How to Light, Shoot, and Edit for High-Key Photography

By: Rick Ohnsman 

High-key lighting originated in the early film and television days. Early cameras and film with limited dynamic range, forced lighting techniques to reduce contrast intentionally. Today, with its use of bright light and an emphasis on whites which give an almost ethereal feel to a photo, the high-key look has become the desired style for some photographers. Let’s explore when you might want to choose the high-key photography style and how you can achieve it both when shooting and in editing.

Emulating the look of early television was the goal for this photo and a high-key monochrome was 

a great way to do it.

As with all art, individual interpretation plays a big part in what photographers consider a “high-key” image and how the technique should be used.

A few things that typify a high-key photo:

• Bright lighting that greatly reduces and sometimes eliminates shadows
• A dynamic range that is predominately toward the right side of a histogram.
• Images where the “mood” is typically upbeat, light-hearted, ethereal, “airy” or beautiful.
• Typical uses are in high-fashion, product, or studio-produced images. Lesser so, but not totally non-existent, are high-key outdoor and landscape photographs.
• Lighting where the ratio between the key and fill light is very close, thus the root of the term “high-key.”
• Distracting elements in the background get eliminated, and typically high-key images contain only the main subject. High-key images are often Minimalist. Many times, the background is entirely white.
• Monochrome high-key is more prevalent, and when there is color used, it is typically subdued or used as an accent.

Images of babies and children often benefit from the bright, happy feel of high key.

Two basic approaches to creating high-key images:

1) Light, expose and shoot the photo with high-key in mind from the beginning, or
2) Rework a photograph in editing so that it takes on the attributes of the high-key style.
Often the final image, even if initially shot with high-key in mind, may still require some post-processing to achieve the best result. So let’s first look at how to light and create a high-key image.

Creating the high-key look in the studio

I use the term “studio” here to reference the use of artificial lights in an indoor environment where you can control lighting. This may be but is not restricted to a traditional studio. For smaller still-life subjects, the kitchen counter works just fine. How you light the subject is what creates the high-key look.

The background

The first objective is to light the background in such a way that it is entirely white with no detail. The choice of background material is up to you. If you are shooting a model full-length in a studio, you might traditionally use something like a large piece of seamless paper. A plain white wall can work too. In fact, you can use most light-colored backgrounds if you can put enough light on it to bring the levels up to a “255” totally white level. The lighting diagram below shows how you can set up for a high-key shot in the studio.

Two lights to light the background and two softboxes or other modified lights to light the subject is how high key portrait lighting might be traditionally used in a studio

Once you have your lights set up, make a shot and adjust your exposure so that the background goes as close to all white as you can make it. Sometimes, depending on the lighting equipment you have available, you may not be able to get even lighting across the background. Getting it right in-camera is, of course, optimal; however, you can clean things up in post-processing.
Professionals who make many high-key shots during a studio session may take the time, and have the equipment, to light the background evenly, thus avoiding extensive editing of each shot later. If you are a beginner though, lack of more expensive lighting equipment should not prevent you from giving high-key lighting a try.

Lighting the subject

Lighting the subject is done in the same kind of standard style you might use when doing portrait photography with a key and fill light. You’ll see from the diagram above the key and fill lights have been placed on opposing sides of the subject. For traditional portrait or studio still-life shots, the fill light is typically slightly dimmer than the key light. This allows some shadows to create modeling and depth to the image. (The difference in intensity between lights is called the “lighting ratio.”) In the high-key lighting style, the key and fill lights are usually closer in intensity with the objective being to lessen shadows and give a “flatter” look, minimizing contrast.
In the first diagram above, the background is front-lit with light shining on the background. An alternative is to back-light the background, placing whatever lighting device you’re using, (studio strobe, continuous light, flash or whatever) behind a translucent background so the light shines through and illuminates it. As before, you should light this to be even, and bring its brightness as close to full white as you can get. Take a look at the diagram below to see this alternative lighting method.
Another often used variation of this style is to use a large softbox behind the subject and pointed at the camera.

