New to Film, please Help

[lolitsluis]

Hello, my name is Luis, and I have recently shown a great interest in changing over to film cameras, and something about rangefinders thrills me, they have a certain feel to it, but Ill cut to the point. I have currently been trying to work my way up from a Zorki 4, which have all broken, and the regular Fujifilm Sensia 100 from Walmart. The results I have gotten are decent, but I feel it is just my fault for still getting exposure down since it is slide film and from what I hear tends to be less forgiving than print film. Besides that, I was wondering what films would you guys recommend for photography? I really like street/candid photography (a deciding factor to switching to film, since a digital m8 is out of range) and do some landscape form time to time. I was wondering what B&w and color film would be considered 'good' for these practices. If you would be so kind to share you opinions or direct me to a thread already on the subject, I would be most grateful

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Luis,

Slide film is hard for beginners, it has no forgiveness...exposure has to be perfect or damn near. Try print film for color, almost any color print film will work ok, they all have good exposure latitude, at least for overexposure. Print films look horrid underexposed even by a little, so if in doubt, an extra stop of exposure won't hurt them at all, as they can take a couple stops of overexposure and still make an excellent print.

Fuji Reala 100 is good for landscapes. For street photography, Most of the 400 or 800 speed color print films look nice.

For black and white street photography, Tri-X if you'll develop it yourself. If you can't develop it yourself, then one of the C-41 process black and white films wlll work good. Kodak T400CN or Ilford XP-2. Both are good. The Kodak is easier to find and cheaper...Walmart sells 3 packs of it cheap!

 

[lolitsluis]

I see, thank you very much for the advice, would the Fuji Reala also be used for street photography as well (obviously at the higher iso's). I have never developed film before, can someone pick it up and learn to work with it, or does one have to be shown the ways. Sorry for being such a newb, I guess I'm just the byproduct of modern times. Where would I go about acquiring the materials for developing the film, and once developed could I take it to a lab to have it turned into photos since enlargers seem quite pricey?

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Reala is a 100 speed film, its not made in any other speed. It has higher color saturation than many other films and very fine grain so its nice for landscape. The closest thing to it in a 400 would be Kodak Portra 400VC. Its a professional film and it has nice skintones (designed as a portrait film). Portra is actually made in 160 and 400 versions and both of these are made in a high color saturation (VC) version or a natural color (NC) version. They're nice films, but kinda expensive. If you use the 100, set your meter at 100, it looks better shot at 100. The 400, I usually shoot at 200, it looks better to me that way, but is ok at 400 if you're careful not to underexpose.

 

[lolitsluis]

Thank you again, I saw some photos of the 400VC and wow, they were beautiful. The color was amazing.

 

[mfogiel]

Luis,
Keep things simple at the start.
You will either need a good scanner or wet printing equipment for really good results. If you want to start with cheap processing, the best bet is shooting a C41 film and having it developed, scanned and printed at a lab, although in the long run this will be much lower quality and many times more expensive than shooting digital for colour or developing and scanning/printing your own for B&W. Start with BW400CN or better still XP2, or any ISO 400 colour print film - my favourite is Kodak Portra 400 NC. Expose the film at ISO 200 and make develop normally. Good luck.

 

[lolitsluis]

Thanks for the advice, im short on cash right now, but once I get into the swing of things, ill post some photos