And it IS daunting, presented with so much to consider, that technology has so often alleviated so much need to even recognize; and does beg an over-load of ideas and suggestions of how to exploit all of this opportunity to 'take control'..
Which does go some way to expand and explain some of the comments above vis affection for the Dark-Room, and or more or less automated gear... which is essentially explained entirely by approach and aspiration.
I 'like' the convenience and point and shoot easement of Digital; the lack of 'faff', Grab camera, worry about the subject, get on with the job. Little real consideration required. I do find post-process obsession a little curious in that world, I have to say; it's almost like having had the camera make the job of taking a picture SO easy, folk need it to give them something to do, and 'feel' like they are 'involved' in the job! As alluded I came fro the traditional dark-room, and was early into digital editing in the mid 90's, where it was a revelation to be able to do stuff, without wasting paper or chems, at the click of a button,, ad half an hour watching an egg-timer! But still.... is more 'convenence'.. especially now I only have to spend maybe three minutes watching the egg timer!
However; its all part and parcel; of idea to image and the entire process along the way; and which bits of the process you enjoy the most, and that have most effect on the final product; BUT it remains a process from start to finish; and whilst I could turn 'off' the auto-focus in the EPM and the matrix-metering scenes and even fit legacy manual focus prime lenses to it, shoot in RAW and spend hours diddling sliders and filters on 'post', to effect pretty much the same 'control' over the entire process, as was demanded of my old clock-work Zenit and conventional dark-room.. The fundamental remains, it is in the CONSIDERATION you apply to the process; picking where you wish to exert influence, where you want to take control; learning where and how that may be possible, and may offer you best effect.. which the more involved 'nature' of conventional film photography does beg, even if t doesn't always demand it.. it does expose you to and inspire you towards....
BUT, the here and now, IS probably to simply NOT let that over whelm you, NOT encourage too drastic an over enthusiasm, to bite off more than you can chew!
99% of the process is outside of the camera; as said starts with the questions, Why? What, For Who?
Knowing your audience, and considering your shots to give them 'something' they will hopefully gain from.That leaps you from before the start right to the end; and having considered your audience, what is the best means of presentation, and IS a photo, on its own the entirety? (To which the answer from me, is quite emphatically 'NO'; it needs context, it needs relevance; it probably needs 'some' sort of explanation, in the presentation delivery...) So the consideration of the entire process, from concept to consumption, starts log before you pick up the camera.
Knowing why you want a photo; how you wish to present it, and what will be important to the audience; then informs and directs how you approach the subject; and what you want 'in' the image; whats important, whats distracting; and how you tackle basic composition. Before even you get to faffing with focus or aperture and shutter settings!
And THEN delving into the process, and possibilities and potentials; Are you going to home develop, or leave it to a lab? What can you do in the dark-room? What might you do the dark-room; what might 'add' to the 'product'. IS a dark-room process necessarily the best way to achieve desired 'product'. Whether that's a photo-montage, or a base tilt to correct converging verticals; some dodging and burning to even contrast, or some gentle vignetting to concentrate the viewer's attention on the main subject and de-emphasis distracting back-ground.
And it ALL goes round in re-iterative loops of 'Consideration' of what you might do in the dark-room, or how you may present final image, feeds back to how you approach the capture; you may decide that vignetting in the dark-room, wouldn't achieve the close attention on subject you need for presentation; close cropped, maybe oval or shaped framing mask may be better; or approaching the subject in capture, with a shallower Depth of Field, or alternative lighting or lighting aids, might be the more appropriate technique.
SOME stuff, you will consider in the Planning stage; other stuff you will have to re-consider in the pre-capture shooting stage; more still, in post-process; BUT, its consideration all the way along the line; and knowing what you 'may' do, what you 'can' do and deciding what is 'best' to do... ALWAYS remembering THE AUDIENCE that will look at it when 'done'.
And just because you MIGHT try something, doesn't necessarily mean you have to; or that its the best way about things.
Initial inspiration, has begged you open the door; enthusiasm for all you see beyond, is begging something of kiddie in the sweet-shop scenario, with you considering it all; pondering different lenses, asking about different films, and and and.. THERE'S SO MUCH TO CONSIDER!... which is great, and big leap into the world of 'considered' photography... but, temper the enthusiasm a bit; and try and keep it simple, and dont bite off more than you can chew, and make yourself sick trying to sample every bar of chocolate in the shop, never getting to enjoy any of them!
