Are there any film people? PLEASE POST HERE!

[deedive]

i have to admit, i love my digital camera, but not as much as my film camera. So are there any film people on the forum? Please post:)

[William_Robinette]

I shoot 35mm sometimes. I like the way it renders natural light a lot, but the hassle of developing and scanning has pushed me far away. I have some stuff I shot on 35 (not much) here: http://sprocketpictures.com/williamrobinette/images/photography/index.html

[Hans Moleman]

on my website, most of the photography section comes from film scans

[MaxZenk]

Some months ago I sold my Canon D30 because of switching from Canon to Nikon lenses because of my 35mm adaptor. So I got these beautiful lenses, new Voigtlaender 58 1.4 and the Nikon 85 1.4 AIS but no camera. Today I was able to borrow a nice Nikon F3 and took quite a few pictures on a Fuji Superia 200. I am really excited about the results.

Before the D30 I shot quite a bit of film, and I recently rediscovered it while being in Paris for a few days.
I can't really tell, it's just a difference photography feeling, at least for me. I work way more carefully and thoughtful. Also the results just feel different. I think it's the film grain, the different DOF of fullformat, the colors... it's just a special look...

I am really excited to see some other folks stuff here!
Hopefully I can show some results pretty soon as well.

How do you guys digitalize your shots?

Best,
Max :)

[Ken K]

I still have a special place in my heart for film... I picked up a Mamiya 645 medium format camera for cheap last year and occasionally shoot some landscapes with Velvia 50. Yum! :)

I also have an old Nikon FM10 from my college days. Been meaning to strap a Zeiss ZF on it and go shoot some film. I miss the simplicity.

[Mattykins]

I shoot 35mm Black and White all the time. Chemicals are getting hard to find though. When I do digitize it, I use a film scanner.

[William_Robinette]

Yup, I use a a Nikon film scanner that my school owns. It does a really nice job.

[deedive]

glad to here im not alone, great pics william and hans.
william, really like the vertical panaramic of the sky, sea and centered tree.
hans, how did u get the chicago river sunset! wow


How do you guys digitalize your shots?
the place i get my film developed charges 5 buck extra for a CD.

[deedive]

:( guess no one wants to post some pics...

[Moojangles]

i use a Mamiya 645 when i feel its necessary or when i go hiking and want to use some film. Not cheap though.

[deedive]

kool, a fellow mamiya person, the above pics are a mamiya6

[MaxZenk]

So I am done shooting quite a bit, not it is time to digitalize.
At my school, we have a negative scanner, but I only gained access to it for this one time and probably not in the future, since they are closing this section down (what the...).
Anyways, what I would like to know: What is a good workflow of analog photography combined with PS postproduction?

I figured having a film develope, get prints, choose the best pictures and scan the negatives somehow works nice, but also gets really pricy.

How was the workflow when it was all analog?
Let's say in a newspaper. Did they get prints from every negative and chose the pictures, or did they only shoot reversal film, select the pictures and then go for it?

Just trying to figure out economical way... :)

[deedive]

i'm lazy, i found a good pro camera place. They develop with a mini contact sheet for 3 bucks and scan at 6x6 400dpi for 5 bucks a roll.

[zergtherobot]

I wish I could rock a medium format, but money restricts me from doing so. I am thinking about picking up a Holga for the heck of it. Ironic that today I am selling my slr. I plan on picking up a nice 35mm or medium format when I can afford, but right now it's just much to expensive for me.

[DivotDan]

I'm loving some film. I picked up a Nikon N90s and a 20mm f/2.8 to shoot some landscape stuff on my vacation. Gotta love KEH too. Since they were just around the corner from me, I was able to pick up an awesome film camera for $31. :D

[after_effects]

Why shoot film when you can use the latitude from the Fuji S5 pro?

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3030/2517564374_f3d8b94058.jpg

Test shot i took the other day. It isnt perfect, but it is hard not to be impressed.

