My first roll of film. Turned out better than expected (mostly)

[Kramertron2000]

So I got my first roll of film developed - had to send it up to Cairns (about 400km north of me), which took a little under a week. Others on a local photography Facebook page told me the CameraHouse in Cairns doesn't do the best job, but I just wanted to check how I went and didnt really want to wait any longer than a week. I was quite pleased with my results (mostly).

A couple turned out a little blurry or over/under exposed and a couple were downright terrible. The terrible ones I had anticipated in my notes though, so I know what I did wrong.

Anyway here is a link to the album - they were scanned to a CD by Camera House and I ripped them from the CD. They are labelled with exif data and notes. The film is Fuji Superia ASA400, taken on a Nikomat FTn with a 50mm f/2 lens. All were taken around the Townsville (North QLD, Australia) area, mostly either at home, at the Ross River dam near my parent's place or on the way up to Paluma.

http://https://ibb.co/album/gUEqDv

Let me know what you think. My favourites are the one of the spillway, the moonrise with the guardrail in the foreground and the cacti.

 

[Kramertron2000]

P.s for anyone who didnt see my introduction I am a complete noob - tsking pictures with my mobile phone and a cheap point and shoot is the the extent of my previous photography experience.

 

[jcdeboever]

Hey bud, congrats on your first roll! Way better than mine. Thanks for following up on your initial thread. You got some nice landscape shots in there. I think the scans were decent overall. Looks like the camera is working good, don't see any light leaks, exposure looks pretty good. Maybe get a flash for indoor stuff. Maybe check that guys website for a flash, like a Nikon SB15.

 

[Kramertron2000]

Thanks for the kind words. The indoors ones turned out crap mostly due to user error. The picture of the cat was actually quite well lit, but in my haste I forgot to change the shutter speed. She's a very difficult subject because every time I bring out the camera she gets up and tries to put her nose on the lens and starts walking around me The other one my sister took and she knows even less than I do and was squatting down to take the picture with a slow shutter speed.

 

[jcdeboever]

Thanks for the kind words. The indoors ones turned out crap mostly due to user error. The picture of the cat was actually quite well lit, but in my haste I forgot to change the shutter speed. She's a very difficult subject because every time I bring out the camera she gets up and tries to put her nose on the lens and starts walking around me The other one my sister took and she knows even less than I do and was squatting down to take the picture with a slow shutter speed.

cool. don't be afraid of a flash. you will be surprised how well they can work. I use a SB15 on my F and it works well on auto, f5/6 @ 1/60s. you can even bounce it. The hard part is getting one that works, so if you do go for one, be sure it works. Just fire it every month to keep it in working order. I have a monthly calendar (phone) reminder to fire my flash units since they may not get used a lot.

Here is a sample, guy was in shade. Dog went crazy on the pop but it exposed the scene well.

 

[Derrel]

You did alright for a first roll. The scans look decent. If this is your first role I'd wager to say that by your fifth roll you'll be doing pretty well. Thanks for following up your initial post.

 

[Kramertron2000]

Thanks guys

That dog does look like its about to go nuts hahaha cool shot though.

The biggest things Iv learned from this roll are to make sure my horizons are straight on landscape shots; be careful with exposure on contrasty outdoor shots (maybe check the metering for both the bright areas and shaded areas then set things so my exposure is somewhere in the middle) and to remember that even though something may look pretty in person, on film it may be too busy to work properly (like in some of the waterfall pictures).

One of the problems my location poses re: contrasty outdoor scenes is that I live in the tropics, so even in winter, but particularly summer, the sunlight is extremely intense, so the rule of thumb to err on the side of overexposure goes out the window a bit. You can see that in the creek and bridge pictures, where even though the shadows dont look too bad, anything light coloured with light reflecting off it looks quite harsh and overexposed.

Fortunately photoshop still works well for scanned shots taken on film - I can crop and rotate to correct crooked horizons and play with light levels if I need to. I dislike computers though, so fiddling in photoshop isnt my idea of fun - Id rather learn to take a great picture in the first place

Im liking the fuji experia 400 film too - its a bit grainy in some pictures, but its quite organic and nice, and the colours are also pretty nice. I currently have a roll of kodak ultra max 400 in at the moment (my third roll - second is more fuji and is getting developed as we speak), so it will be interesting to see how it compares. My next colour roll will probably be something "nicer" like portra or something.

 

[jcdeboever]

Portra is beautiful film, wonderful pastel color. Ektar is sharp and punchy for landscape. You might consider a ND filter.

 

[Kramertron2000]

Awesome. Ill probably order a roll of both soon - probably ASA400 for the portra and the normal ektar ASA100. I still have about 20 shots on the UltraMax.

Literally all I can get locally is the fuji and kodak (at least both are cheap) and TriX (which I have a roll of in the fridge, but Im not a huge fan of B&W, so dont really have much of a use for it).

I have actually been looking at a set of filters that includes a deep red (for infrared film) and a few different ND filters. The ones I was looking at were just cheap chinese ones, but I cant imagine they would be too bad.