Preparing a film 101 presentation for a student run photography society.

[ced]

Before going into too complex (boring stuff) touch on "camera obscura" still simple but interesting...

 

[jtk]

Bolex.

 

[jtk]

Perhaps you should video-record pieces of your presentation in advance, and afterward to record audience responses. Modern times.

 

[jtk]

Remember, virtually everybody in your audience has had a very capable still camera/audio recorder/video camera since their middle school. It'll be crucial to address that reality..

 

[Rainbow]

How did it all go assuming it has happened? I don't think I ever spotted a date for the presentation

pentaxuser

Sorry for the belated response to this,

I'm not a keen nor experienced presenter, besides that it went alright. I asked a few people to prepare answers to the question "Why do you shoot film?" before I started presenting, and that struck up some decent conversation between the society members there, so that was good. At the end I did a little demo of loading a jobo tank blindfolded for the sake of showing people how easy it is to use our darkroom to develop your own film, they liked that as well.

If I had to do it again, I'd use solely pictures to illustrate EVERYTHING. No graphs in it, at all, EVER.

I think the ideal structure would be:

• Cover a handful of analogue processes that aren't just using film, as some people are likely looking into film solely because they want something that isn't digital.
• Cover a couple of reasons why you'd want to shoot film. As aforementioned this is a easy point to get some audience participation.
  • An easy segue into the next topic is that there's a bunch of different kinds of cameras people might want to try out (because let's face it, some people are just tinkerers who are more interested in what they're taking the photo with than the photo).
• Do a whistlestop tour of the major kinds of cameras you'll come across that don't really exist in the digital world (e.g. TLRs), and mention how whatever you pick should ideally be suited to your shooting style.
• Mention that metering with older cameras isn't going to be as easy, people are used to matrix meters nowadays that just do all the work for them (i.e., tell them what an exposure compensation dial is generally used for)
• Whiz through the film formats that are available today (so nobody goes out and buys a camera that you can't get film for any more).

Then take a break, a little recap, let people ask questions, before moving onto actually talking about film.
My objective here was to inform people on what film to buy for themselves, what makes films different to each other:

• Explain that different kinds of film need processing differently, and tell them which are the common ones available where you live (which you can process in your group's darkroom etc.)
• Mention that with black and white you have a choice of developers and that they can change the look of your film, be useful in certain scenarios, and extend its ISO range (while C-41, E-6 etc. are standardised).
• Talk about film speed - everyone should be familiar with the concept of ISO. Once you load a film into your camera you're committed to that ISO, you can't change mid roll etc. You've got to think ahead!
• Talk about pushing and pulling, and explain what they do with PICTURES (the Ilford galleries are an easy place to find example images). Explain that it's not the same as just under/overexposing.
• Talk about grain (how different films can render textures differently etc. - use more PICTURES), and just state that you'll likely develop a preference over time.
• Tell people about reciprocity failure - there's nothing worse than having someone come back to you with a bunch of long exposures that weren't quite long enough.
• Finally, tell people that film isn't the final image. In most cases it's best thought of as a "RAW file", an intermediary stage of the image. There's a whole world of possibilities to explore when it comes to digitising it or, even better, printing it.

Then again, a little recap touching on the basic points of what was covered. Take questions etc.

I did throw spectral sensitivity in there, but it really wasn't necessary. If you want to, you could mention that you can get all sorts of whacky x-ray and infrared films, but nobody's really going to care about if something's ortho or panchromatic. It just seemed topical at the time given Ilford's started cutting down ortho plus and I thought people might want to know what's so special about it.

Hopefully that's a decent guide for anyone else who ever has to do this again in the future.