What film do you use?

[asdfjkl]

Ok,

Just wanting too see if there are toher film fanatics here at zgeek, with all the other photography threads floating around at the moment.

I'll start it off.

For general day to day photography i'll use Fuji Superia.

For the special stuff, i'll use the one of the Fuji slide films.

Fuji Provia, have had some excellent results in cityscapes, landscapes and environmental protraiture.

Fuji Astia, ive found great for colour reproductions especially for skin tones and natural hues.

Fuji Velvia, great for landscapes, the 50 iso is especially good for things requiring longer exposures, such as waterfalls etc (not too long exposure though cause the reciprocy failure on the velvia 50 is insane)

Of course i always use the lowest speed iso as possible, and my favourite would be the provia 100 or the velvia 50.

Black and white i use Agfa.

In my experiences i have found these films to be the best.

I would like to hear what you guys think, i'm always open to trying something different.

[StygiaN]

PNY 128MB SD Card x 2

Someone had to say it ;)

[snoopen]

I used to use Agfa Ultra 50 (now theres only Ultra 100) for colourful cityscapes. Not suitible for all occasions but deffinatly great for colourful scenes! :)

[dozer]

velvia is lovely but so unforgiving, you need to take two shots with a step of exposure between just to get it right.

i use ilford 400 for b&w, its nice and fuji superia 400 for most of my film stuff.

[djcreedy]

heh.
for my 35mm stuff i just ues whatever i can get, ive never taken any proper photos with it.
For proper photos i use the bronica medium format. for which ive never bought film!
Coming with the camera was a shit load of unopend illford delta pro film , like a few hundred rolls im talking. its all 100 film, but i always shoot at 50 and develope at 200 (im obsessed with high contrast) its just what i do!
I havent found a use that this film is bad for (probably because i dont want to, caues then id have to pay!) but ive done model work, landscapes, street long exposures at night, macro flowers. its all good. brilliant results. and the film is so fucking old too. its the old school illford boxes and stuff. i love it

[kleph]

well, i dont claim to be a photography geek or fanatic. i dabble to the extent it can augment my journalism.

before i came to peru i spent a decent amount of time picking the brains of some rather good photojournalists about the craft. one of the big questions i had was film...

when you do shots of events and people, it tends to change the film and speed you want to use rather drastically. fuji cornered the market for photojournalists by introducing a relatively fast film that simply soaks up the color.

i typically use fuji 200 film with 36 exposures. it is easy to get and is slightly better than the 24 exposure film for some reason. the 200 speed is ideal for action photograpy because it is slow enough to have good color and limited graniness but fast enough to capture action.

you can push 200 film to shoot in relatively low light as well as overly bright outdoor conditions. in general situations it is almost perfect for catching action scenes with a minimum of blur. with a manual camera you can pretty much get whatever shot you need. but don't expect art every time.

i find the 160 speed film they have is simply glorious at capturing color but it is rather expensive and damned hard to find in peru.

for night and indoors most 800 film is 100 percent crap. that said, fuji has an 800 film they sell specifically to journalists that is great. but it is damned hard to find and it typically is only sold in cases. i am lucky enough to know where a good photo shop is that has individual rolls for sale - at a relatively sane price - but that is very rare.

[tagme]

I'm an Arista freak. I think it comes out of germany. its 400 iso. bad part, if you wanna call it bad, is that you have to buy it buy the brick, and i mean Brick theres like10 something rolls but its cool with me. i just throw the rest in the fridge and go out and shoot. its better than TMax cuz the grains in this are round and the prints are way less grainy for comparison sake. I would love to go digital but for now i'll stay with what i know. ;D

[asdfjkl]

Kleph,

I used my first role of 800 film (Fuji Press 800) last night. I have never been terribly keen to use such a fast film, but i was taking photo's at carols by candle light last night, and thought i would give it a go. i guess i will find out tomorrow how they went when i get them developed. Have you ever used the 1600?

I'm pretty lucky, there is a great little shop near me that the bloke runs from his house, you can get just about any film off him, all fresh stock and stored properly, great prices too.

[asdfjkl]

velvia is lovely but so unforgiving, you need to take two shots with a step of exposure between just to get it right.

i use ilford 400 for b&w, its nice and fuji superia 400 for most of my film stuff.

Agreed,

Slide film is very unforgiving at times, the results it produces are worth it though.

