Film Photography

Denis Shytarev

Moscow, Russian Federation

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FILM MAMA BLOG CIRCLE | 

Welcome to the May installment of the film mama blog circle! This month we a few of us are featuring Fuji 400H as our film stock. I love, love, love this film. So rich and the skin tones and greens are unbeatable, huge fan! Make sure to click on the link at the bottom to follow along with the circle!

Camera’s used: Mamiya 645 Pro TL  | Leica M3  | Rolleiflex 3.5

Lab: Caribou Film Lab

Follow along with this circle to see what Maggie McLendon has to share!

Best way to do B&W on film? by: Iljitsch

The other day, I scanned a bunch of 30-year-old black-and-white negatives and I kind of like the grainy, photo journalism look. I also spent all of 20 euros on a Nikon F55 recently (and then spent the same money on batteries and film), so now I'm thinking I should try shooting some black-and-white film.

The trouble is that even though it's still fairly easy to have color negative film developed, it looks like having black-and-white film developed is harder, more expensive and/or takes longer, because there's less of a standardized process and very little demand for it.

So: does it make sense to get a development tank and chemicals and develop regular B&W film myself? Are chemicals still reasonably available today? I used to do this 30 years ago as a kid because it was the cheapest way to shoot stuff—certainly not for artistic reasons.

Another way to go would be to use black-and-white film that can be developed using the C41 process used for color film, such as Fuji Neopan 400 CN, Kodak BW400CN or Ilford XP2. Does anyone have any experience with these? How do they compare to regular B&W film? All of these claim to have very little grain, which could be good or defeat the purpose, I guess I'll have to see how the results look.

(I plan to scan the negatives rather than make prints the oldfashioned way.)

As for regular B&W film: IIRC, I used to shoot Kodak Tri-X and Ilford FP4 and HP5. I understand the former has been completely changed and the latter two somewhat.

 

BTS: Photog Shows Off Modified Polaroid Capable of Shooting 4×5 Instant Film

Photographer Alastair Bird recently came across a modified Polaroid camera that is capable of shooting 4×5 instant film. So, naturally, he put it to work!
Mostly discontinued, but still acquirable thanks to FujiFilm, 4×5 Instant film is a rare breed to come by.

As with most experimental photography, Bird’s endeavors didn’t come without some failures. As he explained to The Phoblographer:

Using the camera was quite a challenge — if you notice at one point I’m shooting and the dark slide is in — whoops. Those shots didn’t turn out too well. But what I find is that when I really challenge myself with my equipment, it’s always amazing what I get and it is worth the effort.

 Whether it’s information or inspiration you come away with, it won’t at all be time wasted.  If you’re still curious, head over to The Phoblographer to read the rest of their interview with Bird.
(via The Phoblographer)

More of 4 Creative Ways to Shoot Double Exposure with Film

More of 4 Creative Ways to Shoot Double Exposure with Film

A double exposure is exposing the film twice with two different images and can be easily done by using the multiple exposure option on your film cameras. It is something most of us who ever had a film camera experienced at least once. By accident. It happened when the film got stuck, or when we used a used film again by mistake. Nowaday, double exposure in photography becomes increasingly popular. With double exposure technique, you can create amazing effects. Beside shooting double exposure normal with film by rewind each frame of the roll, here are another 4 creative ways to shoot double exposure.

Shooting a whole roll of your film with a subject, and then rewind the film and shot the second layer of other subject. Example portraits, buildings or silhouettes vs. textures.

Photo by Neil

Swapping film with other film photographers by shooting a whole roll and then rewind the film and send it to your buddy.

Photo by atria007

Double exposing both sides of the film by load your film and shoot the whole roll as usual. Pull all the film out of the canister in a completely dark environment. Flip the film over, and tape the film back together. Roll the film back into the canister, and shoot the roll again.

Photo by hodachrome

Split your images. There are inexpensive lens attachments (such as the splitzer for LomoLC-A+ camera) or you can cut your extra lens cap in half or make your own.

