Tales on Film

First of all let me wish you all a happy 2012. As one of my New year resolutions, I decided that I will keep on posting interesting things about film photography, but I can’t keep up the rate I did last year until september. It’s just not possible to combine this blog on that intensity with all with my work and shooting. However I will not let the blog die. So to show that I’m still committed to posting, here is the first post for 2012.

A little while ago, I was playing around with the Diana F+ and got the idea to try and see if it’s possible to fire a pocketwizard (wireless flash trigger) with the Diana. After some testing and with the little hotshoe flash accessory that came with my Diana F+, it turned out to work. I loaded some film in the camera and went on to do some light tests.

Thanks to the internet I knew that the F+ has a diafragma of about f11 and that the shutter time varies between 1/100 and 1/60 of a second. That made that I had to put my studioflashes for those conditions, I used the old school method of a light meter and made sure I used the lower end of all settings. So I measured for f8 at 1/60 of a second on iso 400 because I was using Kodak Portra 400VC. It was an experiment, and boy was I happy when I saw the photos.

It even delivers some interesting results when you start using double exposures and flashes, just remember to adjust your settings.

So it’s perfectly possible to use a Diana F+ for studio photography. There are some catches however, first of all, the Diana F+ has no real focus, so that means unless you are using a lint meter your shots are going to be a bit soft like the photos above. The second problem is that because you are not working with a through the lens viewfinder and you don’t exactly see what you are framing and that means you’ll get some pictures like the one above, where the head is cut off. So it is possible to use a Diana F+ with off camera flash and there for in a studio environment, I would not recommend it

The last days, there are a lot of articles in the news concerning the stock of Kodak. Investors have lost faith in the company that started the photography for the masses about 131 years ago, the stocks has plummet about 85 procent in the last week and if we look further back, the stock of Kodak has gone down from 80,25 points in 1997 to 1,33 today. That accounts for a loss of 99,5% in the last 15 years.

Most of you know the timeline of Kodak, George eastman Kodak invented the roll film and marketed with the now famous line: “You press the button, we do the rest.” Since then the company became the biggest camera and film producer in the world. In 1975 an engineer from Kodak invented the digital camera. But Kodak only got in the digital business around 2000, that was a capital mistake and that’s where the big decline of the stock began.

If Kodak would go bankrupt, I would guess they will not disappear, but they’ll downsize. I don’t know what they are going to downsize, but I don’t think they will drop the film line. Kodak still makes a lot of film for motion pictures and they just released several new films in the last year. That’s a clear indication that there still is hope for the color films produced by Kodak. I would guess that they are probably going to kill of the black and white film, because there hasn’t been a new film in a while and they have been dropping b/w films consistently lately.

I don’t know what the future will bring, but I rather certain that kodak won’t go down without a fight…

Hamish Innes-Brown took this photo with a Mamiya c330 on Kodak portra 160nc at Tullamarine airport in Melbourne, Australia.

You can find some more in his amazing flickr-set and is also selling prints of these photos over on Redbubble

Found at Petapixel

Another Kodak film that’s not made anymore, but I use quite often, because we have quite a large stash of it, Kodak Royal Supra 400. It was a professional negative film, but there is not much to find about it on the internet. The Royal Supra replaced that the older supra 400, it was supposed to be the same colors, but just a different and better emulsion. The reports are mixed, but I do generally like the film.

Outside, the film has a nice neutral color, it doesn’t really turn yellow like most of the kodak 400 iso films do.

Inside the film turns a bit red, but not too much, to be annoying. There is however not a lot of detail in the shadows, this makes the film pretty contrasty, something I like.

If you push the film about 2 stops, it has the tendency to get very vivid colors. There is a lot of saturation when pushed, but it works pretty good with the high contrast the film already has in darker situations.

Overall the film is pretty good, the only thing that can become annoying is the grain. There is almost none in dark situations, but in good light it’s very noticeable, although it’s definitely not ugly. So again I kind of like it. It’s not the best 400 color film I used, but it’s a decent film, with very consistent results. There is no noticeable color cast on it, after all it was a professional film.

I noticed in the search results of this site, that there is a huge interest in the different film types you can find. I’m only reviewing the film I have used till now and keep in mind that these are my personal opinions

After the previous article about Kodak Portra 160VC, I have to write one about 400VC too. Since October 2011, this film isn’t made anymore, it has been replaced by the Portra 400. As with the portra 160VC the VC stands for Vivid Color, so the color should be more saturated.

The film is optimized to use under cloudy condition and inside with natural light.

At dusk and dawn, the film gets a very blueish cast, but I do like the colors.

At night, the film is acting pretty decent with the artificial lights. Even at this time, there isn’t a lot of noise to be seen

Overall I like this film, it’s fast enough to use in darker situations, but it doesn’t have a lot of noise. The colors are nice and nicely saturated. I don’t use the film a lot, but it’s a great overall film

I noticed in the search results of this site, that there is a huge interest in the different film types you can find. I’m only reviewing the film I have used till now and keep in mind that these are my personal opinions