Film Question

[ssshumack]

I know that this is a digital website, but I have a film question I'm hoping someone can answer. My sister is taking her film camera on our vacation to the Grand Canyon. She is wanting to know what speed of film does she need to get to take pictures in low light situations? For example at the Antelope Canyon. Any help is greatly appreciated.

[OsmosisStudios]

Depends how "low" we're talking here.

400, in my eyes, is low-light film. But most wouldnt think so.

One neat trick is to use a digital SLR: it'll give you an ISO number. Just remember that film has about a 2 stop advantage: so if the camera is choosing 800, you really only need 200 for film.

[SusanH1970]

This should help you out.

[Murtasma]

400 speed should work just fine as long as your not shooting at night or just after dusk. Sunny day use 100 speed. I would pick up a few rolls of each.

[fstopMike]

As Osmosis says, film has a latitude of two stops. I've had 400 in my camera and gone inside a cathedral where I couldn't use flash. I just changed the film speed setting on my camera to 1600 to expose as if I had 1600 film and snapped away on the same roll of film. I had it processed normally and they came out fine. I wouldn't go out and recommend doing something like this, but it can get you out of a pinch.

[kencaleno]

Originally Posted by OsmosisStudios

Depends how "low" we're talking here.

400, in my eyes, is low-light film. But most wouldnt think so.

One neat trick is to use a digital SLR: it'll give you an ISO number. Just remember that film has about a 2 stop advantage: so if the camera is choosing 800, you really only need 200 for film.

Sorry, but as a film user from 1962 until 2005,this is mis-information-Transparency film(slides) has the same latitude/dynamic range as digital, that is 5 stops,but it pays ,as digital, to err on under exposure,and I believe the fastest slide film available at the moment is Ektacrome 160- (four years since I used slide film) negative (print film on the other hand registers 5-7 stops, and the fastest color negative film I am aware of is Konica 1000 ISO, Black and white,Kodak and Ilford 3200 ISO.


Regards, Ken

[OsmosisStudios]

Ken: I wasnt saying film had a better dynamic range (though it does), i was saying that most film is about 1-2 stops more sensitive than a DLSR sensor. Ive taken shots at 400iso on my D80 that look identical to 200iso on film (with no processing)

Aside from that, Ive always over-exposed, with both film and digital, by about 1/3 of a stop, a technique that YOU had advocated some time ago.

In high-school we used 3200 Ilford. It was grainy as all hell, but I could practically shoot pictures in the dark room

(and please, it's not mis-information. By definition, misinformation is information passed purposefully as true when the sender knows it to be false.)

[RussHeath]

To answer your question from another point of view: tell her to take a small tripod and use a longer exposure. Antelope Canyon is famous for its color and light, and if I were shooting film I would personally use some high saturation fine grained film like Fuji Velvia ISO 50 or 100. Put the camera on a tripod and adjust shutter speed accordingly. I've done this in a canyon much more narrow than Antelope with multiple exposures and it works well. Cheers.

[kencaleno]

Originally Posted by OsmosisStudios

Ken: I wasnt saying film had a better dynamic range (though it does), i was saying that most film is about 1-2 stops more sensitive than a DLSR sensor. Ive taken shots at 400iso on my D80 that look identical to 200iso on film (with no processing)

Aside from that, Ive always over-exposed, with both film and digital, by about 1/3 of a stop, a technique that YOU had advocated some time ago.

In high-school we used 3200 Ilford. It was grainy as all hell, but I could practically shoot pictures in the dark room

(and please, it's not mis-information. By definition, misinformation is information passed purposefully as true when the sender knows it to be false.)

Sorry Osmosis, But I have never advocated over-exposing-that was for negative film. I have always advocated underexposing because with Jpegs you can get details out of the shadows,but you can't reclaim blown highlights. Regards, Ken

[fletch]

Originally Posted by kencaleno

Sorry Osmosis, But I have never advocated over-exposing-that was for negative film. I have always advocated underexposing because with Jpegs you can get details out of the shadows,but you can't reclaim blown highlights. Regards, Ken

You can't reclaim anything with a JPEG. You can alter the brightness of certain pixels but you are stuck with your 8 bits of data. If your JPEG contains blown out areas of any individual colour channel, either fully black or fully white there is nothing you can do to get it back.

If everything is within the dynamic range of the JEPG then you are much better to over expose than underexpose. There is much more information in the highlights than the shadows. Therefore boosting the shadows will create a lot more noise that reducing the exposure of the highlights.

(Of couse you could shoot RAW but the 'expose to the right' reasoning still holds true.)

As for film I used to find either 200 or 400 was a great catch all for holiday snaps etc. but for landscape shots I would be tempted to go for the high quality low ISO film and a tripod.