Film Photography resources

[Zach]

Hey folks! I just celebrated my birthday this week (the ripe age of 24) and I received one of the coolest gifts of my life. My uncle gave me his old Nikon F3 with a collection of manual nikon and tamron lenses. 

 

I know not the first thing about film. I got into photography and video 2 years ago with a t2i and have been using the 5D since december. 

 

I am wondering, can someone here point me in the right direction for how to get started with film? What are the  benefits, how do I use this thing, where the heck do I even buy film? I'd be super appreciative! This is of course for photography only 

 

[brucker]

happy birthday, and oooh, nice bit of kit you have there,... wish i had an uncle that was into photography :P

 

there are loads of videos on youtube about how to load/unload film so you might want to watch a few first,.. its easy as piss so dont worry.

 

basically, there are 2 types of film that most people shoot,... c41 colour negative and e6 reversal/slide film.

 

c41 is very forgiving, and you dont need your metering to be spot on to get a decent image. also most places can still process it for you in under an hour. some places will even do a CD for you. low res scans but still nice to see your stuff without having to have prints done.

 

e6 is slide film,.. a bit pricier and development times depend on where you are,.. in the a big city you might get same day processing, in the countryside you might need to wait a few days as they send it out. e6 is less forgiving, you want to make sure that your metering is decent.

 

having said that,.. c41 under exposed turns out muddy,... you know that 'vintage' hazy crappy film look? thats under exposed c41. e6 under exposed is moody and dark with inky blacks. c41 over exposed can be powdery and pastelly, while e6 will just go all white. 

 

c41 you can over expose more without losing too much of the scene, while e6 you can underexpose more and it wont go muddy hazy brown,... it'll just be black.

 

i would suggest you play with c41 first,.. kodak gold is pretty cheap and i think can still be found almost anywhere. if you're after a 400 speed film fuji's superia range is a good choice. 

 

i'm sure a few will recommend you shoot black and white, but again, depending on where you are, it can take a while to process, which kinda takes the fun out of it. there is a kodak c41 black and white,...kodak BW400CN,.. is alright, but cant replace the loverly tri-x.

 

after choosing your film, you load it and tell the camera what iso film you're using,.. and then you go shoot. maybe try a few in full auto, then aperture priority, then shutter priority and see which suits your shooting style best. if you know your exposure you could just go full manual.

 

benefits of film? imagine if you could swap out your sensor,... its like that,.. every film has its own character and you can pick and choose depending on what you're shooting.

 

there's alot to learn and flickr groups are very helpful, as well as youtube channels,... but thing to do tho is to just go out and shoot as you need to learn the camera, and more importantly the film that you're shooting. try and stick with one kind of film till you get to know how it performs, then switch it up later. 

 

if you like your colour, wait till you shoot e6, you wont want to shoot anything else,... cept maybe medium format e6  :P

 

have fun!

[Axel]

I second this, and I have another point for you. Decide, whether you want your photos
- be enlarged by a laboratory.
- be analog originals enlarged by yourself in a darkroom.
- as analog sources for digital post.

For the last option, you will need a high quality film scanner.

[Julian]

I don't want to burst your bubble, but with current digital camera's, there aren't any benefits in shooting 35mm film photography. Except for the nostalgia and the 'look'. In terms of resolution or even dynamic range, you're not going to beat the 5D.

 

Be sure to get a Nikon F to EOS adapter so you can enjoy those Nikkor lenses on your T2i / 5D! ;)

[Zach]

I don't want to burst your bubble, but with current digital camera's, there aren't any benefits in shooting 35mm film photography. Except for the nostalgia and the 'look'. In terms of resolution or even dynamic range, you're not going to beat the 5D.

 

Be sure to get a Nikon F to EOS adapter so you can enjoy those Nikkor lenses on your T2i / 5D! ;)

No worries! I'm not expecting it to be life-changing but I know that it is popular and just wanted to learn a bit more about why :) I am just interested in the process

 

Thankfully I already had a couple adapters on hand! I received a 50 1.2 and wow is it stunning! 

