Hello Everyone!!!

Edian · Sep 9, 2016

Hey everybody,

I'm a 30 year old Musician / Actor / Computer Programming teacher / Gardener / Cosmetologist. I just started going to school for photography and just developed my first roll of B&W film on thursday! I get to make my first prints on tuesday and am super excited! I took a picture of my negatives with my iphone and i'm hoping that my iphone just misinterpreted the lighting because if not, i think i over exposed more than half my shots! but oh well first try with film, b&w and my canon AE-1

I am shooting on an Ae-1 fd 50mm 1.8 with 400 tri-x b&w

My only requirements as of now are to use a shutter speed of 125 , and no indoor pics.

If anyone has any tips for me, it would be greatly appreciated!

All I have been doing is using my In camera light meter on my subjects shadow. and shooting at that aperture.

Looking forward to sharing and learning with and from everyone!

limr · Sep 9, 2016

Greetings and welcome, @Edian ! Congrats on your first roll of film! It does like like there is some overexposure, but from what I can see, it seems like most frames are still within workable limits. And it makes some sense. You're metering for shadows, which means anything not in shadow may end up overexposed, depending on how deep the shadow is, how much of the frame is shadow vs highlight, whether or not the meter is measuring properly... Very high contrast shots can be tricky. You can sacrifice some shadow to preserve highlight detail, or vice versa, or you can split the difference: meter both shadow and bright areas, and expose somewhere in between. Film has a very good dynamic range, so many times you can still have plenty of detail in both, but again, a lot of it depends. Don't worry, Tri-X is very forgiving and you may be surprised at what you can salvage with printing tricks (or software tricks if you scan them into digital files.)

So the 1/125th shutter speed and outdoor shots requirements are imposed by the professor?

Edian · Sep 10, 2016

Thanks!
Those are the requirements for the first couple of rolls. We can't use any printing tricks or digital.
Professor wants to see our composition and we need to capture all 9 levels of grey ( i think the ilford paper has 9 tones)

john.margetts · Sep 11, 2016

You just developed your first roll - and you have printable images? Well done. I have been shooting with film for 45-ish years and still get frames that are no good. It is not possible to properly judge negatives by photographing them, but some of those are very printable so I would be pleased.

Edian · Sep 11, 2016

@john.margetts I am pleased indeed! I can't wait to make my first contact sheet and prints.

Gary A. · Sep 11, 2016

Congrats on your first roll. I'm an old fart and started my photography in the film only days. Recently, I picked up a 35mm and a 120mm film cameras. Good luck and good shooting.

limr · Sep 11, 2016

Edian said:
Thanks!
Those are the requirements for the first couple of rolls. We can't use any printing tricks or digital.
Professor wants to see our composition and we need to capture all 9 levels of grey ( i think the ilford paper has 9 tones)

Fair enough. I only mention it to remind you to revisit early negatives after you've learned more about how to work with the images on the negatives. You may find that images you initially dismissed as too dark or too bright may be workable after all.

This is not to say that I advocate careless shooting just because there are ways to salvage the image later. I always try to get it as right as possible in the camera. But I have also learned that sometimes things go wrong or that there are limits to what the camera can do, and so having a few tricks up your sleeve for how to work with the image after development is useful. I'm sure you'll eventually learn some of these tricks, but your teacher is trying to teach you good shooting habits first, which is good.

I hope you are able to show us how some of those prints come out!