I've been a photo-enthusiast of the digital variety for some time now, and while I love the simplicity of digital; being able to gun a moment down and decide later what the decisive moment was, I have slowly been developing an itch. I own a 5DMk3 with a variety of lenses, all AF, most IS, and I'm thinking this is all too easy. Stick it in Aperture or Time priority and it will produce some stunning results. Add a 32Gb SD/CF card and i can pull off nearly 1000 RAW files which I can tweak in Lightroom after. I can crop/ adjust levels/ rotate/ sharpen/ etc. I want to get back to basics. I want to have to focus for myself, I want to have to decide what aperture to use, or what shutter speed for a given situation. I want to have only 24/36 shots. I think this is one area that I have been spoilt by digital cameras. I lack the instinctual knowledge of how to judge a scene and recognise the ISO/f-stop/shutter speed needed for a decent exposure. The itch I speak of started when I got my dad's old Canon A-1 off the loft two months ago. Its a cracking camera. A real classic. I loved the heft (brass construction) and the mechanical nature of the lenses. Being older than I am, naturally the battery was flat. I ordered a replacement off ebay. In the two week wait, I dutifully cleaned and lubricated it. I even replaced all the perished light seals. I really got attached to it in that time. However, when the battery arrived, I found the thing was dead. The shutter would not fire at all. I was gutted. Anyway, today, I bought a mint Canon A-1 off eBay. I have been watching for a recently serviced unit so I don't need to go through all the hassle again. Along with it I bought a Helios 44-2 58mm f2 soviet lens (plus a M42 to FD adapter). These lenses are built like tanks and offer some truly unique bokeh. While I'm eagerly awaiting their arrival, has anyone any hints and tips for shooting film vs digital? Alternatively, can anyone recommend any good books on the subject? Who on BT uses film? Film is actually making something of a resurgence, especially for black & white photography. What kit do you use if you're into this kinda thing? TL;DR: wanted a new challenge, got a 35mm film camera. Any tips/ recommend any books/articles?
I know what you mean, having been taking photos for the last 30 years. I have a Nikon DSLR which like your 5D Mk3 is great, but sometimes feel that there's something missing. I am still using film on one camera, my beloved XPan panoramic, which is so smooth to use. These days it is quite hard to get images processed and printed from film, other than color neg snaps; the world has moved on rapidly away from wet processing if you don't do your own. My compromise is to use Fuji Neopan 400CN (similar to Ilford XP2) which I have C41 processed at the local supermarket and returned uncut. So far so good, I've been using a Nikon LS9000 MF coolscan at the local lab, and sometimes the Epson V750 to digitise the pics. It's slow and tedious compared to a DSLR, and unless you have the money to buy a film scanner, very variable quality on so called film flatbed scanners. I'd like to own one, but The Nikon LS9000 is still expensive used, and a Chinese clone £2k new! That money would be better spent going full frame in my case. The lab guy thinks I'm mad, and should replicate the 24x65mm frame by cropping the DSLR images, but getting 60cm and prints isn't quite so good on 16MPix frames cropped down. Photoshop Elements has been fine, but I haven't got on the RAW processing thing and suppose Lightroom may help and improve things on that front. So, shooting film's great, but think about your 'workflow' in terms of scanning and onwards. A 35mm scanner (Nikon Coolscan??) with Dicital Ice dust removal hels keep scanning quick and clean - BUT won't remove dust from B&W film other than C41 like I use. HTH and enjoy your Canon film camera, there is something more tangible with those clunky cameras that the modern sleek picture taking computers don't have...
