BetterPhoto Q&A
Category: New Questions

re

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March 17, 2002

You should use the film that matches what you have envisioned for the photograph. For beginners, this requires experimentation with various films to find those that work best for creating what they want. Just like the camera bodies and lenses, film is also a tool.

Some general purpose consumer films to initially try:

Color negative:
Kodak Gold 200
Kodak Royal Gold 200
Fuji Superia 200

B/W negative:
Kodak Tri-X
Kodak TMax 400
Ilford HP5

The Ilford film is a pro B/W made by Ilford, a British company. The store where you buy film may or may not have it. Don't worry about it if you cannot find it. None of these are highly specialized. All of them are used for a wide variety of photography by many photographers. If you were to ask: "What's the best film?" (a loaded question) or "What's your favorite film?" you would get a confusingly large variety of replies with a lot of disagreement among them. Why? Different people have a different vision for what they want from their photographs.

I don't recommend diving into slide films right away. You would need some method for viewing them, and printing them is much more expensive. As you gain some experience, you may wish to eventually try them and start using them.

I could give you a list of what I use, a mix of color and B/W print and slide films, but that wouldn't be very meaningful. From experience in experimenting and using a wide range of films over time I know how they will render an image when printed. I pick the one(s) that will do what I am looking for when it's printed (in the case of slides, when they're also projected). The list of what I use has also evolved over time. I continue to experiment with them. The choices are mostly influenced by what, when, where and how I'm making photographs and what, when, where, how, and for whom they will be used afterward. This goes back to my first paragraph about film being yet another tool in creating images.

Most important of all, work on being able to "visualize" what you want a photograph to be before you put the viewfinder to your eye. This is another skill that requires practice to develop. It doesn't have to be in fine detail either. For me, it's more often a general idea of what I want and the small details are left for when I make it.

-- John

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March 17, 2002

Light:
Light is the only thing that film records. Its direction(s), and its "qualities" (harsh, direct, indirect, diffused) are more important to me than camera bodies, lenses and films. Although there are many other important aspects of the photographs I make, light *is* by far, *the* most important.

-- John

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March 17, 2002