NEW: Ultimate Guide to Getting Started in 35mm Film

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Guy. I'm a photographer and filmmaker from Dublin in Ireland. I have been taking photos since I was a little kid, but about three and half years ago, I also started shooting on film, and I just fell in love with it. I want to bestow that feeling onto others with this Ultimate Guide to Getting Started in 35 millimeter Film. Firstly, what is this not. This is not a photography course as such. Of course, there's going to be tons of bonus tips throughout, but this is not about how to take good or better photos, this is not about correct composition or how to light and expose your images. You could do a separate course or several courses on either of those. What I will teach you though is everything you need to know and much more about getting started in film and specifically focusing on getting you started in 35-millimeter format. I'll go through all of the major differences and nuances from digital, both in principle and how it actually changes your approach to shooting. Secondly, who is this course for? Anyone new to film, whether you are a complete beginner or a professional photographer, I will go through everything you need to know to shoot your first role. Honestly though even if you've already shot a bit of film, I think there's going to be so much bonus info packed in here that it'll still be worth your while, especially if you never really dove into the technical bits or you don't really understand how it works still. As this course is also for people with a strong knowledge in photography, I'm not going to shy away from little caveats and technical terms because they are what those people will immediately understand and be able to draw parallels with in their digital knowledge. However, do not fret any of you who are a complete beginners, completely new to film, new to photography, don't go anywhere. If I ever speak fast or something completely goes over your head, don't worry, I meant for it to and anything that you actually really need to know I will explain slowly and clearly. The reason I'm not splitting it up and doing a course for complete beginners and then a course for hobbyists and pros is because this is about getting started in film and the film bit is new or new-ish to all of you, no matter your previous understandings of photography. If I kept it too basic and neglected to mention things that quickly become fundamental, once you get a little more into it, then I would definitely be doing beginners a disservice. Similarly, all advanced courses jump straight into the nitty gritty bits of film, which is really complicated. I wish that when I started as an already semi-pro photographer at the time that someone had just explained plain and simple, what are the differences here what should I be aware of coming from digital and also this super simple practical bits such as how to load a film camera. Also, if you are a beginner watching this, one, you can watch it now, but then you can come back next year and watch it again and absorb some of the little bits that you missed. But two, most importantly, I'm a big believer that once you understand the principles, everything else will just click much faster, no pun intended, but just suddenly everything falls into place. The technical bits only sink in with practice and I think people have this habit of trying to robe, book learn settings, but by actually understanding how things work, you'll remember one bit and then you'll just be able to work out all the rest. Whereas, if you learn something off about film speed, but you don't really know what the number means, then when you inevitably forget, you will have no chance of being able to just take an educated guess. Often, when shooting on film, it is all a little bit of guesswork, and that's what makes it fun. We're going to cover types of film, types of film camera then we'll look at 35 millimeters specifically, where to get a camera, what to look out for, and what to check in terms of features and condition. I'll go through the practical elements of loading, rewinding and some of the quirky camera features that you only find on film. I'll also give tips for when actually going out to shoot on film. Again, looking at it philosophically but also very practical. We'll go through some really common mistakes and things to avoid and how to deal with the inevitable mishaps and accidents. Finally, I'll give you a really basic but fundamental understanding about how film is developed, how negatives are scanned, just how everything works, what's asked for at a lab and so on. I hope that all sounds interesting, I would love if you could join me, let's get started. 2. Why should you shoot on film?: Just to really quick structure things before we begin. As I said in the introduction, this course is also for people with strong knowledge in photography. For that reason, I'm going to stick this M for manual mode in the corner every time I'm explaining something. As a beginner, you don't need to know if you're just getting started in film or if you are just getting into film for fun anyway, so you can just possibly too nice. Also, at the start of this course, the first few chapters are going to be a little bit more technical and wordy and me just explaining bits. I'm going to be throwing around terms that you probably don't understand or have never heard of, just bear with it. I won't say anything unless I think it is important, and everything will become apparent as we go, promise. If it doesn't and if I don't explicitly explain something and it's silhouette gray, don't worry, don't fret, it means I've deliberately glossed over it. If you are curious, you can either get in touch with me, or there's tons of other resources out there, but it's not important for getting started in film. Then in the second half of the course will be much more practical and hands-on with loading demos and shooting and fixing mistakes, all of the good stuff. Hey, there's actually a third thing on structure, which is introducing you to this segment called EditorGUI, who on reflection realized there's few things I missed, or the way I delivered something didn't quite explain it the way I wanted to, or incomplete hindsight, there was something that I left out in the script that I need to clarify. EditorGUI will be back particularly later on in the course. I'm just going to jump in and clarify little bits to make sure that you understand that the way I initially intended you to. Why should you shoot on film? Well, first off, this is not one of those courses where I tell you that film is better than digital because it's not. I teach digital professionally every single day, and they are different, only because of all of the incredible advancements in digital photography, is film so enjoyable to shoot today. Anyone who tells you that film is better than digital, they're just lost in their egos and they're not shooting on film because they actually want to take better pictures, but they just think that they're better than everyone else. The advancements in digital photography allow us to quite literally nostalgically look back at the era of film and handpick only the bits we liked. It's the very reason we can enjoy film, the way I'm going to propose in this course. Digital has solved all the grips of shooting on film and just the general cost of entry to taking photos. There's a billion examples, but take sports photography. No one is going to go, "Yeah, it'll be better if we could just take 12 shots instead of 12 shots a second, or incredibly accurate and fast autofocus. No, who needs her, no." Digital is great and it's the future, and the very best digital cameras are really good right now. But I love film too. There are two shooting situations where I think it really shines, especially in this age of phones and tech. They are the reasons I shoot them, and they are what I'm going to base the recommendations to you in this course on. Number 1, film is excellent for a photographic situations where you have time. Portraits, landscapes, urban, while traveling, thermic cells, and you can get some really beautiful shots. Number 2, almost in complete contradiction to the first one, film is great for capturing imperfection, real moments, and people without any ability to immediately look at the result and judge it. People can't say, "Oh, no, I don't look good in that. Let's take it again." In this day and age, really quite special. It's the same way and reason people use disposable cameras. But obviously, I'm hoping by taking this course, you can get yourself a proper film camera, even a super basic one, and understand how to get much better results. I know a lot of people who want to get into film to do just that, to take pictures of their friends and moments in their lives, on trips, on night safe, for memories. Film forces you to slow down and have intention. When you have intention, so often your images are much better because you just think about things a little bit more. Today people have so little intention when it comes to photos, especially personal ones. Either you don't take any with real thought, or you take too many, so much so you can never go back and look at just the best ones, or worse, you spend so much time looking for and at the imperfections. Film just forces you to stop, take a sec, appreciate the moment, and then move on, and you can enjoy it later. You can't review it or show it to people. Film doesn't take you out of the moment, whereas on a phone, you take a shot, in fact, you take multiple shots, and then you look through them and see which the 10 might be usable. Then you're like, "Oh, maybe I'll put this on my story." Then you're filtering it and adding text. Then because of your phone now, you get a notification and you have to respond to that, and you are so far out of the moment you took the photo of, which probably was a really fun, good thing that was happening. It's probably something you should be enjoying. Limitation also makes people thrive. Only having 36 shots, you're more likely to make each one count or at least to try to. Your composition is often a lot better too because you're more likely to pause for that split second as you look through the viewfinder and really think about what is in your frame because you have a finite amount of shots. Another reason to shoot on film is that there is something meditative, a base, the physical process, and the physical element of film on a film camera. There's more to do, more to press. For better or for worse, you have more control. Also, having a physical negative of a good photo you took, that you can hold, is quite unique today. Lastly, nostalgia. Whether we like it or not, we are drawn to nostalgia as humans. We crave it because everything went right. Film colors remind us of our childhoods and the good old days. We like it because we only choose to remember the good times and the best bits and the worries and anxiety about what the future held at the time or forgotten. Because most things turned out all right in hindsight, and you just remember the happy emotions you felt. There are so many good reasons as to why you should shoot on film, and I'm so glad that you're here. I'm going to add one last thing though. Don't take this the wrong way. While film will teach you so much about photography, if your aim for getting into film is to become a photographer, digital is the way to go, not film. As a newbie, you need to take lots and lots and lots of photos. Henri Cartier Bresson famously said, "Your first 10,000 photos are your worst." I couldn't agree more. I don't mean, after a few years you end up with a few dies and photos in your camera on your phone, no. That's made up of mostly garbage, and screenshots, and there's a handful of good photos to an end. But I'm talking about 10,000 photos to an SD card, 10,000 photos where you tried to at least take "good photos." Shooting 10,000 photos on film is completely impractical and expensive, and you don't get any feedback on location as to the results of trying and experimenting and seeing, are things working? Are things not working? You can't see what you've shot. If you want to become a photographer, by all means, shoot film and you will learn so much, but do so alongside your digital learning. The reference for me, I started taking photos in memory when I was 10 years old. I had this little point-and-shoot camera, I took it everywhere. Then I shot thousands of photos on phones I had, GoPros I had. But in 2014 is where I would say that I took photography more seriously, I got a DSLR. Only counting since then, it took me a year and a half because I went back to Jack to take 10,000 photos. Since then, I've taken about 115,000 more. Genuinely apart from a handful of really specific times when I know I overshot for a certain project, you should see the amount of different projects, both personally and professionally, that those photos encompass, tons and tons of mistakes and bad photos, but that's the only way to get the good ones. That is why you should shoot on film. Let's get started talking about types of film. 3. Different Types & Sizes of Film: This will be the deep end for beginners, but I promise you, I'm just covering the surface, it's very basic, the actual material is very simple and once you look back at it, you're like, oh that's so easy, yeah. But there's going to be a lot of new words which is the confusing bit like just new terms, brands, everything. Bear with it, promise you it's not hard to understand. Let's get started. Let's talk about different types of film, format, and different sizes of film. To be clear though, this course is going to be tailored to getting you started in 35 millimeter color negative film. The most common and easiest to access and easiest to shoot as well, so 35 millimeter color negative. If you're beginner, it's all you got to worry about. All you got to go out and buy, but just want to make you aware of everything else that's out there so there's no confusion when it comes to buying a film camera or buying film in a shop, but also so that once you get a handle on the basics, you can go off and explore the other quirkier sides of 35 millimeter and all of the other often a little more advanced formats. Photographic film is essentially created by coding a thin transparent strip of plastic with a series of chemical layers, each of which are sensitive to light. By the way, don't pull a roll of film like this far ever. This is just a dummy roll, so don't do that. Just made doing it. Anyway, the combination and order of these layers are different for each type of film. The chemical mixture is called an emulsion and contains microscopic silver halide crystals which are chemically changed when exposed to light. The amount by which they're changed is directly proportional to how much light they're exposed to, thus creating an imprinted image or exposure on the film. So the main types of film are color negative, like this one. So color negative film when exposed and then developed creates a negative transparency. Popular examples that you might see are Kodak Color Plus 200, Gold 200 Kodak, Ultra Max 400, Fuji Color C200, Fuji Superia Extra, Kodak Portra 400, Portra 160, Ektar 100, Fuji Color Pro 400H and so on. You got it. There's loads. Actually, a lot of Kodak films. I just love them, particularly color negative. My favorite, and I'm not at all unique in this is Kodak Portra 400. The Portra line of films is known for really natural reds, so good skin tones and just generally slightly warmer tones, not too much contrast, finer grain when exposed well. So it's really popular for taking portraits and photos of people and just is really popular amongst a lot of photographers, and 400 speed is the perfect in-between either shooting indoors and outdoors. Don't worry, I will get onto what speed means in a bit. But the second main type of film is color reversal film, or slide film, or chrome film, or colored positive film, it has a few different names, but it'll mostly be called color reversal or slide film. It captures images as a positive transparency, so it replicates colors and values directly. Slide film has a few advantages, it often has extremely fine grain, more vivid colors, more detailed scans. Popular stocks include Fujifilm Velvia 50, Velvia 100, Kodak Ektachrome E100, Fujifilm Provia 100F. Again, you get it. There's loads of them. So why shoot color negative over color reversal film? The reason I recommend color negative is because it's a much more forgiving film then slide film. It has a much better exposure latitude. It has a slightly wider range of ISOs. It's often much cheaper too. Exposure latitude, I will go over in much more detail later on. But it essentially means that the film can tolerate being overexposed and underexposed, so too bright or too dark while still achieving a satisfactory result. Color reversal film, on the other hand, is much less forgiving. You really have to get your exposure right with much less room for error. It's also a more expensive film and often more expensive to get developed too, because the developing process is different and slightly longer and the chemicals can cost more. Actually, you might also hear color reversal film referred to as E6, which is just in reference to its developing process. Just another term. Reversal or slide film is definitely better in many ways, but only if you know what you're doing, otherwise, it's an awkward beast. If you nail it, the reward is much better image quality, better sharpness, better scans, and you can view and project and enjoy the images as is, this also gives you a color reference when it comes to scanning and adjusting later on. But again, color negative film is where it's at if you're just getting in and just getting started. All right, moving on to black and white film, which is pretty self-explanatory, black and white film like this one. Black and white film produces a negative in grayscale. There are two main types of black