would be on the left side, but it hasn’t been built yet. The building on the right, between Campbell and Davis is Peoples State Bank.

1917: Campbell Street (Facing Southwest)

This was probably taken from right in front of Peoples State Bank (see previous photo). It looks like the road has been paved by this time. My apartment building still hasn’t been built. It will eventually be where the Real Estate office is in this photo.

1928: Campbell Street (Facing Southeast)

This was taken from the northwest corner of Campbell Street and Dunton Avenue. I’m going to dispute the date on this one. The website said 1928, but it also says the next photo was from 1928. You’ll notice that the Real Estate office is in this photo whereas the next photo has a completely different building in its place.

1928: Campbell Street (Facing Southwest)

I live in the building that has the National Tea Co sign. This is the earliest photo I can find with my building in it. It replaced the Real Estate building from the previous photos.

1940s: Campbell Street (Facing West)

This is Campbell Street, facing west from around Evergreen Avenue. It doesn’t look like much has changed since the 1928 photo (aside from different business names and cars). Peoples State Bank (right) and Davis Street (right) are both gone now, replaced by a JP Morgan Chase branch.

1960: Davis Street and Dunton Avenue (Aerial View) – With Campbell Street in the Picture Too

The final photo I found is an aerial view. The city has changed quite a bit since this was taken. My building is near the top left. Again, the triangular building and the diagonal street in the middle are gone, though the parking lot on the far left remains. The bottom right section of the diagonal street, Davis Street, remains, and the buildings on the bottom right are essentially unchanged. The top left section is very different. There is currently a strip mall-type development there, with a movie theatre and the houses have been replaced with a highrise. Other changes have taken place, but nothing that drastically change this view.