[nigelbb]

I don't want to burst your bubble, but with current digital camera's, there aren't any benefits in shooting 35mm film photography. Except for the nostalgia and the 'look'. In terms of resolution or even dynamic range, you're not going to beat the 5D.

I can only concur. Last year in a fit of nostalgia I bought a Canon EOS 1V (the last & best 35mm camera they ever made) so that I could use it with all my lovely EF lenses. Frankly the results are disappointing. I had forgotten quite how small 35mm negatives are & even with FP4 Plus B&W film the grain is really noticeable once you enlarge any significant amount. Compared to my 5D3 the image is very soft & you lose a lot of flexibility as you are stuck with low ISO & the film speed & white balance of whichever film stock you loaded your camera with. The camera looks & feels great in the hand though & amazingly at 10fps can shoot burst mode faster than my 5D3.

[Axel]

So there. Many came to that conclusion. There still can be something special to the old analog way, but one has to be aware of the costs and the considerable ecological damage caused by all the stinking chemicals.

 

As far as photography is concerned, we seem to be through with analog. How long will it take for 'film'?

[Zach]

Another question - 

 

I'm not about to go build a darkroom but would like to edit and get some large prints done. Are there places I can go to use a high end scanner? I have lightroom and would like to play around with film scans again just out of curiosity. 

 

I am heading out to the country on spring break this week so this should be a fun time to try it out. Thanks everyone for the answers so far! I downloaded the manual and watched a video on the camera and it seems to all make sense :) 

[brucker]

depending on your digital, with a macro lens, a lightbox and a tripod i've had colleagues print decent quality A3 from 35mm 'scans'. you could definitely play around with those, and for the web its fine. bigger an yeah you'll want a dedicated scanner.

 

make friends with someone that owns a drum scanner :P   

[Zach]

Just got my first set of prints back. I went to CVS and just got some 4X6's. The color was pretty blah but I assume thats because I went to CVS :) I really just wanted to get my feet wet. I have to say the process of shooting, not knowing what you're getting, and waiting to see the prints on the way home was quite fun. I cheated with the exposure this time around and just figured it out on my 5D in live view. 

 

It'll turn into a nice hobby i'm sure but I can't see myself dedicating too much time to it. I might try to fill a roll at each wedding I shoot and try to give it to the bride/groom at the end of the reception. I think that'd be a fun souvenir. 

[nigelbb]

Interesting that you should shoot weddings. I saw a photographer at a wedding fair the other day & his USP was that he shot all on film. He had some nice large prints & albums but the style was more blurry & arty than what we are used to nowadays. Of course the danger if you get a taste for film photography is to realise why wedding photographers used to use medium format cameras with a negative size 3-4x the size of a 35mm negative then discover that while a Hasselblad is still very expensive that a used Mamiya 645 can found found on eBay at a very affordable price. It's a slippery slope...

[/p/]

I don't want to burst your bubble, but with current digital camera's, there aren't any benefits in shooting 35mm film photography. Except for the nostalgia and the 'look'. In terms of resolution or even dynamic range, you're not going to beat the 5D.

 

Be sure to get a Nikon F to EOS adapter so you can enjoy those Nikkor lenses on your T2i / 5D! ;)

 

>Implying any digital camera has better DR than 35mm film

 

Sure IF you are doing a specific shot that allows you to stack exposure (that's an incredibly big IF) then you could capture better DR........ However, no FF digital camera currently has the DR of 35mm film, the DR of film is right about 20 stops, while even the best and most expensive digital FF cameras are still several stops less than that. 

 

And no shooting RAW doesn't magically increase the DR that a sensor can capture, RAW will give you a little more play with pulling back "lost" info as opposed to jpg however the sensors are still several stops worse than film, after that it's no longer possible to bring detail back because it doesn't exist. 

 

So no, in terms of dynamic range a 5D (or 1DX or D4) will not "beat" any roll of 35mm film.

[brucker]

@Zach: what film were you using?