and white film. One is traditional black and white film or silver gelatin. It's just like the default, it's one you'll come across. Then the other very obviously different one is C41, black and white film. Traditional is considered more consistent and more stable and has a much simpler developing process, which is why it's the preferred film of black and white shooters. Developing black and white film is much more straightforward than color film, so if people ever develop at home, it's usually black and white, or at least they start off by developing a black and white. C41, however, is the developing process that is almost exclusively associated with color negative film. Thus C41 black and white film has light color film, numerous layers of light-sensitive emulsion, and also requires a more complicated, more temperature and time sensitive developing process. Popular stocks of traditional black and white films include Ilford HP5 400, Ilford Delta 100, Kodak TMax 400, Kodak Tri-X 400. Again, though to them, just watch eye for ones like Ilford IPX2 400, which is a C41 black and white film. Then you've also got sum other niche types of film, such as infrared, which is sensitive to a spectrum of life broader than the eyes can seen and yields real looking images. Then there are companies such as Lomography who make stylized films that have deliberately wacky colors shift, such as LomoChrome Purple to cool, but I don't know why you'd want that, but each to there own. The next question is, what is film speed? Really briefly, in photography, there are three main elements that control how much light gets to the film or the digital sensor. Number 1 being the aperture which controls how much or the amount of light that can get into the lens. Number 2 being the shutter speed which controls the time for which light is a allowed to enter. Number 3 is the ISO, which is how sensitive the film or sensor is to light. ISO just stands for International Standards Organization. If you're coming from digital, you'll know that you can change your ISO whenever you want and then this value affects how sensitive the sensor is to light. With film, it's the exact same except that the ISO or speed is set and you buy your film with a set ISO rating. Just a second ago when I was listing off all those different examples of films, you'll notice that after every brand name and line name, I always added a number. That number is the film speed and actually quite intrinsic to the film because it's set. The different films with different ISOs, even if they're from the same manufacturer or the same line within a manufacturer such as like the Portra line within Kodak, each film with a different ISO is inherently different. It's its own thing. They are a little bit different. As I said, the ISO number refers to high sensitive the film emulsion is to light. The higher the number, the more sensitive it is to light, and the more suitable it is to darker environments where you need to let more light in and then the lower the number, the less sensitive it is to light, and the more suitable it is to brighter environments, outdoors, sunlight where you don't want to let as much light in because there's lots of light. Also the lower the number, same with digital, the less and smaller, finer the grain so better image quality. But why is it called film speed? Well, the speed is just derived from the time it takes for the film to reach a correct exposure. For example, the higher the ISO rating, again, the more sensitive to light, the more light that gets in thus, the faster it achieves a correct exposure. Then the lower the ISO rating, the less sensitive it is to light and then the longer it will take to be correctly exposed. Faster, certainly does not mean better, just to be clear. In fact, because a higher number means grainier, usually people are trying to keep the ISO level as low as possible. Like ISO 100 and 200 same as when shooting on digital, but when you have to because it's darker, you might have to buy a film with a higher number, but hopefully that clears up why it's a fast film, if that makes sense. The word ISO and speed are interchangeable. ISO is more specifically referring to the scale numbers and speed refers to how fast the film is which is set by what ISO rating it has. They're interchangeable. Again, for photographers coming from digital, it is very similar to how a lens might be called a fast lens. A lens with a more open aperture, let in more light. Thus, you will achieve the same exposure with a faster shutter speed so it's a fast lens, very similar concept. Note that when you load film into a film camera that has a light meter or an automatic exposure, if it's not picked up automatically, you will set and tell the camera what the ISO rating of the film that you've put in is so that it can correctly account for that with the shutter and the aperture. In fact you can choose to push and pull the film by deliberately setting the ISO incorrectly. But that is a topic for later on in the course. Lastly, on film types is a film's white balance. White balance is just how warm to cool, magenta to green. The colors are depending on the temperature of the light you're shooting in. As with the ISO, again, unlike digital, the film's white balance is set. However, you don't really have to think about this too much at all. In fact, barely, if ever, the vast majority of color negative films are daylight balanced. That doesn't mean you can't shoot indoors or in flash situations or anything, just is like high. They're set for the average and if you need to tweak anything scanning or editing you can't so don't stress about it. I'm only really mentioning white balance because some films are tungsten balanced, usually denoted with a t at the end, if you find one. Tungsten balanced photo film is rare and I doubt you'll come across this, especially if it's consumer film, highly, more than likely to be daylight balanced. The distinction of films, white balance is much more common to hear when talking about motion picture films. For cinema cameras, 16 millimeter, Super 8, et cetera, the white balance in motion picture matters a lot more so that's where you'll hear it. We've talked about film types, the main three being color negative, color reversal or slide film, and black and white film. Then I mentioned films speed or ISO, then I mentioned briefly white balance and now I want to go on to film sizes. The last thing on types of film and I mean physical sizes. First up is 135 film. We're company known as 35 millimeter film, and this is what you should start shooting on. The number 135 is confusing though, because it's not just drop the one add millimeters to get 35 millimeters. 135 actually refers to a metal cassette, that the film is in. 135 film and 35 millimeter film are the same thing. You'll more likely always call it 35 millimeter, but I just want to make you aware of the term 135. For example, on this box here, it says 135 but it has no mention of 35 millimeter. You just have to know that they're the same thing. 35 millimeter film usually comes in rolls of 24 or 36 shots more likely 36 is in my experience and unlike other film types, it has these little perforated edges so that the film can be fed with little teeth from one spool to another inside the camera. Where the 35 millimeter comes from, it actually refers to the width of the film strip on what would be from your perspective, the y-axis. The width of the strip and then the exposures are taken on the other way. It's the exposure is themselves. Again, confusing numbers are 36 millimeters by 24 millimeters tall. Then there is 120 film, which is also more commonly called medium format film. One film is much bigger at 61 millimeters wide times 6 centimeters wide, there are three exposure sizes of 6 by 4.5 centimeters, 6 by 6 centimeters, or 6 by 7 centimeters, you only get 16, 12, or 10 shots on a roll, depending on which exposure size you shoot, which will basically depend on which size your camera shoots and how much film it advances every shot. While the price of the film isn't too much different, medium format cameras are much more expensive than 35 millimeter. If it costs more and you get less shots too, why would people ever shoot medium format film? Well, the reason is the film itself is technically far superior, especially when it comes to image quality. This significantly increased negative size allows for significantly increased resolution and detail when it comes to scanning and digitally reproducing images, I'll get around to understanding scanning and all that means later on. There's a side note for anyone actually diving into medium format film straight away. There is also something called 220 film, which is identical to 120 film except you get twice as many shots on a row. But to accommodate this on the same size spool, it is much thinner and there's no protective backing paper and this lack of backing paper makes it much thinner. That often needs a slightly different pressure back plate in the camera in order to make sure that the actual image is in focus. Just know that not all cameras that shoot 120 medium format film can shoot 220, some count, but just not all counts. Lastly, onto large format film, also known as sheet film, I feel like I said also known as a billion times already. But I think that's just the nature of film. There's lots of quirky terms for everything on. I'd rather say them all because otherwise you'll hear one and be like, "What's that?" It's one and the same thing, large format film or sheet film. Often for large format, it doesn't come in a row, it comes in sheets. So hence sheet film. Large format film is generally four by five inches, or 9 by 12 centimeters, giving you around 15 times the resolution of a 35 millimeter negative, which is massive. It also comes in less common but even bigger sizes such as quarter place, 5 by 7, 8 by 10 inches, 8 by 10 is 20 by 25 centimeters. That's a massive negative. Just some bonus Hollywood info. Many films and music videos are still shot on 35 millimeter film. Today, the lock is just very iconic and the resolution is still unbelievable. If you've ever watched a film that has been shot in true proper Imax, not digital Imax, which is just two projectors. It's a little bit different, but it's essentially Imax is shooting on medium format film. 4. Different Types of Film Cameras: Part number 4, let's talk about different types of film cameras, and I will give you my recommendations as to what to get started with. First off is an SLR, which stands for single lens reflex. It is the predecessor to and analog equivalent of the DSLR, which is now the digital single lens reflex camera. I have three films who are very new, the EOS 650 and the EOS 33, both Canon. Then I have this manual SLR, which I'm going to be particularly using for demonstrations today because it's fully manual and it can be manipulated a bit more than these can. These two both look like DSLRs but they're actually 35 millimeter film. I will get onto them in a sec. But just generally, with an SLR, they have a mirror mechanism on the inside, so that when light goes into the lens, it hits a mirror, and that hits another mirror, and then that mirror goes through, and you can see through the viewfinder. When you look through the viewfinder, although they're not exactly level, you're seeing exactly what the lens sees. The other thing about a mirror mechanism is that when you press the shutter, the mirror flicks up, exposing the film or exposing the center in a digital camera. When you press the shutter, there's this tiny blackouts in the viewfinder, but other than that, what you see in the viewfinder is exactly what the lens sees. You can also swap lenses with an SLR, which if you already own lenses for a digital camera and your film SLR is the same manufacturer, often they will be actually still compatible. I have a bunch of lenses that I shoot on a Canon DSLR, and the same lenses except for the EFS ones, all the full-frame lenses will work on both of these. That's super handy. Also bonus info, this mirror mechanism in an SLR is why the newer cameras in the digital age are mirrorless and have digital viewfinders. But that is a whole other story. SLRs can be bulky though and their lenses at the same focal length as lenses on other camera types can be much bigger. Although they're not necessarily heavier, they can be a little bit more cumbersome to carry around. Another really popular camera type is a rangefinder. A rangefinder is really similar to an SLR, but it doesn't have a mirror, just has a shutter. Their key feature is that they focus using a dual image rangefinder. So in the viewfinder, which is offset from the lens, you turn a ring on lens, and the two superimposed images when they line up, then you've in perfect focus. I have this camera, which is technically a 22, but it looks exactly like a rangefinder. It's a little bit smaller. Even so it's not a rangefinder to be clear, but the concept of the viewfinder offset from the lens is how a rangefinder would look and the range finding device in the newer models will be built into viewfinder, but on older ones you might have to mount it externally. I just want to clarify that rangefinders are essentially distance focusing. On the majority, you'll find this superposition of two images within the viewfinder, but on others, older ones and externally mounted ones, the rangefinder might just give you a distance to the subject and then you'll compare that focusing distance to the distance scale on your lens. They exist with a different purpose to an SLR so they can't be compared like for like. They are different camera types, but often these are the two options most compared, most debated when people are buying a more premium 35 millimeter camera. So I'm going to go through some of the pros and cons between the SLR and the rangefinder. When looking through the viewfinder of an SLR, because you're looking through the lens, what you see is what you get, what you see is what the image would look like. With the rangefinder though it's a little different. Again, not a rangefinder but it's a good example. The viewfinder on a rangefinder is offset. When you look through it, you're looking through basically just glass. So you can't see exactly what the lens sees, what you're seeing through here won't be exactly what is going to be in your composition. There are markings to that, it roughly frames it for you. Often you can see, which is sometimes a good thing, more than what it's going to be in your frame, which could be good for framing. But to be honest, I'm not a big fan of it. Plus, if your lens is really big on a rangefinder, that can block your composition even more, and if you don't have a newer model where the range finding focus system is in the viewfinder and you have to mount it above, that is often even more problematic, so much so that several lenses for rangefinders often have little could I send them to try and minimize blocking your subject? Now, having said that, there are a bunch of advantages to a rangefinder. One being that often their lenses are much smaller than that of an SLR, often the overall body is much smaller. They don't need as much space for a mirror. It's smaller overall. Everything is smaller, therefore they're also often lighter. They have less moving parts, so they can be quieter. Also, because you're not looking through the lens when you take an actual picture, the viewfinder never blacks out. The viewfinder isn't connected to the lens, so there's no blackout while you take a photo. Does that make sense? One more thing, but this is getting very technical and it's very slight, and only for those who are picky, technically a rangefinder does have better image quality because without the mirror the actual back of the lens is closer to the film plane, closer to the film, physically closer. Also with less moving parts in the camera that can mean less blur, a lower shutter speed, but again, very slight, and you could just use a higher shutter speed or when you get down to having a very low shutter speed, put it on the tripod and stuff, so much of butchness. However, while the rangefinder focusing system is very accurate for wider lenses and closer subjects, if you are on a telephoto lens or a longer focal length, the rangefinder focus system is much less accurate. Also, when you change between a super wide lens to a super long lens, I know a lot of people probably wouldn't do that very often, but sometimes it requires recalibrating the actual range finding device on a rangefinder again, because you're not looking through the lens, whereas on an SLR, you are. On an SLR, on the newer ones, you can get a depth of field to preview where you press a button and it engages the aperture blades, and you can see what the depth of field and the image is going to be like. On a rangefinder, you have absolutely no idea. The other thing I don't like as much about rangefinders is that they tend to be less value for money. Brands such as Leica sell a lot of rangefinders. While they are excellent cameras, they are a really premium price bracket. They are usually highly overpriced for their performance, especially when with film, the film is doing a big chunk of the work. one way an SLR might be considered better value is that often the very cheapest SLR is like the cheapest will still have an interchangeable lens system. But often with the cheaper rangefinders, the lens will be fixed and then only on the more expensive ones do you have the option to change lenses. We have gone from these two. Moving on to point-and-shoot cameras. This is actually a point-and-shoot. I know I was giving examples of it as a rangefinder, it's a point-and-shoot. The reason it's a point-and-shoot and not the rangefinder is because it doesn't have a range-finding focus system. Focuses on the lens and in fact, the focusing on this is not a good example for any camera. This is much better, little point-and-shoot. This is my favorite little point-and-shoot. So point-and-shoot