Here is an alternative that uses just one light. The light source is placed behind the subject and diffused through something translucent. I used a white shower curtain here. Reflectors are used for key and fill.

This lighting style brings in another option of how you light your subject. Because the light used to illuminate the background is pointed at the camera, it might be possible to substitute reflectors for the key and fill lights, bouncing that backlight back onto the subject. This technique can work well for smaller subjects where the distances between the background, subject, and reflectors can be smaller and less light is required.
It may be possible to create the entire effect using just one light source. The photo below was done using this technique.

Using window light

Understanding the concepts above can help you create high-key images using window light and a reflector or fill-flash. Portrait and wedding photographers often take advantage of this style of creating high-key shots with a minimum of lighting equipment. The same principals apply – overexpose the background and light the subject with fill lighting.

An easy way to make a high-key shot at a wedding is to put your subject in window light, 

overexpose the light coming in the window and fill the subject with your Speedlight.

This was done using the same technique with the backlit shower curtain, but a Speedlight was used 

to fill the subject.

High-key in landscape photography

High-key images are relatively easy in an environment where you have full control of the lighting. Being able to make high-key shots outdoors with only the available light is more of a challenge. You have to work with the light that is available, have an eye for subjects that lend themselves to the high-key look, and then use your camera settings to get the best in-camera shot you can. Also know that almost always, you need to do some extra work in editing to achieve a good high-key look with your landscape images.

This bitter cold day in Yellowstone National Park had a high-key look already, and minimal editing 

was needed. High-key needn’t always be monochrome.

The look that typifies high-key photography

Consider the look that typifies high-key photography and what subjects and conditions in landscapes might lend themselves to that look:

• Bright, white backgrounds – Snow and bright sand often work well, as do flat cloudy skies
• Low contrast lighting – Cloudy, foggy, flat-light days are a good time to consider making high-key shots
• Back-lit subjects where you can overexpose the background and fill in the subject with fill-flash or reflected light
• Consider spot or center-weighted metering of the subject, allowing good exposure of the subject but a blown-out background.
• Using the Live-view feature of your DSLR or mirrorless cameras can be your friend as you can see your exposure and lighting effect before you make the shot.

Snowscapes Can take you most of the way to a high key image right out of the camera.

Editing high-key images

While it’s always a goal to get images that are perfect Straight-Out-Of-Camera (SOOC), editing can be used to fine tune an image. Even when you shoot in the high-key style, additional editing can be used to clean up problem areas, lighten up and even out the background, and enhance the look and feel you are striving for. Take a look at the image below.

Straight out of the camera, this shot needed to be white balanced and there were portions not evenly lit.

Turning on the Highlight Clipping feature in Lightroom allowed painting in more brightness with the 

Adjustment Brush and Auto Mask turned on. It was an easy way to get a completely white background 

when the lighting wasn’t even enough

Sometimes you might have an image that you did not consider making a high-key photo when you shot it. However, while editing, you may decide the mood you are seeking would is best suited to a high-key look. Such was the case with the “Angels Dance” image below.
The music and mood of the dance when I captured the shot of these ballet dancers was free, light, and airy. It created a mental image of angels dancing for me. So later, I used the tools in Lightroom to get the look I was after. Following the method used may give you insight into how you can create high-key images in post-processing.

This shot was going to need some work to give it the high-key mood desired.

Post-production technique

The Raw color image out of the camera was underexposed, and the stage lighting had introduced some unusual color. This did not start out looking like a high-key candidate, but here are the steps taken in Lightroom to produce the final result:

• There were two dancers in the shot with good form, but two others who needed to be cropped out.
• I used a basic editing workflow – Exposure brought up to +1.00, Highlights brought down to -100, Shadows opened up to +100, the Whites brought up to +44, the Blacks brought down to -56.
• To deal with the color problem, and also be more compatible with the high-key look, I converted the image to Black & White. Next, I opened the Black & White Mix dropdown and used the Targeted Adjustment Tool. Here, I sampled different spots in the image and brought up the luminance of those colors. Further manual tweaking of the sliders helped bring up the brightness of each color.
• Then I readjusted the Exposure to +1.46, the Contrast to +38, brought the White down slightly to +38, the Clarity to -7 and Dehaze down to -9.
• To make the background full white, and also lose some distracting elements, I used the Adjustment Brush tool. The Exposure was turned all the way up to +4, checked the Automask checkbox, and carefully used the brush to “white out” the background.
• To further give the “heavenly effect” I used a brush with -50 Dehaze to brush in some light “clouds.”

