Film Photography for noobs

phalgunkp
Mar 2, 2021
6 min read

Updated: Mar 5, 2021

Film photography has existed for years. Actually for almost over a century. But some of us born in the digital age didn't get to experience it in it's hay day. But now film photography is slowly making a comeback, at least on an enthusiast level.

I had to check it out and 'experience' it like a true Gen Z.

Well what could a hundred year old technology offer that the latest cutting edge imaging tech cannot.

What a pleasant surprise it was!

Film photography isn't just about the image we create but also the process of capturing that image with so many constraints. It's slow, labour intensive & you've limited exposures. But the reward is worth it. I don't think film photography can completely replace digital photography but they both are different beasts in their own right.

FILM CAMERA and FORMAT

The world of film cameras is fascinating and weird. You have pocket sized point and shoots to huge old cameras using a technology called 'wet plates' to capture images.

Choosing a film camera depends on choosing the film format or film size. Just like the digital world (there's APS-C and full frame cameras), the world of film also has similar formats. Actually digital sensor sizes are based on film sizes. 35mm and 120mm are the more popular options though there are many more formats including 110mm .

135 mm or 35mm Film: This is equivalent to full frame digital sensors and is the most popular choice nowadays. To be honest most film stock manufacturers produce film mainly in 35mm format.

120mm or 20mm film: Here you get to take about 20 images as opposed to about 36 in 35mm format. You get lesser film stock choices and it's a little more expensive.

I suggest beginners to go with 35mm film only 'cause you can shoot more and getting different film stocks is easier.

Film cameras come down to your personal preference. You can either take the safest route and buy a point and shoot or a disposable film camera, or make life a little fancy and purchase a modern electronic film camera that has auto focus and LCD displays. But we are Gen Z, we live life on the edge. So we choose the all mighty vintage full manual SLR.

There are also TLRs, where there is one lens to capture light and the other to view the subject.

Most popular choices for 35mm film cameras are Canon AE-1, Olympus OM series, Pentak K100, Nikon FE series.

The Mamiyas, Yashicas, Hassleblads are still winning the medium format game.

FILM STOCK

The film reel is the sensor of the camera. It's where the image is captured.

The film reel has photosensitive chemicals in it. When exposed to light, react and create an impression of an image.

The colour of the film canister determines the white balance of the film.

You also gotta choose the ISO or ASA ( in film photography terms) or the speed of the film - which is fixed. If you need more sensitive film, you go with a faster or higher ASA film and vice versa.

Every film stock has it's own unique characteristics and latitude.

Kodak Portra (has a yellow canister) is a very popular day light balanced film for portraits.

Whereas Cinestill (has a red canister) is tungsten balanced and is very popular with night street photographers who wanna recreate those cyberpunk tones.

A lotta digital photographers shooting RAW never think about whitebalance, because they can very easily fix it in post. In film it is possible to change the tones using chemical processes but it is better to just choose the right film stock to get the right tones without extra effort as these images are already baked into the reel and by changing tones we physically change the image.

LOADING FILM

Next step is to learn loading the film into your camera. Try not to expose too much of the film roll to light.

YouTube is still your best friend here.

Once the film is loaded you're almost ready to go.

METERING

if your film camera has a working calibrated lightmeter it makes the job a little easier. If it dosen't, then you gotta meter manually.

Metering is the process of analysing how much light is present in the scene and dialing in the settings to capture the kind of image we want.

For most people starting out, a smartphone lightmeter app will do just fine.

If you have experience shooting digital you'll know that digital sensors are good at capturing shadow detail. And almost every tutorial will tell you to underexpose the image a bit to protect the highlights so that you can recover the shadows later in post.

But film is the exact opposite. It is very good at capturing highlight detail but will struggle with shadow detail. So it is advised to expose for the shadows. This means - you take the lightmeter reading from the shadow area.