are essentially just smaller, cheaper, and much less functional. But they do have a big place in my opinion. So you've often got little to no focus control. It's either auto or fixed. There's also little to no flexibility in terms of control. Point-and-shoot are often completely automatic or semi-automatic. Their lenses are often fixed focal length as well. There are some hilarious zoom ones, but for the most part, the lenses are fixed. Having said that though, it's not uncommon to get a cheap point-and-shoot with quite a nice lens, quite an open aperture, say two a's. So although you can't always control when the camera is going to choose to use that open aperture, it's still really nice that it can for when you're in a darker and lower light environment. On the more feature field point-and-shoots, there are certain gimmicky modes, like portrait mode or macro mode, where you can try and coerce the camera to using a shallow depth of field and a more open aperture. Next up is a disposable camera. I know I'm making this course specifically so that you don't have to use one. They are still 35-millimeter film so I have to touch on what makes them a little bit different. On the disposable often everything is fixed, everything nearly always. Lenses are tiny and awful with an aperture of f11, the focus is usually fixed, but because the aperture is so close the depth of field is so wide that the focus will be fixed at a middle point and the subject will usually always be somewhat in-focus. The shutter speed is usually also fixed at something like 1/100th of a second. Definitely not fast enough to be considered fast, but enough to avoid blurring a still subject if you're shooting handheld, which most people are. The film speed in a disposable is usually quite high actually, something like ISO-800. A little bit grainy, image quality will be less good, but it's a lot more flexible for all sorts of lighting conditions which people will be using disposables in darker environments. Also because the aperture is often so closed that it needs to compensate for that too. They are fun for guests at a wedding, but other than that, they cost more than a roll of film and often sometimes more to get developed to. Also for traveling, people take disposable. For one, they take several disposables which is so much space, but then they also continue to carry those disposables everywhere until they get home and they can get them developed, just get a point-and-shoot. The rest of the camera types, I will not dwell on as the focus here is getting you set up in 35 millimeter. So an SLR, a rangefinder, or a point-and-shoot, non-disposable, but there are other camera types so I'm going to go over them really quickly. We also have medium format cameras, which shoot 120 medium format film. Shocker. I know. These cameras are often quite big and expensive and difficult to use, but then the images I get are usually stunning. Then if we go bigger again, we have large-format cameras, which shoot large format film or shoot film. Technically, any camera with an imaging format of at least four by five inches, so nine by 12 centimeters. Large format cameras aren't limited to a specific mechanism or design, so they can be anything: an SLR, a rangefinder, a TLR, anything. Then we've got the instant camera. The instant camera is a little different. It is essentially a pointed to camera that shoots on self-developing film. But unlike nearly all the other cameras I've mentioned, the instant camera is still being manufactured brand new today. I'll touch on how they work when we go over developing later. Then there is this whole other host of niche and quirky camera types that I'm literally just going to mention. We've got a TLR, which is a twin-lens reflex camera, a box camera, a pinhole camera, a panoramic camera, folding cameras, stereo cameras which have 3D effects. There's loads, you get the picture. My recommendation in general to anyone who has already got an interest in photography or anyone who wants to get into film to learn properly or a little bit more technically would definitely be to get an SLR. But they're also not at all unsuitable for complete beginners. In fact, a lot of them would be also great for beginners. I have three film and two digital SLRs, I really like them. I couldn't recommend them more, they are more affordable, they're more flexible, they are usually full of features. The newer SLRs like this one which is made just before the digital era, are really cool because they have so many features that you would easily recognize in brand new SLR today. Which is really handy for them because they have both fully automatic modes and fully manual modes, and then every semi-automatic mode in between, such as aperture variety, shutter priority, all really helpful things for learning. I shoot digital, I shoot aperture probably all the time. So having that when shooting film is really handy. My recommendation to anyone who is a beginner or just wants to dip their toe into film for fun and see how it goes, would be to get a point-and-shoot. They are a great, cheap, really easy way to get into film. Plus you can always get an SLR down the line. There's nothing stopping you. At least that way also you wouldn't have to put as much of an investment into film if you're like, "Oh, I hate this." So definitely a point-and-shoot is such a good start. I also highly recommend a point-and-shoot in addition to an SLR for any hobbyists or enthusiasts because they are just so small and portable. I just love being able to put one in my pocket and bringing it with my friends and not have to worry about it too much. If I'm going to shoot nice film pics, I will bring the SLR. It'll be worth it to have a nicer lens, more features, more control. I'll take more time with my compensation and overall, I'll take much prettier photos. However, when you're with your friends, you just want to take pictures candidly and capture moments and even if some are badly composed or blurry, that actually often adds to it. Honestly, they will always be the ones that you look back on because as cliche as it is, the best camera is the one that you have on you. So if the SLR is too bulky to be worth carrying or that you don't have a camera on you, then what good is having an SLR over being able to actually bring the camera with you anywhere? Also, point-and-shoots often have a built-in flash and they're made of plastic, so they're pretty durable and indestructible so you don't have to worry as much about your precious rangefinder. One other key thing to understand is that image quality on a film point-and-shoot is not really much worse than any other 35-millimeter camera. Let me explain. I can feel professional photographers breathing down my neck. Image quality can be a pretty vague term. A good quality image can refer to how well an image has turned out in terms of that it's sharp and in focus and well exposed. But more often than not, image quality refers to resolution, and grain, and physical quality. So a camera with a better lens, better optics, better focusing, more features, more control in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing will take better quality images overall. However, when using a 35 millimeter point-and-shoot, no matter how cheap and cheerful, you're still exposing images to the same size and quality film. I'm stressing this because a lot of people these days, particularly who will be used to digital and even in smartphones, will hear a lot about megapixels and resolution. Megapixels don't necessarily make a photo better and spending money does not make a photo better. But generally, sensors and digital sensors will improve as you go up the range of cameras. Therefore you pay more, you do get more. With film though, if you shoot the same stock with different types of cameras, the look will be very similar. Obviously, it will be a little bit different, like getting technical; different lenses from different cameras or different types of lenses can let in different spectrums of light, which can create color shifts. But it's so subtle. Generally, 4,400 would look like 4,400. In fact, the main thing that will make an image look very different is if it was used on a different focal length because the perspective of the image will be completely different. My point is that although you might be less consistent and have less control on a point-and-shoot, there is this lovely comfort in knowing that when you do take a photo that you really, really love, you still have the same high-resolution negative copy of this as good as any other camera that you could have had with you that day. For example, I recently shot these negatives on a really proper professional camera. Then years ago, I shot these on a disposable. Again, not recommending a disposable, but to a certain extent, obviously tone of caveats, a negative is a negative. That actually is one of the best bits about film, is that it isn't about what camera you have, because they're all so different. 5. 35mm Cameras - What to look for & Where to get one : On to what to look for, what to check, and where to get a 35mm film camera. Are film cameras still being made new? The answer is no, not really, unfortunately. So you will almost certainly be looking for one that is second-hand. However, that does not mean old and broken. Most cameras are in absolute mint condition, plus cameras can be serviced, cleaned, repaired, and film cameras don't really age like digital one. Of course, they have improved over the years, but even the oldest film cameras could still work today, same principles and essentially the same film. I'll circle back around to new cameras at the end of this section. Where to get a film camera. Well, firstly, naturally check your local camera shop. If they do sell analog film cameras, they will often have also tested and serviced all of their cameras, and they may even come with some warranty or guarantee which is obviously all just a huge big advantage. There are also a ton of dedicated online analog camera shops. Some are affiliated with shops, some aren't, but they still often have tested cameras, guarantees, warranties, etc. There aren't that many in Ireland, but there are loads in the UK and across Europe, and in the States. Honestly, google 35mm camera and see what comes up. Online and internationally, eBay is also a great choice, but it's better for those who know exactly what they want and are looking for a specific model of camera. Lots and lots of cameras were and are made in Japan so there's tons of second-hand cameras on eBay in Japan of any model you could want and they are all in really good mint condition. Just watch shipping fees and everything. But if you put 35mm camera into eBay, it's probably going to be too vague, there'll be too many sellers, too many options. It might just be chaos, to be honest. Whereas if you know you're looking for something specific, it's a good spot. Otherwise, similar online marketplaces is where it's [inaudible] , namely Facebook Marketplace. If you are in Ireland, Adverts.ie is a great site. It usually loads, people sell them in there. Done deal, sites of that nature, Craigslist in the States, etc. When buying things online as with anything, there is this trust and you are buying the seller as much as you are buying the products, so check reviews and descriptions of products and everything and try to see as many photos as you can. It's all up to your best judgment. One common question that you can ask though that you'll see asked all the time is, has the camera had a reel through recently? Which essentially means has read had a reel through it and have the results of that reel been developed? Because that's the only real way of knowing if everything in the camera is working. Sometimes the camera might have been tested with a dummy reel, like I'm going to do in the next section on loading. A dummy reel is just a normal roll of film, but it's one that's being exposed multiple times that you don't actually intend on ever getting developed. This isn't a bad thing. In fact, it's a great thing if somebody has gone to the trouble of testing a camera for you. It's just important to note that a dummy reel only tests that the mechanical functions are working so that the film is loading and the film is advancing and the shutter will be rolling, but it doesn't advise you if the camera has an issue like light leaks, which means that light is getting in somewhere that shouldn't be and causing film burns, that is something you only see on the actual results. Now, light leaks are pretty rare and in my experience, I've never had an issue with them, so I don't worry anyone. They might happen if a camera has been physically damaged or if the seals and the door are missing or have worn away over time, which is all repairable. But hence why just actually having a role through it of which the results have been developed is the only true test of a camera. Also, another note is that sometimes people selling cameras online have just found them in their home, maybe they belong to their parents and they don't know how they work or they don't know if they're working. Sometimes if somebody doesn't have the answers to your technical questions, particularly with cameras, it's not always suspicious so much as it is that they just have no idea. Lastly, of course, the other way that you could get a film camera is just a bit of serendipity. You might stumble upon one, your own attic. Maybe your grandparents or your parents have one. Maybe you'll find one in a charity shop or a garage sale in the States, you just got to get a little bit lucky. But again, the best bit about film, as I said before, is that because all the cameras are so quirky and so different, it doesn't really matter what would you find, particularly when you're starting out. So much buying and selling of cameras goes on because photographers get one and then they pass it on because there's a novelty with actually testing a new camera because they're all just a little bit different. Some specific and popular models of SLR that you might want to consider or specifically search if you want would be things like the Pentax K1000, the Nikon FM or FG, the Canon AE-1. Canon sold over a million units of the AE-1. It was one of the best-selling cameras of all time. It's a little bit of cringe. I'm recommending it because it's cliche almost, but they were very popular because it was a really great camera and still is a really great camera, and it's somewhere in the middle of has a lot of the manual functions of an SLR, but also has semi-automatic modes as well, so it's actually quite feature-full. Next is what to look out for in images and descriptions online, but also key things that you might want to check if you get the chance to physically inspect the camera that you're buying. First off is to check if the camera has a battery. I know it sounds super obvious, but it might not have one or it might not have a working one at that, or there might even be some corrosion and acid leak around the contact points. This is actually super easy to fix. I did it recently. There's tons of DIY videos on YouTube, on Skillshare, even on say, it's already fixed rule, but just check if there is a battery. Sometimes battery compartments in film cameras can be hard to find, some movie behind screws or in. For example, on this camera, you have to undo the screw here. Once you've got the screw loose, you basically pull off the grip, and then in here, inside is the battery. That make sense? They can be really hard to find sometimes. Along with the huge variety of 35 mm cameras comes some of the most awkward and unusual battery shapes and sizes that you've ever seen. But lots of camera shops do stock them, which is good and if not, places like watch shop stock them. It's also really easy to get them in bulk or in big packs on Amazon. The other good news is that in my experience, the batteries last a long time if you're disciplined about turning the camera off when you're not using it. Like I've had cameras last a year, two years on one battery, but then it also depends on how much that camera requires the battery. If you're using a lot of flash, then that will obviously drain the battery much, much quicker. The battery in a film camera would pair with things such as the light meter, any automatic modes, automatic exposure, autofocus, automatic film advanced or rewind, self timers, and then some cameras have a built-in flash. So again, your battery life would depend on what features you use, and we're more battery heavy, some aren't, like meters usually will only activate when you're going to take a photo. But other than that, the battery is basically not being used. Point-and-shoot cameras will almost certainly need a battery to operate. But just note that not all film cameras need a battery and some that even have a battery don't need it to work, they just need it to operate some of their functions and features. For example, a fully manual, fully mechanical film camera should work without a battery, but it may still require one for certain features. If it has a light meter, it'll require a battery to operate the light meter. Obviously, most of the time you would want the battery in to take advantage of those features. But it's just important to note that not all cameras require one. Second thing to check is the shutter speed crucially at different speeds. I'm going to demo with this camera, but basically you're looking to prove that not only is the shutter firing, but that it's firing at different speeds, so faster and slower. A test like this will come much more naturally to photographers because it's almost like a photographer's ear. I can hear it straightaway, but the speed of the shutter, it can be a little bit more subtle if you're not used to it. You don't attest this to scientifically or at least I'm not going to, I'm just going to vary the shutter speed between fast and slow and see if I can hear the difference. You could also take the lens off and visually see how