Photo by Leopold

Suji Park - 5 things I love about Film

Suji Park - 5 things I love about Film

by: Shooting Film.Net

Suji Park is a 24 year old photographer from South Korea. She works between Korea and France. She first studied Marketing in USA, "however, I decided to do what I love most in life —photography," she says. "So as now, I’m just starting a new chapter in my life." We featured her beautiful work on film photography months ago. And today, here are 5 reasons why she still shoots film.

1. The curiosity. While finishing a roll, my heart is full of curiosity and expectations. 1 hour of developing films is a magical time for me and I always get thrilled to see final results.

2. The accident. Sometimes shots do not turn out as expected. There might be light leaks or accidental double exposures. These bring me beautiful surprises.

3. The negative. I love that film leaves hard proof. Unlike photos taken by digital cameras, negative is something I can actually hold in my hands and store in physical places.

4. The history. Most analog cameras now are old and used ones. They may have passed down from generation to generation. When I use my father’s camera, I imagine times it went through and moments it captured. I feel like it is a valuable inheritance that connects me with old times.

5. Time and effort. When using analog cameras, it happens that I take a lot of time for only one shot. I wait for right time for good lighting and I check every setting for the best shot. It makes photos more meaningful and precious to me.

Why we still love instant photos

Polaroid stopped making its famous cameras six years ago. But those who cherish instant analogue photographs aren't ready to let them fade away, says Christopher Beanland

Our collective appetite for a quickie is undiminished. Despite Polaroid deciding to dump analogue photography six years ago, "real" photographs remain resolutely popular. Fujifilm's Instax is big with kids, while Lomography cameras have been colonised by hipsters from Williamsburg to Walthamstow.

You can easily draw connecting lines between instant photography and the fetishisation of other analogue formats – vinyl albums, cassettes, VHS video. Analogue is more human, it has imperfections like we do, we can empathise with the medium – and even, in some case, love it. It takes us back in time.
"My sense of nostalgia has been fuelled by instant film," says the photographer Dee Elegia. "It's made me go back to my childhood and try to capture things from it, using Polaroid."
Polaroid was always the biggest name in snappy snaps. When the American company pulled out of its European base at Enschede in the Netherlands, it was snaffled by nostalgia buffs calling themselves The Impossible Project. Now that gang makes films for old Polaroid cameras there.
When The Impossible Project started in 2008 – by trying to buy up as much of Polaroid's redundant stock and buildings as possible to preserve the medium – a slew of media coverage followed. The group has had its ups and downs ever since. Its founder, Florian Kaps – once of the Lomographic Society – stepped down last year. In 2012, a potential financial meltdown was avoided when a new investor provided some extra cash at the 11th hour.
"We were left no recipes by Polaroid, so had to create a film from scratch," remembers the firm's PR, Alex Holbrook. "We also found a lot of the companies that Polaroid had used before had closed – or the chemicals were now banned!"
But its remit remains: to keep feeding the addiction of instant photography fans for as long as possible. What is it about those little paper squares and the way the photos miraculously appear on them? "The visible reaction after it's exposed to light, the distinctive character of the images – there's a sense of magic that digital lacks," says Creed O'Hanlon, CEO of The Impossible Project.
"Seeing it come out of the front of the camera in an instant is like magic," agrees Grant Hamilton – a photographer who also directed the award-winning 2012 documentary Time Zero: The Last Year of Polaroid Film. "There are no negatives or digital files. There is only one original."
Next year, The Impossible Project will ship a brand new instant photography camera – and they've drafted in the Scottish engineers from Polaroid's former Dumbarton factory to build it. "I joined Polaroid in 1992 and immediately became fascinated," says Grant King, of the start-up Wideblue, which has gathered together many of the former team at Dumbarton. "I remember my first trip to the US Polaroid plants in Norwood and Waltham, being amazed to see instant images by Ansel Adams and Andy Warhol just hanging on the walls."
Ultimately, it's a nostalgic enterprise – and nostalgia is the product of a society without much to say. Unlike in Polaroid's 1960s heyday, these days our ambitions are modest. The most we have to offer history is social networking. Yet one narcissistic social network feeds directly into our love of retro snaps – Instagram.
Sharing phone pics on Instagram or Snapchat is ephemeral, momentary. While every time we take an instant photo on a camera then shake it like a Polaroid picture, we're really trying to go back in time – if only for a few seconds.

