Do This Before You Shoot Film!
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- Опубликовано: 2 авг 2024
- Shooting film is one of the most interesting ways to take photos but comes with some unique challenges. In this video, I'll tell you about the mistakes I made when getting into shooting 35mm film and how avoiding these same mistakes can save you from ruined photos and blank rolls. From simple beginner film camera mistakes, to errors made when digitalizing your photos, I definitely encountered these problems when I was a beginner shooting film.
Keaton:
/ bazooka_mouth
#filmphotography #35mm #filmcamera 
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As a B+W film photographer the best advice I would give is develop your own film and scan your own negatives. I use one film (HP5+) and one developer ( Ilford ID-11). By sticking with the same you will get to know all about how your camera and film behaves under all conditions.This also gives your body of work a certain 'look' . You also get total control of your images. There is no point shooting film if it ends up looking like a poor version of digital. Embrace B+W and the grain. Colour (color) is so expensive as well so B+W gives more chance to experiment within the budget. Plus B+W is historic and just speaks film. Enjoy!
Agreed. Highly recommend B&W, and developing yourself. My take involved two film stocks fomapan100 and HP5+. I started off with d76, but also played with caffenol and rodinal (depending on the needs of the environment I was playing in) on the film end, and dektol on paper.
Couldn't agree more. By fully understanding what the film stock is doing, you can begin to mold your own "style" or "look", so that even when you switch film stocks, you carry over that understanding and mindset. I do the same thing with Portra, where I understand how that film will look in certain conditions like the back of my hand, and can come to expect certain behaviors, etc. You're definitely right with black and white though, through that means, you can cheaply become masterful, not only with the camera, but with the chemicals and negative as well. I should shoot more B&W.
Very nice!! It's funny, some of my b&w shooter friends, really really stay away from fomapan, not sure why 😂
I liked fomapan 100, but had too many shots showing halation in the highlights. Experimenting shortly again , but this time with a blue/cyan filter - theoretically that should attenuate much of the halated red light in the emulsion. We’ll see what if any difference it makes.
@@emotown1 I may well be mistaken, but a blue filtre may induce or accentuate any haze or fog in the environment if making landscapes. I hadn't heard of them for anti-halation effects, but will log that info for future use!
Critiquing your work and photography process is a very important thing to learn as a photographer. I definitely made the mistake of not critiquing my own work when I first started taking photos with some early photo projects of mine coming out unpolished and halfbaked. It took me a while to learn, and I am by no means perfect, but the simple act of critiquing one's work was the most helpful piece of advice I received from other photographers in the community. Glad you mentioned it as a valuable skill to learn in this video!
most definitely!! Understanding how you messed up/can improve a photo is so necessary. I feel like every roll I shoot, I subconsciously am learning another tool to be able to innately know, almost through muscle memory, how to shoot a scene better or more thoroughly.
Big help for beginner B+W photos is even though you're shooting B+W you should still be color conscious. Many people just ignore color saturation and contrast when shooting B+W and just think about bright and dark. For example if you like taking shots of fall colors try a roll or 2 of B+W on those pretty trees the range of colors is still represented there and is striking. Also some B+W films like color can be weighted towards one color or another. And some like ilfords Ortho plus literally don't register red. It's an incredible film stock leading to some intense contrast with Red being black and darkening partial reds like violet, orange, brown, pink.
Tldr shoot B+W like you would color, don't ignore the colors.
A note about light metering. Its true that negative film leans towards overexposure, however remember if you're shooting transparencies, you need to switch it around.
It's all to do with the physical properties of the film emulsion. With negatives, the densest or darkest parts of the image are actually the highlights as the image is effectively inverted. This means that the shadows are the least dense part of the negative, which is why there is less detail able to he pulled.
With slide/transparency film, the emulsion is capturing a positive interpretation of the colours, so more akin to real life, the darkest - and therefore densest - part of the negative is the darkest parts of the scene. So with slide film you need to make sure you meter for the highlights, and you can pull some detail from the shadows if they slip into underexposure.
Now that's not to say you get the same latitude with the shadows on slide as you do with the highlights on negatives. With most negative film, you can handle at least +3 stops of overexposure, sometimes more, and get useable results. With slide film, you're at most going to get about -1 stops of latitude, maybe -2 with something like ektachrome.