[deedive]

I wish I could rock a medium format, but money restricts me from doing so. I am thinking about picking up a Holga for the heck of it. Ironic that today I am selling my slr. I plan on picking up a nice 35mm or medium format when I can afford, but right now it's just much to expensive for me.

yeah holgas are really cool and fun. This may no be cheap but i saw a guy sellin a mamiya 330 for 399.00. I love that camera for close ups.

Why shoot film when you can use the latitude from the Fuji S5 pro?


kool pic, i've used a couple fuji's. but quality wise they dont compare to medium format film. but i do love digital too in a different way. I really dont want this to turn into a digital vs film thread.

I think i didnt write the correct title to this thread, i meant "Please post pictures" here

I'm loving some film. I picked up a Nikon N90s and a 20mm f/2.8 to shoot some landscape stuff on my vacation. Gotta love KEH too. Since they were just around the corner from me, I was able to pick up an awesome film camera for $31. :D

i wish i had KEH around the corner from me :( i have adorama but they are no where close to the service ive seen from KEH.

[DivotDan]

Why shoot film when you can use the latitude from the Fuji S5 pro?

I'd like to see if I can address this w/out getting into the digital vs. film stuff. I think everyone here understands the attributes of digital. I think that we sometimes forget the things that film can bring to the picture. There are a few full frame digital cameras, but that is one advantage of film. With my N90s and 20mm f/2.8 I can get some awesome wide shots. It has about the same FOV as my D200 with a 13mm lens. Plus it can sometimes be difficult to reproduce the beauty of B&W 400ASA film or the color saturation of Fuji Velvia 100.

I think we all love digital. I love my D200, but I think the technical know how of taking a picture can be applied to film and be just as beautiful and in most situations provide a higher quality end product (esp if you want to do large enlargements).

kool pic, i've used a couple fuji's. but quality wise they dont compare to medium format film. but i do love digital too in a different way.

If I had a real pair on me I would have bought a medium format camera, since the intention of my 35mm is only for landscapes. Their quality and sharpness is not met by an of the digital SLR's for sure.

i wish i had KEH around the corner from me :( i have adorama but they are no where close to the service ive seen from KEH.

I consider myself lucky in that respect.

[MaxZenk]

Hey guys... 7 pictures of my first 35mm project.

Film: Fuji Superia 200
Camera: Nikon F3
Lens: Voigtlaender 58mm 1.4, Nikon 85 1.4
Shot with available light and a reflector, negative scanned on a Nikon LS-2000

Please let me know what you think, criticism always welcome, I am eager to learn! :)

Ah, I forgot: This was in a photography class, portraitures, topic: "The day I told her"

Thanks,
Max.

[zergtherobot]

great pictures.

[DivotDan]

Sweet. I really dig the 6th one of her in bed. The way the freckles work with the grain is awesome.

[MaxZenk]

Thanks, nice that you like them!

It's always good to have a chick like that at home.
I really enjoyed doing analog, there's just so much you need to concentrate on... if you screw up, you find out 3 days later, when it is way too late. No way to check framing of the picture you just did... did she blink? did I actually push the exposure-lock button?
Really teaches you some good stuff...

Also I had to cut out the negatives and put them into a slide frame for scanning. I cut them out with our kitchen scissors and I was shaking... screw up and everything is gone... :)

Not the proper way of doing it, I know, but sometimes there are no better ways.

When I had the negatives scanned, I was really surprised:

They looked completly different than the prints, and this although I did not have and "pictureenhancement" or stuff like that done.
I think the scanner screwed up, or what could it be?
It was really hard to get the colours like the ones on the print...

Also what I don't get:

Isn't film 24 x 36 making it a ration of 2:3
Why are the negatives wider then?
And why do they offer 9 x 13 cm (sorry, european :) ) prints at all, which obviously cut off some bits?

Can anyone help me out with that?

[pest22o]

Hey guys... 7 pictures of my first 35mm project.

