film tests

I think everyone should play around with a camera. Don't be afraid, just shoot a bunch of stuff and see what you like from the results! Pay attention to patterns, shapes, colors, and light - see what you like and play around with composition.



I got some free Kodak film and did some camera tests with it - it's been awhile since I used my film bodies - and while it was really me just shooting practically randomly, I still got some fun results. You can do the same!


The camera body's great, but I still don't like Kodak's color negative films. I think it's left over from when I was a custom color printer at a high end lab in SF - I got really really obsessed with mastering perfect color, and it always felt impossible with Kodak's films. Not to dork out about it too much, but the color light spectrum works like this:

Magenta - opposite of Green
Yellow - opposite of Blue
Cyan - opposite of Red

That's a really basic summing up. But with film, the way it works is that if you want your print to be less yellow/ more blue, you put a yellow filter over the enlarger. You want it pinker/ less green - use a green filter. This explains it in a little more detail...

Anyway, for some reason Kodak's films result in prints that always seem simultaneously too green and too magenta, or too cyan and too red, at the same time?! I don't know if it's just my eyes, but that shouldn't happen. These are the professional-grade film stocks I'm talking about, and I just don't like them.

So, when I shoot with film, I use Fuji.

This is Kodak, but I got some fun shots anyway.



And now there are companies creating digital actions that replicate various film emulsion styles, so sometime soon it will all be moot anyhow.

Anyway, a few random, fun images from my test roll.