If shooting positives, you should learn the zone system for your metering.
Agree 100%. I also would never recommend shooting positives to a beginner, until you lockdown how to meter entirely and can understand what you just said. But very good info. I've never had great luck with slide film, but maybe I need to get better at metering 😂
My piece of advice is: if you are scanning yourself and you can’t get the colors right no matter what, try developing in a different lab. I was having huge problems with T-grain film (Portra and Ektar), sent some rolls to a different lab and boom! Perfect negatives that are really easy to scan. Your portra/ektar negatives should look kind of matte and flat/low contrast, if you are getting negatives with a huge amount of contrast and the base has weird colors (like yellow), look for another lab (note that I’m talking about the negatives, not the scans).
Definitely!! I've tried many local labs with no luck. I even recently switched away from my long term lab, because they seemed to be getting extremely lazy with the XXL Noritsu scans.
@@metalfingersfilm that sucks to hear, but they take like 10 minutes per roll to scan compared to like 2-3 for the normal scans
Always coming in clutch with the great videos
thanks homie! always appreciate you
I started shooting film about a year ago and I wish I had this video back then. It would have saved me a ton of trial and error and money on wasted rolls of film that didn’t turn out. Very good video
Awesome!! Likewise for me as well, I honestly think this would have accelerated my understanding of film by 9 months, instead of just toughing through all my mistakes lol
Properly exposing is really important, and the biggest limitation with point and shoots is that they expose for the thing they focus on, thats why Contax t2 is so valuable because it let’s you adjust the exposure on that dial
There’s so much stuff that goes into film photography I’ve only started with disposable cams but I wanna get a film cam but it’s all so confusing 😭
get a point and shoot or cheap plastic camera; they're not all that different from disposable cameras!
I live in Germany and big store chains (dm, Müller, etc.) that develop cheaply (1,25 € per roll) give you your negatives as well. Since I'm just starting out I think this works well because I can always re-scan later.
Very nice!! Germany also seems to have cheaper budget film!! Need to get back and visit Germany asap.
As Ansel Adams said, expose for the shadows, develop for the highlights.
$$$$
making sure its loaded properly is my main one 😂 sometimes id rather have a bad picture than no pictures at all
Haha at least you know your camera is working then 😂
I spent the first couple of years on film basically just relearning photography from scratch. Developing the ability to "see" with prime lenses rather than just entrusting everything to a kit zoom was a big part of it, but trying to make sense of manual metering was the real revelation: apparently I never actually understood what those numbers (aperture and shutter speed) really meant when I was shooting digital - I knew that changing them could give me different effects, but I never got WHY. Additionally, it wasn't until I started shooting on film that I was able to put my finger on why I'd never been happy with my digital work... simply, because it was digital. The linear response to light, the sharpness, the saturation, the uniform noise... it just had a different look from all the images I'd grown up with (the digital revolution came when I was about 17), but I didn't have the language to articulate how, nor the skills to emulate what I wanted. And then when I crossed over, everything suddenly just clicked. I still don't have the skills to make digital look like film, but I've got a very simple system for making my film look exactly how I want. 😁
Ten years on film, now, and I don't regret a single moment. 🥰
Couldn't agree more Kelvin, something clicked for me as well with starting film. I think slowing down was a big part of it.
Totally agree with you on the reason digital just wasn’t as appealing, aside from the process. Before I thought that more meant better! More saturation, more contrast, etc. my favorite color film stocks tend to have low contrast and somehow visually that represents the memory more accurately for me. Oh, if I could add one thing I’d say properly organizing your contact sheets and negatives is something you will thank yourself for down the line. I’m sloppy and lazy and still struggle with that.
Didn’t need the tips but watched it all the way trough anyways. Great video
my man
bros just casually shooting pictures with kenny hoopla
Awesome dude! It took me waaaayyy too long to understand how to meter correctly...
Yeah man, me too, the 1st year of me shooting, I foolishly just shot everything at 2.8, but I had no idea lol
Had to double take the shots of kennyhoopla, wasnt expecting that cossover
hahaha, glad you recognized him
Oh shit you're photographing kenny hoopla?
