Film Photography

It's winter in the Northern hemisphere. Though it's only been winter for about week – at least if you go by the Old Farmer's Almanac, which I'm certain we all still read religiously – it's been cold for a while. For film photographers, summer is a happy season with enough light, with gorgeous colors, and little worry about malfunctioning equipment. If you're not hanging out in the wettest of jungles or the hottest of deserts, anyway. The cold is less kind to our equipment and our medium. Cameras are susceptible to malfunction, film becomes brittle.

Tim Heubeck, over at the Waste of Film channel on Youtube, has made a great video detailing the Film Toaster, a platform for using your DSLR to scan film. DSLR scanning has rapidly become a preferred way to capture negatives with a potentially higher quality than a traditional flatbed. The Film Toaster brings attempts to make this process easier, but with a $1699 price tag that may turn off potential investors.

Ansel Adams once said “you don’t take a photograph, you make it.” I have always thought that what he meant by this quote was the process involved in reaching the final image. It has never been about clicking a picture simply, but it involves the creativity the photographer pours into his image. And creativity and sensibility also are what transpire in the beautiful conceptual project of Finnish photograper Christoffer Relander, titled “Jarred & Displaced.”

Post-processing at the computer for hours on end often leaves me feeling nostalgic. Maybe there’s something tangible to film photography that I’m overlooking. After seeing a fellow landscape photographer working his 4x5 near a tree in the local dunes, his approach to our hobby had me contemplating my choice of hardware. There are so many analog-inspired pictures circling the web, that it’s obvious that I’m not the only one. Today, I want to share my thoughts on film photography with you.

I don't care what you say; film is cool. It's a great way to become a more technically apt photographer, it makes you carefully think through your creative impulses, it gives a unique look, and it's just fun to shoot. That's why I own film cameras that I regularly shoot with alongside my digital setup. And it's also why I'm so excited for Film Objektiv, a rental house for anyone looking to get into shooting film or for pros looking to augment their current setup.

If you've ever picked up an issue of Climbing or Outside Magazine, you are pretty much guaranteed to have seen Corey Rich's images on the cover. One of the biggest names in adventure photography, Corey has worked for everyone; from Nike and Adidas, to Apple and North Face. As a still photographer and director, his production company handles outdoor film projects in some of the most remote environments on the planet.

Let's chant it from the rooftops: Film is not dead, whether as a medium in art or as the thing that makes instant photos at parties possible and will let you take pictures in places where digital cameras and phones aren't allowed in.

One of the best things about shooting film is that there are so many cameras to choose from! Of course, your wallet may disagree with me. The number of formats, combined with the different brands, form factors, lenses, and options make shooting with film almost impossible to get bored with. If you're at all familiar with my articles on Fstoppers, you know that I tend to focus on film and bringing it to a new audience. To that end, I've created a new video series profiling various film gear, some of it well known, some not so much! In my quest to learn about and use different systems, I hope you'll learn along with me. First up, a medium format rangefinder style camera from Fujifilm: the GF670.

Kirk Mastin and Mastin Labs are the creators of some of the better known (and more highly regarded) sets of develop presets for digital images to emulate the look of film. Kirk has been working on a mobile app to achieve similar results on the go for a while now, and that app has finally been released. Meet Filmborn.

Camera resolutions are soaring in recent years, with Canon unleashing a 50-megapixel DSLR and Phase One showing off the new XF 100MP back. The unending argument of why manufacturers bother with such resolution swirls around one thing: printing. Photographers argue that a higher resolution camera will produce a better print with more detail. Technically, that is absolutely true, but most photographers aren't printing much these days.

This one hurts. I don't think I've ever written a review for a product that I wanted to like more than this one. From its beginnings as a Kickstarter back in 2014, large format film photographers have been drooling about this camera. Finally, a low cost camera that, at about $300, would make 4x5 photography accessible to the masses. But, long story short, The Intrepid Camera just doesn't live up to its promise. Read on to find out why.

It happens almost every time I scan some film. I look at my developed film on the computer and think, "That's a pretty cool shot. I wonder what my settings were?" Shooting film is amazing, but sometimes it becomes a pain in the rump to remember what you were doing when you shot a specific photograph, since there are no digital markers to log your work for you. Enter: Photomemo. It's a small, lightweight logbook that's specifically tailored to be a film shooter's friend.

After various setbacks and delays over the past two years, Italy's FILM Ferrania has begun preparations to make slide film for analog still and movie cameras. This puts the company back on track to make a first batch of film for distribution to backers of their Kickstarter project.

Sean Lotman photographs the people of Japan's streets and beaches. One of the main reasons he shoots film is because he shares a darkroom with his wife, Ariko Inaoka. For him the advantages of physically printing the images has it's advantages, he can lay them out on the floor, rearrange them and figure out what the project is about and where to take it. You can do the same with the digital photography workflow too, but I must say, it's something I have never done.

Parabolic softboxes are all the rage in the lighting world. It seems like you can't check out lighting videos on Youtube without coming across one. But with price points all over the place, I was reluctant to pick one up for fear of spending too much money on a modifier I wouldn't like or use. Then, I came across the budget-priced Selens Parabolic Softbox. With a price of about $100 and good reviews, I was ready to pull the trigger. Here are my thoughts and video review.