This high key version much better captures the mood of the dance.

The numbers and precise steps used for this image are a guide rather than an exact “recipe.” They are intended to show you the general idea for creating the high-key photography look with Lightroom and the tweaks and tools to get there. The main point is, even if you have an image that does not immediately look like a candidate for the high-key look, some knowledge of what constitutes that look, and how to use your editing tools to get you there, can create some magic.

It’s okay to have some darker tones in your high key photos.

Good photographs communicate to the viewer, tell a story, convey an emotion, or take the viewer to a time and place. Using the technique of high key is one more way to use your images to speak to your viewer. Learn the techniques both to shoot and edit a high-key shot, and you can not only grow your lighting, camera, and editing skills but add a new means of communicating with your images to your bag of photo tricks.
Please try this technique out and share with us in the comments below.

Share this article.

7 Steps to Perfect White Portrait Backgrounds in the Studio

By: John McIntire 

Photographing subjects on a white background is one of those things that looks easy from the outside. However, once you start digging into the details, it turns out it’s not quite as simple as it seemed at first glance.
Unfortunately, being able to shoot on a white background is one of the most useful skills for you to have in all sorts of photography including portraits and still life. Even if you hate it stylistically, you will eventually have plenty of people ask you for a pure white background.

When you get the technique right, there are a whole host of things you can easily do with your photos, such as cutting your subjects out for composites. Even when your technique isn’t perfect, there are a host of post-processing options to get you, and your images, there in the end.
However, this article outlines a process to help you get perfect results straight out of the camera every time. If you’re handling a high volume of images – whether that be portraits or products – this may save you countless hours in post-production.

What you need

You will need a few lights for this technique. In this example, there are three lights and a reflector.

To get started with shooting on a white backdrop in a studio, you will need a few things.

• At least two studio strobes with modifiers or flashguns (three or four would be preferable and will make your life easier). Softboxes are the easiest option for your background lights.
• A light-colored backdrop. White is preferable, but this technique will work easily with anything up to mid-grey. It is more than possible to do it with darker backdrops but to avoid complications, stay light when you can.
• Space. You will need space to get the best results. As described below, you will need to keep enough room between your subject and the background to help prevent spill from the background lights falling on your subject. For portraits, this could easily take ten to fifteen feet of space in addition to the distance you are from the subject. For smaller subjects, space is much less of an issue.
• (Optional) A light meter. Because we’re dealing with moderately precise ratios, a light meter will help you here. You can get by without one, but it does make it easier.

Step One – Choose your aperture

Before you do anything with your lights or your subject, the first step in this process is to choose the aperture you want to shoot at. This choice is going to be the basis for everything else you do in this process. Anything from f/8 to f/4 is a good bet for studio portraits, but you can choose anything you like. Your only real limitation here is the power output of your lights.
If you choose f/11, then your backgrounds lights will need to be set at least two stops brighter, which would be f/22. You may struggle to achieve that with low-powered strobes. If that’s the case, then you will have to choose a larger aperture for your final image.
For the remainder of this article, the chosen aperture will be f/5.6.

Step Two – Light your background

When lighting your background, take the time to ensure that it is evenly lit. This will ensure that 

all of your background is white with no darker tones creeping into the sides and corners.

Once you know your aperture, the next step is to set up your background light(s). If you can, use large, directional modifiers like softboxes. This will help prevent excess light spilling where you don’t want it. It will also help to ensure that the background is evenly lit from top to bottom, preventing any inconsistencies in exposure in your final images.
Place your lights on either side of your backdrop and pointed towards it at a forty-five-degree angle. Try to position them so that you get even coverage.