long the mirror is flicking up for. Firstly, I'm just going to start with a default for this camera, which is 11/25 of a second so when I take a shot. You can hear that's pretty fast. Then I'm going to slow it down to 1/8 of a second. Hopefully you here hear this. Ready? Can you hear the difference? I'll do it again. It's like other than [inaudible] it's [inaudible] so you can hear the shutter both open and close like [inaudible]. One more time. Can you hear how slow that is? I can take the lens off as well. Hopefully you might be able to see. Ready? Then if I speed that backup to say 1-250th of a second, then that should be, you'll be able to hear it, ready? Much faster. I'll show you again. The actual tech is much quicker. This is a manual camera so I can test the shutter speed as I wish. I can just change it to whatever I want. On any other camera, you should try to switch to manual mode if you have multiple modes. However, if you did pick up something like the fully automatic pointed sheet like this one, you can still test the shutter. By varying how much light is entering the lens, you can force it to pick a faster or slower shutter speed. For example, if I point it at a semi decently less table and take a photo, you can hear it's like [inaudible]. Whereas if I was to cover the lens and then take a photo, firstly, you might have heard that beep. That beep is actually a warning noise to say that there isn't enough light in. Again, I don't know if it'll pick it up well in the video, but I can hear that the shutter went from being [inaudible] to [inaudible]. Let me just try that one more time, so if I cover the lens, hopefully, you can hear it. Did you hear the delay? Initially, it sounds like the camera is clicked, so it's like click, but then there's a second click and that's actually the shutter closing. It's been opened for almost half a second, which is going to blur or anything. But it proves that the shutter is picking different shutter speeds. Next, we're going to take a look at the lens. You can start by just a physical inspection of the lens. By looking through it, it should look nice and clean; no fungus or mold or a haze or scratching. You can even take it off, look through it. This lens is actually very clean. If you've got any major scratches, obviously that will affect the lens, affect the image, but any tiny hairline scratches actually shouldn't really show up at all. The next thing you could check is the actual smoothness of the rings on the lens, so the focus on the aperture. On this lens, the ring closer to the front is the focus ring. This should be really smooth. However, it should also be stiff enough that when you turn it and leave it, it doesn't just slide somewhere else. Then the other ring closer to the camera is the aperture. This should click into place, gently click every time. It's F8, F11, F16. Just note that there may be little clicks in between the numbers on your scale. That's just options between the numbers that are actually shown. Take for example here, I'm at F5.6 and there's a click between F5.6 and F4, which must be F4.5 or so. Lastly, on the lens, it's actually important to check, and beginners don't worry about this at all., We won't be able to be on a point shoot. You won't be able to put. The last thing to check is whether the aperture blades are closing. This is true for all cameras on, for digital photography too. But the aperture blades, which decide how much light gets that into lens, they only close when you actually press the shutter. Even if you've set the aperture to anything, nothing happens within the lens. But then when you actually click the shutter while the shutter is engaged, the aperture blades will close to their desired distance. Then in order to observe the object blades closing, you want to use a really slow shutter. If you haven't, you should change to Bulb mode, which is identified with a B in the shutter speed. If you have another camera with a digital screen you might require just changing the shutter speed to as slow as you possibly can go. Then at the slowest, it will change over to Bulb. Bulb essentially means that while you have your finger on the shutter, the shutter will open for as long as you want, and then when you let go, it closes. This would be used for when you plug in an external shutter for long exposures so it's like a coastal shutter length, like open, close. For as long as I hold it. It'll be opened. Does that make sense? On the lens, I'm going to change it to something that's close, such as F16. I'm going to look through the lens as I take a shot and I can see that the aperture blades have engaged almost the whole way. Then I'm going to change to something a little bit more open like F4, but that we should still be able to see. Again, the aperture blades have engaged in close but not the whole way. Then finally, if I select F1.7, which is the most open that this object can go, I'd say we won't be able to see the aperture blades because it's going to let in as much light as it can. Yeah, they've engaged but I can't see anything. Other things that you could check on the camera are the shutter counter. Just make sure that every time you advance, the camera moves up, letting you know which one you're on. The shutter counter is not connected inherently to the film. Obviously, I don't actually have any film in here at the moment, but I'm just shooting and still going up. If you ever open the back of the camera and then close it again, the counter will reset, so the counter should be back below zero. Then it might take two or three shots to get to one. We're on Number 1 and then we're going up again. We'll get onto this when we talk about loading and mistakes. But if you ever have any issue where you open back and counter by accident, but then you close it, the shutter counter will recess even if you're on shot 15 or something. Just be aware that it's not connected to the film. The other button you can check is the inner gear release button. On the inside of the camera attached to the film advanced, there is this gear, so you can see it here. Every time I take a shot and advance the film, it is what advances the film using the perforations. However, this won't go backwards. It will always go forwards, but it won't go backwards. Therefore, if you tried to rewind the film on manual camera and this wasn't released, it would tear the film. At the bottom, before you rewind again, I'll go into this. When you rewind, you would press this button in and upward would release the gear which allows it to be basically moved completely freely. Then as soon as you advance again, this button will pop back eight and it won't go back again. Then the other thing that you can check is the camera's door seals and light seals. Do you see this black hole that you'll notice that's just running in the edge of all the doors like early at the hinge, you just make sure that that looks intact and is there. Again, this is something that's replaceable, but it is something that would let light in if it's missing. The other thing you can check looking at the back of the camera on the inside is the pressure plate and just make sure it's there essentially. As you can see from where it lines up this pressure plate, put pressure on the film that's currently being exposed. The piece of the film is currently being exposed. Make sure that the image is in focus. If you are having trouble with images not being at all in focus or sharp and you know it's not your lens, it is probably a problem with the pressure plate. One more thing you could check is the self timer. On this camera here it's this little switch you pull it at the top. On this camera here is at the top of the camera, and it's this push forward, which gives you the self timer. Then on the newer cameras, again, it's just, you slide this all the way forward, and then you're on the self timer. Just make sure that when you take a shot that these are firing. If I was to flick this timer off and then take a photo. Yeah. Can you see the red dot? That means it's counting down. I think on this camera it's about 15 seconds and that starts beeping of the last five and then takes photos. If you have an SLR or a range finder that has a light meter you codes and honestly I never have beginners don't go near doing this, but you could check as to whether the light meter is accurate. You could do this by comparing it to an external light meter under the camera that you know is working in digital camera or a phone-like meter up. I don't need to do if I thought that the light meter was off. As a photographer, I know roughly what settings will apply it to what lighting scenario. If it's way off, I'm like, ''Something's up here,'' Just make sure that if you are trying it though, that you're comparing results like for example, a lot of film cameras or all you want will center waste their metering. The center of the frame is what it will meet up for it. Whereas if you're using another camera or a phone app, you might have to touch different parts of the image. Just make sure you're metering the same part or same lighting situation. Just one more thing to check when buying something is just the term waterproof or weather sealed. Generally back when film cameras being made, there wasn't the same standards for like IPX certification or ratings for waterproofness. The term was a bit loose, but also often seals and weather seals have or will have worn down over time. If your camera is weather sealed, I wouldn't necessarily trust that the same way you would trust a weather sealed DSLR. Some cameras were clearly designed to be submerged and they are obviously the complete exception like they should still be completely waterproof but just weather sealing. One more thing that you should check, which I don't know how I forgot. It was almost just so obvious I completely missed this, but you should check the flush. Just check that the flash on the camera is working. Seems super obvious, but it might not be working. Just worth a little check. Lastly, just to return to you any comments that are still being made brand new. There are some niche, quirky, novelty cameras that are still being made new, but the main brand new camera was unfortunately just being discontinued in October 2020 was the Nikon F6. This had all the above vessels of state of the art brand new DSLR, except it was 35 millimeter film, which is really cool. Obviously, it is said that it was discontinued, but if you do want one there still brand new or in mid condition from resellers, they're just not being manufactured anymore. Having said that the company, Ilford are releasing really cheap little pointed at you camera this month in March 2021 when I'm recording this. Actually are the company AGFA, they might even be the same one but just rebranded. Maybe that will be some manufacturing reprise for 35 millimeter. Who knows? Then there's the Braun Leica, who are still making two brand new film cameras today. They are RNA brand that had been around for over a 150 years. They were renamed in film and they are same line to digital today but do less of in the mainstream. For AGFA photographers, while I've always been known for really high quality cameras. They've also been known for being incredibly overpriced and not at all good value for money. You famously pay much more for less with like that. They released a brand new 35 millimeter camera back in 2014 as an anniversary owed to their old M-line of film cameras. You can still buy one today, but like a MA goes for well over €4000. Yes, they are sleek and minimal and the mechanical parts are completely German, over-engineered in a beautiful way. But you get the absolute bare minimum features wise. Like MA is fully manual, fully mechanical, doesn't come with a light meter, it doesn't come with a flash, doesn't come with any mode. In fact, for over four grand, it doesn't even come with a lens. Now, I'd eat my words if I was ever given one. But just as beginner, please know, especially when the film is doing chunk of the work, don't fall into the like a hype or just hype around other premium models. You can easily get a really nice pointed sheet for €50, an exception of one for a €100, you could get a really nice SLR between AV and a €150 with lenses or a lens probably at the upper scale. You could get really lucky and somebody doesn't know what they're selling and you could get SLR for 3D grid. Let's go on to loading. 6. 35mm Loading & Rewinding: Hey, welcome to the next section. Let's talk about actually loading film into your camera. I'm going to demo most of it on this manual SLR. The first thing you want to do is open up the back of the camera and before you load anything, just make sure everything is clean and there isn't much dirt or dust. That'll give you the best chance of keeping the film clean and therefore getting the best images you can. Back to just how to open the camera. On this manual SLR, like with a lot of SLRs, you will turn to the actual rewind spool. This is the advance side, advance lever. You've got rewind spool here. If you flick up this little lever, it'll have the thing you wind to rewind, we'll come to that. If you actually pull the entire piece up, so you pull up and then you pop. This one obviously is spring loaded. Some of them are spring loaded, and that opens back of the camera. Then to close it, you just close this and you'd pop this down. Then on different cameras, this is a point-and-shoot like I showed you before. But unlike lots of point-and-shoots, it doesn't have an automatic load and automatic film advance. It has the same or similar winding mechanism to the SLR, except that it's at the bottom. At the very bottom of this camera, there's little tab. It's basically the exact same thing as this, but it's upside down. Then you would just pull the whole thing out again, and then door unlocks. Does that make expense? Then on a bigger SLR like this, it's on the side of the door. Hopefully, you can see there is this little latch which you just pop down, but you have to push in and down and then that'll pop open the door, similarly on this one. This one has a button and a lever, so you can't just pull the lever. But you have to push in this button first and then push down this lever and that'll open it, kind of a little bit of a safety. Then one more on this little point-and-shoot, this is also on the side, its little switch on the side of the door. But it actually has a cool safety feature built in. If you pop this down, the bottom will open but the door won't. The door will only open if you also have pressure on the bottom. Pressure on the bottom and then pull it down, then the door will open. I'll do it one more time. If I pop this, it'll just pop the little latch at the bottom open. But it's only when I actually apply pressure to the bottom and then also press the switch that the door will open. Does that make sense? Also note that some cameras will load left to right, some will load right to left. It doesn't really matter which way they do it. It's just to be aware that it won't always be the same side, but it will always be really obvious as to which side it goes. One will be very different to the other. Let's go on to automatic loading. Most unusually, both of the point-and-shoots I have our manual loading. I'll get onto them in a sec. I'm mainly talking about automatic loading in terms of point-and-shoots. I'm going to use this big SLR because it's automatic. But actually in reality, like any point-and-shoot, it will probably be the same. You'll open the back of the camera. This camera actually loads left to right, whereas the SLR, I'll show you in a sec, loads right to left. In this camera, you would literally just pop in the reel, and then you would drag the lead across, and then make sure it's folded in and over the other side. Then that is all, you just close it. Now, I won't close it now because I want to reuse this reel in a sec. Essentially, you literally just put the film in, pull the lead across and close the door. This camera is a little bit more advanced. The film advance mechanism is much nearer and much better. Then once you click the door closed and turn on the camera, you're good to go, you're good to start shooting. If for some reason on your point-and-shoot or your automatic SLR, any automatic camera that has automatic loading, if for some reason when you close the door, nothing happens, and number 1 doesn't show up on the little screen saying you're at your first shot, just open it back up and pull the film out a little bit more. It might just not have gone across enough, or you might have pulled it too far and you might need to just feed it back into the reel a little bit. I would always start off by going like this. Then if you need more, you can pull more out. But you don't want to pull too much out because you don't want to get as far as where your first shot is. The other reason an automatic camera might not do anything is if the battery is dead. If nothing happens when you turn the camera on, definitely possible that the battery is just dead. In an automatic camera, you will hear when you close the door that it starts to [inaudible] , and it basically pulls out the film by itself as far as the first shot. When you've loaded a roll of film successfully into an automatic camera, as well as shot number 1 coming up on the screen, something else that often comes up is the ISO speed. It'll pop up as 200, 100, 400 depending on the film that you've just put in. How does it know what film you've put in? Well, it's not as high tech as you'd think. I've got a reel of color negative film here, and on the side of it, you'll notice this unusual little pattern. Well, this pattern is called a DX code, and it is what tells the camera what speed the film is at. Then you'll see here on the inside of the camera that there is these contact points. These contact points automatically read what the film speed is, which is super handy because then you don't have to set this. But in nearly all cases, even on automatic cameras, you