Shooting Film… Going back to the roots of traditional film photography
Written by Tandy Sean on October 11, 2009 – 2:45 pm -
A Cross processed transparency of a girl jumping off of a waterfall in Laos
When I was traveling through Laos 2 years ago the unthinkable happened. My digital camera sputtered and died! I couldn’t believe my misfortune! I mean, how often does one travel to Laos anyways and I was fortunate enough to be there during the biggest festival of the year, the rocket festival where home made rockets were shot into the sky to signal the beginning of the rainy season. Fortunately I had been lugging my Canon Ellan 7 35 mm film camera and a bag full of film since I left home 6 months ago. Being forced to go back to traditional photography was both a thrill and a joy. It inspired me to be more creative, make film choices that I hadn’t had to make in years, choose between color and black and white… It really brought something back to the art that died with digital photography. So, here’s a story I wrote for a travel website about returning to traditional photography. There are also some tried and tested techniques on getting better digital shots too.
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I see the shot in my head and make for a group of drunken kids dancing about, ready to fire their home made missiles into the heavens at the Laotian rocket festival. Putting the viewfinder to my eye, I compose the shot and make sure the settings are where they should be. Perfect! I wait for the right moment. The projectiles are lit, smoke and fire propels them into the sky with a high-pitched wailing screech. I hit the release button. My shutter comes down with a sickening wheeze. I look down in horror and the screen is black. I start to sweat as I realize that the unthinkable has happened, my digital camera had shot its last image. It was dead and there was nothing that I could do about it.
Since digital photography became the standard several years back, film has taken a back seat in a major way. Completely removed from the commercial market, the medium caters only to the fine arts photographer and to several pillars in the photography world, whose clients are more than happy to play by their rules
After the turn in the commercial industry I too was thrilled to make the switch to digital, and haven’t used my film cameras in over 2 years. But of course, while traveling through Laos where electronics and equipment are not readily available, horror of all horrors my precious Canon 10D decides to give up on me. Its shutter gave out, which I now know to be a common problem with digital SLRs. So I found myself in the most picturesque country imaginable with nothing but my film camera. Fortunately I was prepared after years of having teachers drilling the word “Backup” into my head instilling a paranoia and dread of equipment failure bordering on the obsessive. With a giant ziplock bag filled with rolls of black and white, color, and slide film, I embarked on a journey of rediscovering the dying medium of traditional 35mm film photography.
I was less than thrilled at the thought of reverting to film. Having gotten used to being able to see my shot instantly and optimizing and fiddling with it on my computer right away, I was actually quite nervous. The old feelings of “Did I get the shot?” And “What if it doesn’t turn out?” were creeping back into my brain. All the woes that went away with digital photography were back. I had to remember the rules that digital made irrelevant, understand my lighting, understand the exposures, and even hauled out my light meter which had been collecting dust, buried in the deep recesses of my backpack.
But what I never expected was to rediscover something lost. In short it was amazing. Not seeing the shot opened up my creativity and made me passionate again. In a way, I had been losing interest in digital without knowing it. It was much less exciting when I could shoot whatever I wanted at any ISO, in as many shots as I had the memory cards to hold. With film I had to think, know what I was shooting, and know the limitations of my film.
Instead of changing things with the push of a button, I had to play by the rules. With digital, imagination is made irrelevant and replaced with instant gratification which, through force of repetition, becomes unfulfilling. I found myself dreaming photography again, always thinking of the next shot, calculating how something would turn out without knowing for weeks if I was right. I was more experimental with my picture taking and had nothing to worry about other than composing the shot and shooting it properly, I found photography a challenge again and was more inspired than I had been in years.
Back in Bangkok came the moment of truth, getting the film processed, and scanned. Film or not it still has to get into my computer. I was nervous to see what would come back from the lab. When I opened the package containing contact sheets, CD’s galore, and bundles of negatives I felt like a kid at Christmas. Happily it worked out great. Memories of the trip came flooding back as I remembered what I was thinking when I took the shots and saw how everything turned out more or less how I wanted. With some surprises of course which really is the fun part. I realized then that film has something that digital doesn’t, the quality of the image was far superior to my digital images and it was somewhat shocking and disappointing to note since I had always been a firm follower of the digital revolution.
Of course I’m now back on the digital band-wagon with a canon 5D which, after a few days shooting has offered some extremely promising results. This is a 13 mega pixel mega camera with all the technology that my old digital camera was missing. Giving low light shooting a quality I hadn’t seen in years and with a full frame sensor allowing my lenses to shoot at their proper focal length I really think I’m in love. Also monochrome settings allow you to use different black and white filters digitally, producing powerful images that actually rival medium format film in almost every way.
Whether or not I go back to film on occasion or not, I am happy to say that my experience of reverting to my old favorite medium helped me remember what I loved about photography and has gave me a new approach to my work be it digital or not.
Since the majority of photography today is digital and that isn’t going to change, here are some tips to make sure you get the most out of it. The biggest disadvantage to digital photography is permanence. Images should always be shot in RAW or Tiff formats when available since compressing to JPG lowers the image quality which degrades further when you access the files. Also, we don’t know how long modern computers will even recognize these formats. The lifespan of today’s CDs and DVDs is estimated at 3 years in optimal conditions so your shots sitting on that CD in your drawer may or may not last the long haul. If you do shoot digital make sure you back up your images on duplicate CD’s and on a hard drive if possible. Above all, print the images you like! That way if you lose the file you’ll always have a hard copy somewhere that can be scanned.
When shooting digitally slightly under-expose your shot and try to use a polarizer. Traditional photography requires over-exposing to get more information into the highlights, but when shooting digital if you under-expose a quarter to a half a stop, you may be able to avoid a blown-out white sky in place of the beautiful blue you were expecting. Digital highlights contain no information so fixing something after is only possible if you underexpose your shot slightly. Also, use of a polarizer in bright conditions tones down the sky so that it falls within the sensors range. Just doing this can make your subjects look more natural, colors more saturated, and preserve detail throughout the shot.
Tags: digital, film photography, laos, Photography, south east asia, techniques, travel, waterfall
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