 

i was going to mention this but i figured that it would be better to mention after your first roll,... not that i'm trying to 'teach' you or anything,... you might have really liked your first roll after all.

 

for c41, if its 400 speed film, tell the camera its 200, 100, 50 and so on,... 

 

for e6 you want to under expose a bit so 100iso at 120, 400 at 500 ish, and so on.

 

that tends to bring out the colours a bit more. 

[brucker]

@nigelbb slippery slope indeed,... 

 

linhoff technica,...

 

[Zach]

@Zach: what film were you using?

 

i was going to mention this but i figured that it would be better to mention after your first roll,... not that i'm trying to 'teach' you or anything,... you might have really liked your first roll after all.

 

for c41, if its 400 speed film, tell the camera its 200, 100, 50 and so on,... 

 

for e6 you want to under expose a bit so 100iso at 120, 400 at 500 ish, and so on.

 

that tends to bring out the colours a bit more. 

Your teaching is welcome info! It was c41 400 speed, I believe. Brand, I can't remember. I'm currently shooting a roll of Kodak and I'll be trying a black and white roll next. 

 

I'll mess around with that and see what I come up with! 

[jgharding]

I recently bought a Contax RTS II because I already had the lenses from video shooting.

 

It is really fun and there is something different about it, it's soft and comforting, it simultaneously has more detail, yet in a softer way.Good detail, if you will, not surgical detail. You could probably scan up to 150MP with very slow 35mm film and still see new things... beautiful!

 

You do learn good discipline too.

 

You learn what we've lost and appreciate what we've gained with digital, all you lose is money.

 

If you want your own scanner the Reflecta Proscan 7200 is good, there's a software package you can buy to improve it a lot too.

 

I think the result is about 16MP or 18MP if I remember rightly.

 

My favorite film is 3200 or 1600 speed black & white, I love grain more than 50ASA studio film. Some people hate it, but if I wanted it clean I'd shoot RAW digital!

 

If you aren't looking for idiosyncrasies and want maximum control, shoot stills with a 5D and L glass. As far as I'm concerned most of that glass could strip the life out of a streetfight, and make a sincere moment look like a cereal advert. But I digress!

 

If you want some unpredictable fun, get on film!

 

Not that film is unpredictable or uncontrollable if you know what you're doing, but I don't... ;)

[dahlfors]

Personally I'm using the Epson V700 scanner for scanning negatives & dia. I rarely ever shoot any film anymore, but I got lots of film yet to scan... 

 

Epson V700 is not of the quality of a drum scanner, but it produces great results. Good thing about it, is that you can scan medium format film as well if you start shooting that. There's also a few cheaper models from Epson that scan in a little smaller dpi, but with roughly the same features.

 

If you get the 3rd party software Vuescan you can also do multipass scans into .DNG format - and use Lightroom RAW processing on your scans. This is especially useful on photos with a high dynamic range.

 

The F3 is a great piece of a camera. Give it some service and the camera will outlive all the current DSLR's :) The prime lenses that Nikon built in that era are usually good quality lenses.

 

 

/p/: From my experience with negative film, I don't find that negative film has that much more useable image data than what the best modern sensors can capture, like Nikon D800 with 14.4 EV steps: http://goo.gl/D0Xu4

 

This fellow comes to the conclusion of around 15 usable EV steps for film, although he mentions a theoretical 20 EV steps: http://archive.bigben.id.au/tutorials/360/technical/hdri/

 

But yes, I wouldn't say digital sensors yet beat film in that regard - but they are good enough that it doesn't really make a difference (unless you really could get 20 EV steps out of film in some special way. I haven't seen any ability to push that much out of any film I've shot).

[Zach]

Okay, this has been a fun learning experience. Not nearly as hard as I thought. 

 

Went on spring break last week with some B&W and color film, all 400. I also used a really old strip of film that my uncle had left in his camera bag. That was maybe a mistake, haha. Lots of artifacts and scratches on the film, but still a cool learning experience! 

 

Heres my favorite of the week. I was really surprised at how much room I have to play with in post with the jpegs from a CD.