can override that and you can choose to set a different ISO speed. Also what some people do, it's called DX code hacking. Again, we'll get onto this in a second we're shooting. But if you want to change the ISO speed deliberately and you know you can't do it in your camera settings, you can literally get a marker and color in or scratch off different parts of the DX code. Just set it to a different film speed, and then your camera will think it's a different film speed. You can look up loads of tutorials as to how to do that online. That's a way of forcing an automatic camera to pick an incorrect film speed. Let's go over loading into a manual camera. Let's do it in the SLR. Let's show you how to load a roll of film into a manual camera. Different cameras load different sides, so you might have to load it upside down if it's the other way around. It'd be really obvious as to which side you need to pop it into though because it'll only fit on one side, but you just pop the roll of film in. If it doesn't fit, it's because the rewind spool is not pulled out all the way, so just make sure that it's pulled all the way out. Once the film is in, then you can pop it back down. Again, if it doesn't go down, that just means it needs to line up with the little pins. You can just give it a little twist and it'll pop down. Then take the lead and pull it across and then tuck the end of this into one of the slots on the other side, anyone would do. There'll usually be an obvious one that will be the best choice. Then you can advance the film by pulling on the advance lever and just guide it so that the little perforations line up with the gears when you take a great shot. There we have it loaded. Now, the film is loaded. You can continue to purge a shot or two when the camera is like this. But because I know this is correctly loaded, I tend to close it up and then sometimes you can get a bonus shot or two. But either way, what you will next do is you'll advance this, shoot, advance it, shoot, advance this until you get to number 1. We are at number 1, we are ready to shoot. I don't know why I used the term either way. What I meant by the bonus shots with that, when you're loading it normally, you will purge the shots up to the first shot and then you'll start. But if you load it really carefully and you have rolled it to the six and you pull out the lead, the bare minimum amount, get it successfully loaded and then close the back of the camera, you sometimes can then successfully use the next two shots that you would normally purge so that you can get 37 or 38 shots. In that case, you would not advance to the first shot and actually try and take two shots. Then when you get to the first shot, it'll be your third shot. Doesn't always work, it's just that's what I meant. If you are trying to do that, It's not either way. You would just start from there. Then from then on, any shot we take is just usual shots. I can show you what that looks like on the inside because I think this is the view that you rarely get to see. The way the film is shooting when you are shooting on a point-and-shoot, it doesn't matter, this is how it looks and how it works. It'll be advanced and then shot which will light in and expose the film, advanced, shot, advanced, shot, and so on. See what I mean? Obviously, don't open up a camera like that while you're shooting, that would just ruin everything. I was obviously just doing that for demonstration purposes. But hopefully, that helps visualize exactly what's going on in the camera. Therefore, you can solve problems a lot easier too. Now, don't forget, after you've loaded the film into your manual camera before you can start shooting, the other thing you got to do is set the ISO. In this camera, you do so by pulling up on this dial and then turning so the ISO value is inside the shutter speed 1. If you pull up, you're controlling the inside one. Whereas if you turn the whole thing, you're turning the whole thing. I realized that I didn't quite explain the ISO very well. There's going to be much more information in the next chapter and the one after so don't stress, but it is really important to set the ISO. In that SLR, it doesn't even have a light meter. It literally is just for reference so that you can check back as to what ISO you have in because it also doesn't have a window. But on other cameras that have an automatic exposure, it's really important to set the ISO after you load the camera. These two point-and-shoots are also manual so they won't pick up the ISO with the DX code. It's really important that you set them. I just want to also point out that the ISO scale isn't always at the top. On this one, there's actually a little dial on the very front of the lens, and that's how you change the ISO. Then on this one, the ISO is actually at the very bottom, just to know basically that they're not all in the same place. Let's move on to your rewinding. Pretty straightforward in an automatic camera, like any of these automatic cameras, they have on the back or it'll either be on the bottom or the back, but they will have this rewind button. It looks like a roll of film with these arrows going into it, and when you press that, it will automatically free one film. Sometimes you'll need a pen or something very small to press it because they've deliberately designed that it's hard to accidentally press because that can be really annoying. [inaudible] What looks like on this camera, you press that in and that will rewind the film into the reel. Let's go on to the manual rewind. First thing you should do is make sure you press in the gear release button on the bottom of the camera. That disengages the film advance and allows the film to be rewind. Without that, the film won't come out of the take-up spool, and if you put pressure on the rewind and you've really forced it, you can just rip the film. I have done that before because I thought it with stuck and it was actually this button. Make sure you press down this button, make sure it stays down. On some cameras that are finicky, you might need to hold it while you rewind. But for the most part, it'll stay down. Now the film is unlocked effectively from the advance side. On the rewind spool, there will be this little lever which you pull up. Don't pull the whole thing up. You don't want to open up the back of the camera, but just lift up this little lever. On that lever, there will be a little arrow. In this case, on this camera, it's red. That arrow is pointing in the way you need to turn to rewind the film. If you start pulling like this, you can hear the film rewinding. You will need to be forceful with it. But if it really sticks, if it's really tough, don't force it. It's definitely a problem to do with the gear. Now, I'm only opening the camera here to show you what's happening on the inside. Don't do this. On the inside, this is what it looks like. I only hold their reel so that it doesn't pop up because there's no back of the camera. I'm going to twist, twist, twist. This is all going to rewind into the reel. If the back of the camera was closed, you would keep rewinding until you've got all the reel in. I'm just going to take it out here. Normally, you would roll the whole thing into the canister and then you would hand out into the lab to get developed. Extra little bonus tip, I'm sure people are curious as to how they know when they've rewind the whole thing. How will they know that all the film is there, not any of it left on the advance? Well, you can actually feel it. Again, first thing to do, press down the button at the bottom to release this. Pull up this little lever and start rewinding. You can feel, you can feel it. Then as soon as the pressure goes in the lever, give it two or three more turns, and then that'll be it. I guarantee you it will be fully inside the roll. I hope that all makes sense. Let's move on to some common mistakes. 7. Mishaps & Mistakes: There are some easy mistakes that you can make when loading and when shooting, that can be just devastating if you either don't notice them or if you encounter them. Fear not though, lots are avoidable and/or fixable. While everything unloading is fresh in your heads, I'm going to go over them now before we actually go into anything about shooting. Mishaps and mistakes, let's talk about them. On a manual camera, a really common and unfortunate mistake is that when loading, the film doesn't actually catch on the take of spool. When you're advancing and shooting, you don't actually advance any film. You think the whole time that you've been taking a bunch of cool shots when you actually haven't. But the worst bit is, is that when you rewind this, you will then end up handing in a blank, completely brand new roll to be developed, which obviously when developed, will return completely blank. Plus again, because the shutter count isn't connected in any way to the film, it's just connected to the advance lever, the shutter count will still continue to go up giving you the impression that you're shooting when you're actually not. Which again, it makes it even more frustrating and makes the mistake even easier to make. How to prevent this? Well, I'll just show you really quickly. A good example is where you know that the film has caught on the actual gears, but it hasn't actually been placed correctly into the take of spool. What happened in this example is that you can shoot per inch the shots up to shot number 1. Now, we're on shot number 1, and then we will go to shoot two, three. But when we opened the back of the camera, the film hasn't actually advanced, so that is the painful bit. However, hopefully some of you are a little bit more eagle-eyed, and you might have noticed that while I was shooting, the rewind spool isn't turning. If I shoot, see the way it's not turning. It's not moving at all. This is actually connected to the film canister. Whenever you advance, this should turn, and if it's not, that means the film is not advancing to get in the habit of checking this as a key sign. For example, if I open this now, knowing that it hasn't caught, and I fix the problem. Now I fixed it, so that I know it has caught correctly. If you notice now, when I shoot, so make sure your rewind spool is done in case the rewind spool is popped up, still, you definitely have to push it down to make sure it's down. But when it's down, you'll notice that when I shoot, it turns. It's turning, turning. Does that make sense? Every time the film gets pulled across while the advanced lever, the rewind spool will turn with the film. Another often mistake is accidentally shooting the wrong ISO. Make sure the two habits you get into after you load are that, number 1, you check that the rewind spool is winding with the film, but also check that you set the ISO. Don't forget to set the ISO, because if you can't remember what film you put in there and the film doesn't have a window. This camera doesn't have a window. Some of the newer ones do have a window where you could actually see the film loaded and therefore you can see usually what speed it's at, you're like, I shot Ultramax 400, it's 400, but this is not about a camera anyway, so we could pick that up. But the cameras without a window you won't know if you don't set your ISO. Shooting at the incorrect ISO will obviously affect your exposure. It will throw off your cameras light meter on automatic exposure, and therefore your photos will either be overexposed or underexposed the whole time by whatever the ISO value is off by. Now the good news is that it's unlikely that you previously set it at 100 and then it's now set at 800, which would be quite a big difference. It's more likely that the difference is you shot a roll of ISO 200 and now you're shooting a roll of ISO 400. The difference is only a stop. Especially with color negative film where there's a little bit of latitude. I'll go in that next chapter. You can get away with it. The only issue would be is that if you are shooting color reversal film where there's less room for error, less leeway with exposure, or if you massively overrated your ISO. Let's say your film is actually ISO 100, but you tell the camera by accident that it was ISO 800. Then you will be massively under exposing all of your photos and underexposure is a lot harder to recover in them. Again, I'll go on to that, and other little caveat is that there are situations where you would want to set your ISO incorrectly to create a deliberate effect. But obviously when you're doing it intentionally, that's completely different to accidentally forgetting to set it after you've loaded a new roll. You're off the hook if you have an automatic camera that picks up the DX code because then it'll just set it itself. Another really devastating error is when you accidentally open the camera with a roll in there. Or worse, when you actively go to load a roll and you open the camera deliberately and there's a roll in there that you forgot about it. But don't panic, genuinely, don't panic. It's not all bad news. I know this from personal experience. There actually is a lot that can be recovered. Firstly, I think this goes without saying, but if you do open up the camera and you see or if you open up partially and see an unexposed roll on the inside, just close it off immediately. Don't overthink it too much because the longer you leave it open, the more problems you are going to have. Just to demonstrate though, when you do open it, you almost certainly have overexposed or lost the frame that's in the barrel as such, the one that's right here and maybe like the next one. But and I mean, this there are a bunch of shots that may still be somewhat salvageable. Take a roll can be wind so tightly that it still protects some of the shots that you've already taken. They might have the odd film burn here and there. It's all very random and it's all a bit of luck, but I have got photos back that I did not deserve to get back, so don't panic. You genuinely would be so surprised. You haven't lost any of the shots still in the roll. Let' say you open the back of the camera after shooting your first three, you might have lost the first three shots, but you haven't lost the rest of them. Close it back up and just continue. Now remember that when you do close backup and continue because it's been opened, the shutter counter will be back at before zero. You're going to have to work out where you think you were. Just remember it that whenever you open the camera the shutter counter will reset no matter where you are on the film roll, no matter how many shots you've taken every time, it'll just reset below zero. In terms of prevention, well, lots of cameras have this little slot on the back of the door. Mine doesn't, but the slot is actually so that you can put a little slip in to say what film you're shooting. What lots of people do is that they take, let's say they just loaded this role of Ilford FP4 plus. They would then rip off the hard-boiled of the door or something. Then you would slot this in the slot at the back of the camera, obviously this camera doesn't have one, but lots of cameras do. Lots of SLRs do. Have a look for that because that's what that's for it. Then for the duration of the fact that you are shooting this roll, you will have this here, and that way you'll know if you ever forget what speed the film was at, what film you have in there, and also just that you do have film in there, so don't open the camera. You can also just tape this to the camera every time you load new roll if you want. The other thing people do, if you don't have one of those slots or just in general is that they might actually tape the door closed that way it prevents it opening accidentally. But also once you have the tape, you can then actually right on the tape that you have put in ISO 125 black and white. Great writing. Yeah, you can actually write on the tape, and that way, again, you know that not only is there filled in there, but you know what film it is and what speed it's at. Let's say you stumbled upon this camera and it's on ten shots and you don't know whether it has film in it or not. You didn't take the door. You don't have a film slot, you don't have a window. You have no way of knowing is their film in there? You don't know are these ten shots just blank shot where you're testing it or are they actually ten shots that you shot. How would you know is there a film in the camera? Well, there is actually a way to know. On a manual camera if you pop up there rewind spool. But then don't release the gear at the bottom so that the frame doesn't rewind freely. It's stuck in the advanced. Then just start to rewind this. Don't do this too hard because if you do too hard, you will tear the film. But just try and rewind it. You'll notice it can't be rewind because there's film in there. Whereas on say, this camera where there's no film inside, if I was to rewind the rewind spool, it would just rewind. There's no film, there's no pressure. But if, again, if there was film resisting it, which there is in this camera, it won't rewind. That's how you know there's film inside. Does that make sense? Actually two more things on this whole issue is that some cameras are quite cool like this one. This one has a safety feature on the inside so that hopefully you can see this almost like protective cover on the take-up spool side. You would load the film here, you would drag it across. This has two advantages. One, it helps the film load correctly. But also, if I was to open this camera midway through shooting a roll, the shot that was in the barrel as such would be lost. But none of the shots over here would be, or at least they would be vastly more protected from light. Some cameras have little cool features like that. Then lastly, if you do have to open of the back of the camera, let's say, you didn't think of this and you've no idea how to tell whether there's film inside or you know something went wrong whereby you've ripped the film or it's not rewinding, something is stuck, something is