Which film and where to develop

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abdabs

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Jill
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Thanks to the help here I am now the owner if a Pentax mx which is currently away having the CLA done.
As I am a novice to film photography which film would be a good starting point and then what film to progress to for greater quality I mainly shoot portraits. Also do you guy send it off to be developed and where do you recommend
Thanks again
 
Which film? Depends on any number of things, what you want from it, what you prefer... so the best thing to do is to buy a bunch then decide what you want to keep using. Although one of the main choices you can make is Black and White or Colour. Black and White is always a good starting place since you can quite easily develop it yourself, you can develop colour film too but it's a bit more involved. Of course, with colour film what a lot of people do is just use whatever PoundLand has in stock, which saves a bit on money but works out a lot more expensive than black and white, pound for pound, when you consider developing costs.
 
As above, is it black and white or colour that interests you want?

With black and white there are a whole multitude of films that can be used for portraits depending on whether you want a grainy, contrasty effect or the opposite for example. I would have a go with some Ilford FP4+ which is a general purpose 125 speed film and very tolerant with quite fine grain; and some Ilford HP5+ or Kodak TriX 400 both of which are 400 speed and also very tolerant but more grainy. With black and white film, experiment with different films until you find what you like. Try looking around the black and white section of AG Photographic, who sell nearly every black and white film known:

http://www.ag-photographic.co.uk/black--white-film-1-c.asp

For colour, its a choice between colour transparency (slide, E-6 process) and colour negative (C-41 process). For starters, I would use colour negative initially as it has much more latitude than slide film which makes it a bit easier to use if your a beginner as its more tolerant to over/underexposure.

For portraits, the best colour negative films are Kodak Portra 160 and Portra 400. Their designed for portraiture but can be used successfully with other subjects. They recently came out and are probably the best film product for many years, the grain is extremely fine and they will cope with 2 stops of underexposure with no noticeable increase in grain using normal development. The colours are natural.

For general picture taking, you can't go wrong with consumer Fuji Superia or Kodak Gold/Ultra films which come in a variety of speeds.

For developing, there are plenty of good places to send off to but I would recommend:


All of these of excellent quality and I have used all of them. Ilford Lab is notable in that it prints on proper B&W paper and doesn't cheat and use colour like the other places (and pretty much everywhere else). This means that the prints are of excellent quality and look great.
 
I was looking at the portra for colour what's the difference between 160/120 and 160/135.
For Black and White I dint want it grainy but some contrast
 
abdabs said:
I was looking at the portra for colour what's the difference between 160/120 and 160/135.
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The 160 refers to the ISO speed - the sensitivity to light. The 120 and 135 refers to the film formats - 120 refers to medium format film, which is not what you want. 135 refers to small format film or more commonly 35mm film, which is what you do want.
 
For portraiture, you would probably like Ilford Pan F+, which is ISO 50, very fine grained and quite contrasty. It is frequently used for portraits. Ilford FP4+ though as mentioned above is a great all around film, the grain in Tri-X 400 or HP5+ is not intrusive (although it can depend on the developer) and can be quite nice.

Faster films tend to have more contrast, but on the other hand, slower films such as Adox CHS 25 or Kodak Technical Pan (not made for about 8 years, but I have some) are very contrasty as they have less lattitude (CHS 25 for example is very unforgiving to overexposure). With Tech Pan, you actually have to develop it in special low contrast developers or it is literally just black and white, it is practically grainless though. It used to be used in scientific applications because of its ultra high contrast in normal developers
 
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Thanks Freecom2 I knew the 160 was the ISO but glad I know the rest so I don't end up with tons of film that I can't use
 
Don't know if you saw my post above, you replied just before I posted it.
 
s162216 said:
Don't know if you saw my post above, you replied just before I posted it.
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Thanks I'm going to have to google them and try each if them to see which works best for what I want
 
First off - have a look in the Humungous "Show us your Film Photographs" thread - make a note of any shots you like the look of, and the film/processing used - most people post in there state what film they'd used, and what chemicals etc were used. Once you've got a nice little list of films you'd like to try, buy a roll of each, and try them out. Then once you've established a preference for B&W, C41 and E6 Slide, buy a good supply of them - 10 rolls or so - and really get to know how you can use the film - how hard you can push it, it's exposure lattitude and so forth - with respect to your camera, your processing kit, and your photographic style.

Sorry if ^^^ sounds a bit pompous - but it really is something that only you can really answer - we'll always be around to sort out technicalities and specific recommendations, but only you can answer the big question... "does it look like I want it to?"
 
TheBigYin said:
First off - have a look in the Humungous "Show us your Film Photographs" thread - make a note of any shots you like the look of, and the film/processing used - most people post in there state what film they'd used, and what chemicals etc were used. Once you've got a nice little list of films you'd like to try, buy a roll of each, and try them out. Then once you've established a preference for B&W, C41 and E6 Slide, buy a good supply of them - 10 rolls or so - and really get to know how you can use the film - how hard you can push it, it's exposure lattitude and so forth - with respect to your camera, your processing kit, and your photographic style.

