beginning with a manual film camera.

[TwiztidBlood]

i have a praktica mtl5 and a couple lenses, and i would love to know where to start with it, im used to using digital but i love film, knowing how to use exposure and iso, and all would be wonderful. any help is needed please!! i tried my first roll of film with it and my exposure and focus was pretty bad.

 

[Alexandra]

It's good to see people coming back to film after digital. Rare phenomenon, but a great one.

It's natural that after shooting digi for a while, film is hard because the camera wont enhance your pics and figure out stuff for you. You'll have to get used to it and this might take a while and will probably be disappointing at times. I started phototgraphy and learned with a film slr, so it was sort of easier.

Unless your hands shake a little when you press the shutter or if you have a really bad lens, focus shouldn't be a big problem. Once your hands get steady, there's no shake. Other than that, one little thing you should never forget: focus before you actually close the aperture. It's that silly, but sometimes when I don't have time to think and just go for the quick shot, I forget this and focus sucks.

As to ISO and exposure... It would be easy to explain in a few words, but here's my advice on this: read a book or visit this site: http://photonotes.org/
When I was starting with film, I got very few and nebulous explanations from some people and finally wasted lots of film before I could really figure it out.
Seriously, it will save you a lot of time and probably some money too if you read a book or something. This way you'll really know what does what and how to control exposure
However, I must add that just reading wont fill the blanks and you'll have to learn 99.9% from practice.

It's normal that your first roll isn't very good.

The switch to film and even more so to manual can be rough because you're fully responsible of the results.
However, once you have it, you'll see they'll be better that when the camera figures it out for you.

Good luck with this

 

[Torus34]

The more specific you make a question, the better the answer can be.

 

[Don Simon]

When I was starting with film, I got very few and nebulous explanations from some people and finally wasted lots of film before I could really figure it out.

Of course, wasting film is itself quite a good form of learning - take notes of what you're doing for each shot, then when you see the results you'll understand what you did right or wrong.

The more specific you make a question, the better the answer can be.

I'm responsible here; I advised TwiztidBlood to post here asking for a brief explanation of the basics of exposure and use of a manual film SLR. It's a pretty broad subject, I don't think it could have been asked as one specific question. Anyway, http://photonotes.org/ looks like a good place to start learning the basics.

 

[Digital Matt]

Also check out http://www.photo.net/learn/making-photographs/

 

[Torus34]

And the library. Don't forget the library.

 

[TwiztidBlood]

thanks everyone so much, im gonna head to the library this week, and everything youve said is helpful. i will definatly start writing down what ive done before each photo so i know how to make changes. im going to visit both websites and i have a tripod so shake isnt an issue for most photos. im sure you will see me around here alot. and ill also read others problems and questions in this forum as well

 

[ahelg]

I started out with a fully manual Centon K100 and I still believe that they were the best photographs I took. Perfectly exposed and all that.