[kleph]

the big difference in the press 800 and the regular is granulation. i had a professional photographer tell me this but i took both types with me when i came down here. i became a believer when i shot a slew of pics for the preparation for the feast of corpus christi in june.

in these (http://www.kleph.com/blog/2004/06/corpus-christi.html) pictures you can see the detail of the subject but it doesn't look like it was developed on sandpaper like the shots i took on the regular film. i essentially threw away two rolls on the other 800 film because they sucked so bad.

bottom line, the trick is getting a feel for the peculiarities of the film. you have to simply bite the bullet and take the expense in the nose while you figure it out.

here are some examples of what i have gotten to work...

http://www.kleph.com/images/corpus006.jpg

http://www.kleph.com/images/peru08006_sml.jpg

http://www.kleph.com/images/peru08004_sml.jpg

http://www.kleph.com/images/peru08005_sml.jpg

i took a bunch of night shots at the copa america using the 800 that really came out well. the problem was that when you shoot at any distance at night, the flash is completely useless. you can find them here (http://www.kleph.com/northernreport/july1804.htm) and here (http://www.kleph.com/northernreport/july1104.htm).

as for 1600, thats really for super long shots with special lenses. there isn't much use for you taking regular shots. but grab a roll and play with it and let me know what you think.

[asdfjkl]

Very nice shots kleph,

Granularity was what i was worried about with the 800, but fuji are generally have some of the finest grain films on the market, so i thought i would try them for the 800, going by these, looks like i made the right choice :-)

I have a friend who has used some 1600 for some night time concerts, havn't actually seen any of the results, but he says its quite good. Apparently very easily damaged by heat, the role he stored in his pocket for an hour, had redish tones.

[kleph]

thanks, and yeah, that is a problem. if you buy a lot of it you should keep it in the freezer.

[kleph]

also, i would like to say that the regular 200 film can be forced to take some pretty good low-light and night shots in a pinch. i took this one in a restaurant in chiclayo peru using only the wall to steady the camera.

http://www.kleph.com/images/peru013-2.jpg

it came out much less grainy than i expected and, since the subject was so close, the exaggerated apeture and f-stop settings actually worked in the picture's favor.

what was also interesting is one of the other photos i took also showed some of the lit interior which was a bit overexposed but looked great lightwise (the composition was terrible so i didnt upload that one).

what it suggested was that by using the slow film and a tripod you could get a photo that would integrate both the light and dark elements of a nighttime shoot. obviously a fast film would be violently overexposed in the same situation.

[ajca]

I use digital

[Totti]

Yep. Digital all the way.

[kleph]

thats wonderful. now. go start a "what digital camera do you use?" thread and please keep the discussion here on topic.

[beowulf437]

When I used to take a lot of pictures I would use Kodak 1200 colour film or 1600 black and white. I would always get good crisp pictures. I had played around with various 200, 400. and 800 speed films but was never happy with the results. Most of my photography was indoors.

[kleph]

When I used to take a lot of pictures I would use Kodak 1200 colour film or 1600 black and white. I would always get good crisp pictures. I had played around with various 200, 400. and 800 speed films but was never happy with the results. Most of my photography was indoors.

did you ever use fuji or color 1600? i may be able to pick up a roll or two of this back stateside and i don't know if i should use the extra cash for that or porn... i mean, supplies.

also, what type of indoor conditions are you describing?

[beowulf437]

I have used Fuji 400 for general photograhy and outdoor shooting, I have never used 1600 colour.

I used to have a job traveling around the country setting up these kiddie amusement centers. I had taken to documenting the setups because my bosses didn't believe they were a bitch and I was working 20 hour days. So the indoor photography was usually large open areas with either flourescent light or natural light though the windows (as some of these places didn't have electricity yet).

[arelius19]

i love the e100vs film.. 50 iso is too low too often... i like just using one format that works almost always... the colors are great
oh and its slide film, i think the quality of slides is so much better than print film

[asdfjkl]

Cool, havn't used any of the Kodak Ektachromes before i really should try it though.

First day back from holidays and it is indeed a struggle.

Anyone here got one of those film scanners that scans entire strips of film (i.e. not the flatbed type). I'm tired of paying too much money to have my slide stips scanned and was thinking of buying one.

[Solo man]

One important property of colour slide film is its archival quality, which boils down to how it looks in twenty years. No slide film comes close to Kodachrome in tis regard. I have seen many examples of different brands taken many years ago and none come near it for true colours.

[asdfjkl]

Thanks thats some useful info Solo man, since ive only been using slide film for 6 months, I really had no idea about that.