On Shooting Film
By Ralph Barker
Film. It’s that look-through stuff that comes in long rolls and sheets, usually needs to be handled in total darkness, and needs to be developed . . . by someone. Before digital, it was essentially the only stuff, photographically speaking. Well, OK, there were Daguerreotypes (tintypes), but that’s for a “before film” article.
I’m not going to say that film is better than digital – it isn’t, except in a few respects. Mostly, it is simply different than digital, but has a few properties that may be of interest to “serious” photographers, both professional and amateur. So, let’s explore a few of those “different” properties, avoiding all of the usual film vs. digital angst.
Archival Properties
The word “archival” can mean different things to different folks, but I like to think of it in a manner similar to “antiques” – something more than 100 years old. Personally, I’m fortunate to have a few silver prints of my ancestors that date back to the 1800s, and a few film negatives that are from the early 1900s. Although some have seen some rough handling, they are still usable, and can be scanned or printed with current technology. Perhaps more importantly, they could likely be scanned or printed with future technology, as well, with little or no loss of the original image quality.
Although we like to think of digital images as being permanent, keeping digital images for the long term requires some work, work that many haven’t really thought about. Hard drives, for example, eventually fail, some sooner than others. Ah, but you have backups on CDs or DVDs, right? Good. But, CDs and DVDs eventually fail, too. Some will fail in as little as a couple of years, while others might last up to ten years, perhaps a little more. So, if you want to maintain your library of digital images, you’ll need to initiate some sort of program for reading them to hard disk and creating new CDs or DVDs on some sort of regular basis.
There’s also the issue of advancing computer technology, and whether you’ll even be able to read those old CDs and DVDs in the future. For example, do you have a computer that will read a 5 ¼” floppy disk? Do you even know what a 5 ¼” floppy disk is? So, you (and, your descendants) will need to be digital-image archive librarians. Otherwise, all those treasured images will sort of just go away.
Image Properties - Overall
Film images have a different look than digital, particularly when enlarged. This is partly due to the nature of the film itself – the odd-shaped, light sensitive silver halide crystals that make up the image are distributed randomly in three dimensions within the film’s emulsion. In contrast, digital images are made up of rectangular pixels, neatly arranged in a two-dimensional array. Plus, different film/developer combinations produce images with distinctly different properties. Some films (e.g. Ilford Delta films) are almost brutally sharp, producing very crisp, technical-looking images. Other films (e.g. Ilford FP4+ and HP5+) have a softer look, and others (e.g. Ilford Pan F+) may be best described as “creamy” in appearance. Thus, you have choices with film, and are able to choose the film/developer combination most suited to the way you want to portray a particular subject. Some of this can be done in post-processing with digital images, but you’ll never achieve “creamy” because pixels are two-dimensional and have finite boundaries.
Examples of sort of crisp, and sort of creamy.
By Ralph Barker
Film. It’s that look-through stuff that comes in long rolls and sheets, usually needs to be handled in total darkness, and needs to be developed . . . by someone. Before digital, it was essentially the only stuff, photographically speaking. Well, OK, there were Daguerreotypes (tintypes), but that’s for a “before film” article.
I’m not going to say that film is better than digital – it isn’t, except in a few respects. Mostly, it is simply different than digital, but has a few properties that may be of interest to “serious” photographers, both professional and amateur. So, let’s explore a few of those “different” properties, avoiding all of the usual film vs. digital angst.
Archival Properties
The word “archival” can mean different things to different folks, but I like to think of it in a manner similar to “antiques” – something more than 100 years old. Personally, I’m fortunate to have a few silver prints of my ancestors that date back to the 1800s, and a few film negatives that are from the early 1900s. Although some have seen some rough handling, they are still usable, and can be scanned or printed with current technology. Perhaps more importantly, they could likely be scanned or printed with future technology, as well, with little or no loss of the original image quality.