ADVICE:-
You are struggling to get to grips with Manual Focus. Start there, its a fundamental you need to get a handle on. And its NOT just about sticking the focus spot over the important bit of subject and getting it crisp in the view-finder. or, wacking the Helios wide open at f2 and trying to find shallow focus subjects to look at the Bokeh in!
It's about exploiting manual focus and Depth of Field, to get your subject in the acceptable focus zone, and putting that acceptable focus zone most effectively n your scene; whether that is using a tight aperture to make the Focus Zone as big as possible around tear away tots, or speeding vehicles; or shrinking it down to chuck back-grounds out of focus behind a flower head or 'whatever'. Selectve focus is about exploiting that Focus Zone, and NOT necessarily focusing on the 'subject' like the red dot of a DSLR wold try and do, putting the DoF zone arbitrarily 1/3 infront, 2/3 behind the set focus distance...
Using the silver thumb-wheel on the bottom right of the Helos lens as screwed to the camera, will 'stop down' from f2 'viewing' aperture to whatever aperture you have set on the ring, and give you a DoF 'preview' of the sort of acceptable focus you will get at the taking aperture... USE IT! May make the view-fnder a bt dm, but by eye, should give you some idea of the Focus Zone you will get.
On the top of the lens; you have, in yellow, the focus scale, telling you what the 'critical' focus distance set is, against the middle red-line...but next to that is the DoF scal, in gren, that brackets the focus distance scale, to indicate the focus zone between the aperture settings marked.
Note that the distance scale is NOT liniar on the dial; up the top end, you have infinity, then 10m, then 8 then 4... at the other end, 50com, then 60, then 65cm; as you get closer towards infinity focus, the distances are much greater, at the ear focus end, they are a lot closer, close focus s that much more 'critical' BUT the DoF zone indicated by the aperture marks, stays the same, so closer your focus distance, less DoF yo get around it...
So you can get a very shallow focus from getting very close to your subject, and or you can get a very shallow focus from using a very wide aperture; BUT; you don't have to use both, and neither do you have to focus exactly on your subject.
DoF is a % of focus distance; and is a 'zone' 1/3 in-front, 2/3 behind the focus setting. So, if you want to chuck a distrcting back-ground oof, you don't 'have' to open the aperture all the way, or get right up close; you can simply shift the focus zone, 'forwards' ahead of your subject.. there's nothing n that portion of the scene to be in or out of focus.... so that bit doesn't matter, you can 'waste' as much DoF zone as you like on empty space, and draw tha back of the focus zone as cloe as your subject and as far away from the back-ground as you like.....
OR wiky-worky; you can maximize your DoF zone, focusing behid your subject; again, no need to back up, or stop down; JUST alter the focus; focus behind the subject, you will inherently get a greater amount of DoF zone, and provided you keep the subject in the bit infront of the focus distance, you will get that focus zone where most effective in the scene.
You don't need to fret about using super-tight apertures to maximize DoF, nor using super-fast ones, to minimize it; you JUST need to understand DoF and how to exploit it, AND to exploit 'manual focus' and NOT be dependent on the focus dots, and having your subject of interest slap on the cross-hairs!
This is but small bit of basic, fundamental technique, that even manual focus SLR's hampered any-one learning or exploiting, with through the lens view-finders, with max-aperture composition to keep the view-finder 'bright'!; Something 'zone-focus' view finder cameras begged of the user to 'consider' and use the focus zone, rather than just take what the camera gave you, fro what you see is what you (might) get vie-finder composition.
Read up, learn aout that; and your concerns over focus need not be anywhere near as large, A-N-D, you will be better informed and experienced to exploit the DoF zone, either to get better effect, ether to get shallow focus effects, or deep focus effects OR just to improve your odds of getting subjects not just more often 'in' focus, but getting the focus you want around them...
And keep it simple..... eliminate variables and areas of possible conflict or confusion... you have a lens... USE IT! Learn the technique with it. A 135 portrait lens may be great for shallow focus effects in portraits, a wide angle may be wonderful for offering loads of DoF in a landscape; BUT, here and now is that how the lens length is effecting that DoF is an added complication; how the numbers on the dials are shifting, yet another; getting to grips with the 'principle & practice' that is confuson you can probably do without.... save the turkish delight for aother day, finish the mars bar!