Okay, just a couple of thoughts so far, after shooting for a couple weeks; 1) It's expensive. ~£5 a roll for 36 shots, £5.99 to develop and £2 to put it on a cd when Boots develop it for you. £12.99 for 36 shots. And as i'm ....refining my technique (read sh*t) my hit rate (that I am happy with) is approx 1-2 of those 36. 2) Full manual without a meter is HARD. But there's an app for that! 3) The process is slow. Due to the cost (see 1.) I'm finding I'm tight with what I shoot, so a 36 roll is slow to work through and developing takes 48 hours. (1 hr processing is +£1). The learning process on a digital is so much quicker; you take the pic, look on the lcd, tweak the exp/white bal/iso/etc and take another and you immediately see the difference. The learning process on film has been: take a shot, wait a week to finish the roll, wait 48hrs to get it developed, review the image, and totally forget what settings you used in the first place as you didn't write them down. 4) I'm missing many shots I would of gotten with my 5DMk3. Digital is great to shoot away with, and providing you have the time, edit it on the computer and turn what was a mediocre shot in camera into something rather good. I suppose that is half the skill of a modern photographer now. As I'm being tight (see 1. and 3.), it's in the back of mind that "if the shot isn't great, it's not worth taking". 5) I'm LOVING it! There is something about the whole process of taking a shot on film that is slightly magical. Starting with focusing with a split prism (a process everyone must try at some point in their photographic life), all the way to winding the next frame on. The whole process is so analogue, so very tactile. Yes it's expensive, yes its a slow steep learning curve, but it's making me a more careful, discerning photographer. And that, as they say, is priceless.
I ask the lab (Boots at the Trafford Centre) to just scan them onto disk for me. I have no idea on the model they use, nor have I reviewed the quality. After what you have said though about how pricey a decent scanner can be, I'm hoping the results are rather good. My workflow is a bit of an odd one. Film is exclusively for pleasure. I wouldn't dream of taking anything but my 5DMk3 for an earner. Boots handle the processing and carry the brunt of the workflow. Anything I'm happy with will be framed in a 6*4 cheap frame. Anything I'm really happy with, i'll take back to Boots to be enlarged and a larger frame will be used. Anything else will be discarded in a drawer somewhere to be forgotten. I'm finding the choice of film types to be something of a mine field. I initially picked some from ebay, based mainly on price, then read some reviews and realised that the results are so changeable. I have some Ilford XP2 that I'm currently shooting with. Of all the rolls i have, the possible results from that stuff excite me the most.
I still shoot film. 4x5 film to be precise. It's very expensive, working out at circa £6 per exposure, but in a typical day I will probably only expose 4 or 5 sheets of film since I spend a lot more time thinking about each image and quite often walk away before exposure since there's always the question "is this worth spending £6 on?" in the back of your mind. Some days I might expose as many as 10 or 12 sheets, but other days I might go home having only exposed one. Albeit one that I'm probably pretty content with. Despite the expense, there's nothing quite as satisfying as seeing a good 4x5 transparency on the lightbox for the first time. That said, I tend to shoot more and more negative because Portra is just bloody amazing film. I scan at home with an Epson V700 flatbed scanner with VueScan as I find it better than Epson's software. I then colour correct (and invert for negative) in Photoshop. My hit rate tends to be pretty good - I'm happy with over 50% of the exposed sheets (some work on the ground glass, but just don't work when they're back from the lab), and then I look for around 6-10 significant images a year out of maybe 200 exposures in total. By significant I mean that they either push me forwards photographically, or they're printed portfolio material.
Best books to look at if you're into Landscape Photography and want to give Large Format a go are: The Negative - Ansel Adams (book 2 of 3 - but if you get a deal it's worth also picking up book 1, the camera, and book 3, the print). Using The View Camera - Steve Simmons They should cover most bases of technique. Adams was the master of exposure. I use a spot meter, but quite often I get by without using it as you can usually guess the exposure pretty well on negative just calculating the exposure based on the tone of certain objects in the scene - sunlit grass has a certain EV, for example and you always want to place that at no more than +1 2/3 stops above the midtone, and using the sunny 16 rule, you can extrapolate that to 1/8s at approx f/32 on ISO160 film in sunny conditions (hard shadows) or 1/2s in cloudy conditions (soft shadows). With the light meter I usually follow these general rules for exposure: On positive/transparency, place textured highlights at +1 1/3 stops or flat highlights at +2 stops. If the visible dynamic range is >6 stops, add filtration to the sky to bring up the shadows. On negative/film, darkest detailed shadow at -3 stops and let the highlights loose unless they are more than +5 or 6 stops - i.e. the sun - then add filtration to compensate
