by Dan K
First published by http://japancamerahunter.com
Introduction
Film photography is similar
in many ways to digital photography and most of your standard digital
photography techniques apply to film too. You just have to understand the
peculiarities of film and its limitations and you’re good to go. That will be
explained in detail in this article, which presumes readers are already
reasonably proficient at digital photography and are embarking upon film
photography for the first time.
I have already covered the
different kinds of film available and the look that they produce in an earlier
article. The main difference between actually using film versus digital cameras
is a matter of getting the exposure right and this will be the primary focus of
this article. I will also briefly talk about developing, printing and
scanning.
Film Speed
The sensitivity of a film is
referred to as film speed. A slow film is one that’s less sensitive and a fast
film is one that’s more sensitive.
Film speed is measured in
ASA. Functionally, it’s the same as ISO on a digital camera. You won’t often be
faced with any other measurement of film speed, but the most common alternative
is DIN standard 4512. This is an old system and the only time you’ll have to
use it is if you’re using a very old camera. Often the film box will state the
DIN number alongside the ASA rating. Just in case, here is a handy
table:
Essentially, all you need to remember is 100 ASA (ISO) is 21 DIN and each
additional 1° of DIN represents a third of a stop of exposure
sensitivity.
Shooting in Low Light
I will be pilloried for
saying so, but I just don’t recommend shooting in low light with film. There is
film that can be shot at up to 6400 ASA, but I find the grain, contrast and
lack of shadow detail not worth the exercise. The main reason fast lenses were
so popular before digital was due to the relatively slow films available at the
time. As films got faster, wide aperture lenses became less common.
One further complexity is
that at long exposures, film suffers what is called reciprocity failure. That’s
when the film performs at below its rated ASA during long exposures. How much
exposure you’d need to add depends on each film. If you are determined to do
bulb exposures, look up how to calculate it in the film manufacturer’s
specifications.
I don’t enjoy doing long
exposures on film. It’s eminently possible, but it’s much easier to get it
right by trial-and-error using a digital camera. As a general rule, if the
light level, film speed and maximum practical aperture demands a shutter speed
that would result in camera shake or subject motion blur, then I just put the
film camera away and go to digital, or find a way to better light my subject.
The filp-side to film being
slower than digital is you can get really slow film. This makes it possible to take
wide aperture photographs in broad daylight with a hint of motion blur. By
over-exposing, you can get far more than a hint of motion blur. Do this with a
digital camera with a base ISO of 100 to 400 at midday and even shooting in RAW
won’t save you. In fact try it; take a narrow depth of field shot on medium
format with midday shadows and motion blur. That would say ‘film’ in a way that
would be extremely difficult to reproduce with digital.
Flash
The traditional solution to
photography in light too low to shoot with a wide aperture alone is to use
flash. Done with skill, this can work out very well. To my eye, on-camera flash
it comes out better than with digital flash photography. I do like the look of
on camera flash and black and white film. Certainly, it comes out better than
an underexposed image.
Artificial Lighting
Film has a fixed white
balance. Most colour film is daylight balanced. Shooting under tungsten or
fluorescent light adds further complexity. Whereas electronic flash has a
colour temperature close enough to daylight, tungsten and fluorescent light are
of a different colour temperature and nature. In the old days, you’d buy
tungsten film, but today the vast majority of film is daylight balanced.
Colour temperature is
traditionally corrected with optical filters. For example an 80A filter will
cool Tungsten light to approximate daylight. This comes at the penalty of two
stops of light cut by the filter. Another more modern approach is to fix it in digital
post processing and you may lose only a little bit depth.
If you are using flash or
strobes with tungsten balanced film, you should employ a CTO (orange) gel over
the light source to bring the colour temperature back to the equivalent of
tungsten, just as you would with a digital camera. In a situation of changing
or tricky cross-lit white balance, I will usually choose monochrome film
instead of colour. It’s a lazy cop-out, but remains sensible advice.
Fluorescent tubes and LEDs
not only have a strange colour temperature, but flicker too. The solution is to
make an exposure of 1/60s or longer to avoid uneven lighting. This fix applies
to digital photography as well. As for the colour temperature, I would simply
guess whether it is closer to daylight or tungsten and use the appropriate
film. If in doubt choose daylight film, because a little amber colour in the
light gives the scene a little warmth and atmosphere.
Setting Film Sensitivity
Older film cameras that have
a meter required you to set the film speed manually through a dial, whereas
most modern film cameras can take care of setting the film speed for you. Not
to be confused with Nikon’s designation for crop-frame sensors, DX is a system
by which electrical contacts in the camera body pick up a reading from the film
canister. The film has a DX pattern on it (not all do) set the camera film
speed to DX. If not, set the film speed manually.