Step three – Set the exposure for your background lights

The easiest way to find the exposure for you background is to use a light meter. Don’t worry if you 

don’t have one, you can still chimp the histogram to make sure it’s overexposed.

With your lights positioned, all you have to do is set the power so that the camera will record your background as pure white. Your background needs to be at least two or three stops brighter than your subject. Because the hypothetical aperture we’re using is f/5.6, that means the backgrounds lights should be at f/16 for three stops of exposure difference.
If you’re using a meter, be sure to check the exposure at the top and bottom of the background and not just the middle.

Step four – Place your subject for a test

On the left, the subject is too close to the background and the light is wrapping around her and 

lighting her front. Placed a few feet further away, the subject is rendered as a silhouette. (The detail 

in the darker image is from the overhead fluorescent that I hadn’t turned off yet.)

To figure out where your subject needs to stand, or be placed, put them in front of the background and take a test shot with only the background lights on. If they are far enough away from the background, your subject should be in perfect silhouette, and there should be no light falling on them or wrapping around them in any way.
Where there is light falling on your subject, just move them further away from the backdrop until you achieve that perfect silhouette.

If your exposure is right, you should have no details in your background and no details in your subject.

Because you are lighting a white (therefore reflective) surface, your background is effectively a light source and acts like one. The light from your backgrounds will fall off at a rate governed by the inverse square law. What you are trying to do is to place your subject in a place where the light level drops enough that it has no effect on your subject at your desired aperture.

Step four (part 2) – Flag your background lights

To ensure light isn’t going where you don’t want it, flag your background lights. Here, I’ve used 

black fabric and covered all but the section of background that will be in the photos.

It may be that you can’t achieve a perfect silhouette of your subject for some reason. This issue can arise from not having enough space to work in, or it could be that your modifiers are producing too much spill. One way to combat this is to flag your lights.
Flagging simply means to block light from where you don’t want it. You can do this in any way that you want. V-flats and black curtains (as in the example images) are both cheap and effective ways to flag your light.
Simply place your preferred flags in a manner that blocks excess light from coming back towards the camera, but doesn’t interfere with the part of the background that will wind up in your composition.

Step 5 – Place your key light

Once the background lights are done, you can light your subject in any way you want.

Now that your background is lit and you know where your subject needs to be, you just need to light your subject. All you have to do is place your light any way that you desire (any lighting pattern will work), and set the power to your desired aperture (f/5.6 in the examples).

Unlike the background lights, you don’t have to worry about what any excess light from your key light is doing. Because you are so far away from the background with a light set to a much lower power, it will have little to no effect on the final exposure of the background. However, do pay attention to what the light is doing off to the sides. If it’s firing into a nearby white wall or another light-colored surface, then that surface will act as a reflector in your images.

Step 6 – Add fill (optional)

Use fill lighting to reduce the impact of heavy shadows in your images. You can use another light 

if you wish, or a reflector as shown here.

If you want to add a fill light to your set-up, you can now do that as normal. You can fill with another strobe, or you can use a reflector as shown in the example images. The main thing to remember about fill light is that it should be at least one stop lower in power than your key light.

Step 7 – Check your final exposure

With everything set-up, you should have a perfect white background straight out of the camera.

With everything in place, take a test shot at your desired aperture. If your key and fill lights are in your desired position, everything should be spot on and you should now have an image with a perfectly white background straight out of the camera.

That’s it

This isn’t a hard technique, but it does require a fair few steps and a lot of attention to detail. Don’t be put off by any of that. Once you’ve set it up a few times, it will become second nature very quickly. You will also be able to learn how to set it up in a few minutes, potentially saving you a ridiculous amount of time post-processing backgrounds that aren’t perfectly white.

Share this article.

