My First Film Shots

C

Carl Hall

Suspended / Banned
Messages
3,817
Edit My Images
Yes
Evening all!

As some people might be aware, I recently purchased a Mamiya C220 TLR (after the helpful advice on this forum!). I loaded it with some FP4+ film and shot that last weekend, but that's currently still being developed as I had to send it off up North. Over the last week I've been taking some photos using Ektar 100, and have just got them back from being developed in my local photo shop, which luckily is less than a mile from where I work. Here's the four best (or least worst, I should say!) from that roll. I've noticed that there are loads and loads of dust like marks on the photos, and I'm not sure if that's a fault of mine, or of the shop that scanned them. There are also some weird lines and bright patches on a couple of them (they all have one bright edge!). I think I'll hold judgement on that until I buy my own scanner and try it for myself!

Being a complete film newbie, there are a couple of lessons that I've learned. Mainly that film kicks the crap out of digital when it comes to not blowing highlights! I was able to bring down the highlights in Lightroom 5 with ease, and all of the detail was saved. Absolutely amazing. Secondly, the DoF on a medium format camera when you're focusing about 12 inches away, with an 80mm lens at f2.8 is absolutely bonkers. I was also really surprised at the saturation of the images, I adjusted the exposure, contrast and white balance in these shots, but didn't touch the vibrance or saturation sliders at all!

There are a couple of things I'm a little disappointed about with the photos (besides the dust and light patches), but overall I'm quite pleased with them for a first venture into the film world. I'm sure that over the next few months I'll improve, so be prepared for me to fill the forum up with bad photos! haha. Anyway, here's the photos. (I realise that photographically speaking they're terrible)

Cheers,

Carl
 
Nice set, dof is great on MF looking through the big vf never gets old.

Start a thread in the talk section with some pictures of the dodgy negs and we'll try and work out what's going on.
 
An excellent first set Carl, you seem to have come to terms with the dof very quickly. I love being able to shoot at f32 without worrying about refraction.

Andy
 
Carl Hall said:
Evening all!

As some people might be aware, I recently purchased a Mamiya C220 TLR (after the helpful advice on this forum!). I loaded it with some FP4+ film and shot that last weekend, but that's currently still being developed as I had to send it off up North. Over the last week I've been taking some photos using Ektar 100, and have just got them back from being developed in my local photo shop, which luckily is less than a mile from where I work. Here's the four best (or least worst, I should say!) from that roll. I've noticed that there are loads and loads of dust like marks on the photos, and I'm not sure if that's a fault of mine, or of the shop that scanned them. There are also some weird lines and bright patches on a couple of them (they all have one bright edge!). I think I'll hold judgement on that until I buy my own scanner and try it for myself!

Being a complete film newbie, there are a couple of lessons that I've learned. Mainly that film kicks the crap out of digital when it comes to not blowing highlights! I was able to bring down the highlights in Lightroom 5 with ease, and all of the detail was saved. Absolutely amazing. Secondly, the DoF on a medium format camera when you're focusing about 12 inches away, with an 80mm lens at f2.8 is absolutely bonkers. I was also really surprised at the saturation of the images, I adjusted the exposure, contrast and white balance in these shots, but didn't touch the vibrance or saturation sliders at all!

There are a couple of things I'm a little disappointed about with the photos (besides the dust and light patches), but overall I'm quite pleased with them for a first venture into the film world. I'm sure that over the next few months I'll improve, so be prepared for me to fill the forum up with bad photos! haha. Anyway, here's the photos. (I realise that photographically speaking they're terrible)

Cheers,

Carl
Click to expand...

Hi Carl,

These look good for your first time using medium format! As you've discovered, colour negative film is great at handling highlights.

The dust and the weird lines to me suggest problems with the lab, although bright edges could result from a light leak in the camera. I really would recommend sending a roll or two to a pro lab (e.g., Peak Imaging, AG Photographic, UK Film Lab), just so that you can begin to control a few variables while you're starting out. At the moment, if any problems arise, it's unclear if it's the camera, the lab, you, the film, etc.