This also depends on the film stock. Film stocks with faster ASA tend to have higher latitude (dynamic range). Ex: Kodak Portra 800 which has an ASA of 800 has higher latitude compared to Kodak Colourplus 200 having 200 ASA. This means we can overexpose Portra 800 by more than 2 or 4 or even 5 stops and still manage to get detail in the highlights as opposed to say Colourplus 200 where we'll start losing detail after overexposing by 2 stops.

The more you shoot you'll quickly realise how over exposing or under exposing an image completely changes the tones of the image.

Typically for Kodak Portra film stocks you over expose but atleast half a stop to one full stop to get true to life skin tones. As portra is very contrasty, overexposing will help cut some contrast.

A great way to understand how most of the film stocks work is by using VSCO. It's ironic I know.

Apparently VSCO puts in a lot of research to digitally simulate film stocks. So play around with it. But don't completely rely on it.

FOCUSING

You need a beautiful vintage manual lens. Modern lenses for digital cameras prioritise image quality and perfection. But a lot of these vintage handmade lenses have their own little quirks that make them so unique. One of the most popular vintage lenses is the all mighty 40 year old Russian; I mean, Soviet made Helios 44M. The bokeh bro!! Droool worthy.

Okay! so your settings are dialed in and you've doubled checked them. Now take your time and manually focus. I'm pretty sure your vintage camera dosen't have autofocus.

You can shoot at a slightly narrower aperture to get the image in focus easily.

SMASHING THAT SHUTTER BUTTON

Once all this is done, you can smash that shutter button!!

Don't forget to enjoy that beautiful shutter release sound and physically feel the shutter move inside the camera. It's like driving a vintage car as opposed to a fully automatic modern electric car. The vintage stuff just feels different maaan!

ALMOST DONE

Nah! your job isn't finished yet, you gotta get your film processed or if you're the adventurous type, you can process it on your own.

I won't go in detail about film processing here, there are a tonne of videos online explaining every aspect of it.

Typically a film processing lab does this for you. They will wash the film and scan the film for you.

PROCESSING AND POSTING TO SOCIALS

I mean, who dosen't love those pastel toned images of beautiful people in beautiful places.

But there's a small debate brewing in the film community.

Should you edit film pictures or not: Nowadays most film photographers get their negatives scanned and digitised. Film negatives are strips of your film reel with the processed image embedded in them. And the image is reversed. I mean from a colour perspective. You can digitally scan them to obtain your real images.

Well coming back to the topic, I really don't care. It's all about your vision. If you feel you gotta enhance the image digitally you can.

But there is also the chemical way of 'editing' film images. You can 'push' or 'pull' an image to increase exposure or reduce exposure. This affects the grain in the image too. You can also dodge and burn your images chemically to enhance them.

Most great film photographers did enhance their images including the great Ansel Adams. So cut the hypocrisy, Adams didn't have Lightroom so he did it in the darkroom, now we have LR and PS.

Darkroom: Film stocks are photosensitive. You can't just rip open the canister whenever you feel like.

You need a dark photon void environment. Thus - the darkroom. It's literally just a room without light.

( I do know safelights exist there)

Cool! You're all set! Go out and burn some film.

Go experience them beautiful tones, them light leaks, them grains. I did tell you, it's an experience. From feeling the rugged buttons on the camera to smashing that shutter button.

Ahhhh!

Happy shooting and getting your wallet burnt. Oh! did I mention shooting film is addictive and quite expensive? Well it is.

Things to avoid: Film has existed for centuries, so you'll always find an annoying nerd photographer who seems to know it all. It's all gucci till they teach you the basics but then scoot bruh. Chart your own path. Create history. Don't let them lecture you on which specific aperture to shoot at, which particular film stock to use.

Also there seems to be this bullshit unwritten rule - only shoot black and white, only take useless snapshots of tangled electrical wires dangling from the heavens above!!

Again, scoot! Chart your own path. Create history.