This weeks' Photography Freebie
Copy and Paste the link below into your browser, hit ENTER and enjoy!

 http://p-static.animoto.com.s3.amazonaws.com/files/MotivationEbook1.1%202.pdf

Beginners Tips for Night Sky and Star Photography

By: Phillip Van Nostrand 

Star Photography

My favorite type of personal photography is taking night shots of the stars (long exposure pictures). I am often busy shooting pictures of people at weddings, or apartments, or models, and it’s important for me to make sure I take pictures for fun regularly. Taking pictures for no one other than myself is highly rewarding, soul filling, and fun! I also love taking travel photos and HDR photos, in this article we will take a close look at exactly how you can take your own epic star photographs.

30 seconds at f/2.8, ISO 1250

What you need to take jaw-dropping pictures of stars

To take your star pictures, you only need three things:

1. a full-frame camera (for better ISO capabilities)
2. a fisheye lens (for the widest view of the sky)
3. a tripod (for stability during 15 second photos)

(Note: You can do this with a cropped sensor camera, without a tripod, and without a fisheye lens. It will just be a little harder and slightly less jaw-dropping)

25 seconds at f/2.8, ISO 1600

Camera settings

You can nail this shot almost every time with these settings:  25 second exposure, f/2.8, ISO 1600
If your lens doesn’t open up to f/2.8 you can try 30 seconds at f/4 with ISO 1600.
Note: this kind of photography won’t work if there is a full moon out (or even a half moon). Don’t compete with large light sources, the stars will be over powered. The best location for star photography is way out in nature, away from city lights that cause “light pollution.”

13.0 seconds at f/2.8, ISO 1600

Why to use these settings

The most important component of these settings is the 25 second exposure. An exposure longer than about 25 seconds will start to show star trails. Photographing star trails is a legitimate type of photographyon its own, but not the type of photography you are trying to do here. Since you are limited to about 15-25 seconds max shutter speed, you still need to let in more light. The largest aperture you can find on a fisheye lens is f/2.8, and still your picture might not be quite bright enough to look stunning. So this is where the ISO comes into play. On a full-frame camera like the 5D Mark III or the Nikon D800 you can bump the ISO up to around 2000 without seeing much noise. You’ll learn how to reduce noise in Lightroom in the next section for a super clean photo.

Editing in Lightroom

I do extensive retouching in Lightroom after I take my photos. I’ll usually boost the exposure up by a stop or more and I’ll use Noise Reduction under the Detail section to reduce any unwanted “noise” (those pesky extra white, red or blue pixels that show up when you push the ISO too high). Here is a standard star photo of mine and the Lightroom settings I used to create it:

25 seconds at f/2.8, ISO 1600

Here are the Lightroom settings I used to edit the above photo:

1) You can see in the first panel that I bumped the whites up to +46 and brought the blacks down to -52. I really wanted to emphasize the stars against the dark sky and this is a good way to do that. Pushing the clarity up to +55 also helps define the stars against the sky, making them nice and crispy. I boosted the saturation to bring out any colors that are in the sky.
2) In the second panel you can see that I sharpened up the image a bit, also to emphasize the stars. At the same time, I brought up the noise reduction to 33 to smooth out some of the noise that might show up, and I brought up the color to 25 for the same reasons.

Pro tips

Here is where you can have fun with the editing. Play around with the split toning sliders to make the colors in your sky appear magical. In the photo above you can see a little bit of turquoise in the lower part of the sky, and that comes from boosting that color in the Shadows of the Split Toning slider here:

You can also affect the color of the sky by playing around with the temperature and hue sliders to get some pretty magnificent looking star photos. Take a look at this one photo rendered three different ways:

Another pro tip that you may have noticed in all of the photo examples I gave here is this – shoot your stars in context. It really tells a great story to see a silhouette of a pine tree or a house in the background, and it shows the magnitude of the scene when you have an object in the foreground to compare to the stars.

Lastly, make sure you know which direction the Milky Way is. You can use an app like Sky Map to see exactly what stars are in the sky above you.
Have fun shooting, and please share your pictures below!



Share this article.

