Why Your Film Photos Suck

Рет қаралды 8,200

Күн бұрын

Пікірлер: 58

@randallstewart1224 21 күн бұрын

As an extension of the comment on "expsoure" as a point to improve, I'll add that the single greatest restraint on good exposure for beginners is the incident light meter, popularized by Sekonic. If YT video producers can be used as representative, the great majority of them use the meter wrong. Wrong technique here tends to lead to underexposure, which in turn may explain why so many light-weight "creators" recommend over-exposing negative film by one stop. An incident meter can be extremely accurate, but its element is the studio, where lighting is tightly controlled. In the great outdoors, many waive the meter sensor dome at the sky (for example, in this video), at which point they are doomed to underexposure. It may be instructive that no camera maker has ever built an incident meter into their camera.

@Kitsaplorax Ай бұрын

When I started film in 1992, no one shot wide open. It was considered unappealing and a rookie mistake. t8 and be there.

@LoFiAxolotl Ай бұрын

when i started in 1961 it was the exact same thing and to this day the widest i have shot was f5.6 and that was at night... why are people trying so hard to hide 90% of their image in a blurry mess when they could just spend 5 minutes actually composing a shot and making it interesting?

@MrMacroJesseSky Ай бұрын

lol what stills lenses in the 90s used t-stops

@LoFiAxolotl Ай бұрын

@@MrMacroJesseSky every single one... T stops for all intents and purposes are F stops just that T stops describe how much light hits the sensor and F stops are a function of the iris size over the focal length of the lens.... you can calculate both for every lens....

@KahruSuomiPerkele Ай бұрын

understandable, I have a 50mm f1.2, I only ever used the widest aperture once for a portrait and it didn't even look good. I do use f2.0 when the light becomes tricky, but it often end up looking bad.

@MrMacroJesseSky Ай бұрын

@@LoFiAxolotl they’re very much not the same. As you said, F stops are a physical measurement of focal length over iris. And T stops are the actual amount of light hitting the sensor. The amount of light from hitting the film/sensor from F stops can very from lens to lens, manufacture to manufacture. This is important for matching shots (mainly with motion picture). There’s a reason though T stops lenses are expensive, because they have to be tuned at each size iris to give a specific amount of light.

@mike747436 Ай бұрын

You didn't say, but overexposure in negative (print) film is ok, whereas reversal (slide) film is more like digital and doesn't handle overexposure well; colours will be washed-out and lacking detail.

@7head7metal7 Ай бұрын

Composition is what I need to study much more for better results. The technical aspects are easier to apply for me, but finding a good composition for something seems more difficult. For example, I wanted to capture some nice colors of fall, but I took very long to find a nice location, good light and even the option to create composition. With more experience this should get easier, I suppose

@stevenmccaughan2752 Ай бұрын

Ansel Adams has a series of books on Photography he ran workshops and I learned that you could dry a print in the microwave he would spend hours on one print when I watch him it was 33 prints to get it correct I don’t understand why people buy cheap film and expect great results Acros is my favorite black and white film and I was lucky enough to have shot Kodachrome. Photography has never been cheap insure your gear

@kentfaithwendyzeng Ай бұрын

Great insights on transitioning to film photography! 🎞 It's all about learning from mistakes and understanding exposure, composition, and editing. Your tips on using quality labs and managing expectations are spot on. Thanks for sharing your journey and encouraging others to keep improving! 📷✨

@angelgrace1175 Ай бұрын

Wonderful video, great advice and info, thank you! I also appreciate the reminder that we all start somewhere. Photography is truly an individual art form that is developed over time through practice of our craft. I love it! 😁🙏🏻

@mnltphts Ай бұрын

Thanks for your views-really insightful! As someone who shoots with a Minolta X-700, I’m always looking for new knowledge, and there’s definitely some great takeaways here.

@7head7metal7 Ай бұрын

Nice to see a fellow X-700 user! It's an amazing camera and quite reliable from my experience. I wish it would get more coverage with film photography KZbinrs

@RickLeMon Ай бұрын

@@7head7metal7 I suppose I'm an honorary member of that club. My main 35mm is the Minolta X-370 I got in high school. For many years, I wanted to upgrade to an X-700, but now I'm just happy with my old friend

@thevoiceman6192 Ай бұрын

I use a photo lab that does great work. And yes transitioning from digital where you can see the photos you just took and with white balance and histograms it's easier to get good photos. And then switching to film where you have to make it happen. In digital the camera works for you. In film. You work for the camera. As my photographer uncle always said. Get it right the first time in the camera. I knew a film photographer who schott dubble film and did not edit his photos. He was sponsored by them. His photos were on their boxes and cannisters.. Again if there was no film there would be no digital and you are saying they edited their photos back in the day. Like it was a thumb your nose at it comment. You should say the reason we have digital and editing is because of film. Pay homage to it

@cal3blipa Ай бұрын

Thanks for the uplift have my first 3 rolls that need developed. It’s a point and shoot so not expecting the best but I’m just excited to see them.

@blackukulele Ай бұрын

Film was all there was in 1978. I started developing and printing my own black and white images in the early 80s. I learned to crop, dodge and burn, and to correct exposure in the printing stage. Exposure was usually ok if you set the ASA (ISO) correctly and used the built in exposure meter (I had a Canon AT-1 with a F1.4 50mm lens).

@davescamera3672 Ай бұрын

My latest film mistake was at my friend's birthday party. I usually have success with my Vivitar flash but because I was drinking, I over looked my flash settings. I didn't match my flash to the film ISO. Although it was flashing every shot, none of those night shots were useable.

