Film beginner's questions

[ryunin]

Yes, it is slowly beginning to make sense how much I should learn.

Do you guys think The Zone System for 35MM Photographers: A Basic Guide to Exposure Control would be enough? Or terri's articles on the Zone system enough?

I have one question, once we somehow learn to manually set the exposure, what about that AUTO setting in an old Nikon FE and such cameras, where you only choose aperture and rely on the camera to pick the proper shutter speed? Is that for sissies? Or for ocassions when we don't have time to manually set everything?

To sum up about the range of skills and experience, I would say the wider the range is the wider the field in which we may express ourselves is. Jimmy Hendrix knew nothing about musical theory and his music was great but covered a very narrow musical field. Miles Davis knew all about complicated jazz harmonies and even invented his own scales and chords. Then there are fantastic blues singers who only know how to sing blues. A friend took a fantastic picture with his PS camera several times but he never became a photographer, only picked amazing people, moments and situations and made the best out of them with the little camera. Stunning pictures. So everyone must decide how great the scope of photography they want to master or at least learn to express themselves. So to me I would like to learn to have things under control when making BW photographs on film. Zones, darkroom, negatives are all waiting for me now.

 

[ann]

professional use the mode that gets the job done. learning what they all do will assist in making that decision.

IMHO, it is important to balance creative vision with technical knowledge. If you have a great idea but are clueless how to put it on paper your not going to get very fair. If you have all the technical aspects down pat and don't understand or have any creative talent the photos are not very good.

As your education grows with practice and experience; which means fill the learning bin answers will appear

The harder you practice the "luckier" you get.

Oh, by the way; professional make lots of mistakes
1. they are willing to experiment and try a wide variety of techniques and not all are successful
2. you only get to the see the successful ones

 

[dxqcanada]

I use Shutter or Aperture priority (semi-Auto modes) in situation where I have no time to manually adjust them AND the scene is balanced good enough that an average meter reader will produce a usable exposure.

 

[Mike_E]

Ryunin, something that you haven't mentioned but I will bring up is to shoot with both eyes open.

One thing that no amount of skill can control is the progression of time. Try and always be aware of your surroundings and their effects on your subjects. I'm not nearly the first nor the last to say it but photography is really all about capturing the moments of your life so that you can share them with others. Great photography is made from great moments.

 

[ryunin]

professional use the mode that gets the job done. learning what they all do will assist in making that decision.

IMHO, it is important to balance creative vision with technical knowledge. If you have a great idea but are clueless how to put it on paper your not going to get very fair. If you have all the technical aspects down pat and don't understand or have any creative talent the photos are not very good.

As your education grows with practice and experience; which means fill the learning bin answers will appear

The harder you practice the "luckier" you get.

Oh, by the way; professional make lots of mistakes
1. they are willing to experiment and try a wide variety of techniques and not all are successful
2. you only get to the see the successful ones

it all makes sense and i agree, thank you

 

[ryunin]

Ryunin, something that you haven't mentioned but I will bring up is to shoot with both eyes open.

One thing that no amount of skill can control is the progression of time. Try and always be aware of your surroundings and their effects on your subjects. I'm not nearly the first nor the last to say it but photography is really all about capturing the moments of your life so that you can share them with others. Great photography is made from great moments.

this is the part of photography that my brain is gulping down very well i think, the philosophy of it, the why of it, this is the main reason i want to do it, discover something beautiful, even bitterly beautiful or something bitterly true, to separate garbage from pearls, authentic from fake...

when i shoot in a pub being all confused about zone systems, meters, shutter speeds, etc etc i at least know i want to wait for the moment where the group of people around me all have their eyes opened, all look in the right directions, move not too much or just the way i want it, just wait for the right moment and when that picture is made then wonderful, i am a technical retard, but i love art and philosophy hidden beyond photography, or in other words, we all have our own philosophy of photography or are looking for it, working on it, this is something i do naturally, technical aspects are the hard ones for me

 

[ryunin]

I use Shutter or Aperture priority (semi-Auto modes) in situation where I have no time to manually adjust them AND the scene is balanced good enough that an average meter reader will produce a usable exposure.

that makes sense, thank you

 

[dxqcanada]

The semi-Auto modes are good if you want to maintain a specific shutter speed or aperture ... and let the camera control the other.

 

[ryunin]

The semi-Auto modes are good if you want to maintain a specific shutter speed or aperture ... and let the camera control the other.

this is interesting, i always thought that to determine DOF, you have to choose aperture, hence you can leave the shutter speed alone

when i shoot portraits, i usually use the .... missing words... maximum aperture, f1.8 or whatever I have available from my prime lenses

when i shoot landscape, i choose f11 or f 16

when i shoot a complete figure, f5.6 or something

if in most situations we prefer a certain aperture, why should we have to use manual setting?

it would only make sense if the batteries were dead or if the camera was manual only

i am not defending, just asking

 

[djacobox372]

The semi-Auto modes are good if you want to maintain a specific shutter speed or aperture ... and let the camera control the other.

this is interesting, i always thought that to determine DOF, you have to choose aperture, hence you can leave the shutter speed alone

when i shoot portraits, i usually use the .... missing words... maximum aperture, f1.8 or whatever I have available from my prime lenses

when i shoot landscape, i choose f11 or f 16

when i shoot a complete figure, f5.6 or something

if in most situations we prefer a certain aperture, why should we have to use manual setting?

it would only make sense if the batteries were dead or if the camera was manual only

i am not defending, just asking

M = you control the exposure

Even the most fancy metering doesn't do nearly as good of job of choosing exposure as a skilled photographer.