DSLR Camera Focus Tips

How to Refresh Your Creativity by Shooting Digital with a Film Mindset

By: Adam Welch

There exists a strange and long standing line drawn in the weird sands of the photo world. On one side of that line you have those who shoot only digital images and on the other, you have those who still swear by analog film. Then there’s a hazy gray area (probably 18% gray) where people like myself reside.
Do you shoot film or digital? Seeing as this is Digital Photography School, I assume the answer to that question likely leans towards the latter. I started out on my photographic journey with a 35mm SLR, then moved to a DSLR and mirrorless, until I now strike a weighted balance between digital and large format film photography.
Why am I telling you all of this? The reason is simple; we all want to make better images and we all want to grow as photographers.

Stay with me here….Consider for a moment that instead of choosing sides on that imaginary line between film and digital photography, while pointing out the perceived benefits of digital over film, that there are many lessons to be learned from the film shooter’s mindset.
In this article, we’re going to look at some ways shooting film, or at least with the mentality of film, can help you with your digital photography skills. And no I won’t try to persuade you to jump from one side of the line to the other.

Shoot like it isn’t free

If there’s one thing that has both illuminated the field of digital photography while at the same time stamping out the classical mental focus involved in the craft it is this…

This little piece of plastic and silicon cost me about $13 and holds well over a 1000 images when used in my 36.4-megapixel camera. That’s a lot of photographs. What’s more is that it doesn’t end there. I can hypothetically erase and reuse this contraption an unlimited number of times.
My camera will wear out (knock on wood) before this memory card does. Now, compare that memory card to this:

This is a box of one of the 4×5 sheet films that I use with my large format camera. It cost me around $40 after it was all said and done. That’s 25 sheets of film that I will have to load into holders under complete darkness, put into my view camera, expose for about $1.60 each, and then bring back home to develop in my darkroom. And that’s just the first phase.
If I want to print images from those negatives I have to either scan them into the computer or print them myself in the darkroom using light-sensitive paper and even more chemicals and equipment.

Which causes more pause before shooting?

So, here we have two entirely different mediums to record what is essentially the same thing. Which one do you think I am more careful with when shooting? The $40 box of film or the $13 memory card?
If I make a mistake in exposure, composition, or anything else when I’m shooting digital there is virtually instant feedback and the error usually costs nothing. With film, the result is hidden and any “Uh-ohs!” are only evident after the fact.

I urge you to shoot as deliberately as possible when using your digital camera. Sure, even a well thought out photo can go bad regardless of planning but the more you think about what you’re doing the fewer variables there are in the equation.
Pay attention to what you’re shooting and why. Photograph as if every frame costs you money and I promise that you will begin seeing better results with your digital photos.

Choose an ISO and stick to it

Something that we take for granted with digital photography is the quick application of ISO changes. Usually, a prompt turn of a dial can take you from ISO 100 to ISO 6400 and back again in a few seconds.

This is not a bad thing. Changing ISO on a digital camera opens up astounding creative possibilities and lets you get shots you would have otherwise missed when the light changes suddenly.
That being said, it can also spoil us to the point where we crank up the ISO at times when we might possibly find more creative alternatives. Try this to practice – choose an ISO for the day and shoot at only that ISO setting.
Granted, I wouldn’t try this on a wedding shoot…but go out with your camera set to say, ISO 400, and force yourself to think through difficult lighting conditions. You might find you gain a better understanding of the relationships between shutter speed, aperture, and ISO that will help you immensely in the future.

Make a set number of exposures

Before I moved into digital photography I used 35mm film. Most rolls were of the twenty-four exposure variety with some being extended to thirty-six. That seems like a million frames when compared to the two sheets carried in each large format film holder or the eight with my Polaroid SX70.

As much as I love my film cameras, I still use digital for over 80% of my “professional” work. Each time I switch back and forth between film and digital I notice a strange change in the way I shoot particular scenes. It goes back to our first point about how film actually costs money with each click of the shutter.
I tend to essentially overshoot a scene with digital. I may take 10 or 12 images of a frame whereas with film I might only make one or two. Why is that? When you think about it, making consistently solid photographs isn’t a matter of firing off a bunch of frames and hoping for the best, though that does work sometimes. Usually, the best images come from the careful execution of each snap and with film you only have a certain number of those snaps in the bank before you have to change things out.

