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500 shades of gray: tips for shooting black and white film

If you are new to film photography, chances are that you will get into shooting black and white sooner or later because you have been inspired by the masterpieces of our great geniuses. But before you become the next Henri Cartier-Bresson or Sebastião Salgado there are a few things you should know.

Seeing the world in Black and White is the main struggle for everyone at the beginning but like with everything else, it can be learned and practiced with a simple understanding of how colors are translated into BW. The human eye can distinguish approximately 500 shades of gray (some are limited to 50 but that’s another story!), on the other hand, the scope of colors is almost unlimited.

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2 Cheap Films You’ll Love To Shoot With

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It’s about time to give some fame to two cheap films in price but by no means in quality. It can be tempting to go for the expensive ones when buying rolls but let’s not forget about the bottom of the shelf.

The films you are going to read about have some serious advantages on top of their inexpensive price. If you are just starting it may be a good opportunity to practice without breaking the bank. However, if you already have some experience, you can always try these two guys and compare the results to the more famous films you are used shooting with. I’m sure they won’t have anything to be ashamed of!

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Let Film Dating’s quiz help you choose the perfect film for you

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Whether you already shoot film or you’ve only been thinking about it, picking the right film for you can be difficult. There’s so many to choose from, and new ones, are popping up every day. Many film shooters chose long ago what they prefer, but how many did you try before making that decision?

This fun web app from friend of DIYP, photographer Vincent Moschetti, is here to help you out with Film Dating. It’s essentially a short quiz. It asks you to pick some images in order to figure out what you like. Once confident in its assumptions, it suggests a film based on your image choices. I’m not usually a big fan of quizzes like these, but I did think the result on this one was kind of interesting, for me at least.

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How to edit colour film negatives in Photoshop in a few simple steps

Scanning colour negative is without a doubt the most irritating part of my workflow.

Since I started to shoot with film, it has been the source of great frustration, especially in terms of colour rendition. Each colour negative that I scan shows and dreadful blue or green cast and it’s a pain to get rid of in Lightroom.

THE STRUGGLE WAS REAL, UNTIL TODAY!

I’ll take the example of Kodak Portra because that’s the one that causes me the most trouble. When you look online at images shot with this film, most of them are looking amazing and show beautiful colours. But when I scan a negative of Portra, it gives this pallid and nauseous look to my poor model.

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3 beginner mistakes new film photographers make and how to avoid them

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Patience is not one of my many virtues and practice as always been my favorite over theory. Instead of taking the time to learn the essentials before starting, I usually go head down into it and comes what may! This behaviour has caused me disappointment, loss of time and money.

That’s why I have decided to be more thoughtful and cautious in my approach to photography and things in general. From these bad experiences came the idea to gather the 3 biggest mistakes I did so you can easily avoid them. Each mistake here is based on my personal experiences. I’m sure some of you may encounter similar difficulties so do yourself a favor and avoid some disillusions by taking a few minutes to read this.

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How to get the best contrast and most detail when developing your own black & white film

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The World of analog photography keeps surprising me every day a bit more! I recently read about a technique called Stand Development so I have decided to try it myself. For those of who never heard of it before, let me explain you the differences between a normal development process.

When developing, as recommended by manufacturers, we are supposed to make regular agitations to ensure that the exposed film is always in contact with fresh developer. This is because the developer exhausts itself after a while and is no longer able to transform the particles of silver on the emulsion. Agitations also ensure that all the tonalities are evenly revealed.

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