Note that if the canister
does not have DX contacts, most DX cameras default to 100ASA. If your film is
other than 100ASA and lacks a correct DX code, for example, it’s some funky
small production film, or bulk-loaded from a 100 foot roll, first consider
whether this will be a problem with your camera. There are some interesting
work-arounds available for this situation. When I bulk-load film, I often
recycle used 135 film cans with a correct DX code for the film that I intend to
load.
Also, some modern
consumer-grade cameras don’t have the facility to override DX. If so, you might
be able to get round this with exposure compensation, if available. Sometimes,
I want to use film rated at 1600 ASA, but the camera’s meter only goes up to a lower setting.
If all else fails, just shoot
away and treat the film as if it were rated at whatever the camera thinks it is
rated at. This will under- or over-expose the film and tell the lab that you
shot it at 100ASA. I’ll tell you about re-rating film next.
Pushing and Pulling
Film
Many people don’t know that
you can adjust the film speed in development. What you do is shoot the film at
up to three stops over (two is better) and clearly label the can. It’s not
common in high-street stores, so it helps to make good eye contact with the
lab-technician and say clearly “Please push two stops” and wait for him to
mumble an acknowledgement and write the instruction on the order slip.
Otherwise he might well forget and then you’ll have to rely on latitude and
that’s usually only good for one stop of under-exposure. BTW, I wouldn’t bother
pushing one stop; it’s usually not necessary.
Pushing is relatively easy;
they just stop the machine and let it develop longer. Pulling is hard to do in
a commercial processing machine, but straightforward to do by hand. Note that
many labs hand-process black and white film, so you may have more luck asking
them to pull it, especially if you go to a good artisan lab. I don’t normally
pull film as print film has great over-exposure latitude.
Note that pushing increases
grain and contrast and loses some shadow detail. Pulling reduces grain and
loses some highlight detail. If I want more grain, I’ll push it. I find it more
effective and reliable than altering the developer chemistry. Cropping also
enlarges grain, but you lose some sharpness and contrast and shadow detail are
not affected.
Latitude
Print film has tremendous
latitude compared to digital sensors. Films vary, but you can shoot most print
films at between +3 and -1 stops of exposure. The precise latitude can be found
on a technical data sheet, or if you know how to do it, you can read it by
looking at the DX code on the can. I will teach you how to do this, because
unlike film speed, latitude is very rarely written on the can. This is a bit
silly, as I can’t recall seeing a camera that could read the second row of
contacts, not even Fujifilm Natura cameras that rely heavily on latitude in
their exposure programs. It’s especially silly, because it is humans metering
by eye that would benefit more from using latitude than automatic cameras would
anyway.
In the picture above, the two red highlighted contacts reads +1/-1 stops
of latitude. The blue highlighted contacts read +half/-half and the green
contacts read +3/-1. You can confirm this from the table below.
In practice,
having lots of exposure latitude means you don’t need to be spot on with your
exposure. As you over-expose, you will lose highlight detail. Conversely, as
you under-expose, you may start to lose shadow detail. It’s best to get it
right, but when I am working with high-latitude print film in a meterless
camera, I tend to err on the side of over-exposure and give an extra stop of
exposure for good measure. This is Old timers would say “Expose for the
shadows”.
In fact, you are supposed to
be using something called “The Zone System” to balance shadows and highlights.
Read up on it if you want to learn more. As a general rule of thumb, if the
scene has a high dynamic range and your key subject is not the brightest part
of the image, then expose to keep shadow detail. Let the emulsion’s greater
over-exposure latitude handle the tricky highlights. This is the opposite of
the way you’d do it with a digital camera, where you might try to avoid blowing
out the highlights. Try it and once you have the hang of it, it will make a lot
of sense.
Latitude relates to the
flexibility of setting the film’s mid-tone exposure. As a side note, dynamic
range describes how many stops of variance the scene can encompass. In this
scene below, I exposed for the shadows and relied on film’s wide dynamic range
to carry the highlight detail. You can still see details on white shirts in the
midday sun.
In the second example below, I had no time to plan my exposure as I
was busy dodging a bicycle messenger cycling across the road. As a result, I
exposed sloppily without adjusting the centre-weighted meter. The image on the
left is as scanned. The one on the right has been adjusted in Photoshop to
bring up the shadows. It kind of works, but it’s not as natural looking as a
proper exposure would have been.
Slide film, on the other hand, has great
dynamic range, but narrow latitude. It has to be shot at precisely the correct
exposure, to within less than a stop off. I can’t guesstimate it by eye to my
own satisfaction. Most metered cameras can handle it, but the best are the
Nikon matrix-metered SLRs. Where it will bite you in the behind is when you’re
using a camera with a dodgy meter or shutter, or a camera designed for mercury
batteries but used with alkaline batteries of a different voltage. Unless you
can be sure to meter correctly, don’t shoot slide film. Whenever I see the
lomography website, I am astounded at the skill or good fortune of the
photographers that post good images shot with slide film and cameras with no
exposure control at all. It’s not as easy as Lomography would have you
believe.