not working. How can you open the back of the camera to check? Well, again, it might be so obvious, but you need to do it in somewhere there is no light. You can buy these film bags. You would put the camera inside and then you would zip it up roll it and make sure there's no light. These bags have these really tight hands that you can put your hands in. Then you can find the camera open it, touch it be like, oh crap, there is film in there or like I find the problem, it's all caught up. Then close the backup. That is much better than having a dark room because, well, obviously a true dark room will be dark enough, but tons of people have space that you think might be dark, isn't actually dark and there still light and it can still damage film. If you are a beginner though, and something gets stuck in your camera and you don't want to try and open it yourself and you don't really know what to do. Bring the camera to a camera shop and be like, can you please develop this? And just give them the camera. They'll go into the back, they'll take the film out and then they'll give you back the camera. They are much better placed and poised to do that for you. Also important to know if you do ever take a roll out by itself, like, let's say the film does tear and you end up with this. Obviously, this is developed unexposed. Let's say you end up with this piece of undeveloped film. Don't put it in a canister like this. Please let light in, you would actually need a full black canister like this, a blackout canister. Beginners, you don't have one of these, so don't stress, just, just don't trust these, if your roll has already been exposed. Obviously, once it's wind into the roll like on this one, you can just give this to the shop. You can put it in this, put it in your bag and protect it. But these transparent ones provide a protective purpose, not a light stopping purpose. Another common mistake on a camera would be if you accidentally hit that Automatic Rewind button too early. Let's say you have about 10 shots in on your automatic camera and whatever happens, you hit that Automatic Rewind, it makes a noise and it rewinds the whole thing into the can like this. That is quite frustrating, obviously, because you had 26 more shots left. If you absolutely adored those first 10 shots and you don't want to ruin even one of them, you don't want to take any risks, cut your losses, get the reel developed even though there's only 10 exposed shots, just do it. However, there is a way of recovering the lead and retrieving the lead and going again. You can buy these funky tools called the film lead retriever or film leader retriever, you can get one on Amazon. I don't have one, you won't have one. Obviously they are much easier if you have one, but there's ways to do it with. Essentially, the way to get the role out is to use another piece of film. I normally use this piece, which is a blank reel that I got developed and I got no shot back on it so I just cut a bit off it and this is like an excess piece of film. But chances are that if you're a beginner and need to film, you also don't have any access film lying around. I think you can also do it with the lead of a new reel. What you want to do, I'm going to basically insert it upside-down orientation to that film. What you want to do is you want to wet the edge of it. You could lick it, but these chemicals are a bit gross. So then you would feed it into the reel that you're trying to retrieve. We want to get into a situation once you put it in a little bit so that when you turn the film reel that you're trying to retrieve in the direction that would be pulling in the film we've just inserted. I'm turning it this way because that would be pulling in the film I've just inserted. If like it's doing which is good, the new film I've just inserted comes with it. By turning this, it's taking it in. That's a good thing, that means it's stuck. Now I think that this big reel has caught the lead of the yellow one so I'm just going to pull it. You're ready? Two,1. One more go. Told you, it's not that easy. Insert this and I will turn this. see the way it's taking it in? Three, 2, 1. Got it. I'm glad that worked. So we've got the edge of the reel on reel. Had this actually been you, had this been your situation, you would not need to reload this into your camera, but this is important. Which camera put it in? So to say I've got the same. Now it's loaded back in the camera. Remember, the situation here was that we had accidentally rewind the film early, so we take in 10 shots that we liked and then we hit rewind early. Now we've retrieved the lead. The film counter has recess. We want to get back to the 10th shot, but without ruining any of the ones on the way. If we just started shooting now, we would just start double exposing all of the first ones that we shot. But let's say you accidentally hit the narrow rewind at shot number 2 and you didn't care about the first two, you could just shoot now, acknowledge that the first two or three be all wrong and then continue. However, essentially want to do is you want to minimize the amount of light getting into the film. If you have lens cap, put the lens cap on. You could change the aperture to the highest value, so F22. Then, again in contradiction, you could change the shutter speed to be as fast as possible. That way, with the aperture, you're letting the least amount of light in, but with the shutter speed, you are allowing it to be exposed for the least amount of time possible and then with the lens cap on it or even covered with your hand, then you can shoot your way back up to number 10. Then once you get there, you can read you all the settings and just continue on and you'll be at where you are and all the shots in between won't be doubly exposed because, yes, you expose them again, but you didn't expose them to any new light. Does that make sense? Hopefully. I realized that I used the manual SLR to demo loading the film after it had been accidentally re-runned back into the camera. On a manual camera, you're never going to be in that situation where you've accidentally re-runned the film. But the principle is the exact same, it'll work the exact same. If you have an automatic camera and you've accidentally re-runned it, pop the film back in, cover the lens, even if you don't have any manual control or any way to close up the aperture and the shutter speed. Just cover the lens, make sure it's super dark and shoot your way back up to the shot that you were on. Lastly, the final little mistake that I'm going to include, super easy mistake. Obviously there's probably tons more. The final one is that if you have a point and shoot or a rangefinder, remember to remove your lens cap and watch those fingers. The reason being is that unlike an SLR, again, the rangefinder or, this is just point and shoot, but a rangefinder or a point and shoot, the viewfinder is separate from the lens so when you look through the viewfinder, you don't see what the lens sees. In this case, if I'm looking through the viewfinder and I've got my lens cap on, I think that my view is unobstructed. I'm like, "Oh, I want to take a picture of this, take a picture, and then I go right and take another picture." By the lens cap on, I would not know any difference and then I would look and get my results. Obviously, well, I might realize halfway through but remove your lens cap. Remember to check. Similarly, like on a point and shoot, this camera won't let you shoot when the lens cover is closed, which is cool, so it has to be opened. But it's so easy to just rest your finger somewhere over the lens. Again, I wouldn't know my fingers here because I'm looking through here and it looks perfectly clear. Watch your fingers, watch the lens cap. It it's on a point and shoot or rangefinder, you won't know. On an SLR though, might be obvious. But if you look through and your fingers was in the way of the lens, you could see that, because you can see what the lens sees. On that, if you ever did load a new reel into a rangefinder and then realize that you shot the first five shots with the lens cap on, if you're clever about it, you could rewind the reel while retaining the lead and then go for it again and shoot the first five and nothing would be the wiser. But I'll say it's a little more difficult if you've shot a random middle shots with your finger or with a lens cap on. It'd be much harder to try and rewind exactly one shot without ruining the others. I hope all of that made sense. I'm sorry this is such a long chapter. Let's have a look at actually going out and shooting. 8. Tips for Actually Shooting on Film: On to tips for actually shooting on film. I actually messaged a bunch of friends who shoot on film, just asking them what is something that they wish they had known when getting started, and I kept getting the same theme of answers. I have two categories of tips here. Firstly, a bunch of more philosophical ones, and your approach to shooting, and your mindset, and then a bunch of very practical ones. People overwhelmingly said, don't be too precious, and don't worry too much about not taking a shot because it's expensive or you've got to make every single one count. You'll just end up regretting not taking a whole bunch of shots, plus you need to shoot more to learn more. The other thing that came up a lot was, don't be afraid to invest in more premium films. Especially once you get a little more into it, the results are noticeable and I definitely think the colors are so much nicer. Feel free to experiment too with different film types and different camera types. Then take note of what you liked and what you didn't like about different colors and different grains compared to other ones. I mean take note, write it down. Also, keep your negatives safe and organized, and that way, you can refer back to find out what images that you really liked that you shot on different types of film, because in 35 millimeter, it's written on the edge of the film negative, just by the perforations. On to you getting it and actually shooting. If you're shooting on a point-and-shoot, you should use your flash often, unless it's really sunny. Obviously, if it's night or dark, you'll have the flash on, but I'm talking about the dimly lit rooms, tungsten lit rooms, darker, overcast days, times when you think it'd be brighter, but cameras perceive a lot less light than our eyes. Our eyes are really good at adapting and adapting really quickly to darker and dim environments. If it in any way feels a bit dark for you, I guarantee you the camera thinks it's much darker. That's just a bit of perspective. Cameras perceive light much differently, and a lot less. Especially, point-and-shoots often have fixed lenses with really closed apertures, so they don't let in a lot of light from the start. In order to compensate for not letting in a lot of light, the point-and-shoot will prioritize a slower shutter speed in dark environments. A slower shutter speed will mean blurry subjects. To avoid that, use your flash. Just turn it on. Also in general when shooting on film, but particularly when using a point-and-shoot, try and keep your hands as steady as possible. Even if you're in the moment and your subject is moving, and you're just trying to be quick and candid, try and just you, for a split second, while you take the photo, keep as steady as possible, because if you move, then both you will be moving and your subject will be moving, and that is just definitely going to be a blurry image. Whereas at least you can reduce one variable and you won't move, keep steady, and then obviously, hopefully, your subject won't be blurry either. Or sometimes there's a lot more moving parts. Hold your shots until you start to hear the film advance. Don't just click it and move immediately. That's just a better habit to get into, again, it just will avoid having a a shot, particularly important on a point-and-shoot or disposable, or something smaller and with a [inaudible] lens. Another thing to note when shooting on film, especially if you are used to digital, is that often, the shutter speed of older film cameras is not that fast. Beginners, you can ignore this. But today, it is commonplace for [inaudible] to have a max shutter speed of one of a second, or 1/8,000th of a second even. Whereas the two point-and-shoots I have, they have a shutter speed of 1-500th of a second, 1/430th of a second, respectively, which is by today's standard, not that fast at all. Therefore, in bright conditions, these cameras will automatically stop down with their aperture in order to compensate for the fact that it's a bright light and their max shutter speed is not great. But it's also more important even for a manual lens or lower that you might be buying or shooting with that the fastest shutter speed might be a lot lower than you thought you might be able to use. Therefore, if you are a photographer who wants to retain their shallow depth of field and open aperture, you might have to, in bright conditions, shoot with an ND filter. Again, beginners, but if you understand what I mean, you'll know what I mean, if you know, you know. Next is onto focusing. Obviously all cheap point-and-shoots and disposables have fixed focuses, and then all other cameras or other point-and-shoots will have an automatic focus. It'll be basic, but it'll be all very straightforward. Same goes for SLRs, which will either be manual focus on the lens or will have some automatic focus that is very similar, but a more basic version of the New York cameras today. Then you've got range finders, which are manual focus. But what I want to talk about and my point is that there are some point-and-shoots like this one, which have a manual focus, but they have these symbols on them designed to simplify the focusing process. The symbols will be a little bit confusing to beginners. On this lens, you can focus to three different symbols at a single person, two people, or a mountain, and clearly, that represents a single person or portrait, a small group, or infinity. What is confusing is that you might think that the mountain symbol is for focusing on these vast landscapes and very far away objects because it's a mountain. But in reality, this camera uses the mountain symbol to represent anything that is longer than five meters away, so just 15 feet away, which is across a room. On this camera, this is lower now, obviously, this is dial, but on this camera, infinity is just anything beyond seven meters. In both cases, that's far away from the lens, but it's not a mountain. The reason that's like this and the reason in photography you've got something called infinity focus is because as objects get further and further away from the lens, they all compress together into what is perceived to be the same focusing plane. The lens, in terms of focus, won't be able to distinguish between them. It's just you get to a certain point when everything is in focus. The easy way to visualize this is if you imagine you're looking at a cityscape or you're looking at the New York skyline, you know that loads of these buildings that you can see that appear to be in a line are really several hundred meters away from each other in distance, but from your perspective, they all get compressed together. This infinity distance and effect is more prominent the wider the lens you have. What I'm getting at is that if you're a beginner using this camera, you would be using this mountain focus way more often than you think, anything that's beyond five meters from the camera. Then that means that the transition between one person or two people, or a portrait or a small group, that would also happen earlier. The distance for one person is 1.5 meters and the distance for two people is three meters. You could easily have a group of people that's more than three meters from the camera if you're trying to get everyone in frame, and if it's more than three meters, you might go in-between, or then you're going to be five meters at the mountain. The reason I know these distances is because if you flip the camera upside down, there is a distance scale on it, which has all the exact meters and feet distances for each symbol. These aren't set. You can twist the dial at in-between the lens. You can actually focus significantly closer than one person or a portrait recommended distance. But it's just important to know how cameras perceive distance. The next few bits are going to be pretty trivial to any photographers or stuff, but they're really important for beginners. But at the end of this section, the whole end of this section, I'm going to circle back to exposure and film latitude, pushing, pulling film stops, and that is all super important, but it's very technical, so that will go over beginners heads. I'm going to let them to just skip to the next section if they don't want to listen to it, but any obvious professionals, just stick with the next few points for now and then we'll get into the meaty stuff. Continuing on about the symbols, whether you are a beginner or not, film cameras have some of the most random features and they're all unique in how they present themselves. There are a few completely unique features, but often just cameras have the quirkiest way of doing the same thing. Some for better, some for worse. It's all such a mixed vibe. But also, that's part of the fun and it's part of the reason, again, why photographers often trade cameras, just learning new ones. It's a great idea to go and try and find the manual online for your specific film camera. There are tons of resources that have all these manuals still from different manufacturers and that way, you can find out what that weird button does that you have no idea. You can also send me a picture of it on Instagram DMs or something and I'll see if I can help. But honestly, I might not been able to. Lots of point-and-shoots in particular have all these consumer modes, which are a little bit gimmicky and a little bit silly, and much more well-intentioned than they are