Would you Pay a Photography Tax?

35mm, analogue photography, cost of photography, Film Photography, flickr, Ireland, money, Philosophy,photo, Photography, tax, taxation, thought experiment

I have been thinking a lot about the quantity and quality of pictures that I have been posting on-line recently and am concerned that self publication and self promotion might all be a little too easy. I take a lot of photos I generally have at least one film camera with me when I leave the house and my iPhone is an extension of my hand. I can’t remember the last time I was not able to capture something that I found interesting.

I develop the film or empty the memory cards and look at the images. I am past the stage where I tend to get shots that would be unfit for viewing, blurry, lack of composition, boring content, incorrect exposure etc. This means I end up with a lot of pictures and I am never really sure what to do with them. I post a lot to flickr or my Facebook page and some help me fill this blog.

In the interest of trying to improve the quality of the photography that I show to other people I have been floating the idea of a photography tax. Assume that you have spent the day shooting pictures and are now trying to decide what to publish. You could just upload everything to any photo sharing site and the world will have access to them to enjoy, comment on and critique. Therefore I am suggesting that in order for me to select what I consider the best shots there should be a price attached to uploading then.

It will be a two tiered system for publishing photos on-line. Option one will be just upload any shots I want and pay in the region of €1 per photo to display them on-line. I think even at this small charge it would make me very selective about what gets posted. The second option would be that I can publish the photos for free but I will need to defend the image in front of a judge. This person will not judge the merit of my photo but whether or not my explanation of motives for taking and displaying the photo are rational and compelling. It is my belief that either the monetary cost of up-loading or the emotional cost of having to explain my photography would instantly improve what I choose to display to the world.

I would love to hear if you have a process that helps you decide what to post on-line and how you select your images. Would you consider paying a photography tax? Should it be mandatory?

by: Aware of the Void

Free Computer Wallpapers

I hope you enjoyed the free computer wallpaper video above.  To see my other videos just go to Youtube.com and search for my channel, "DarrylmrT".  Thanks for watching, 'til next time...happy shutter bugging!

Film Photography Part 2 By Paulo

Hello again.
This time I’ll share some thoughts about black and white film and which are the most popular kinds of film.
Black and white film is popular because it’s easy to work with, it can take almost any abuse, it’s very forgiving, it’s easy to home develop and… it’s not going away anytime soon. So, I will try to keep it simple for all of you who are starting or want to get started with using black and white film.
What kind of black and white film is available?
The most common formats are 35mm and 120mm film.
Note 1: There are also large format film sheets available which cover many different formats but large format cameras are a different breed and I will leave this kind of specific film alone on this post.
Image size and format, what’s that?
A 35mm roll will deliver 36 frames of 35x24mm.
There are special cameras, which are called half frame cameras, that cut every frame of a 35mm film and are able to take 72, more or less, 15x24mm shots.

A 120mm roll can deliver several formats. The famous square format, the 6×6 cm format. The 6×4,5 cm format (that’s why the cameras are called 645 cameras) and the 7×6 cm format.
Note 2: There are bigger image formats which can be “recorded” using 120mm film. 6×9, 6×12… up to 6×24.

Pictures can be enlarged so what’s the thing about format?
Information! The bigger the negative, the more information it will record. Bigger negatives allow bigger enlargements with less loss of quality. That is true in a darkroom or using a scanner.

This is my mother, taken with the Hasselblad. 120mm film in 6×6 format.