There's something absolutely wonderful about holding a piece of film fresh out of processing. The feeling of accomplishment, that indescribable rush of holding something you created in your fingers makes the difficulty of dealing with the medium worthwhile. However, once you're done processing the film, the next phase begins. Scanning can be, to put it lightly, a royal pain. From dust-spotting to tweaking color and levels, there are challenges that must be addressed. This is how I do it!

When touting the many virtues of film, people frequently mention the power of negatives in the highlights. But what does that mean, exactly, and how does its strength compare to its digital brethren? To find out the differences, I shot a demanding subject with both digital and black and white film, severely over and underexposing. How did they stack up against each other? Read on to find out!

When you're shooting film, especially large format film, you have a lot of time to think. When your hands are in a bag and you're loading or unloading many sheets of film, the mind tends to wander and probably the subject that crosses my mind the most is "why?" Shooting digitally would be so much faster. I could be out having a beer somewhere! I could be editing some images in Photoshop from an editorial gig that I've been putting off. Hell, I could be practicing my juggling skills (or learning to juggle). So, why am I instead up to my elbows in this bag, enduring the necessary tedium of film life? Here are some common doubts I have and the reasons I push past them!

In 1948, far before Photoshop was introduced to mankind, there was a painter and photographer dynamic duo that created outlandish portraits. Of course I'm talking about Salvador Dali and Philippe Halsman. Time Magazine recently released this awesome video explaining just how the team was able to get these great shots.

During a two-day trip to the magnificent city that is Rome, photographer Milán Rácmolnár came up with the brilliant idea of photographing Rome in infrared. The result is a different and pink perspective on the cityscapes.

It's been going on for decades. Film chemicals that coat the film and react with the various colors coming through the lens weren't made to cope with a diverse set of skin tones.

In the world of newspaper photographers, you'd be hard to find someone consistently making more exciting and interesting portraits than Jay L. Clendenin. You might have seen his Land Camera Polaroid images from the Toronto International Film Festival, or his 4x5 black and white/digital color diptychs of California Olympians. For this year's Olympics, he decided to go even bigger and bring out his 8x10 Tachihara view camera to capture some amazing photos of American athletes.

There are certain images that have become so ingrained in our psyches, they are almost dismissed outright. If you've ever been in a bookstore, browsing the photography section, you've seen the docile faces of the Weimaraners of William Wegman. The images are always clean, crisp, and have become immensely popular in the last 20 years, gracing coffee tables and calendars alike. The temptation to dismiss them as commercial drivel is strong. But that would be a mistake!

Ah, vacation! As photographers who shoot to put food on the table, it's exceedingly difficult to unplug. The temptation to jump into post-processing as soon as we take a photo can be overwhelming. The image is never done! If we just push this slider or that, tweak this or that, or crop here or there, the image would be so much better. At some point, though, shouldn't we be experiencing our vacation instead of documenting it? Enter the ultimate in quick and dirty memory-making: the 35mm film camera.

One man's trash is another man's treasure. This statement is proven true in the recent New York Times video. Reporter Deborah Acosta was walking around New York City when she found an odd trail of old Kodak slides. The trail lead to a big bag full of slides, notes, and letters addressed to a woman named Mariana Gosnell. Who threw away these photos? Who was Mariana?

"The idea for 'RAGE' was to show a build-up from a busy city that is packed with people into an outburst of anger, frustration, and violence, depicting a society that is spiraling out of control." Such is Tim Sessler's commentary on the current issues of gun control, race, and violence, a striking achievement with a unique filming style.

This low-tech alternative to digital photography can produce stunning art. Last year, I've recovered five out of ten “cameras." Some are found by others and stolen, others are simply blown off by a passing storm. Yet others are removed by bomb squads... I'm sharing these pictures with you, which are scanned negatives of black and white photographic paper. The brightest parts are the sun's streaks, burnt and etched in the paper - along with bubbles, rips and sand that texturize the images in bizarre ways.

[UPDATE] The winners have been announced! Check out the winners page to see some incredible video editing.

Filmsupply and Musicbed have partnered up to bring you a film competition that could change your life. Without having to shoot one frame of footage, you could win up to $100,000 in cash, prizes, and incredible experiences. Although you're not restricted to only using their content, this competition allows you to tap into the huge libraries of both Musicbed and Filmsupply to create and submit your 60-second film. Check out the submission guidelines below.

Last week I showed you how you can use just a DSLR and a few accessories to digitize your negatives. However, that article wouldn’t have been complete without explaining how to convert the scanned analog picture to a positive image. The process is quite easy and only a few steps are required to achieve a great result. Let’s dive in!

Whether you are shooting film or have a large collection of negatives, chances are you will want to scan them one day. The process to digitize your analog pictures can be expensive and sometimes even disappointing regarding image quality. When I started playing with my Mamiya RB67, I wished there was a cheap and quick scanning method that would offer me a good amount of detail and decent colors. I found it using gear I already owned and that most of you actually also have at home. It even surpassed my expectations to the point that I decided to share the technique with you in this article.