practical. This is because these modes can't actually make that much of a difference even if they wanted to, they are so limited by and held back by what lens is actually on the camera? How open is the aperture? What film speed have you put into the camera? There are tons of different factors at play. Nevertheless, here are some of the really common ones and what they try to do. If you see a lady or a girl sometimes wearing a hat, that is a portrait mode and that is going to try and prioritize a shallower depth of field, so a more open aperture. If you see a mountain symbol, that is for landscape photography. This is not to do with the focusing or the symbol that I talked about a minute ago. This is a mode and it's much more to do with the aperture and the depth of field. If you see a flower that is macro mode, which prioritizes focusing objects that are closest to the lens. A person running would be sports mode. This is trying to prioritize a faster shutter speed to capture fast-moving motion. Then if you see a moon or stars, that is a night mode and that is prioritizing a longer shutter speed for not a time-lapse, but to let more light in because the scene is much darker. Then the next set of symbols you might see also modes, are the more advanced ones. But don't worry if you don't understand these at all because these are not just film modes, these are photography modes and principles, and they exist on pretty much every camera, all new cameras. One, they take a long time to get used to and learn anyway, but also, there are tons of other more in-depth resources on YouTube and Skillshare that are more just photography-based. But anyway, you've got the M, which stands for manual mode, so full control of everything. AV mode is aperture value or aperture priority mode. This is where you adjust the aperture and the ISO, and then the camera compensates with an automatic shutter. I use this for 95 percent of all shooting scenarios in photography across all kinds of cameras. I love aperture priority mode. TV stands for time value, which is essentially shutter priority mode, so you adjust and set whatever shutter speed you want and ISO, and then the camera will compensate with an automatic aperture. On a digital camera, you could separate these at the ISO on auto for all of those modes, but I don't think there's many situations where you'd want to do that. Again, on film, the ISO is fixed, so if you are setting a different ISO to the film you've put in, it's because you are deliberately trying to push or pull the film. Then P stands for program auto, which is very close to auto. The aperture and the shutter speed are both automatic. Then you can compensate by setting the ISO, by setting whether the flash is on or off, and by the setting up exposure compensation by a stop or a stop above. Lastly, on different buttons and features, there is often a battery check option denoted with a C on different cameras. Sometimes it's options in line with the on and off, so it'd be on/off/C. The battery check is one of the features that if it's there will be different in every single camera. Sometimes it beeps, sometimes it will flash a light, sometimes it will flash a light at different speeds or at different brightness to indicate whether the battery is full, or almost empty, or needs to be changed. Again, that's all something you'd have to look up in your own manual. The other thing that the battery check might do is that in the viewfinder of an [inaudible] , it might trigger the light meter and it'll flick all the way up if the battery is good. The other quirky thing that takes a lot of people by surprise when they first get started, especially if they're on a little point-and-shoot with a little screen, is if you have a role in and the battery in, and you're like midway through using the camera, even when you turn it off, the screen appears to remain on and the shutter count will remain there. This is super low power mode, so don't really worry about it. There's nothing you can do. It's just going to be there. It will last ages and ages. Last thing on batteries, if you ever know that you're not going to be using a camera for a while, or you are putting it away in storage, or you know that you're going on a big long trip and you're leaving the other cameras at home, just take the batteries out. It's much better for them if they're not stored with the batteries in over a long time, which can cause leaking and battery leaking can cause corrosion and damage, and you don't want that. Finally, on to exposure and latitude, you can spend years learning about exposure. It is such a massive part of photography and such a massive topic. Again, I'm going to try and stick as closely to what is unique to film. Beginners, you can just skip this or passively listen. Don't fret at all. This is advanced stuff for people who already have a knowledge in photography. I will explain things, but I'll explain some things more than others and I won't dwell on the explanations because again, a lot of these are more principles in photography and there are many more in-depth resources available online. Let's get cracking. My biggest tip for anyone coming from experience in digital, is with film, you just need to correctly expose your images. Overexpose, if anything, but definitely try not to underexpose. I definitely formed a habit in digital, especially shooting raw files, is that I would expose for the highlights and then in editing, I can bring up all the shadows as you retain on the information in the shadows. Obviously, I would prioritize exposing the subject correctly and having the subject as well lit as I can. But in harsh or high contrast or tricky lighting situation, I would resort to this exposed to the highlights tactic, I suppose. As anyone in digital knows, you cannot retain any information in completely blown-out highlights. Therefore, this habit of slightly underexposing is not a bad one, but you'd need to actively switch your mindset when you're shooting on film. In digital photography, when someone speaks about an overexposed or a blown-out image, you instantly imagine an all bright, all white image with completely clipped highlights. In film, this isn't necessarily so. Film still can absolutely be overexposed and unrecoverably so, but it has an incredible tolerance to being overexposed and you can retain detail in the highlights. Again, not if you overdo it, but so much more so than with digital, and especially for color negative film. This ability to tolerate multiple stops of exposure above and below the correct exposure is a film's latitude, which I know I mentioned in previous sections a few times, and I said I'd come back to it. So here we are. Now, before I go any further into latitude, I'm talking about color negative film here. Color reversal and slide film has a much lower tolerance to being incorrectly exposed and behaves a lot like digital. If you need to push or pull slide film, again, we'll come on to push and pull in a sec, I highly recommend that you give instructions to the lab to push or pull in the film the developing process, because it is much less likely and much less recoverable by scanning it at different brightnesses. Also, black and white film is also pretty desirable to correctly expose. It's much less common to push and pull black and white film. A really important note is that even on color negative film, you can't just be like, "I'll just overexpose all the time. It'll be grand." Overexposure does have an effect on the image. It often makes it more saturated, which sometimes can be a desired effect. But also, other times, there can be these colors shifts and slight changes in the hues. It's just important to know that while the film can tolerate being overexposed, the image won't be identical to if it had been correctly exposed. Also, last little caveat is that there is a variation within color film too. Cheaper films often have less of a latitude, and then there is a variation between different stocks and different brands as well. I'll start by clearing up really quickly what a stop of light means because I'm going to start to turn around the word stop a lot, and if you don't know what that means, this won't make any sense. Increasing your exposure by one stop of light means letting in twice as much light and decreasing your exposure by one stop means halving the amount of light allowed in. Now, this science is easy and straightforward. Well, because you are having and doubling the light, these increments are exponentials. It gets a little bit more complicated when you talk about adjusting by more than one stop. For example, if you overexpose by two stops, it's actually four times the amount of light that's coming in to the power of two, and if you overexpose by three stops, it's actually eight times the amount of light coming in. It's base two, it's like binary. However, once this clicks, you'll notice that so many of the common terms and numbers in photography move in increments of one stop and are often stops apart from each other. For instance, ISO, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, those increments are doubling the number. But that's not a coincidence because it is going up in stops of light. In each increase, the ISO is doubled, becoming WAS sensitive, letting in twice as much light. ISO 100-200 is an increase of one stop. ISO 200-400 is also an increase of one stop. Similarly with common shutter speeds, 1/130 of a second, 60th of a second, 1/125 of a second, 1/250 of a second, 1/500 of a second, 1/1,000 of a second, in each of those increments, you're going the other way, but you're still moving in stops, each time, you are halving the amount of light allowed in. With F-stops too, F1.2, F1.4, F2, F2.8, 4, 5, 6, 8, 11, 16, 22. Now, because of how the F-stop is calculated, it's a fraction, so these increments aren't doubling the numbers, but they are still moving in stops. I won't go over the explanation, but F1.2 to F1.4 is one stop of light. It's the exact same step as going from F8 to F11. In each case, you're halving the amount of light allowed in. Yes, you can pick the in-between values of ISO 160, a shutter speed of 1/50 of a second, F-stop of F22. It's just more common that you will hear the ones that go up in stops. Finally, we go back to latitude and pushing and pulling film. Hopefully you have heard of the term pushing and pulling film. They come into play both when shooting and when developing. It's pretty much linked. But I'll go over developing in the next section. You you push and pull film using the exposure compensation and the shutter speed, but it's more common to manually adjust the ISO. That's also common when shooting expired film. I'm just going to use our ISO as example, but you could compensate in other ways, but the principle is the same. If you were to push them while shooting, you would be underexposing. So setting your ISO higher than the rating on the film actually is. Essentially, you're telling the camera that the film is more sensitive to light than it actually is. Thus speeding up your exposures and your shutter speed, and letting less light and underexposing the film. But why would you ever want to do that? You ask. Well, let's say in a very low light situation where you want to try and maintain a minimum shutter speed so that your subjects don't blur. Especially if you're shooting with an automatic camera, you would want to tell the camera the ISO incorrectly so that you would give the impression that the film is more sensitive than it is, allowing you to maintain that higher shutter speed. Yes, all your images will be underexposed, but that's the whole point of pushing. When you underexpose like this, it'll usually mean that you're going to have to keep the film in the development process for longer and thus, you're pushing it. Again, I'll go into that in the next section. If you were to pull film while shooting, you would be doing the exact opposite. You would be setting your ISO lower than the film rate at ISO. A lower ISO being less sensitive slows down your exposure and thus lets in more light, hence the overexposure. To illustrate this effect and exposure on film, there is a great blog post on PetaPixel titled how exposure effects film and this is where these lovely graphics come from. Thank you to them for putting them together. They took the same photos at different exposures and then scanned them at equal brightness. To be clear, these images are after they had been corrected while being scanned. This image of the guy in the red check shirt was shot on Fuji 400H, and then this one of the girl with the plant was shot on Portra 400. Both films known for a good exposure latitude. You can clearly see across the full 13 stop range, six stops below, correctly exposed, and then six stops above, that, the film performs ludicrously well, especially when overexposed. If you're coming from digital, six stops overexposed would not look like that. Even three stops overexposed would look drastically different even after being corrected. There is still some leeway in underexposure. More so for Portra, but not really more than a stop or two. As I said, unlike digital, you really shouldn't underexpose film unless you have to. Anyway, that wraps up this section. I hope that was helpful. I hope there was lots of tips for actually practically going out and shooting, and that somewhat clears up exposure and exposure latitude and pushing and pulling film. Let's get on to the final section, which is developing and scanning. 9. Understand Developing Negatives, Scanning & Printing: On to the final main section, understanding, developing, and scanning, and printing. I had the chance to call in to my local lab, Conns Cameras, to take some footage of their process and equipment so that I can overlay it and show you as I go through and talk about the basic developing essentials. I figured it is and would be a pretty difficult process to visualize if you haven't ever seen what film developing is like, so here is a little peek behind the curtain as I go. When you go to develop your film at the lab, you will hand in your canister, which will highly likely be color negative, so C-41 process, so all very straightforward. Obviously, this tail won't be sticking out because you'll have it rewinded all the way into the film. It doesn't really matter if it is, just if you ever do not rewind the whole way and it's like this, make sure you bend it or mark it so that you know that it's a finished roll and not new new roll. It's something to do with the lab. Obviously, they'll develop whatever you hand them, but just for your own reference. If you're watching this from Ireland and in Dublin, I highly recommend Conns. They are so consistent with their results and they're super sound. If you are in the States, try go to a camera shop, or a film lab, or somewhere, a specialist. I've actually had a lot of film developed in the States over multiple different summers that I was there. In my personal experience, unless you have to, I would avoid pharmacy joints, such as CVS, Rite Aid, any of them for film developing. They offer developing, but don't ever do it in-house, which is obvious if you think about it, but people might assume that they do. Every roll has to get sent out and then it can take weeks to come back in. In my experience, again, it's never on time. Also, rolls can get lost. They sometimes don't return the negatives or they cut them weirdly. Often, if you get scans, you'll get them on a CD, which is just such an awkward medium for transfer these days. It's so rare now to find a computer or a laptop with a disk drive that you can actually get the files off, and you can rarely get the CD only. You have to pay for prints even if you don't want them. Because they process them at these big bulk centers, they will almost always ignore any sort of special instructions from you. Also, in my experience, the colors in the scans were always really off, like way off. Which was actually quite surprising to me because they supposedly, I sourced them to official Kodak or Fuji labs depending on the pharmacy. But anyway, you can scan them again yourself and let it be known that I have had a really good experiences with proper film labs in the States. When I go into a film lab, practically, I always ask for their roll to be developed and scanned, that's it. The scanned files will be delivered to your email, sometimes a USB or a CD, depending where you are, but for the most part nowadays, by and large, it'll be emailed with a service such as WeTransfer. Then, crucially I return to the shop to collect the negatives. That way I can store them and scan them myself or have their rescanned again, and I can even have them scanned to a higher resolution than I initially had them scanned to, which I will come to in just a sec. But please keep and organize your negatives. I can't state that enough. I have in the past had negatives destroyed or not collected them, and I regret it to this day so much. Specific batches of photos that I somehow I just forgot to collect or chose not to collect, and I have all their negatives from different years, and I'm like, "Ah." It annoys me so much that I don't have them, so collect your negatives. While I highly recommend in general that you print your work, I have several reasons why I don't ever opt for those 6 by 4 inch prints. Number 1, those prints are novelty size, they're really small, but also once you have a certain number of them, there's no way of displaying them, and they'll just end up in a pile in a drawer. Plus, there's also no point in printing any bad shots or missed exposures, and on any given roll, there's only going to be a handful that are your favorites. Secondly, I will nearly always minorly edit the scan, so not at all to the same extent that I would edit a photo that I've shot digitally, but sometimes the white balance might be a little bit off or the image needs to be cropped. Therefore, the scans are much more useful to me. Thirdly, I will 99 percent of the time be