Just as an example, this is the sort of info I get back from UK Film Lab, which can be very useful when using a particular type of film/camera/lens for the first time:

View attachment 6788 View attachment 6789
 
If you have what looks like clear dust marks on the negs (which are black on prints) then it may be worth gently cleaning off the lens changing flap. After noticing such marks on my film after changing a lens on my C220 I took a look without a film in and clouds of black flock were all over the place. I gently cleaned off the flap fabric surface with a dampened Qtip - after 4 cleanings it stopped coming off jet black and there was no cloud of dust when operating the lock/unlock control.

To see what the photos looked like see http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/threads/show-us-yer-hooleyd-film-shots-then.486228/page-3#post-6094081
 
Last edited:
Thanks for the replies all :) Could a mod move this thread to the film discussion section if possible please?

steveo_mcg said:
Nice set, dof is great on MF looking through the big vf never gets old.

Start a thread in the talk section with some pictures of the dodgy negs and we'll try and work out what's going on.
Click to expand...

Thanks Stevo. Yeah you're right, that viewfinder is really special. The way everything pops out from the background really makes my liveview on my modern dslr look dull and flat! Do you mean upload the original scans that I received? If so I will upload resized versions to it (seems to be a 200 or so kb limit for photos?).

Andysnap said:
An excellent first set Carl, you seem to have come to terms with the dof very quickly. I love being able to shoot at f32 without worrying about refraction.

Andy
Click to expand...

Cheers Andy, the DoF is one of the reasons I bought the camera. I was trying to fake the MF look by using the Brenizer photo stitching method on my dslr, and skysh4rk pointed out how cheap MF film cameras can be! I haven't used the lens at anything smaller than f/16 yet (that was the limit I'd go to on the dslr, so it's just habbit really), but I wasn't aware that MF was different at smaller apertures. I'll have a read up on this!

skysh4rk said:
Hi Carl,

These look good for your first time using medium format! As you've discovered, colour negative film is great at handling highlights.

The dust and the weird lines to me suggest problems with the lab, although bright edges could result from a light leak in the camera. I really would recommend sending a roll or two to a pro lab (e.g., Peak Imaging, AG Photographic, UK Film Lab), just so that you can begin to control a few variables while you're starting out. At the moment, if any problems arise, it's unclear if it's the camera, the lab, you, the film, etc.

Just as an example, this is the sort of info I get back from UK Film Lab, which can be very useful when using a particular type of film/camera/lens for the first time:

View attachment 6788 View attachment 6789
Click to expand...

A light leak wasn't something I'd thought of, but you make a good point. I've got a roll of FP4+ with Ilford at the moment, so I shall see if it comes back with light edges too. The light seals on my C220 have been replaced with some black wool (photo attached), do you think this could be the cause of the problem? If so I might try and replace it with some new seals (if I can get the wool off!)

Hopefully my film will be back early next week (quoted 3-5 day turn around, and they only received it yesterday), so I can see what they come out like. I will look into UK Film Lab for my next colour roll.


dmb said:
If you have what looks like clear dust marks on the negs (which are black on prints) then it may be worth gently cleaning off the lens changing flap. After noticing such marks on my film after changing a lens on my C220 I took a look without a film in and clouds of black flock were all over the place. I gently cleaned off the flap fabric surface with a dampened Qtip - after 4 cleanings it stopped coming off jet black and there was no cloud of dust when operating the lock/unlock control.

To see what the photos looked like see http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/threads/show-us-yer-hooleyd-film-shots-then.486228/page-3#post-6094081
Click to expand...


Thanks for the advice dmb. I had a look at the last photo on that thread and was shocked at how many marks there are! I don't appear to have any marks like that (they're much thinner and shorter, like dust), but I had a look at the flap anyway. As far as I can tell there aren't any bits floating around, and the lens change flap looks clean. I will give it a clean with a cotton wool bud when I get home though, just to be sure.
 
Carl Hall said:
Could a mod move this thread to the film discussion section if possible please?
Click to expand...

Done. For future reference, you'd be better reporting the initial post and asking for it moving, that way, anyone online in the staff room can sort it asap.
 
Welcome to the world of film, and waist level view finders. You are going to find that you'll shoot it more than your digital camera.

