Some basic film advice needed please!

cambsno

cambsno

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Simon
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Aside from having a Pentax film compact in the 80s as a teenager, my only other film experience has been with disposables!! Have been thinking about film for a while and fancy having a bash, so in at the deep end - have bought a Zorki 4 Russian film camera off here. No metering, or anything - manual only!!!

I have a light meter on iphone which I intend to use, and maybe use the D300 to meter with. Use the D300 in manual mode anyway so that doesnt bother me.

What film to use? There seems to be loads of types! I plan to use the camera mainly for fun stuff and to see if I get on with film. May try to get some nice outdoor shots of the kids (on the rare occasions they are still) and may even venture into town for a few candid type shots. No idea what type of finish I am after, nothing too arty or grainy, just a nice film! Am angling towards shooting on B&W film.

Any other hints or tips I should bear in mind after coming from Digital?
 
Well I always give the same advice to someone who wants to try film (or play with a film camera) and that is:- Buy a roll of film at the "Poundland" shops for £1, then use the camera, then go to a superstore Asda and get the film developed and scanned to a CD also supplied with Index (thumbnails of your shots) for £3, in the week they will do it in 1 hour while you shop.......and if you like it then branch out from there to better films, labs or B/W or whatever.
Also superstore Tesco will do similar for £3 but send the film away, so it's a few days wait.
 
Coming from digital, the only thing I would say is don't stress too much about getting the exposure absolutely perfect (then again, I guess you are planning to use the iPhone as a light meter :p ). Most consumer negative film has a lot of latitude, so it can take quite a lot of exposure variations and still come out with a very usable image.

If you are going to get it processed by a lab rather than DIY but you want to shoot B&W film, then have a look at the C-41 B&W films (they often have the 'CN' designation). Ilford XP2 and Fujifilm Neopan 400 CN are two examples. You shoot them as normal, and they get processed in the same chemicals as colour film but because of their design, you get B&W shots from them. It's not quite as good as shooting real B&W and developing it yourself, but it's a start, and it might be enough to trigger you to look onwards and upwards :)
 
I've been using a Zeiss Ikon Nettar which is a 120 folder and more basic than yours (I have to guess focus as well as exposure) I've found the lightmeter app on my android phone perfectly accurate for B&W film, all shots were very printable. I was using Fomapan film, its cheap and had a very filmy (read old fashioned) look to it, its proper B&W though so pricey to develop unless you do it yourself (in which case VERY cheap).
 
Good idea Brian - At least i can blame asda if they look rubbish :p
 
freecom2 said:
Bill, is that Photography Assistant?
Click to expand...

I've just tried beeCam Lightmeter on my new HTC Wildfire S - and compared it to my Sekonic L-358 and the lumigrid reflected light add-on.

On an initial reading, the reading from the HTC was within +/- 1/3 of a stop, but a repeated reading was miles out, as were all subsequent reads until the app was closed. There is however, a handy option to calibrate the sensor - with a sensor correction factor of 4.0 dialed in on the HTC it seems fairly close - certainly good enough for C41 or B&W snapping, and better than my lousy sunny 16 guestimates :LOL:
 
I'm using:
beeCam Lightmeter, (pretty good, needs resetting fairly often)
Light Meter (paid app, not bad, my HTC hero is a bit slow with it)
Photographic lightmeter (flakey IMHO)
Photography Assistant (not bad tries to do a lot, so a bit busy)
 
My Rolleicord IV came with a "Sunny 11 Rule" chart on the back of it with some typical exposures for Sunny, cloudy, etc days. So under "normal" daylight situations, you could get by without a light meter with a little experience and by learning the Sunny 16 Rule. 135 format with its whopping 36 exposures per roll also gives you room for bracketing too when exposing without a meter. It is actually kind of fun to go out and shoot by only using the force sometimes.

Shooting a digital in manual mode is hardly manual at all. At least on mine, anyway. It will still tells you that your under/over exposed and if your focus is correct prior to making the shot. So it is not quite the same as shooting a non-chimping manual film camera.
 
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using C-41 process black and white films, you are limiting yourself to ilford XP-2 fuji neopan 400CN and a kodak one. shooting real black and white you open yourself up to much more varied film, Fomapan is very old fashioned and looks very "filmy" Rollei retro is a nice film i find, very forgiving. i like to shoot mainly low iso films, 25 to 125, the top end of which is normally good as a walk around film. Kodak Tmax 100 is a cheap film which is quite nice. the only thing is the fact that you need to do true black and white dev, which can be pricey in labs, or if you can find someone on the forums, they might be able to dev it for you at a smaller fee


hope this is of some use
Rob
 
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