Onto FILM. Easy for flok to talk abut the colour saturation or grain of different emulsions, and how sme better suit some subjects and not others, and pontificate at length on the aesthetic merits of them.. but, again, kiddie n the sweet-shop syndrome; very easy to dart from film to film, sampling them all, and exploiting none; never getting a feel for what they are best suited to.. or not. Also very very easy to wast an awful lot of money on very expensive emulsions that aren't the best suited to your subject, whether you can exploit them or no.
Advice on this one, here and now, is again, Keep it Simple, Silly; 'Cheap' color-print film likepound-land Agfa, is a pretty generc all-round emulsion, and pretty useful for an awful lot of photography. Its also pretty cheap... and starting out; wanting to learn, wanting to experiment, that is positive advantage; buy it, burn it; keep things constant! Used to be that B&W was the starting place, as it was 'cheaper'.. not any-more! But again, if you want to start home dev, it is a good way to go; but keep it simple silly;pick a cheap generic all-round emulsion, and burn film, till you have the experience to exploit or appreciate merits of alternatives;.
Slide? Deserves special mention; Slide film, is a bit tricky, it doesn't have the tolerance of print flim, as you normally viewed a slide directly in a viewer or light-box or on projecton; there was no room for any post-process correction in printing. There is a more expensive/complicated all positive colour-prnt process called Cibachrome, to make colour prints from slide film, but even that was tricky to make any 'correction' with. Slide was popular in professional reprographics, first because they could assess the 'quality' and merit of the original directly; and throughout lay-out where all was possitve image. Ameteurs used it, commonly because either it was the 'cheap' way to get colour photo's, as you didn't have prints made; and you could more cheaply still home-process with little specilised equipment or space.and or, because it puts a demand on the hotographer to get it 'clean in camera', lacking oportunity for any post-process manipulation, so like a film camera, begged an attension to diligence and consideration to use the stuff.
NOW, today; the cost advantage of not having prints made, is rather diminished by few making prints anyway; more still by 'digital' and scanning, where once into the digital domain, same post-process diddle ability as for print films is available.
It IS significantly an opportunity to make life harder and more expensive for yourself, and at the stage yo are at on the learning curve.. yeah, one of those sweeties in the shop you'd like to try... but put the peppermint cream back with the Turkish delight, and finish your mars bar! There's always another day! Its something not likely to help you much at this stage, and more complexity, shooting to preserve high-lights and saturate colours etc, likely to hinder more than help.
Remember, with a Spoty and 50, you have as much or more 'camera' already than many were lucky enough to start out with; I was actually reminiscing about my Dad & Cousin at school together in the '60's, to whom the Spotmatc was the icon they both aspired to, at school Camera-Club! Heck, an interchangeable lens camera was something special, and when they did attain one, often redundant as they couldn't afford another lens! Was also recollecting advice I think David Bailey offered, that folk were prone to spend a lot of money on a camera, then little on film, to learn how to use it, when should be the other way about...
Which begs conclusion KEEP IT SIMPLE SILLY.. 35mm has almost certainly more capability to make large scale reproductions than you currently do to make negs that could stand that amount of enlargement. Film> Keep it simple; pick a standard, and limit the variables. Three's a lot to learn, and a lot to use film on on the way, yet. Likewise filling a gadget bag; alternate lenses may be wonderful; BUT learn to get the most from what you got, and here and now you are struggling to get to grips with manual focus, and exploiting DoF is something that's still a rather alien concept... start there....
Best advice I can offer to kiddie in the sweet-shop syndrome; pick ONE sweet, eat it all; pick another tomorrow; don't make yourself sick taking a bite out of as many as you can, and not want to come back 'cos the sweet-shop just makes you sick, and gets you into trouble for all the half empty wrappers!
. Which is why I, considering my audience (if I don't please myself, I don't think it good enough for others), don't use 35mm and prefer at least 6x6 and preferably large format film. But I don't print at less than A3/12x16. I know that my standards are more exacting than most; the answer to the question as to how far you can go is entirely subjective.
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