Analog Photography: The Beginner’s Guide to Film Cameras (2024)

We'll commencement with colour film, which comes successful 2 flavors, affirmative and negative.

Positive Film vs. Negative Film

Positive film records the representation arsenic you saw it erstwhile you pushed the shutter. It produces rich, saturated colors and tends to person beardown contrast. It's overmuch little forgiving successful my experience. You request to get the vulnerability close and there's not overmuch you tin bash astir it aft the information if you don't. I thin to debar high-contrast scenes with affirmative movie (or usage graduated neutral-density filters to trim contrast). Positive movie is usually mounted arsenic slides erstwhile you person it professionally developed.

Negative film records the other of what you saw. In achromatic and white, everything is reversed, blacks are white, and whites are achromatic truthful that erstwhile you radiance airy done it to print, the achromatic areas clasp backmost the light, making them lighter successful the print, and airy areas fto much airy through, rendering them acheronian successful the print. The aforesaid is existent of colour antagonistic film, but it tends to look much similar a yellow-orange messiness arsenic a negative. Negative colour movie often has a softer look than colour positive, with little contrast, and higher dynamic range.

Which should you use? I suggest experimenting to spot which you similar the best. Below are a fewer movie recommendations based connected the benignant of images you privation to make.

Best Film for Landscapes

Best Overall

Fujifilm's Fujichrome Velvia 50 is ridiculously costly astatine $30 per roll, but I've inactive yet to find immoderate different color-positive movie that looks arsenic bully arsenic Velvia. Its colour saturation is legendary (tending toward the red/magenta), and its neutral grey equilibrium means you astir ne'er get weird colors successful shadows and highlights. The terms means I don't sprout it precise often, but erstwhile I'm heading retired into the wilderness, this is what I bring.

Runner-Up

Kodak's E100 is simply a caller movie for me, but I've changeable a fewer rolls now, and I tin accidental that it is precise antithetic from Velvia. There's nary of the Velvia warmth; colors are alternatively neutral with a mild greenish formed to the highlights. If you're looking to sprout landscapes with a antithetic look than the past 50 years of Velvia-influenced images, this is the movie I'd recommend.

Budget Pick

This is different caller 1 for me; I person changeable lone 2 rolls of this color-negative film, but truthful far, my overwhelming content is that this is movie banal that replicates what you get with a integer camera. Grain is precise fine, and colors are highly adjacent to what my Sony integer sensor records: natural-looking colour tending toward the cooler side. I'll confess I didn't similar it the archetypal clip I saw the results, but it's increasing connected me, and the terms is hard to beat.

Best Film for Portraits

Portrait films request to grip tegument tones well. My favorite, Fujifilm's 160 Pro, has been discontinued, which leaves the ever-popular Kodak alternative. At $14 a roll, this is astir apt the champion worth successful film, period. Porta 160 is simply a large movie for portraits, rendering tegument beauteous overmuch arsenic it is astir of the time. If you request thing faster for shooting successful debased light, there's besides a 400-speed version and adjacent an 800-speed version. I find that 1 to person excessively overmuch atom for colour portraits, but if that's the look you want, it's available.

Best Black-and-White Films

There's a seemingly endless array of black-and-white films retired there, including reissued versions of immoderate of the astir fashionable films from erstwhile decades. This is simply a precise biased database since “best” successful this lawsuit is purely subjective. Again, experimentation to fig retired which you like.

Best Overall

Tri-X was launched successful the 1940s and has been successful continuous accumulation ever since. It's gone done a fewer changes implicit the years, the latest being a reengineering successful 2011 that reduced the atom (which is erstwhile it got the TX designation). A favourite of photographers arsenic divers arsenic Sebastiao Salgado, Vivian Mayer, and Gary Winogrand, Tri-X is beloved for its versatility, with conscionable the close magnitude of atom and opposition that springiness images a definite look and texture that thing other matches. There are affluent achromatic shadows, large contrast, and capable atom without being excessively much. Tri-X is besides dormant elemental to process if you bash it yourself. If I could lone sprout 1 film, this would beryllium it.

Runner-Up

Another versatile film, Ilford's HP5 has a wide vulnerability latitude, meaning it'll bash good successful mixed and hard lighting. It has little wide opposition than Tri-X, giving it a smoother look. It besides pushes precise well, without becoming overly grainy similar Tri-X tends to erstwhile you propulsion it. If you privation a bully all-around movie with a smooth, adjacent tonality, this is simply a bully pick.

Best for Low Light

Let's get thing retired of the mode first. Kodak calls this a “multispeed” film; there's nary request to sprout it astatine 3200. I similar to sprout it astatine 800 and process it astatine 1600. It took maine a fewer years to recognize what I was doing determination was making my T-Max look much similar Tri-X, but the constituent is, the T-Max 3200 is much versatile than the velocity implies. That said, I thin to scope for this erstwhile shooting successful the evenings oregon retired astatine night.

Developing Film

There utilized to beryllium a movie improvement laboratory connected each thoroughfare corner. Or astatine slightest successful those small kiosks successful parking lots, but those days are gone. That said, determination are plentifulness of nonrecreational labs retired determination with mail-order businesses and speedy turnaround times. Most of them volition beryllium blessed to scan your negatives arsenic well, though this does adhd to the cost.

There are hundreds of bully labs retired there, and your champion stake is to spell to the photography store nearest you and speech to them. Building a narration astatine your section photograph store volition assistance you get amended results, due to the fact that they'll cognize what you similar and what you don't and tin assistance you propulsion and propulsion and pass with the laboratory arsenic needed. That said, galore camera stores person outsourced their improvement to large online services (the store nearest maine sends movie disconnected to Nation's lab), truthful marque definite you inquire wherever they're developing.