Great shots btw, it looks like you have got a handle of it pretty fast
 
some good creative pics there of every day objects.

dust spots maybe scanning in lab but I doubt it as lab scanners are usually really HQ so unsure.

line on film did you use a very slow shutter speed for that one?

my kiev 60 did exactly that on speeds less that 60/1 it was a slow curtain issue. Only way i diagnosed that was running a film on all slow shutters and getting devved and hey presto they all had lines like that.
 
TheBigYin said:
Done. For future reference, you'd be better reporting the initial post and asking for it moving, that way, anyone online in the staff room can sort it asap.
Click to expand...

Ahh ok, I wasn't aware that I could do that. Thanks very much :)

Sectionate said:
Welcome to the world of film, and waist level view finders. You are going to find that you'll shoot it more than your digital camera.
Great shots btw, it looks like you have got a handle of it pretty fast
Click to expand...

Haha, I think you might be right. I was planning on getting up at sunrise tomorrow to take some photos with the C220, and not once has taking the dslr even popped into my head.

Mr Bump said:
some good creative pics there of every day objects.

dust spots maybe scanning in lab but I doubt it as lab scanners are usually really HQ so unsure.

line on film did you use a very slow shutter speed for that one?

my kiev 60 did exactly that on speeds less that 60/1 it was a slow curtain issue. Only way i diagnosed that was running a film on all slow shutters and getting devved and hey presto they all had lines like that.
Click to expand...

I've had a look at my notes (I decided to write everything down for each photo), these are the apertures and shutter speeds for each of the photos:
  • Danger Sign - 1 sec at f/4
  • Carrots - 1 sec at f/2.8
  • River - 1/30 sec at f/16
  • Leaves - 1/125 at f/2.8
  • Snail Shell - 1/500 f/5.6 (was going to be 2.8 but was limited by max shutter speed of 1/500)
The ones with the light bands are the carrots (1 sec at f/2.8) and the river (1/30 at f/16). They're both quite slow shutters but the other slow ones (the danger sign, and a couple others that were too crap to post lol) don't suffer from it. I believe the C220 has a leaf shutter inside the lens, so I'm not sure if this could be the cause?

When I get home later I'll use a light source and a magnifier to see if I can see any of these light bands on the negative, but I struggled to see them yesterday evening (although I didn't look too hard and it was quite dark lol)
 
Carl Hall said:
I've had a look at my notes (I decided to write everything down for each photo), these are the apertures and shutter speeds for each of the photos:
  • Danger Sign - 1 sec at f/4
  • Carrots - 1 sec at f/2.8
  • River - 1/30 sec at f/16
  • Leaves - 1/125 at f/2.8
  • Snail Shell - 1/500 f/5.6 (was going to be 2.8 but was limited by max shutter speed of 1/500)
Click to expand...

Ektar can be a bit tricky at times with exposure, but I would usually just shoot those sorts of shots at 1/500 and f/2.8 without a second thought with most any colour negative film.
 
Ahh if they have a leaf shutter in the lens then I guess you would not get a straight line with a slow shutter?

My old Kiev was a curtain shutter.
 
So I finally got round to looking at the film close up (using my phone as a lightbox...) with a magnifier. Interestingly, it seems that the light patches on the images are actually on the film (glad I refrained from blaming the shop!!). It looks as if there is another frame which covers the two that have the light patches. I've attached a rough image showing where it's located. I'm not at all sure how that frame could have got there, but I do remember having the exposure knob set to "multiple" at one point and accidentally winding the film on a little bit before noticing and switching back to "single". I'm fairly sure that I didn't actually take a photo whilst it was on "multiple" mode, but I'm not sure if switching from one mode to another whilst winding the film on has messed it up. Looks like I've learned a lesson- make sure it always stays on single mode!!

Whilst I was looking at the film close up, I noticed that some of the marks on the images are actually things that are imbedded in the film. They're very small but you can see that they're bits that are actually stuck in the film. Not sure how this has happened, but its something that I need to keep an eye out for with the next roll!
 
Ahhh sounds.like bad spacing causing an overlap
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top