Sorry if ^^^ sounds a bit pompous - but it really is something that only you can really answer - we'll always be around to sort out technicalities and specific recommendations, but only you can answer the big question... "does it look like I want it to?"
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Thanks I totally agree I just didn't know where to begin I've already started a list but thanks for the idea of looking on the other thread
 
abdabs said:
Thanks I totally agree I just didn't know where to begin I've already started a list but thanks for the idea of looking on the other thread
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Bit of advice - start from the most recent end... it's been on-going so long, that some of the films have probably gone out of production by now :LOL:
 
TheBigYin said:
Bit of advice - start from the most recent end... it's been on-going so long, that some of the films have probably gone out of production by now :LOL:
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Hey Mark why can't I edit my own old posts? Some have shots missing because of moving them around in Photobucket.
 
How old are they Brian ? over 6 months and the edit function time-expires I believe.
 
TheBigYin said:
How old are they Brian ? over 6 months and the edit function time-expires I believe.
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Ah they were over 6 months...erm must be a reason why there is a time limit, but I can't think of one, er well other than all the little edit buttons are taking up bytes on the server ;)
 
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excalibur2 said:
Ah they were over 6 months...erm must be a reason why there is a time limit, but I can't think of one, er well other than all the little edit buttons are taking up bytes on the server ;)
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Well - for one thing, all the edits are stored as well as the originals, which takes up lots of additional server resources... And yes - I did discover this, when I found that I could check the pre-and post edited versions of things. :eek:
 
Brian - just an update on the "edit" button thing - it's now been changed to 1 year before the edit expires - we've had a few people doing 52 projects that have complained about not being able to edit their threads, so it's been extended a little.
 
Watch out for looking at other peoples shots as lighting makes a huge difference to contrast and colour of a Film. Take Javier's street shots on XP2 - they are NOTHING like the results I get from XP2 because he's working in a much harsher and brighter light than I am in the Welsh mist.

Then of course you have filters which alter things...
 
I'm starting to dip my toes back into film photography, but any I will be doing will probably be b&w, mainly people and portraits and just wondered how the rereleased AGFA APX100 stands up?

I've read a few people saying it's great, plus its only about £2 a pop (135 36exp)
 
TheBigYin said:
Brian - just an update on the "edit" button thing - it's now been changed to 1 year before the edit expires - we've had a few people doing 52 projects that have complained about not being able to edit their threads, so it's been extended a little.
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(y)
 
antihero said:
I'm starting to dip my toes back into film photography, but any I will be doing will probably be b&w, mainly people and portraits and just wondered how the rereleased AGFA APX100 stands up?

I've read a few people saying it's great, plus its only about £2 a pop (135 36exp)
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You looking at it on Silverprint? I bought two rolls from them and I asked behind the desk, he confirmed it was cut from frozen old stock (as is Rollei Retro 100). It's not a new production, and he was pretty sure about that.
 
freecom2 said:
You looking at it on Silverprint? I bought two rolls from them and I asked behind the desk, he confirmed it was cut from frozen old stock (as is Rollei Retro 100). It's not a new production, and he was pretty sure about that.
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Yes Silverprint, if it's not new production surely it's a bit misleading to write, quote; "New stock now available of APX 135-36, fresh shipments arriving from Germany; APX100 initially, APX400 is in development and may be available by late 2011, BACK IN STOCK! Brand new AgfaPhoto APX100 dated 01/2013" on their website.

To be honest, not being a film expert, is it still a decent film to use for the price?
 
There should hopefully be a new version of APX100 shortly, as well as improving APX400 with the cooperation of the original AGFA engineers and to be released as Adox Pan 400, Adox are also working on a new version of APX100 to be released as Adox Pan 100.

It might be a while though as Pan 400 was expected to be released in the Spring but there were supposedly more problems than expected with the experimental first coating batch released so the dates been pushed back a few months again...
 
antihero said:
Yes Silverprint, if it's not new production surely it's a bit misleading to write, quote; "New stock now available of APX 135-36, fresh shipments arriving from Germany; APX100 initially, APX400 is in development and may be available by late 2011, BACK IN STOCK! Brand new AgfaPhoto APX100 dated 01/2013" on their website.

To be honest, not being a film expert, is it still a decent film to use for the price?
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I know, I asked specifically because I'd read that and I'd heard on flickr that it might be a fib or two.

APX100 is meant to be absolutely wonderful in Rodinal - a quick search on the internet will reveal some of the results, they seem to be a seriously winning combo. I haven't shot either roll yet and I don't have any Rodinal either so I can't vouch for this personally, but there's a lot of happy shoppers using that combo, and a lot of people who swear by it for the last word in ISO100 sharpness.
 
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