 

[dxqcanada]

Also the algorithm that calculates the exposure does not know what you have in mind.

Many shooters are fine with the automatic exposure metering found in most modern cameras. An experienced photographer may want to manually control the exposure under a situation where they know the camera will be wrong in its calculation.

 

[ryunin]

Why does it take me so long to get things? Of course, you do choose a preferred aperture, but adjust the shutter speed according to the situation, if you know how to do it, of course.


I don't want to start several new threads so let me keep asking here.

After reading about the zone system over and over again at different sites, I came to the conclusion that it goes hand in hand with spot metering.

Matrix is for people who for some reason want to trust it but it isn't for someone who wants to learn exposure. That leaves spot metering or center-weighted metering in my case, I have Nikon FE, which has the center-weighted metering and Nikon F75 which offers both matrix and spot.

Would you recommend FE to start learning about manual exposure or F75 with its spot metering? Or should I buy a hand-held spot meter first and use it? I am not sure where to start. Read or shoot or both and with what equipment.

I also thought it might be better to not mix learning to develop and learning to expose as I would never know where I made mistake - badly exposed or badly developed? I thought maybe I should learn to expose with Ilford XP2 to get consistent results from the lab and see my exposure mistakes and learn to develop as separate skills as for now.

 

[ann]

there are other items that go into the DOF decision. FOcal length of the lens, and the focus point.

Many years ago, longer than you age, we had to manual meter and learn to meter as that was the only option.

Meters are meant to read the world as a 18% middle gray object, which it may or may not be what you want. It is clueless that snow should be white, or your favorite dog is black and it gives a middle gray recommendation.

If your using a aperture or shutter priorty option and correct for what you wish this to look like, your going to end up with the same quanity of light reaching the film but in a different manner.

with manual metering one can set a value and move the other around getting a different amount of light reaching the film creating the look your vision is dicating.

for instances with the snow for an example. i use f8 as my aperture priotry option and the shutter speeds moves to 125, but i want to open my aperture to 5.6 to increase the exposure so the snow is no longer gray, the shutter will go to 250 which is going to give me the same exposure but a different DOF.

However, with manual metering i can leave the shutter speed at 125 and open the aperture as much or as little as i like and the exposure will change without the shutter speed changing.

because of my experience i also use manual metering and rarely ever use it's recommendation, but look at the light and decide what i what the image to look like before i fire the shutter. This means when i get a new camera body, i have to go make some quick test to see how it is performing against my vision.

with film this means i may have to change the ISO and the development times and with digital it means i may under or over exposure a specific amount to make the exposure i want , not the one the meter thinks i need.

 

[ann]

leaning does not come in a few minutes,
your trying to cram to many items into your learning.

Understanding the Zone System can certainly help you understand tonal values in greyscale. WIth 35mm film you need to commint the whole roll to one set of numbers; ie. ISO and development times.

Start off simple, KISS.

take a roll of film doesn't make any difference whos, are what ISO, altho , i think tri x or hp5+ will be more forgiving.

Set the ISO at 400 and take about 18 exposures, the change the ISO to 200 and finish off the roll. I am not sure if your doing your own developing yet,but take it in and have the prints made and then look at them and you will see right away which ISO is giving you the best shadow detail, and the most imformtion.

Stick with that and the same shop so the developer and who ever is doing the work stays consistence and start taking more images and leaning as you go.

just use the camera meter, your making this much too difficult.

Is there some place you can take a class with someone who knows what they are doing in the darkroom. That should save you lots of time, energy and money.

 

[ryunin]

leaning does not come in a few minutes,
your trying to cram to many items into your learning.

Understanding the Zone System can certainly help you understand tonal values in greyscale. WIth 35mm film you need to commint the whole roll to one set of numbers; ie. ISO and development times.

Start off simple, KISS.

take a roll of film doesn't make any difference whos, are what ISO, altho , i think tri x or hp5+ will be more forgiving.

Set the ISO at 400 and take about 18 exposures, the change the ISO to 200 and finish off the roll. I am not sure if your doing your own developing yet,but take it in and have the prints made and then look at them and you will see right away which ISO is giving you the best shadow detail, and the most imformtion.

Stick with that and the same shop so the developer and who ever is doing the work stays consistence and start taking more images and leaning as you go.

just use the camera meter, your making this much too difficult.

Is there some place you can take a class with someone who knows what they are doing in the darkroom. That should save you lots of time, energy and money.

I feel very overwhelmed with all the information, i dont mean yours or anybody else here, just in general, it's hard to know where to start. I had no idea shooting film would be this complicated / most BW photographs I see everywhere look just like simple photos where exposure was no big deal - but that is the naive idea and in fact i am probably able to expose well only 5 % of what a skilled photographer can do. But that challenge makes it even more interesting for me. With digital, I thought I had learned to expose with the help of matrix and RAW and camera raw I can't imagine how I could have a problem with that, I mean I had plenty of well exposed digital images, but now I am a complete beginner. I have a friend who is going to teach me exposure and another one who is willing to teach me developing my films so I guess that will be a good way how to start.