ISO and ASA
Unlike digital cameras (we can change the ASA settings from shot to shot) film has a given sensitivity.
It’s pretty easy to find black and white film from 20 ISO up to 3200 ISO being the 400 ISO the preferred sensitivity of many photographers. Why? Well, 400 ISO is a flexible sensitivity. Using a smaller aperture or a higher shutter speed we can use it in daylight and opening up the lens or using a slower shutter speed we can use it in low light.
All black and white film behave the same way but they do not certainly look the same, very much the opposite.
Low ISO films (20, 25, 50, 100) deliver a wider range of grays, less contrast and less grain.
High ISO films (800, 1600, 3200, 6400) deliver more contrast, more grain and a shorter range of grays.
That brings us back again to the 400 ISO film, which is the alleged ideal match between contrast and grain.
The next shot was taken using Ilford PanF+, which is a 50 ISO film.



The next one was taken using Ilford Delta 3200 film.



Knowing this from the start can help us in choosing a certain look for a shot or a photo session. It’s the film phographer’s way of “editing” the shot before taking it. That’s why so many film photographers are faithful, not to a certain kind of film, but to a certain film, literally, being Kodak TriX 400 the absolute king.
If I want a harsher look, something more contrasted, I would use high ISO film. If I’m looking for a smooth look I would use low ISO film. No matter the brand, all black and white film behave like this, however, some films do have a specific visual signature. Ilford’s Delta 400 is different from Kodak’s TriX 400 and Rollei’s RPX 400, for example. The grain is different, the contrast is different, the sharpness of the film itself is different. Film emulsion recipes are valuable patents.

Adox CHS Art 50


Kodak TriX 400


And another example of Kodak TriX 400 but this time developed with a different developer than the previous shot.



High ISO film, low ISO film, that means getting a lot of film?
No it does not. Black and white film is so forgiving and so flexible that you can use a 400 ISO roll, from 100 up to 6400! That is called pushing and pulling the film.
Pushing the film is when you set the ISO on the camera higher than the sensitivity of the film, or “box speed”. Pulling the film is the opposite.
Remember, pushing and pulling film will make it behave exactly in the same way as if you were using a “real box speed” film. Lower ISO, less contrast and grain, higher ISO, higher contrast and grain.
Here are several examples of pushed film.

Kodak TriX 400 at 1600 ISO


Kodak TriX 400 at 3200 ISO


Kodak TriX 400 at 6400 ISO


Ilford HP5+ at 6400 ISO


There is only one thing that you must keep in mind. When you load a camera with a film, let say Kodak TriX 400, and if you push that film to 3200, you can not pull it to 200 on the next shot, 1600 on the next and so on…
Black and white film can be forgiving  but there’s a reasonable interval.
You can pick a 400 ISO film and use it at 3200 from the first to the last frame, or you can use it at 100 ISO, but if you planing on changing the ISO during the same roll keep in mind a safe rule: using the box speed as a reference, you can use it one stop down and one stop above. You can use a 400 ISO film at 200, 400 and 800 in the same roll and still get good results.
If shooting a certain film in a certain way can be a photographer’s creative choice to edit the shot before taking it, developing the film is a way to edit the shot after taking it.
It’s a whole new world. There are fine grain developers, contrast enhancers, grain enhancers, all around developers, smoother ones, aggressive ones, powder, concentrated…
Different developers can make a big difference when used in combination with different films.
Look at the next two shots. They were both taken using Ilford HP5+. The first one was pushed to 3200 and the second one was pushed to 6400 ISO, which is pretty extreme pushing.

Using a certain developer (Ilford ID-11) I was able to control the grain.



Now look at the next example. It is the same film but pushed only to 800 ISO. Notice that by using a much more aggressive developer the results are much more grainy and contrasted than the previous 2 shots.