Film: Fuji Superia 200
Camera: Nikon F3
Lens: Voigtlaender 58mm 1.4, Nikon 85 1.4
Shot with available light and a reflector, negative scanned on a Nikon LS-2000

Please let me know what you think, criticism always welcome, I am eager to learn! :)

Ah, I forgot: This was in a photography class, portraitures, topic: "The day I told her"

Thanks,
Max.

I love them all especially the last one.

[Ric O'Shea]

Max, those are some nice shots. It's refreshing to me that people are still rocking film and it's beginning to make a come back as people tire of the banality of digital. Granted, I use digital all week (I shoot for a newspaper) but when it comes to my personal work it's 99% film. I love the weekends when I can break out one of the multitude of film cameras laying around my apartment (my personal favorites being my 2x3 Graflex, my Holga, my 1950's Brownie Hawkeye, and Nikon N80).

I shoot almost exclusively chromes and b/w negs. I process my own b/w film in my apartment and have to drive about an hour to get my slides done. More work and more cost...of course. But I love the anticipation of seeing what I've shot and I really enjoy doing my own processing. I don't see it as a chore but as a craft that I've worked at very hard. Granted, digital makes my daily workflow much, much faster and allows me to make changes as I shoot but I find the results from a film take to be far superior. Film challenges me and really makes me concentrate on my shots. Digital makes me lazy.

Someone asked awhile back about an analog workflow. In the short time that I did film for work, here's how it went:

-We shot on color negs (Fuji Press), cracked them open in the darkroom and spooled them on stainless reels (something I suck at), loaded them in the processor and hoped for the best (she was a finicky beast), wait 12 minutes, pull them out and throw them in the film dryer.
-Once the negs were done we loaded them into archival pages, threw them on the light table and looked at the shots through a lupe.
-After we decided on which ones we wanted they were scanned and toned through PS.

This was a significant workflow improvement over the olden days of paste-ups and actually making prints in the dark room. I never got a chance to do that but it's always fun talking with guys that basically lived in the darkroom.

Max, you ask why your scans look different than your prints. When you take film to a photo lab they use calibration strips to setup their machines for the particular type of film you're using. Most processors, especially one-hour labs, work on the assumption that it knows better what your pictures should look like over what you actually want. If people got prints of what their disposable cameras actually shot they'd probably throw them in the garbage. The processors work to neutralize blown highlights, crushed shadows, and remove color casts. If you shoot print film with filters and such on and then take it to an average lab, the processor will automatically remove those colors to make it look like normal daylight.

When you scan images yourself, your scanner isn't automatically doing that processing. Some high end scanning software will allow you to tell it what film you're using and it will make those compensations.

As for print sizes, a standard 35mm frame is a 2:3 ratio. However standard print sizes don't exactly match that. A common size here is 8x10 inches which crops out part of the picture. At least 8x12 is still an option. Most times I will size the picture in PS to what I want (keeping the proper proportions) and have them print it on an 8x10 sheet (so that it has borders which make it easier to matte and frame).

Hope this was useful.

[deedive]

good shots Maxzenk, i really like the last one. Love the layers

[MaxZenk]

Hey guys, thanks for the feedback!

The last one is my favorite as well. This is the shot that inspired me to do the series. And it really makes me humble, since that was a spontaneous shot (at least staged by me ;) ) on the very top of Eifel tower in Paris.

Ric, thank you very much for your insight, it was really helpful indeed!

Film challenges me and really makes me concentrate on my shots. Digital makes me lazy.After that project I really understand what you are saying there. And as a beginner lke me this is a far superior way for learning.

I have one additional question as for the workflow:

How do you tell a shot to be good from the negative, I mean really negative, not reversal film... and how do you tell it it's really in focus?
Or is it basically about the composition, how you make your seletion and then look at colors (of course) and sharpness afterwards?

As for the lab, this is what is still confusing me:
I paid quite a bunch to have the film processed at a in-house lab, doing the prints also with the negatives and not scanning and printing them. Because I wanted to avoid any kind of this processors.
The thing is, the prints really looked like in the situation and how I intended it to be... but the negative scans did not, I attached the scan of one picture.