In an effort to strive for quality over quantity with your digital work, begin thinking in terms of keeping your shot count for a scene in the single digits. No, of course I’m not saying to sell your digital camera short and only shoot 20 or 30 photos at a time all the time.
What I’m suggesting is that you limit yourself to a focused group of purposed photographs instead of firing off a hoard of shots and hoping for the best. Try to shoot no more than 10 images of the same scene and then move on to something else. Make 10 images of that, and then move on again. The key outcome of this exercise is to train (or retrain) yourself to produce a smaller number of total images but a larger amount of usable ones or keepers.

The real conclusion and the true lesson to be gained from all this is for you to learn how to become more deliberate with your photography. Use your camera with purpose, and most importantly remember to slow yourself down from time to time. Slowing down is key.
Being both a film and digital photographer I find the complete flop of my creative mindset changes drastically between the two mediums. Obviously, digital cameras have extraordinary capabilities and offer many benefits over their analog cousins. At the same time, the true nature of photography can be lost when we suddenly find ourselves with limitless shooting capabilities that are often only capped by a camera’s battery life and our own enthusiasm.
Try putting some of these lessons from the world of film to use the next time you find yourself deleting more and more images and finding fewer quality pictures. It just might be that you begin shooting better and get more enjoyment from your digital photography.

Share this article.

6 Film Photography Challenges that can Improve your Digital Photography

By: Tim Gilbreath 

Film photography, as an art form, is having a huge renaissance at the moment. This resurgence in popularity has been going on for a few years now, and the reasons for its existence is many fold.
Primarily, shooting film taps into our sense of nostalgia. Those are powerful feelings, and that power can push us on to do better and ignite our desire to learn more. At first, the general consensus of the photography community was that the return of film was a hipster’s game and almost became a cliche.

Older, more experienced photographers reminded us there was a reason film had gone by the wayside when digital photography became widely used. What about all of the advancements in technology that made it easier, faster, and cheaper to take the same photos we took before?
In the end, the truth shows the mediums of film and digital sensors can, and do, coexist. An even happier truth is that not only is film photography still valid in this day and age, but its greatest purpose is also to bolster our knowledge of the craft and infinitely improve our digital picture-taking techniques and resulting images.
Let’s explore a few film photography challenges and their benefits a little further.

1. There’s no chimping after shooting a photo

“Chimping” refers to the practice of checking your display or viewfinder after every capture to see the resulting image. It seems nowadays everyone is speaking out against it. Film cameras, of course, having no digital display, didn’t have this ability. You didn’t know what the shot would look like until you developed the film.

While there are certainly advantages to this practice, such as quickly identifying an incorrect exposure or setting, it is easy to fall into a habit of methodically looking at your display and missing other opportunities to shoot. Most camera LCDs are very small. They don’t do a great job of representing details of how capture really looks.
Try adjusting the review settings in your camera and setting them to one second, or no review if that’s an option. This will simulate just shooting without spending time looking over the resulting image.

2. You are limited to 24 or 36 shots

Another limitation of shooting with a film camera is the number of exposures available to you. Depending on the film type, you could only have a couple of dozen exposures to use on a single roll. Once they were gone, they were gone – no deleting in-camera.
Shooting with a limited set of exposures compels you to slow down a bit and take your time when shooting. If you know you only have a small number of shots, you’ll definitely take more care with composition, settings, and lighting before clicking the shutter button.

Of course, this exercise can be practiced by mentally allowing yourself only 24 or 36 shots in a session, and then going back to review them after pulling them off of the camera. Did you notice an improvement in the technical aspects of the image after you had to stop “spraying and praying”?

3. You are stuck with a single ISO for a whole roll of film

In the film days, ISO wasn’t used in the same context as it is today. Now, we think of ISO as an adjustable setting on our cameras (which of course, it is). We know that raising the ISO on our DSLR or mirrorless cameras lets in more light to the sensor, at the expense of adding digital noise.
Film cameras didn’t have these adjustments, because the film you loaded dictated the ISO. To shoot indoors in a lower light situation, you’d buy and load an ISO 400 or ISO 800 film. Then, to shoot outside in the sun, you’d more likely go with ISO 100.
The caveat, of course, was once you loaded a roll of film, you were stuck with that ISO until you finished the roll.
Nowadays, we can change ISO for every shot, drastically improving the efficiency of our series of images captured in one sitting.