@josephcurry4891 Ай бұрын

I wish I could tell old me "edit, edit, edit!" I didn't do anything, and now I'm going back and scanning film from 07-08 to redo it all. My old scans are tiny, or I would scan prints on a flat bed with no regard for all the dust and dog hair. But also a lot of digital photos, no editing at all, straight out of the camera. I have a lot of cleaning and editing to do. I would also tell old me to learn how to develop my own BW. The internet wasn't like it is today and I wanted someone to hold my hand and baby me through the process. And that just wasn't going to happen. And lastly I wish I learned about depth of field and zone focusing earlier. I understood DOF but I mostly liked shooting in low light situations, and didn't like flash so I was shooting wide open and paid for it. But understanding zone focusing would have helped a lot and would have kind of tied in with DOF understanding better.

@heitormeirelles1607 Ай бұрын

I've photographed about 20 films in my life so far and I'm still learning and I feel like these are mistakes that I kind of knew I was making, I knew the theory behind it but I didn't care about the practice and now it all makes sense, why that ONE unit photo turned out wonderfully perfect and I had so much difficulty getting the others sharp or well exposed, always making poor use of the film, taking away my flash that slips off the shoe and doesn't fire :P, as well as an ND filter that I need for a long time time to use higher ISOs with manual flash, if I worry about this I will be invincible

@curiousmatt4052 Ай бұрын

great video, thanks!

@garlicburger Ай бұрын

Needed this!🎉

@tundrusphoto4312 Ай бұрын

Well said. Thanks.

@billxciii 13 күн бұрын

@4:48 I feel like I know this place. Is it on Mount Desert Isle in Maine?

@metalfingersfilm 12 күн бұрын

@@billxciii bingo!

@blakelindsay4658 Ай бұрын

Wish I would have told myself ‘Don’t take the same shot twice’

@khandarbar3975 Ай бұрын

I want to print logo and images on 35mm film To prepare slides in projector for logo projection Can you suggest me what are the printer and films required for this?

@TebartzvanElst-ul3mi Ай бұрын

Why you shoot analog, when you edit the scans in LR and post them in 1080px on instagram?

@metalfingersfilm Ай бұрын

same could be said about modern 40MP cameras

@kool_thing Ай бұрын

Hey, no need to call me out like that 😤 Jk, thanks for the great tips

@LoFiAxolotl Ай бұрын

The only thing i would tell "novice photographers" to work on.... is composition... that really is 90% of what makes a photo work or not... there's a reason some photographers are outstanding and we remember 1000s of their images... while others are completely forgetful... and it's not the camera, lens, film or lights they use... it's because they know how to compose a photo Study the work of photographers that inspire you... study WHY they work... study their composition... study their light... study their technique... camera and lens and all of that doesn't matter... Annie Leibovitz will shoot a better picture on an iPhone 1 with a cracked lens than you on a P1 IQ5

@CarloRosillo Ай бұрын

Are you in Milwaukee???

@metalfingersfilm Ай бұрын

Haha I lived there the last 3 years, but moved out to Colorado this summer.

@reformedfilmlab Ай бұрын

Shoot at 1/2 speed of what the film is rated. Hah, editing (Suck it John!) :p

@DGLuxton Ай бұрын

My film photos don’t suck, ha! I don’t know why you assumed they do - I suppose that’s just clickbait.

@tommynikon2283 15 күн бұрын

Kids today….REAL film photographers shoot transparency stock: for the SKILLS required. 😂. GET it right, in-camera…no crops allowed. 😊. And, using filters ON camera.

@metalfingersfilm 15 күн бұрын

Link me your work, Tommy! Would love to see some masterpieces from a REAL photographer!

@TheDamnGarage Ай бұрын

Black and white is NOT cheaper. When you look to have it developed by a lab the cost is more than color. So if you get a 3 pack of Fuji 400 it’s about $8/ roll and $12 to process it and have it scanned: so $20. If you get HP5 that’s around $9 and $16 to process and scan. Sure there are cheaper black and white films and there are more expensive color films but practicing with black and white is dumb. Black and white has like 3 stops of latitude in either direction for most film stocks so if you make an exposure mistake you haven’t learned anything. Contrast that with a roll of 100 speed film like Proimage (which is super cheap) that has narrow latitude for exposure mistakes and you learn that exposure triangle pretty quick.

@corgis6801 Ай бұрын

BW film is much cheaper if you use DIY setups. You can buy a 100 foot roll for just over $100 and get 18 rolls out of it, self dev is way cheaper / easier then color and scanning is also much easier in BW. In my case I can shoot a roll of BW with scans for $6-$8 while color will cost me at least $16 and I will have to put much more effort into editing scans. There is way more choices as well for BW, you can shoot cheap film from iso 100 to 1600 but with color all the high ISO options are much more expensive. Its personal preference as well of course, if you don't like the look of BW then there is no point wasting money on it. In my case I didn't like the weird colors of film so I shoot digital for color instead.

@TheDamnGarage Ай бұрын

@@corgis6801 I understand what you are saying. I also factor in the time spent learning how to load the canisters, develop rolls etc. I assume there is a learning curve to developing at home and all of that. I, personally, would rather spend my not at my place of employment taking walks with my camera than developing. Different strokes for different folks.

@corgis6801 Ай бұрын

@@TheDamnGarage Yea it's up to you what you want out of film. I find learning developers and working with the physical film to be part of the analog process otherwise it's just digital photography with extra steps to me.