I guess I need to practice scanning a bit more?! :)
And photography...

[Ken K]

cracked them open in the darkroom and spooled them on stainless reels (something I suck at)
Oh man, you just took me back about 12 years to college. I kinda forgot about that whole processing process and it all just came back to me with "spooled them on stainless reels". Fond memories of trying to do that in the dark... lol. Man I miss that b&w photography class. It was my most favorite class in college. :)

Now you make me want to set up a darkroom. Thanks a lot! ;)

[WaveRiderXIX]

I always shoot with my 35mm Lomo!!!
This particular one is the color splash.
I use Fuji 400.

Love this thing. I can get looks off this camera that I could never pull off digitally, without the need to throw into photoshop work. The only hassle is getting it developed, that and 2/3 of my pics always come out messed up. (Still trying to perfect the timing of holding down the trigger in different lighting situations)
This was straight up from Costco's scans.

http://gallery.mac.com/philipcuenco/100448/00370005/web.jpg
http://gallery.mac.com/philipcuenco/100448/00360020/web.jpg
http://gallery.mac.com/philipcuenco/100448/00370014/web.jpg
http://gallery.mac.com/philipcuenco/100448/00360006/web.jpg

[Ric O'Shea]

Negs are tough to sift through to find the good shots. Getting a small contact sheet made makes life much easier when it comes to good color. That being said, I've always used a 10x lupe and a light table. With the magnification it's easy to spot the ones that are sharp. Beyond that it takes experience. The orange cast of the negatives and the inverted colors make it a challenge so instead I look at the density of the image (which is indicative of good exposure. I just like to trust that the colors are there too.) The nice thing about print film is the huge latitude, especially on the overexposed side. Even if it looks completely washed, you can normally pull some detail from it. I also look for good composition and potential crops.

One thing you can do is look at the negs of good prints and compare them to negs of less than spectacular prints. It will give you an idea of what to look for when editing.

[Zim]

You can still buy film?

No really my 35mm film days are over. It was fun and and have boxes and boxes full of old pictures and negatives to prove it. No for me it is going to be Nikon Digital SLRs all the way. I can take a picture, edit it and then print it at home all in the same day.


But I sure miss the way some of the slide film used to look. Film is awesome but just not for me anymore.

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y22/zimvg/RZ1_0929.jpg

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y22/zimvg/DSC_1984.jpg

[Zim]

You can still buy film?

No really my 35mm film days are over. It was fun and and have boxes and boxes full of old pictures and negatives to prove it. For me it is going to be Nikon Digital SLRs all the way. I can take a picture, edit it and then print it at home all in the same day.


But I sure miss the way some of the slide film used to look. Film is awesome but just not for me anymore.
]

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y22/zimvg/DSC_1984.jpg

[Hans Moleman]

Kodak e100g
http://www.dvxuser6.com/uploaded/9586/1214590385.jpg

[deedive]

ALL NATURAL SUPER MODELS! work it!... work it!...
i need some homemade sideways back pocket jeans.

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y22/zimvg/DSC_1984.jpg

[Adam Gonzalez]

I would shoot film if I could afford processing. I love film especially Kodak Vision 2 and 3 stocks....mmmm!!!! And nothing gets past the old black and white and standing in a dark room for hours trying to get the right pull out of the clouds and dodge of the eyes on a pic. Film will always be around and will never be out dated, it will only get better. Features, commercials, documentary, etc will still shoot on film, old school and new school photographers will still shoot film. There is way to much latitude (11 stops holy s**t) in film that we are only still trying to achieve with our 1's and 0's like after_effects tryin to defend his Fuji S5 Pro (4 stops maybe).


i heart film!

[deedive]

i heart film!

me 2

[One Way PhotoVideo]

as much as I love my D70 setup, I always admire a good Medium format shot