A Red Light Doesn't Make Your Film Immune to Overexposure!

Hello everyone! As you know, I don't post much here because it isn't that often that I have new info about film to share. I laugh out loud thinking about what has happened today. My new friend, Becca Dryer, and I got together to chat film. She shot her first roll the other day and I couldn't be more proud!

She has a Holga (I have been wanting one forever), and she agreed to let me shoot a roll with it. I need some new head shots so I used the my roll trying to get some self portraiture going. We will see how that goes. Anyway, after looking at her little Holga book, we found out that you can use 35mm film in a Holga and it will take panoramic pictures. We were anxious to try this, but had some difficulty figuring out how to get the film back into the 35mm film canister after we had taken the pictures. We thought we could put a red cup over the light in my bathroom and load the film into another camera and manually wind it back into the canister. The photo above is a picture of our makeshift dark room. Taken by Becca with her handy iphone. Yes, that is my hand holding up a red cup over the bathroom light.

We made that transfer and were feeling very proud of ourselves until we got the film back from one hour Walgreens and learned that is was all overexposed beyond recognition. Oops! Chalk that one up to learning. It all just seems so silly now, I laugh every time!

The self portraits were on a different roll and I will post them as soon as they get back from the lab. Fingers crossed!

How to expose for Shadows with a Light Meter

I was recently asked how to expose for the shadows and so here is a pretty concise description:

For metering the exposure for the shadows, you basically hold the light meter under the persons chin (but not so close they are uncomfortable) and point the light meter toward the ground with the ball retracted so it is in the shadow of the face. Sometimes I lie to the light meter and tell it that I am shooting a slower film speed to give myself an extra stop of exposure just to be safe.

Can you use Digital to learn Film?

I had a friend as me this one the other day and I thought about what I would tell myself if I wanted to go back in time and do this to save money etc. Here is was I would say to me:

Absolutely you can elimiate some of your learning curve using digital! There are some things that you can only learn shooting film (like just getting used to it, see the rest of this blog for more info), but if you are strapped for cash here are a few things that will help you become a better film shooter with digital.

1. Shoot in manual. Pay attention to how the different setting affect your pictures including shutter speed, aperture, and ISO. This is just basic photography skills that you can learn on digital to improve yourself as a photographer. When you shoot with automatic settings, you don't have an much control and troubleshooting your manual results are a great way to learn. There are photographers who have narrowed their look to an exact science and this is a way to learn enough to figure out where you want to take your style. When you know about photography in general then when someone tells you about their specific way of shooting, it makes a lot more sense.

2. Shoot only a specific number of pictures. A roll of film has about 30 images on it. If you are taking a friend out to practice photography, instead of taking 300 pictures and narrowing it down to the very best 50, try limiting the whole session to 30 (that is 1 roll). Try to make every image count. You will think a lot more about what you are doing. Pretend that every time you click your shutter, it is costing you a dollar.

3. Read your manual. So many people intend to do this, but they never do. The first photography book I ever read was the manual. The first time I read it, I experimented with each step and immediately looked at the results on the computer to solidify the information. This is one of the best things I ever did because when I heard other people talking photography, I could ask questions and the answers made sense. Shortly after the first read, I read it a second time. It made more sense the second time because it answered questions I didn't know I had yet. Then when I would learn something new, I would think, "I remember reading something about that in my manual" and could quickly reference the information and get my answer. If you have lost your manual, you can look it up online and chances are find a free PDF online of your camera's manual.

There are some things you can only learn with film. Each camera is a little different and takes some getting used to. Also, if you are shooting with film, you can use a light meter that helps with exposure. If I don't have a light meter, I shoot with AV(aperture priority) or TV(shutter priority) settings and overexpose2-3 stops, but I still know enough about the settings to know what I want to use and when. If you are not sure, stick with manual until you have learned enough to know what you like. You can use AV and TV with digital to practice as well.

What is aperture?

I have included in earlier posts a very brief description of what aperture is and want to expound based on a question I got on facebook. As you can see from these images the aperture refers to the size of the hole letting light into your camera. The larger the f-stop, the smaller the hole and less light for taking a picture. There are some specific properties associated with small aperture vs. a large aperture. A small aperture (high f-stop such as f/16) lets in less light which might be tricky in a low light situation and when you take the picture most everything will be in focus. When you are shooting at f/2 your film can get a lot more light and the plane of focus is very small. Any questions? Beuler?

Oh, one more cool thing, the shape of you aperture determines the shape how how blurry lights in your pictures look. For example, check out this picture. How would you guess that the photographer got the lights to look like hearts? hint: it's kind of a trick question

The images and more information are posted in this photography article

The rest of the story

Do you remember this post? I was heart sick because I thought I ruined some of my pictures. Well, I told Richard's what happened and they left the film in the developer longer than normal and all the pictures looked great when I got them back!! It saved my skin! The pictures were eventually published on Snippet and Ink a national wedding blog. Check it out!

Another exeriment with overexposure

I have been playing with the idea of overexposing a few stops and just shooting without metering that much. If I am at 2.8 aperture, then shooting at like 1/125 or 1/250 in the shade and just going for it even if the light changes. Check these out. I was at a session and my light meter started giving me the same exact reading even when I moved it to a very different lighting situation, so I obviously knew it wasn't working. I just tried to make a conservative estimate of what the light was at erring on the side of overexposure. I took both of these images right at sunset and my setting for both images was 2.0 1/60 (it was my conservative estimate, remember? But I forgot to give it a few more stops when we went into the direct sun). I am guessing that I was about six stops over in the sunny one and maybe 3ish in the shaded one.

Look how sunny and colorful the overexposed image is! It's very Hawaiian vacation-ish and this is Oregon!! The water was grey to the natural eye!!

Exposure Comparisons

I have been looking forward to the results of this test for a while! Let me explain, the close series is taken with the 400H. The image on the far left is one stop overexposed, the far image on the right is 6 stops overexposed and each image in between represents one stop difference. The second series (more zoomed out) is the same thing, but with the 800Z. Notice how the more overexposed the image is, the more soft and less contrasty it becomes. Now, I was really surprised there wasn't a greater difference in the images and the two images side by side were taken from the 400H test and I just played with with color and levels in photoshop to make them look really similar. You have so much latitude shooting film! When in doubt, just bump up your exposure! None of the images in the two series are photoshopped.

With that, I am going to announce my studies in film are mostly complete! I don't have enough content to continue posting everyday, but every once in a while when I learn something new, I will try to share it.