Originally posted by nickthetasmaniac Just a bit of fun - what advice would you give to a digital native wanting to enter the wonderful world of film?
I'm a 20-something who spent about 10 years shooting digital before I decided to have an enthusiastic crack with film, and something I noticed as I made the transition (and continue to notice) was that while there's a huge amount of info out there for film shooters, an awful lot of it assumes a degree of prior familiarity. It's pretty overwhelming, and a lot of the techniques and language used to describe them left me scratching my head.
So, if you had a friend starting out with film, what advice would you give?
For me:
- Always overexpose colour negs.
- Film won't make bad photos look good.
1) I would recommend to get a GOOD exposure, not to overexpose...while C-41 deals overexposure better than underexposure, before you get familiar with all the tweaks I would recommend to start with black and white, that is more forgiving in case of wrong exposure.
2) Get a simple camera like a KM or a Spotmatic F, set the ASA speed, at the beginning it's easier to start setting a speed (traditionally the closest to the ISO of the film, for instance 1/125 if you are using ISO 100, 1/250 for ISO 200 and so on), point at the subject, focus it and centre the needle changing the aperture.
3) FIlms don't make bad photos look good but since you have to set up everything it's more likely that you will think more and get a better result than shooting 1000 digital frames and choose a single one. Also since you pay for each frame developed the "mass spree" mentality doesn't belong to film.
I showed a 20 years girl I am pointing at some of these pics and she remained stunned to find out they were taken with an 35 years old camera. Now she wants to learn film photography!