I’ve been doing it for a while now. Trying a lot of combinations of films and developers and using different recipes to develop them but I do it for passion and for fun and despite the fact that I have no ambition in being a “fine art” photographer, I truly believe that knowledge about film and developers gives me more creative options.
The bottom line is… experiment. Load your camera with film and use it. Take notice of your experiments and enjoy. It is a wonderful world of possibilities and a world made of rules to be broken. The hard part of film photography is not knowing the visual signature of films or developers but to write our own on top.

Walmart Files Suit Against Photographer's Widow - PPA Today

Walmart Files Suit Against Photographer's Widow

By

Professional Photographers of America (PPA)

on May 12, 2014 11:45 PM | Permalink

Your typical copyright infringement involves one photographer stealing another photographer's images, or reproducing copyrighted images without permission. But in this case, it's the largest retailer in the world bullying a small Arkansas studio.

Walmart and its founding family, the Waltons, have filed suit against Helen Huff, the widow of Arkansas photographer David A. Huff.

David Huff's studio, Bob's Studio of Photography, was founded by his late father, Robert A. Huff, in 1946, and created portraits of the Walton family before the expansion of Walmart grew them into one of the wealthiest families in the world. But now Walmart and the Walton family are demanding that Helen Huff hand over those works.

The complaint states that they (the Waltons) seek to obtain six or more boxes of photos, negatives, and proofs, alleging that over the years, Bob's Studio retained those items "as a courtesy" to Walmart and their family (they didn't). The complaint further states that the Waltons own intellectual property rights to the photos (they don't). The fact is, under federal law, photographers own the copyrights to their own works.

Little explanation is provided from the Waltons about the basis of their claim. They even took a swipe at offering Huff $2,000 for all the images, although they are worth much, much more.

PPA has been working with Huff to support her case and thereby advocate for photographers' copyrights.

"It's a total David vs. Goliath situation," says PPA CEO David Trust. "We simply can't remain idle and allow this to happen--it would set a terrible precedent and goes, flat out, against copyright law. PPA as an association stands behind Ms. Huff and supports her case as the rightful owner of these images. We have contacted her lawyers and offered to file an amicus brief* when and if that time comes."

*What's an amicus brief, you ask? It's is a legal opinion or testimony that is volunteered by a "friend of the court" who is not a party to a particular lawsuit but has a strong interest in the case. It is a way to introduce concerns ensuring that the possibly broad legal effects of a court decision will not depend solely on the parties directly involved in the case. 

PPA also advised Huff and her attorney of a separate suit, Natkin v. Winfrey, in which Oprah Winfrey claimed she owned the rights to photos of her created on her set. Since the photographers were hired as independent contractors and had not signed work-for-hire contracts, they owned the full copyrights for the images, and Winfrey's argument was swiftly rejected by the court.

Walmart filed its lawsuit against Helen Huff in state court, but because it is a copyright issue, Huff's defense removed it to federal court. The defense argues in its answer to the Walmart complaint that Huff owns copyrights to all the works her late husband and father-in-law created for the Walton family, and that they worked as independent contractors for the Walton family. In addition, Huff's defense filed a counterclaim of copyright infringement, alleging that in the past Walmart has reproduced and allowed third parties to use Bob's Studio of Photography's copyrighted works. Huff and her attorney are awaiting Walmart's answer.

"You can never say what will happen in court, but this seems to be absolutely in conflict with copyright law," Trust says.

PPA always stands for photographers' copyright protection. As such, we will continue to provide information as these cases develop. Check back this blog for updates!

Sierra Kristen

Northport Maine, lifestyle film photography.

I had the pleasure of photographing this sweet family a few years back.

then i got to photographed their awesome wedding the next year.

THEN, i got to photograph them again, but on film. jude picked their name last fall for a super discounted film session. he was in my belly during their wedding, so that’s probably why he picked them. they’re just that awesome!

here’s a little peek into their lovely growing family. more to come soon!

fuji 400h. FINDlab.

feels AMAZING to get back to film shooting again!

You can see more of Sierra Kristen's work at; http://www.sierrakristenphotography.com/?p=3759