Alright, so here’s the thing, I like photography, even though I think I’m not that good at it. Regardless, I like the technicals behind it, different styles, the creative expression, the challenges, and ofc gear acquisition (syndrome).

The gear#

Having been eyeing film photography for years now I finally committed and went on Ebay to pick up an old Pentax Spotmatic F from Japan. I already had a couple of M42 lenses which is what the Spotmatic is compatible with. These cameras are built like a fucking tank, made pretty much fully out of metal. Just picking the camera up I felt I was about to dive into something good.

Metering and exposure#

Of course I did a bit of homework before I did all of this and read up on a couple of things first. I knew that the camera won’t handhold me like modern digital cameras do. There’s no fancy metering (even though the camera does have a rudimentary light meter for which I still need to buy a battery for), digital viewfinders that would show me exposure levels and light clipping (zebras), focus peaking, etc. I now had to do everything myself, and the best tool to get the exposure correct is to use a light meter. I decided to use an app for this, which does the job perfectly - I opted for downloading an app called LightMe. You point the phone camera at a scene and it gives you the right shutter speed for your aperture. For instance, if my aperture is set to f5.6 I can just reference the lightmeter to know which shutter speed I need to dial in. Or vice-versa. As for ISO, that stays static according to which film is loaded in the camera currently.

Now, there is one big difference in how to expose for film versus digital. On digital we’re always underexposing our shots to protect the highlights. We can bring a lot more shadow details in post process. Film is the other way around, overexposing is not that much of an issue. From what I learned and observed, film captures light in a non-linear manner. The more light there is the slower it accumulates further. This also means that shadows need enough light to actually gather enough detail. If film is underexposed you’re not getting any information from the shadows. Knowing that, we can slightly shift the exposure mindset and ask ourselves, what is the acceptable shadow detail loss I’m still happy with. In other words, we expose for darker parts of the frame rather than worrying so much about protecting highlights. It’s usually fine to just overexpose by +0.5 to +1 EV and end up with a perfectly fine looking photo. That said, film handles dynamic range differently than digital sensors, so you’ll still have to make sacrifices. There’s also a more robust way to get the exposure you want using Ansel Adams’ Zone system. Feel free to read about it if you care.

Shooting#

So, I went out, shot some scenes, had a good time. What I instantly liked about film is that it slows you down and makes you think more - unless you like burning money. If you like burning money, send it to me instead! Anyways, knowing that each shot costs money introduces a very interesting limitation, which then sparks more creative thought … ‘cause you kinda want to save money. So in a way I’m paying for my own creativity. You really can buy anything with money!

I finished my first roll of film, took it out, loaded in a second one, dropped the first one at a photo lab for development and went to shoot a couple of more frames before calling it a day. Great stuff!

Development and scanning#

After a couple of days I picked up the negatives at the lab. Here I need to mention how film works in 2 steps:

  • Film gets exposed to the light and reacts to it chemically
  • A set of chemicals is then used to develop the film into negatives and make it permanent

That’s for film itself, now we still need to get actual pictures from these negatives. There are a couple of ways to do it, but for my case I decided I can just scan the negatives at home with my digital camera and a macro lens. The only extra equipment I needed was an LED lightbed. I bought a cheap one from Amazon for like 18€. It needs to have even, diffused light onto which you then put negatives and basically take a picture of them. You end up with raw files of the negatives, which you then need to flip into “positives” and post process if needed. It’s of course possible to ask the photo lab if they offer scanning service for you as well, I think almost all of them do. There are also dedicated film scanners if you want to dive into that.

What’s next#

So, what’s next? Well, I’m diving into it deeper. The next obvious thing for me is to develop my own film. Gonna do black and white at least. Color can be a bit more tedious, so I’ll see how my interest “develops” over time. Developing at home seems cool to me and opens up the hobby for some extra creative expression.

I’ll also be bringing my film camera on my trips. Here I need to mention airport scanners, apparently they’re damaging to the film itself and can ruin your rolls. I’m expecting the airport security staff to be understanding and reasonable about this but we’ll see.

So far I’ve only shot cheap Lucky SHD100 and Fomapan 100 film. Mostly because of low price, so if I fucked up I wouldn’t be too beat. But I’m actually quite liking them. Despite that, I’ll definitely try some other film brands/types and ISO ranges. ISO 100 is cool and all if you’re out on a sunny day but it just doesn’t cut it when light gets low. I haven’t tried color yet either, so that’s also coming up for me. There are also speciality films like infrared from Rollei and some more crazy looking ones from Lomography. All on my to-do list.

There’s also long exposure stuff. Film has this reciprocity failure. Read up on that yourself if you care that much, I can’t type anymore.

Verdict#

I ended up with some good shots, some bad shots, and mostly mediocre shots. I still suck at photography after all.

But yeah man, film. Give it a try! It takes quite a lot more effort but it’s so damn fun. Each shot automatically has more value - at least to yourself. Normies probably couldn’t care less about this, honestly, but who cares what they think. Anyways, I’m out.