viewing them and sharing them digitally, at least first. Fourth, and lastly, if I do want to get them printed, I can still do so at anytime. In fact, I can choose to only get the best ones printed out the batch, and I can print at a bigger size than the little novelty size, and I can do so after any minor edits have been made. Thus, the image that is printed is actually the final image that I want. When developing film, the basic process is, now obviously this completely differs depending on the technique you're using, but usually the first thing would be that the film is prepared and pre-washed. Then secondly, it'll be placed in a developing chemical bath or several, followed by a stopping bath, which is often just water to stop and complete the developing process. This is then followed by a fixing chemical or in some cases a bleach-fixing chemical, which is often shortened to blix, to remove and, well, dissolve any leftover silver halide crystals, leaving just the silver medal. Then this is followed by washing off any remaining chemicals and drying the film. Then finally the negatives or positives for slide film will be cut and scanned. Different processes can involve multiple baths, and are also often time or temperature sensitive. So you must be precise with your timings and transfers, and also the chemicals must be at certain temperatures. I realized that when explaining the steps of the process there, that that is really in principle and not depending on where you're developing, it'll complete different. In labs and in any shop or industrial level place where they're developing rolls in bulk, they will have big machines that are completely automated, that are enclosed, where you put the film in and then it does the exact same process over and over again with chemicals at the right temperature for the exact amount of time. It's all very easy. Then they can manually adjust the settings of those machines for different types of film and so on. Those different steps would more apply if you are developing at home where you'll be dipping in and out of your own baths in the dark, or it might all happen within a self-contained developing tank where you're pouring the chemicals in at given times, it depends on the setup. The principle of the steps is still the same, but it looks a little different in different places. Traditional black and white film is the most straightforward to develop, and that is why most people who develop at home either only develop black and white film or start off developing black and white film. Not only is it very straightforward, it's often cheaper too. It typically only has one layer of light-sensitive emulsion that is only sensitive to the value or density of light, not per color. Therefore, that makes it much more simple and you have more room for error. Then there is the C-41 developing process, which is mainly used for color negative film. It's by far the most popular developing process around. It's what your lab will use for any color negative film that you get developed. Color film has multiple layers of light-sensitive emulsion, each sensitive to a different color. It is a little harder to develop yourself, as you must be much more precise with time and temperature than with black and white film, but it's still very doable. Just note that C-41 film often doesn't have a stop bath, often the blix will go in with the developer. Then there is E-6, which is the developing process used for color reversal or slide film. E-6 film also has multiple layers of light-sensitive emulsion, and during the developing process, multiple developing baths are used, as well as a reversal bath that turns the negative silver image on each layer into a positive transparency. Although there are more steps, the process isn't much harder than C-41, just E-6 processing is incredibly temperature-specific, even more so than C-41. This means that precise temperature control is crucial to success. Again, it is still doable at home, but you'd want to be pretty comfortable developing C-41 first. E-6 chemicals are often also more expensive and have a shorter shelf life once they're mixed, which logistically makes it quite hard for people at home who aren't developing all the time or in bulk. E-6 chemicals in general are less common and can be much harder to obtain in certain parts of the world. Then there is cross processing, which is the deliberate developing of film in a different chemical process from which the film was designed for. So developing color reversal film with C-41 and vice versa, color negative film with E-6, the wrong way round essentially. Cross processing creates crazy color shifts and exposure changes, adding contrast, also taking it away depending on what you do. It gets really complicated when predicting the results of cross processing, and some people do that because they try to compensate when shooting, knowing that they're going to cross process the film. Personally, I'm a big fan of trying to replicate colors as they are or as prettier versions. At least for now, cross processing isn't at all appealing to me. I think to be honest, some of the shifts look just awful, but then also it look cool and each to their own, it's your art. Lastly, on developing processes, just because I said I would briefly mention it before, instant film, like Polaroids. I I have one here unfortunately, but when you have a Polaroid, obviously it has that really iconic look. If anyone has ever used a Polaroid camera, when you buy film, they come in this tightly, almost square pack, and you put it in. The first thing that happens is that a blank gets popped out of the camera. Once that's gone, all the rest of the film is then ready to go in a line like soldiers, and the first one is ready to be exposed, then the camera exposes it and it doesn't print. I think some people think Polaroids print the images, but actually what happens is, you know way instant film has that really iconic shape with the white border, but then there's this thicker white border at one end, inside there, there are chemicals, developing chemicals. After the photo is taken, as the film gets ejected from the camera, the chemicals are squeezed out of that pouch and across the image, and then as soon as that happens and the photo comes out, it starts developing itself on the spot. Just by the way, you shouldn't shake them, and the reason people keep them in darkness, I don't know if it's actually better or not, but it's to do with the developing that's happening. Now, as I mentioned in the last section, you can push and pull film while shooting, but in reality, that really refers to the developing process, what you have to do while developing to compensate for what you had to do while shooting. If you underexpose by two stops while shooting, you can compensate by extending the developing time and pushing it by two stops. Pushing film is quite effective, but it adds contrast to the image. Similarly, if you overexposed while shooting, you could compensate by shortening the developing process, thus pulling the film by a certain number of stops. Again, though, this is not without consequence. Pulling film, especially by more than one stop, does not have a good effect on an image. In fact, when overexposing a film that has a lot of latitude, like a color negative film, it would be much better and it will be much more recommended to just develop it normally and then compensate when scanning, rather than actually pulling the film. Pulling film has much more of a dramatic impact on the image than pushing film. Therefore, pulling film is much less commonly asked for, except for on color reversal or slide film where you might need to pull the film because it doesn't have the same latitude. The moral of the story is, it is still a really good idea to get your exposure right when shooting. This is just something you can do if you are stuck in a situation while shooting or if you make a mistake while shooting. Now, I know that the terms push and pull are really confusing and easy to get wrong or mix up as to which is which, so alternatively when giving instructions to your lab, you don't necessarily have to say, "Can I have this pushed by two stops?" Instead, explain to them that you underexposed by two stops and they'll know that means you want the film pushed. Final thing I want to mention is scanning. Scanning on the surface is very straightforward. The negatives are scanned using a scanner, and I'm not going to dive too deep into this. You could technically use a scanner on the top of your printer at home, but there are much better scanners available when it comes to getting a really high resolution result. Labs will have specialized scanners with mounts for film sizes and film types, all to speed up their workflow and bulk. You when you get a roll developed in the lab and then you ask for scans, the default scans that you will get will be JPEGs that are about 2-5 megabytes in size and they'll be perfect for viewing on screens and for small prints. The pixel resolution will be decent at 2,500 pixels by 3,500 pixels. However, the actual resolution when compared to printing will be quite low. The DPI or dots per inch. Increasing the DPI increases the amount of information in the file, thus increasing how large it can be printed. For screens and web viewing, 72 DPI is perfect, and it is probably what you would get by default with your scan to JPEGs. You wouldn't even really notice at all, even if they were more than that, unless you were editing them in a professional software, because the pixel resolution is still so much greater than HD screens. Now, all labs will offer you, if you request it, the ability to have your negative scanned as bigger JPEGs or more likely, uncompressed TIFFs. TIFFs are much larger files to preserve quality for editing and printing and archiving, comparable in some ways to shooting raw on a digital camera. It will likely cost more to get TIFF scans though, because they take longer per image. While they are great for saving and having, if you're a photographer, there are two reasons that labs don't offer TIFF scans by default. Number 1, they are much more work, but Number 2, the average person or consumer won't notice, but also does not need a TIFF-sized file. If you are a beginner or heck even a pro, don't at all feel like because I've mentioned that JPEGs are lower-quality, that a TIFF is something that you need. The sizes of TIFFs on a disk are really big. Let's say some consumer got TIFF scans and then they put them on their phone, that would take up so much unnecessary space, and again, we wouldn't notice the quality difference at all on a screen. In fact, if you tried to post an uncompressed TIFF to Instagram, it would almost certainly crash the app. The compression algorithm would break. TIFF files are for photographers with hard drives and are designed for editing, and like with a digital raw file, you would export JPEGs from your editing software, from Lightroom to share online. This is the great thing about film though, because the resolution is almost infinite. Not quiet, it'll get really grainy if you go massive, but it's more limited by how good your scanner is, even if you shot on a disposable camera, which is mad. If you get negatives scanned as small JPEGs but keep the negatives, down the line at any stage, you can get the negative rescanned at a much bigger resolution if needs be for printing, etc. Medium format film and large format film with the negatives being so much bigger than 35 millimeter, have even more potential, and the quality is just bonkers. That is why so many print and magazine photographers still shoot medium format. You could put it on a billboard. Unlike 35 millimeter, which is still used today for music videos and for Hollywood films, the quality of IMAX has still not yet been matched by the very latest in digital cinema cameras. In general, for printing, remember screens is 72, the minimum recommended DPI is 240-300 DPI, so let's call it 300 DPI for printing. Therefore, depending on how big a print you want to make, you would scan your file much more than 300 DPI. People recommend, for archiving purposes, to scan negatives at a minimum of 2,800 DPI, but more like 3,000-4,000 DPI. To give you an idea of file sizes and pixel resolutions, and please note that these can vary so much with so many factors, but anyway, at 35 millimeter negative scanned as TIFF at 2,800 DPI will be about a 30 megabyte file; at 4,000 DPI, it will be about 60 megabytes, so double in the file size with a pixel resolution of 4,000 by 6,000 pixels; then a medium format scan at 4,000 DPI could be anywhere from 70 megabytes to 120 megabytes, and the pixel resolution there would be about 8,000-10,000 pixels on either side. Then a large format TIFF scan at 4,000 DPI would be something like easily 500-600 megabytes per image, which is a massive file, and the pixel resolution there would be something like 20,000 pixels on the short side, so ludicrous stuff. One final caveat, I know that you could print a 72 DPI image, quite big, and not notice. Nine times out of 10, people wouldn't notice, especially if they're standing back from the print. I'm not recommending you do this, but honestly you'd be surprised. I think it's just of note that people can get way too hung up on the technicalities and everything has to be at this resolution to be perfect, but also the average consumer is so rarely printing at any sort of big size. If you're printing on high quality photo paper or canvas, I've surprised myself honestly with some pretty low res files and they look great. In fact, they look better than great. Next, extremely quickly, darkroom printing. What is darkroom printing? Well, essentially a negative is mounted, a light is shone through it onto a light-sensitive piece of photo paper, which is setting in a developing emulsion, and an exposure is created on the page, basically printing with light instead of ink, a little like a massive instant film photo. It almost certainly will require a few attempts to get the exposure of the print correct, but exactly like taking a photo, this is based on how long the light is shone through the negative and onto the paper. Darkroom prints can be really nice, although digital printing has come a long way and is also really nice. What people sometimes do is that they will take their darkroom print, which came basically directly from the negative, and then they will scan that print so that it can be blown up even bigger. But that is a whole other topic. Finally, storing negatives. Please collect and store your negatives. If you haven't been doing so up until now, I highly recommend you start, start on your next roll. Again, so handy for rescanning if you ever want to get them printed. If you ever want to do a darkroom print, you're going to need the negative. I'm currently in the middle of reorganizing all of my own negatives, so I don't have any cool filing system to show you. I will almost certainly share that on Instagram when I have that done. But practically people recommend that you store them in glassine paper pockets or in plastic pockets. Just make sure that they are acid-free so that over long periods of storage, they don't degrade the negatives. Also keep them somewhere dry and at room temperature, just not in an overly hot or humid spot. Also a good idea to keep them somewhere dark. Again, just not in direct sunlight. Often people will keep them in a folder. They will also get covers for their folders, but this actually keeps the dust out, which is another thing that you should try and avoid. That is it for developing and scanning. Again, I know that was a really long, technical section, but I hope it made sense. I hope it was helpful. See you in the final task. 10. Task - Shoot your first roll: If you've made it this far, I just want to say, thank you so much. Thank you for watching all of that and joining me. I know it was super long and super technical, but I really, really hope that you learned something. Now, finally, it's over to you. I have a task for you, and that is to get out and shoot your first row of 35 millimeter film. Step 1, get yourself a film camera, an SLR or a [inaudible] were my recommendations from earlier, depending on what you want to get out of film. Step 2, get yourself a roll of film, something cheap to get you started with. But again, don't be afraid to invest in something nicer and more premium once you get into this. Step 3, load it into your camera. Make sure you check that it is loaded correctly and that you set things like your ISO and then get out shooting. Step 4, rewind this and get it into the lab to get developed. Keep your negatives. Step 5, if you want to, I would love if you would upload your favorite image or images to the Skillshare class project. Just make sure that it's public so that I get notified and that I can actually leave you feedback. But that is all. I really hope that you learned something new and that you found that interesting. If you did and you enjoy this, I would absolutely love if you could leave a review or recommendation that would really help me aid but also more people will find and see the course. If you've any further questions at all, send me a message on social media. I'm at @guyboggan everywhere. You can also drop me an email at info@guyb.ie. If you want to look at my work or pick up any prints that I have available, you can follow me on Instagram again @guyboggan, or you can look at shop.guyb.ie. Thank you so much. Generally if you're watching this right now and you've got the whole way through and the whole way to the end of this, I appreciate you so much. I really hope that this was worth your time. Again, I would love if you could leave a review or recommendation. Thank you so much and I will see you soon in the next one. I don't know when the next will be. You can also head over to my YouTube channel where I will definitely be making many more videos, tutorial-style videos, obviously, not as long. See you soon. Also, thank you again. [inaudible]