Title Change - A Journey back into film! Multiple Film Cameras.

[Derek W]

Evening all,

As some may have seen in the New Gear thread I recently bought a Canon AE-1 with 50mm 1.4 FD lens from ebay which was fully working with new seals. Once I had got new batteries and a few films I've now received some photos from the first Black and White film that I've shot for about 20yrs.

All shot on Ilford 100 B&W film with an f-stop between 5.6 and 11 and a shutter speed between 1/125th and 1/500th of a second.

EDIT

Title changed for incoming camera!

 

[Raymond Lin]

Lovely

 

[Derek W]

Lovely

Thanks.

I've been watching a number of film photography youtubers for tips on shooting film cos its been that long with digital that I'd forgotten its better to overexpose slightly than underexpose which is what I'd normally do for digital. I'm most of the way through a roll of Kodak Gold 200 so that'll be getting developed after next weekend. I've been looking on Analoguewonderland.co.uk for different film types as well and I'm intrigued by the Lomography Metropolis film so I'll probably buy a couple of rolls to try out in the streets of Dundee shortly.

 

[.one.]

I have all ways dismissed the going back trying film as a fad but must say there great looking with out the modern content I would be convinced number 2 would be worth a large print.

 

[Derek W]

I have all ways dismissed the going back trying film as a fad but must say there great looking with out the modern content I would be convinced number 2 would be worth a large print.

It possibly is a fad for me as well. I've enjoyed shooting that first roll again and I'm almost finished my first roll of colour film. Going for a walk this weekend so I'll get those shots fired off and this thread updated in due course. It's always good that the film camera and old lenses are about half the weight of my 5d2 with whichever L lens I decide to put on it so to a degree it encourages me to take a camera with me when I go out to do something.

 

[.one.]

It possibly is a fad for me as well. I've enjoyed shooting that first roll again and I'm almost finished my first roll of colour film. Going for a walk this weekend so I'll get those shots fired off and this thread updated in due course. It's always good that the film camera and old lenses are about half the weight of my 5d2 with whichever L lens I decide to put on it so to a degree it encourages me to take a camera with me when I go out to do something.

Nice make sure if there is any cars in the picture tell em to take a hike lol.

 

[Derek W]

Thought I'd best change the title since this arrived today!

Got some 120 film on order so I'll be giving it a spin shortly.

 

[Scuzi]

Where are you all getting your film developed? I keep flirting with the idea of getting back into film but the reason I stopped was the increasing cost of development and difficulty of getting good scans.

 

[Derek W]

Where are you all getting your film developed? I keep flirting with the idea of getting back into film but the reason I stopped was the increasing cost of development and difficulty of getting good scans.

For the black and white roll I went back to Ilford (harmanlab.com) and I've just sent a colour film off to analoguewonderland.co.uk so I'll need to see what like their scans are like. I went with high quality jpgs for both but there is an option for high quality tiffs as well.

 

[Derek W]

Got my Kodak Gold 200 shots scanned through to me today. I wasn't as happy with these ones as I was with the Black and White images.

The settings used were similar to the previous set with the images being slightly over exposed as film will allow for this better than under exposing. I'll see how i get on with the Yashica with the final 6 shots also on the Kodak Gold 200 film. I've had to fully meter them manually and i suspect with the light meter app I should have allowed for a shutter speed beyond the camera limits to ensure I wasn't over exposing the shots beyond the 1/300th of second limitation of the camera.

 

[Scuzi]

There’s a certain je ne ce quoi about them though. Is it the dynamic range?

I’ve been browsing Bronicas on account of your posts…

 

[Derek W]

There’s a certain je ne ce quoi about them though. Is it the dynamic range?

I’ve been browsing Bronicas on account of your posts…

I've been watching a few videos from grainydays on YouTube. He makes reference to the dynamic range of various films and he also refers to the films latitude or how well it can handle the detail / colours / noise when the film is under or over exposed. Different film stocks have different chemical mixtures to give the different looks of the final image.

Apologies for camera browsing! On that note thought if you've got Instagram take a look at flints auctions. The post they stuck up yesterday they're giving away a hasselblad 500cm so that might be worth doing just for a couple of tags and a share.

