Film Theory

A Year in Slide Film Part 1 – Shooting – By Holly Gilman

By / November 11, 2021 / Learning Journeys, Philosophy & Reflections / 29 Comments

I was originally put off shooting slide film because I had heard that you needed to be incredibly precise with your exposure otherwise the whole shot would be ruined. Frankly, when I was first shooting film, I didn’t have enough confidence in my ability and so I kept away.

Strangely enough it was developing my own black and white film that gave me the confidence to try it. I had previously wondered whether the lab were just really good at salvaging what I’d done, but developing myself meant I could learn from each roll and improve and ultimately I felt that my exposures were good enough to try slide film.

35mmc header image

Picking your Color Negative Film Stock – An Alternative Approach – By Matt Wright

By / August 11, 2021 / Processes, Tutorials & Guides, Workflow / 32 Comments

The film community is a high point of the internet. Coming back to film after a 20+ year hiatus was facilitated by all of the excellent work that has been done over the last few years. My return home would have been a painful, stressful, and expensive affair without the help everyone (thanklessly) offered me. …

Picking your Color Negative Film Stock – An Alternative Approach – By Matt Wright Read More

Colour Theory for Black and White Photography Part 1: Digital and Analogue Filters – by Sroyon

By / October 23, 2021 / Processes, Tutorials & Guides / 16 Comments

A black and white photograph “translates” the colours of the original scene into shades of grey. This “translation” or conversion is done by the film (in film photography), or by the sensor and software (in digital).

Some colour-to-B&W conversions seem simple enough. If the original scene has blacks, whites and greys, in a B&W photograph we would expect them to be rendered as blacks, whites and greys respectively. Likewise, we would expect a dark green to be rendered as dark grey, and a light green to be rendered as light grey.

What about a dark green and a dark red? That’s where things get more complicated. In a B&W photograph, we would expect them both to be rendered as shades of grey. But will they be the same shade of grey, or will one be darker than the other? The answer depends not just on the original shades of green and red, but also on the conversion process.

So how does this conversion process work? How can we control it? Why would we even want to? This is the first of two posts in which I try to answer some of these questions.

Some Thoughts and Experiences in Favor of the Price Hikes on Film – Steven Bleistein

By / May 20, 2020 / Philosophy & Reflections / 33 Comments

Every time a manufacturer like Kodak or Fujifilm announces a price rise on one or more film stocks, there is a lot of howling online, whether in the comment sections of articles or in online forums, as if somehow the price hikes are greedy, spiteful, and personal, meant only to harm the lives of loyal, indigent, analog, fanatics. You can see the some of the moaning in the comments on my 35mmc piece on Fujifilm’s release of Neopan Acros 100 II, and also in the comments of Johnny Martyr’s superb and sanguine article on Kodak’s 2020 price hike that provoked more than one sanguinary response!

Scroll to Top