All Color and Black and White Film Stocks Compared from the slanted lens

Old-N-Feeble said:

IMO, beginners should start with a manual 135 camera and shoot slide film. This will help them (force them) to understand proper metering and exposure compensation. Then, if they want to learn ultimate control in analog grayscale, get a 4x5 with one lens and Adam's ZS books.

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35mm, sure but slides ? they cost like 20$ a roll when you include processing
they take a couple of weeks to get back from mall away processing if you don' thave a local
lab that does E6 // and probably not the best/easiest thing to develop oneself with no experience //
probably c41/ stragiht color is the best first film to shoot as long as as the person brings it to a place that
returns the film .. last i checked rite aid still returned film but its best to check //

Vw1302 said:

I am not hater but this comparison is useless.. there are more films in the market, every works with different developer, no experience with acros and question like "why ilford produce 100iso and 125iso film... really????

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yeah its kind of weird ilford has a 50 and 125 iso film/ at least the 125 doesn't auto delete the latent images if
you wait too long. what does experience with acros have to do with anything ? im not a hater either
but why does it matter if he has or doesn't hav experience with acros ? ive been shooting film since 1970
and i have very little experience with acros ... he dropped the film off at a pro lab, not everyone who
is going to try film wants or cares about 2 or 5 different types of developers and esoteric differences
between film stocks...

just watched it again, i liked the video. went to the site and saw the outtakes.
if i was a NOOB, definately useful.

Old-N-Feeble said:

I'm quite sure if I'd started with transparency film with a manual camera, I would've learned proper exposure technique much sooner.

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That's right!
And that simple home truth has been lost on generations of photographers who are more at home besmirching slide film than singing its praises.

faberryman said:

I understand some people want to make it mysterious, but analog photography is not that hard. I learned it as an adolescent. Whether analog or digital, doing something well always requires effort.

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I agree but to do analog well does require more knowledge, forethought, and skill than auto-everything digital.

jnanian said:

35mm, sure but slides ? they cost like 20$ a roll when you include processing
they take a couple of weeks to get back from mall away processing if you don' thave a local
lab that does E6 // and probably not the best/easiest thing to develop oneself with no experience //
probably c41/ stragiht color is the best first film to shoot as long as as the person brings it to a place that
returns the film .. last i checked rite aid still returned film but its best to check //

<snip>

just watched it again, i liked the video. went to the site and saw the outtakes.
if i was a NOOB, definately useful.

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A bit pricey, yes, but one thing slides do better than any other film is... tell the truth, and nothing but the truth. Shooting negative film is so forgiving that a newb will often never see their exposure errors. Slides do not lie. It won't take more than a few rolls for a newb shooting slide film in a manual camera to get the general idea about controlling exposure and transpose that newfound knowledge to print film. I think it's an excellent teaching tool.

So, if we're to do analog well, we need to have reasonably good understanding and control of the medium. This comparison doesn't even attempt to do that. Again, I intend no disrespect and this is only my opinion. I think this comparison does more harm than good. For one thing, when a newb doesn't get similar results as were seen in the comparison, they'll be confused regarding why. Had the test been done under properly controlled conditions with specific goals set, it would have been more useful.

Old-N-Feeble said:

I'm quite sure if I'd started with transparency film with a manual camera, I would've learned proper exposure technique much sooner.

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That is what I learned on, almost by default. Here in Japan they don't print the outtakes, so all my experimenting on colour neg film meant I didn't have much to show for it (no film scanners at that time). In order to be able to see exactly what I had shot, I just switched over to slides. The interesting thing was I almost never had a problem with metering - my camera (Nikon FE) always metered correctly, so I never understood the fear people had about being even just half a stop over or under because it had never been an issue for me.

I really learned Zone focusing and getting the exposure exactly right shooting slides on a folding 35mm camera that did not have a range meter. Color slide film and processing was reasonably affordable for a teenager back then.

Tor-Einar Jarnbjo said:

Nowadays, when colour film is scanned and post-processed digitally, and perhaps even for most purposes looked at digitally with just the one or another odd paper print ever made, the significance of the emulsion properties is almost lost, since you have a bucket full of much more powerful tools for brightness, contrast and colour control in your image processing software, than what used to be available in the 'old days'.

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I disagree but I see where you're coming from. I think photogs still choose the appropriate film for different occasions. I know I do.

This shot on Ektar looks significantly different than this shot on Velvia 50 though I used the exact same scanner for both. You could likely edit one to look more like the other but I'm not aware of anyone doing that.

Punker said:

I disagree but I see where you're coming from. I think photogs still choose the appropriate film for different occasions. I know I do.

This shot on Ektar looks significantly different than this shot on Velvia 50 though I used the exact same scanner for both. You could likely edit one to look more like the other but I'm not aware of anyone doing that.

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Great examples!





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Rudeofus said:

This video may accidentally reveal, that differences between B&W films are not nearly as significant as some fanatics make them appear, a bit more reserve for underexposure here, a bit more image detail there, but nothing which will make or break a photo shooting.

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I found the video interesting but failed to see the kind of differences in the sense of "extent" that they discussed. The stand-out one in terms of visible difference was D3200 which had a much lower contrast look as has been discussed and largely agreed upon here at Photrio

I could see very little that distinguished Acros in league table terms from the other films and from the time they spend discussing the merits of Acros they didn't seem to see a lot of distinguishing features either

pentaxuser

Punker said:

I disagree but I see where you're coming from. I think photogs still choose the appropriate film for different occasions. I know I do.

This shot on Ektar looks significantly different than this shot on Velvia 50 though I used the exact same scanner for both. You could likely edit one to look more like the other but I'm not aware of anyone doing that.

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I am not sure if you have linked to the correct images, but they look very different. Mostly however, because they show two completely different motifs. And I am not sure what you are trying to say by comparing a negative and a postive film scan. Even if you have scanned them both on the same scanner, the scan software will have two completely different 'pipelines' for processing the raw data from a negative film and from a positive film scan and it is honestly impossible to tell here which difference is introduced by the scanner software and what actually comes from the difference in the emulsions.

To me, the scan of your Ektar shot does not look like Ektar at all. I may be fooled by haze over the lake, but the Ektar emulsion has a much higher colour saturation and more 'poppy' colours than what can be seen on your scan. I would have expected greener trees, redder roofs, bluer skies and a higher contrast. I did some shots recently on Ektar myself and here is a scan from an RA-4 wet-print from an Ektar exposure. Colour, contrast and brightness are adjusted to look as close to the paper print as possible. Please ignore the light leak in the upper right corner:



So, now we have my Ektar scan, which looks completely different from your Ektar scan. Did we happen to use two different Ektar branded films with completely different emulsions, or is it not more likely that any difference we see is caused by whatever we or automatisms in our software did different in post-processing? Think about it.

Common... this is becoming pointless...

some reading by users is in order, some practice too...

do you know eachother scanners? do you know eachother laboratories... color is a bit more standardized but: differences exist!
you are just proving the point of the guy that made the video... over thin air...
and man everyone is doing saturation and contrast adjustments to scans... even your scanner is!!!