 

[.one.]

I've been watching a few videos from grainydays on YouTube. He makes reference to the dynamic range of various films and he also refers to the films latitude or how well it can handle the detail / colours / noise when the film is under or over exposed. Different film stocks have different chemical mixtures to give the different looks of the final image.

Apologies for camera browsing! On that note thought if you've got Instagram take a look at flints auctions. The post they stuck up yesterday they're giving away a hasselblad 500cm so that might be worth doing just for a couple of tags and a share.

Have you tried converting the colour pics to B/W ?

 

[Derek W]

I've not tried that one yet. Straightforward to do in lightroom I guess.

 

[.one.]

Had a play

 

[Derek W]

Got the first scans of 120 Kodak Gold 200 back today.

McManus Gallery in Dundee

V&A Dundee

Jokeresque Staircase in Aberdeen

 

[Scuzi]

Beautifully exposed. Do you use a light meter or an app?

I’ve tried a few labs recently.
Analogue Wonderland - good but pricey.
Take It Easy Film Lab (Leeds) - relatively cheap but service wasn’t great and they scratched up a few of my negatives pre-scan.
Come Through Lab (Manchester) - good value, fast turnaround, and great output. My favourite so far.

I’ve just sent two rolls of 120 and a roll of 135 to a local lab in Southampton to see how they come out.

 

[Derek W]

Beautifully exposed. Do you use a light meter or an app?

I’ve tried a few labs recently.
Analogue Wonderland - good but pricey.
Take It Easy Film Lab (Leeds) - relatively cheap but service wasn’t great and they scratched up a few of my negatives pre-scan.
Come Through Lab (Manchester) - good value, fast turnaround, and great output. My favourite so far.

I’ve just sent two rolls of 120 and a roll of 135 to a local lab in Southampton to see how they come out.

I used light meter app on my phone. I was a bit disappointed with other photos from Aberdeen as although it was a glorious day the sky came out quite a bit over exposed.

 

[Scuzi]

I used light meter app on my phone. I was a bit disappointed with other photos from Aberdeen as although it was a glorious day the sky came out quite a bit over exposed.

Film has quite a bit of latitude with highlights but less so with shadows. It can typically deal better with over exposure than under exposure. I’m guessing you know that and are consequently exposing for the shadows. When metering, do you do it at “box speed” e.g. 200 for Kodak Gold? Some things to consider from my experience (I’m by no means an authority on the subject but have shot film on and off for about 25 years):

- If you find many of your shots are over exposed, firstly check the camera is functioning correctly. If there is a problem it would most likely be with the shutter timing. For example, I shot this with my Mamiya Sekor C 100-200mm which, unbeknownst to me at the time, had a sticky leaf shutter due to oil contamination. I think it was supposed to be a 1/125 exposure but clearly ended up being at least 1 second.

- In high contrast scenes, you may want to consider framing out bright sky as much as possible if you subject is in shadow. Film has great dynamic range but if your subject is in deep shadow compared to the sky you may have to compromise more than you would with a HDR digital shot. Stratiform cloud is the enemy. It can make a correct exposure look blown out, whereas if the same bit of frame was blue sky or partial blue sky against partial cloud, it would look amazing.
E.g. I took a few shots from this angle but scanned just this one as the others had solid cloud in the sky and it looked all blown out:

- If you are expecting this based upon conditions and experience, you could ask the lab to pull the film to bring more details out in the highlights and the expense of reduced contrast. That’s an artistic decision depending on what you want to achieve.

- Try a different film stock. Something like Ektar 100, it might preserve highlight detail a bit better.

- Use fill flash.

 

[Derek W]

Cheers for that. Generally since I'm just getting back into film photography I'm keeping everything at box speed for now. I've been watching a number of videos on youtube from a guy by the name of Grainydays so I am looking at getting some other film stocks. I do like the look of the lomo metropolis (just seen its back on analogue world) but I'll have to pay through the nose for that one from foreign shores. A few others that I'm looking at are Portra 400, santa 100 and I'm sure there was another one that i can't think of the name off the top of my head. Also looking into getting a fridge / freezer to store it in should i get a stockpile going!