Using Expired Film
Film is a chemical process.
Chemicals degrade with time. Colours can shift, but the biggest effect with
expired or poorly stored film is it gets slower. Therefore, I sometimes
deliberately over-expose old, expired film. Slide film is very temperamental
and should be stored as cold as possible, slowly brought to ambient
temperature, shot before it expires and developed immediately. Print film is
much more tolerant and 25 ASA to 400 ASA black and white print film is all but
bullet-proof.
Processing film
Most film emulsions with
unusual processing requirements are no more. Kodachrome, for example required a
special process that can no longer be found. Today, most labs offer only three
processes:
C-41 is the colour negative process
E-6 is the colour slide process
B/W
chemicals process monochrome print film
I prefer to develop colour film in a
lab. It can be done at home but it’s cheaper, easier and required less kit to
get it done commercially, even when pushing. Bear in mind that slide film and
black and white film can cost triple to be done in a lab. Black and white print
film can be developed by anyone that can follow a cookbook and is cheap to do
at home, so I do all mine that way. The other reason to do your own black and
white film is control. Most labs don’t specify which of several available
developers and protocols will be used, or how old the chemicals are. This can
have a significant effect on the grain, tone curve and quality of the image.
If you’re bored with your
photography, colour negative film can be developed in slide chemicals (E-6) and
colour slide film can be developed in negative chemicals (C-41). The latter is
more common. This messes with the colours to creative effect. You end up with a
colour negative with strong hues. I love it, but it’s not for every roll. Make
sure your lab knows you want to do this not all labs will cross process.
Whatever you do, don’t get a lab to cross process movie stock in a conventional
C-41 or E-6 machine. It will leave a nasty gunk all over the inside of the
machine, on the rollers and on other people’s film.
You can even cross process
colour film in black and white chemicals. You get a thin but contrasty black
and white image with strong grain. This needs to be over-exposed and pushed a
stop or two or you will have no mid tone detail and no shadow detail at all.
Black and white film can’t be
cross processed in C-41. It just comes out blank, and the lab-tech will laugh
at your naivety. Some specialist labs can even reversal process certain black
and white negative films with clear film bases, but if you want black and white
slides, you’re better off with a film designed for it like Scala or Fomapan R.
You can process these as negatives too.
Scanning
Many digital photographers
like to scan, being accustomed to editing and storing images on a computer and
sharing the results on-line. Whole books can be written on this topic and I
will go into greater detail in subsequent article, but for now I will provide a
simple summary.
Some labs will scan on a drum scanner, especially
large format film. I scan mine at home on a flatbed scanner that is designed
for film. Other people I know prefer to photograph back-lit negatives with a
DSLR and a macro lens. There are pros and cons to each process, but they all
get the job done. Just don’t buy one of those little dedicated film scanners
with a camera inside. I have tried several and they all gave horrible scans and
scratched my film.
Enlarging and Printing
The best way to enjoy your
slides is as slides and best way to enjoy your negatives is as prints. When I
print, I like to print big. 35mm film can easily be printed to 12″x18″, but
finer-grained films are best for this unless you want grain to be a big
feature. Note that I said “feature”; it’s not like ugly chroma and luminance
noise. It is a feature; it contributes to the look and feel. It is worth
finding a good lab that does optical enlargement. Digital labs are more common,
but they will just scan at 1200 to 2400 dpi, then re-sample and print on a
digital printer at 300dpi. Optical enlargements get the most out of your film
and look much better. Most digital labs don’t print larger than 12R except by
special order, as this is the biggest they can make from a 3:2 format image on
a standard roll of printer paper. A good print is a sight to behold.
Conclusions
The use of film has pros and
cons over digital. If you understand the differences, you can use it to best
advantage. The important thing is to get out and start shooting. You’ll learn
from your mistakes and take pride in your triumphs.
Further Information
This is the latest instalment
of Dan K’s series of articles on the theme of Film for the Digital
Photographer. If you have not already read his previous articles, I would
encourage you to read them. They cover combining film and digital photography,
film cameras and the various films that are currently available.
I hope you have found these
articles interesting and enlightening. Regardless, please share your questions
and observations. JCH’s readers include some of the most experienced
photographers and we can all learn from each other.
You can follow Dan on his
social networks. He always has something interesting to say about photography
and cameras.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For high quality camera bags and accessories worthy of Leica equipment, go to
Thank you, Dan K. I learned a lot.
ReplyDeleteYes, excellent article.
DeleteWow, there is lot more to know shooting film than digital.
ReplyDelete