Yeah, from time to time
The worst mistake would be not shoot with film because you worry too much about making a mistake ;-)
undoubtably!
For point #2, agreed especially on the scanning part. But for developing negatives it should be mostly the same result, shouldn't it? Also can you point me towards some of your fav b/w stocks?
I would hope so, yes, but again, not sure how much care/forethought is going into Walgreens development, haha. I would recommend HP5, TRI-X, or any of the Ilford Delta film stocks, depending on your light flexibility.
All my film work is in black&white. I developed my negatives and print on paper using filtration and exposure to perfect prints. Film and the zone system forever!!
Which film stock in b&w do you prefer shooting most?
nice video!!
Thanks yan! Glad you enjoyed!
Trust me if you OCD, film photography and be perfect and frustrating at the same time.
4:34, but Portra 800 shot at 100/200 is beautiful haha
The one thing I see in so many young film photographers' pics is that they don't use ND grad filters nearly enough. Blown out skies and blocked in land. Even in digital, why do everything in post-production? It wastes dynamic range. If one simply doesn't have time to clean and orient filters, ok, but when you can, I 100% recommend them.
You know, that's probably something I could use. However, wouldn't it make the whole scene darker, instead of "adding" dynamic range? Like everything is just 1 stop darker, no?
@@metalfingersfilm you're thinking of full ND filters. Grad (graduated) is darker on one side and blends out to neutral. With options of hard transition, soft, and reverse grad where it brightens up again towards the top. So you keep all your brightness in the foreground (or wherever) and just darken the brighter area to compress the range.
Was that a Zenit ET as the thumbnail ?
I am not in favor of photo editing to some extent, and in some cases, it can change the characteristics of the film roll completely. For example, when you send a sample image of a roll of film for sale, the edited image can be a scam.
Would over correction by the lab also be a scam then?
I'm a film lover, I'm still shooting film so I really appreciate everything you're doing and helping people. I understand that's your point, I don't mean to argue.
@@khoavan9984 not trying to argue at all; just make you think. Unless you're getting completely flat images; someone else is doing the "editing" for you.
Meanwhile me:
*Uses a fully automatic film camera with all the features of a digital one, but leaves it on the wrong preset. (Or the preset wheel gets twisted in my pocket without noticing, like it did last weekend)
hahaha, I can relate to that
what is exposure?
i actually started photography over the summer and started on film just because i wasn’t interested in digital
very nice! what camera?
@@metalfingersfilm pentax me. there’s a camera store near me which sells vintage camera’s. sometime down the line i want to transition to a fully mechanical camera (once the pentax kicks the bucket) but the pentax me works just fine for now.
@@horse_dog that's a great camera!! I wouldn't rush it; as they say, the best camera is the one you already own.
@@metalfingersfilm like i said, i only intend on replacing it when it no longer functions. my mother accidentally let slip she’s getting me a bronica sq-a for christmas as well lol, but as for new 35mm cameras i’m quite satisfied with the pentax me
So meter for the shadows?
Indeed!!
All videos I watch about millenials and GenZ talking about film photography forget a very simple thing, that is specially important with film: photos are meant to be printed, not scanned. The best screen and scan will never show a photo as nice as even the cheapest of (chemical) glossy photo paper do
You did a shoot with Kennyhoopla???
Yeah he's the homie. went to high school with him
2:07 is he using Davinci resolve????
haha i also noticed that?
The biggest mistake is taking boring photos it wastes film. RUclips photographers are guilty of this.
Haha, are you trying to say something? ;)
Well, no, you are speaking from a scanning perspective, but scanning sucks and it's the reason 99.99% of you don't print. To print, you need a correct exposure, not a shadow biased exposure. Yes you are gonna lose shadows sometimes and guess what, it still looks amazing. Instead of scanning the whole roll choose 1 or 2 that you like from the roll, order an 8x10 print and scan that in your basic home printer scanner. It's a whole lot better than scanning every frame and fucking around in lightroom playing god and trying to decide which dumbass instagramer you should copy with your editing. Remind you, it's an analog image. Didn't you start shooting film to get rid of that workflow? This comment is not particularly aimed towards the creator of this video, rather is an outburst of mine against... people. Everything is all right.
Thanks Zab