Although we like to think of digital images as being permanent, keeping digital images for the long term requires some work, work that many haven’t really thought about. Hard drives, for example, eventually fail, some sooner than others. Ah, but you have backups on CDs or DVDs, right? Good. But, CDs and DVDs eventually fail, too. Some will fail in as little as a couple of years, while others might last up to ten years, perhaps a little more. So, if you want to maintain your library of digital images, you’ll need to initiate some sort of program for reading them to hard disk and creating new CDs or DVDs on some sort of regular basis.
There’s also the issue of advancing computer technology, and whether you’ll even be able to read those old CDs and DVDs in the future. For example, do you have a computer that will read a 5 ¼” floppy disk? Do you even know what a 5 ¼” floppy disk is? So, you (and, your descendants) will need to be digital-image archive librarians. Otherwise, all those treasured images will sort of just go away.
Image Properties - Overall
Film images have a different look than digital, particularly when enlarged. This is partly due to the nature of the film itself – the odd-shaped, light sensitive silver halide crystals that make up the image are distributed randomly in three dimensions within the film’s emulsion. In contrast, digital images are made up of rectangular pixels, neatly arranged in a two-dimensional array. Plus, different film/developer combinations produce images with distinctly different properties. Some films (e.g. Ilford Delta films) are almost brutally sharp, producing very crisp, technical-looking images. Other films (e.g. Ilford FP4+ and HP5+) have a softer look, and others (e.g. Ilford Pan F+) may be best described as “creamy” in appearance. Thus, you have choices with film, and are able to choose the film/developer combination most suited to the way you want to portray a particular subject. Some of this can be done in post-processing with digital images, but you’ll never achieve “creamy” because pixels are two-dimensional and have finite boundaries.
Examples of sort of crisp, and sort of creamy.
Image Properties – Detail
Film choice and format size selection can provide a wide range of potential image detail. The larger the format, and the finer the grain in the film, the more detail you’ll get. I like to refer to this as “real” image detail, because you see more as you enlarge the film more (or, scan at a higher resolution). With a digital capture, all you see at 100% is all you’ll ever get.
This, for example, is a scan of an 8x10 negative of Cathedral Falls in West Virginia, made on Ilford HP5+ (medium-speed) film, and tray-developed in Ilford DD-X developer. I like DD-X developer because of its nice balance between fine-grain, sharpness, and tonal quality. Kodak D-76 or Ilford ID-11 would have produced a negative almost as nice.
The negative makes a lovely 16”x20” silver print that is rich in detail and tonal quality, since that size print is only a 2x enlargement of the negative. With the right darkroom equipment, it could also produce an 80”x100” silver print that would show no loss of image quality.
What is not apparent here, though, is that with a high-powered loupe on the negative, you can tell that it’s a red ant, not a black ant, crawling across that flat rock in the foreground.
Film is Fun
Plus, film is just plain fun. It allows you to learn more about photographic technique – a little more, or a lot more, depending on how deeply you want to explore the medium. If you don’t want to set up your own darkroom, you can have the film processed by a lab – local or distant, depending on whether you shoot B&W or color film. If you shoot B&W, developing your film yourself is quite easy and economical. All you need is a “dark tent” and a light-tight developing canister. You can also scan the negatives and make digital prints, if that is what you want to do.
Plus, shooting film allows you to use different types of “old” cameras, including 35mm, medium format, and large format (4x5, 5x7, 8x10 and larger). That also allows creative explorations of different types of lenses, and the characteristics those lenses impart on your images.
This “old” Leitz dual-range 50mm Summicron lens from the 1950s, for example, produces images that are sharp, but have a certain “glow” to them that is impossible to reproduce with more modern lenses.
The “eyes” attached to the lens allows it to focus down to 17” on the Leica M rangefinder camera.
The image of the burial-plot gate, shown above, was created with this combo.
The “eyes” attached to the lens allows it to focus down to 17” on the Leica M rangefinder camera.
The image of the burial-plot gate, shown above, was created with this combo.