Woodwind players don't get it.

[bloke]

Most people I know who use plastic reeds on single reed instruments do switch between instruments a bunch for most of their gigs. I'm being really redundant, but this includes Broadway pit work - where someone's playing five different instruments or even six, and it also includes someone playing in a jazz quintet, quartet, or trio where either they are one horn with a keyboard and bass or they are one of two horn players with a little rhythm section and are trying to make the band sound more diverse.

[tofu]

.

[WC8KCY]

Hm, I never noticed that, but may not have played 45 minutes uninterrupted on them. I hardly play regular clarinet at all, and bass clarinet only rarely as kind of a gag. And I believe in both cases they're old Fibracell reeds, and there have been changes in that stuff. The bigger the reed, the more appealing plastic will be. Cane reeds for big sax and clarinet family were a nightmare. Inconsistent, from one to the next, from one day to the next for the same reed, etc., while I don't recall any real trouble with the common soprano clarinet.

As for film - yeah, I've got a pile of old negatives that I keep around for no particular reason. Some LF [hi, Ben], some MF. I believe I still have the Rolleiflex, after the camera store buyer's offer seemed far too low, but no idea what to do with it.

Eh, soprano clarinet reeds can be temperamental, too--the worst, in my experience, being Vandoren Traditional. My favorite reeds, all of which are no-fuss or seldom need fixing:

E-flat clarinet, cane: Vandoren V21
B-flat clarinet, cane, classical: Vandoren V21
B-flat clarinet, cane, general-purpose: Olivieri Elite
B-flat clarinet, cane, big band/jazz: Alexander Superial
B-flat clarinet, synthetic: Fibracell Premier (red printed sticker)
Alto clarinet/also sax, cane: La Voz alto sax
Alto clarinet/alto sax, synthetic: Fibracell Original (black printed sticker)
Bass clarinet, cane: La Voz tenor sax
Bassoon, synthetic: Emerald

Years ago, I got a Canon 5600F flatbed scanner that does film scanning and spent many memorable hours running my old negatives through it. Time and again, I was gobsmacked at how much better the scans were versus the prints from the lab when the film was originally developed. It was literally like seeing all those images for the first time, and I was able to turn many crummy shots into breathtaking photographs after post-processing. I've made some gorgeous 16x20 prints out of 4800 dpi scans of my negatives, and have even sold a few prints for good money.

Whenever I shoot film now, I just have the negatives developed, scan 'em, edit the images, and then send the post-processed scans to the lab for now-flawless prints. I get the unmistakable, classic look of film along with all the exciting possibilities of digital photography.

If you have a lot of old negatives shot with high-resolution films such as Ektar 25, Kodak's excellent Portra 160, and good consumer-grade films such as Kodak Gold 100 and Fuji Superia 100/200, I urge you to get a decent scanner and go on a photographic treasure hunt of your own. The greatest photographs you've ever taken might be hiding in that pile of old negatives--and you may have never seen them in all their glory due to poor photofinishing.

[donn]

Actually I had an Agfa Duoscan HD, which should have been good for something like that but for various reasons wasn't. Originally I was unable to get good balances for the negative films I had. Later I came back to it and got better at that, but at that point the thing had developed some banding problems, so the output was more interesting but worthless.

I have a cellular phone now, so it's all good. I couldn't stand Portra or other varieties of Vericolor. Most often used Agfa Optima.

[WC8KCY]

Actually I had an Agfa Duoscan HD, which should have been good for something like that but for various reasons wasn't. Originally I was unable to get good balances for the negative films I had. Later I came back to it and got better at that, but at that point the thing had developed some banding problems, so the output was more interesting but worthless.

I have a cellular phone now, so it's all good. I couldn't stand Portra or other varieties of Vericolor. Most often used Agfa Optima.

Drifting off-topic...

My first scanner was likewise an Agfa, and it didn't last very long before developing banding issues.

Our local camera shop, which closed up shop in January 2020, had Agfa photofinishing equipment. When Agfa film went out of production in 2005, they bought quite a stockpile of it and the last of it finally ran out around 2009. The old guy who ran the shop made it a point to keep photography fun and affordable for everyone, so in addition to Agfa Vista film at six rolls for nine bucks, there was always a bin of barely-expired film for 99 cents a roll. I've shot a lot of Vista 400 and a few rolls of 800--and still have some in my fridge--but never got to try Optima, which notably came with many of the Leica point-and-shoot cameras. I always thought the neutral contrast on images taken with Agfa film was more lifelike than the exaggerated contrast engineered into many Fuji and most Kodak films.

[donn]

Hm. To my eye, contrast seemed higher with Optima 100 than any MF Kodak or Fuji color negative film I tried. Or maybe I wasn't separating it enough from saturation, as the two seem to be closely related. Speaking of which, in MF I also used a fair amount of Ultra 50, which would be cartoonish in some cases but incredible on a foggy morning.