Try shooting with the same ISO through an entire set of images with your digital camera. Many of us will leave the ISO the same for extended periods. However, not changing it at all strengthens your knowledge and usage of the exposure triangle. You’re going to have to adjust aperture and shutter speed instead to get a properly exposed image.

4. You need to know how to use manual exposure controls

As stated above, today ISO is a setting or a dial, not a roll of film you can’t change until it’s finished. Film cameras are the perfect tool to learn the exposure triangle since most controls are manual on these devices. Some later SLR models had automatic aperture controls, but even these require a little more input than what is available on current DSLRs.
To simulate this, set your camera’s mode to “Manual,” and play around with the ISO, shutter speed, and aperture to see what happens when one or more of these are changed. What does it do to the needle in the light meter? How does that final effect change the image recorded?
Proper exposure is a game. Changing one part of the exposure triangle changes the final output. You have to find out what other settings you must alter to balance that change and produce a correctly exposed image.
Once you’ve done this, you’ll have a better understanding of what’s going on when you set your camera to Av (aperture priority) or Tv (shutter priority).

5. There is no autofocus, so you’ll need to focus manually

One of the greatest technological improvements available in DSLR cameras today involves how the user focuses on a particular point in the frame. In older SLR cameras, a manually rotating ring on the lens controlled lens focusing. It changed the distance between the lens and sensor, thereby increasing or decreasing the sharpness of the focus.
On the DSLR cameras of today, electronic autofocus systems allow the photographer to manually or automatically select focus points within the frame. Then the camera adjusts a motorized focusing mechanism within the lens to focus. This can all happen very quickly – in seconds – and greatly improved picture taking over the last couple of decades.

As wonderfully innovative as autofocus is, not using it can help us reconnect with the mechanisms of film cameras. It helps us better understand the act of focusing a lens on increasing or decreasing sharpness in an image. Thankfully, most modern lenses give you the option of disabling the autofocus system altogether and focus manually.
To do this, simply look for the autofocus switch on your lens barrel (usually a two-position switch marked AF at one end, and MF at the other), and switch it to MF (manual focus). Doing this disables your autofocus system. You’ll be required to rotate the thin ring near the end of the lens to adjust focus.

6. There are no LCD screens, menus or advanced features to help you along

As camera systems entered the digital age and became more advanced, cameras themselves started to rely less on analog controls and more on menus available on bigger LCD screens. These menus allow you to control the finer aspects of the camera. They let you dig deeper into the options available.
Of course, film cameras had no menus. They didn’t even have LCD screens. Any options that you had control of you adjusted through analog knobs and switches on the camera body. With an old Canon AE-1 Program, you couldn’t change the file format (there isn’t one) or which autofocus mode to use (of course, no autofocus). To use “Program” mode, you simply turned the aperture ring on the lens to “A,” and the camera would then set the shutter speed and aperture automatically.

Naturally, you can simulate this by ignoring your LCD screen entirely. That means no chimping images after you push the shutter button, and not adjusting any settings in the camera. Using the analog dials (if available) on your camera will, again, help strengthen your understanding of the basics of taking photos. In the long run, this can only improve your photography.

So as we’ve seen, these film photography challenges can provide many benefits to modern-day shooters, whether you have an interest in analog photography or not. So take an afternoon out with your camera, and pretend it’s an old SLR, with none of the benefits of your newer model.
Get back to the basics. Concentrate on the bare essentials needed to capture a photograph. You will come out with a better understanding of how to capture light, and a more fulfilling enjoyment of the hobby. Also, you’ll produce better pictures, and more importantly, know exactly how you captured them.
Do you shoot with film cameras? Have you tried treating your dSLR like a film camera? Share with us your thoughts on these film photography challenges in the comments below!

Share this article.