The first film I've shot in nearly 20 years - some snaps of my daughter

Mav · Jun 15, 2008

I was getting into photography at the dawn of the digital revolution so I never really shot much film aside from a little on the Ricoh film SLR that my father had, and a crappy pocket 35mm film camera that I had in college. After that I had digital point and shoots and finally got started with DSLRs in 2006. The more I read and learn about film though, the more I couldn't help but think I was missing something. Sooo.... I pulled the trigger the other week and bought a used Nikon F100 with a grip for next to nothing, loaded some film into it, slapped my Nikkor 50mm f/1.4D lens on it and just picked up the scans and set of 5x7" prints from Costco today.

Shot with Ilford B&W XP2 Super 400 C41, courtesy of the person that sold me the F100. This was really just a functional check of the F100 more than anything, but holy heck I managed to get 7 or 8 keepers on a 36 exp roll. That's better than I do on digital! :lmao:

Now compare those with one recent portrait using my Nikon D40 and Nikkor 17-55 DX f/2.8 lens, shot at 55mm, f/4, iso400.

Lovely color shot, but I dunno. The film has a richness and texture that the digital just isn't matching. Even my wife and my mother-in-law saw the B&W's and were like 'ooooooooooohhh, that's nice!' The digital looks "too processed" and synthesized and the skin just looks plasticy. There's no texture or "feel". And just eyeballing it, the dynamic range of the B&W film is huge. Some of these photos I would have been fighting highlight blowouts like crazy on digital. Anyways a lot of this is pretty subjective, but I really like the look and feel of film and am going to shoot more of it.

Next up I have a couple rolls of Fuji 400 Superia, 100 Reala, and some 100F Velvia E6 slide film. Going to the beach in about two weeks and I think I'm going to get some slower speed finer grain B&W film. I really like the B&Ws so far.

BTW it cost a whopping $2.99 to develop and burn the 36 exp roll to CD at Costco, and $5.85 for a set of 5x7" prints. Next time I'll probably skip the prints and just go with the CD only since I did some minor editing to all of these. Oh the D40 and 17-55 shot was straight off the camera.

JimmyO · Jun 15, 2008

Shesh, Turn down the ISO on those first ones!

^^^That was a joke

Great shots!
Theres something awesome about shooting film still. Your alot less trigger happy and you usually get more properly exposed/composed pictures.

Mav · Jun 15, 2008

I knew somebody would comment about needing to turn the ISO down. :lol:

Yeah you're definitely more selective with film as far as when to hit the shutter.

The F100 is a very solid camera too - makes my D80 and D40 seem like toys in comparison.

Battou · Jun 16, 2008

Mav said:
I knew somebody would comment about needing to turn the ISO down. Yeah you're definitely more selective with film as far as when to hit the shutter. The F100 is a very solid camera too - makes my D80 and D40 seem like toys in comparison.

Thank you for posting these, I've been getting the noisey line way too frequently and I have been growing frustrated to say the least. I've been getting dissapointed with everything I have been shooting lately and fell back into an old habit of mine and it cost me a fortune. Seeing these has reminded me that patients is more important and that people will forget about the grain if there is something worth looking at.

nealjpage · Jun 16, 2008

Number two is awesome!

sunlioness · Jun 16, 2008

The forth and the sixth are amazing! Well done!

wrbphotograhy · Jun 16, 2008

i really like number 5... really cool eyes

Emerana · Jun 16, 2008

Really wonderful photos. They have a journalistic feel to them

dab_20 · Jun 16, 2008

Oh I really like these. Film definitely has a special something that digital doesn't. Your daughter has beautiful eyes! I really like the comps and lighting in these.

droyz2000 · Jun 17, 2008

I love the noise that you can get with film. Pictures, for the most part, stay sharp and it just adds something extra to the frame. I really like them. 2 and 3 where you are looking up to here I am really drawn to. The lighting on her face and short DOF are excellent.

Chris of Arabia · Jun 17, 2008

droyz2000 said:
I love the noise that you can get with film.

Once upon a time we used to call it grain... :lol:

Helen B · Jun 17, 2008

Lovely pictures, and the graininess suits them. I think that the graininess (grain-like appearance) must be because of the scanning or post-processing, because it looks uncharacteristically obvious for XP2.

I hope that you don't mind me posting this link, but it is an example of ISO 800 dye-image film (XP-2 is an ISO 400 dye-image film) with a very wide range of scene brightness. No noise reduction was used in post processing. Hopefully you will be able to see the lack of graininess from the shadows to the highlights.

Best,
Helen

Mav · Jun 17, 2008

Thanks everybody!

I have to say, the more I look at these the more I like them. And I love how you can get a totally different look just by swapping out film. This is a flexibility of film that I was taking for granted shooting digital. I can see how the graininess might be distracting on perhaps landscape photos where you might have a lot of smooth tones (particularly with the sky), but I definitely like it for this. Half the time my wife complains that on digital things look "too sharp" or "too clean". And look at the out of focus area on low ISO digital shots. It's just smooth flat nothingness. There's nothing there. With film you still have substance in the grain, which for these I think adds to the photo. I like how on #5 and #6 her hands don't just become smooth blobs of nothingness in the out of focus area. There's grain and substance there now. I also like how the grain has a way of obscuring those facial imperfections that people complain about while still not taking away any important detail. I wouldn't want to shoot specifically like this all the time, but the next roll can be a whole new look. And I know this varies greatly by the film, but I did try various exposures for a few shots on film and they all turned out fine after development and scanning, so there "can be" more latitude as far as exposure. My D40 and D80 DSLRs have never been known for consistent metering, but I'm always a half stop away from being too dark, or having highlight blow outs and they're far touchier. A D200 or D300 would probably work a lot better for me, but how much are those again? And didn't I just realize that I like the look of film a lot? Chasing a toddler around is tough and you only have enough time to get into a good position, compose, briefly glance at your meter to see where things are at and make a quick adjustment if needed, focus, and then fire before they move on and you've missed the shot.

And this has nothing to do with film or digital really, but the F100 screw drive motor literally YANKS my little 50mm f/1.4D lens around far faster and makes a lot more fine focus adjustments than my D80 does! It totally smokes it as far as focusing performance. Half of my shots at f/2 or larger on my D80 are lost due to misfocusing simply because the AF system doesn't/won't keep up, but it will on the F100 easily. In fact I don't think I had a single misfocused shot on the entire roll shooting at anywhere from f/4 to f/1.4 which is amazing. I've heard the pro level digital bodies are better and have beefier focusing motors, but at a pro level price. Can't justify buying one just for that alone.

Anyways, lots of thoughts.

Mav · Jun 17, 2008

Helen B said:
Lovely pictures, and the graininess suits them. I think that the graininess (grain-like appearance) must be because of the scanning or post-processing, because it looks uncharacteristically obvious for XP2.

I hope that you don't mind me posting this link, but it is an example of ISO 800 dye-image film (XP-2 is an ISO 400 dye-image film) with a very wide range of scene brightness. No noise reduction was used in post processing. Hopefully you will be able to see the lack of graininess from the shadows to the highlights.

Best,
Helen

Helen that looks great! Wow that's an 800 speed film? You're correct that the grain in my photos did become a bit more obvious after post-processing, but I actually liked it. I didn't apply any grain reduction or plug-ins or anything.

Edit: Any recommendations for film scanning? People have recommended the Epson V500, or just going with a dedicated film scanner like the Nikon Coolscan 5000.