Expand your wedding photography with film and also fill flash.

Four Compact Rangefinder Film Cameras

More point and shoot film cameras. A quick look at the Canon Sureshot Zo...

Wedding Photography during the Transition from Film to Digital

The Yashica Minister D. A great camera for learning the basics

Retiring with a Camera and Learning how to use it.

I have been retired about 9 years now.

Many of my friends have also started the same phase of life.

I have lots of interests which are reflected in this and my other blogs and youtube channel.

I do meet with people often though, who are close to retiring and really are concerned about how they will occupy their time in retirement.

They are usually people who have made their work the main event.

Work  is the main event while we are of working age  and many choose to continue working past retirement age to remain occupied and mentally stimulated.

I have chatted with some people and made some suggestions when they are not sure about what they will do.

One of the things I suggest often is taking up photography.

Of course an ideal way to get started is when many new retirees go on their overseas holidays.

Inevitably in that scenario at least one of a couple will take a camera so they can record their holiday.

If people have not been into photography before this they can be quite disappointed with their images.

Usually they will have taken some sort of compact digital camera with them which they really don't know how to use.

Another area for retirees to get into photography is taking pics of their grandchildren.

So this post is a thought starter about taking up photography in retirement or re visiting it as something dabbled in when younger.

I have recently had some friends who were recently retired approach me for some lessons.

They had quite useful compact digital cameras but did not really know how to use them properly.

One had already been overseas and was disappointed with his pics and now was going again.

The other was bout to go on a major trek on the famed Kokoda Trail of New Guinea.

In a couple of hours we managed to go through some tips which they took on board.

Their results were pretty good.

The most useful tip was how to use the flash when shooting people in daylight where they were in front of a bright background.

By this I mean bright often overcast skies.

So for people who live in Adelaide, South Australia, why don't you consider contacting me for some introductory lessons to get started.

I have taught people photography for many years.

You will find my asking price for training very affordable.

I will teach both digital and film photography depending on your preference and will also give advice on buying a camera to suit your needs.

If you don't have a camera you can practice on one of mine.

Here is a link to something I did with some retired enthusiastic photographers.

https://geoffthompsonsphotographytraining.blogspot.com/2017/04/come-and-try-photography.html

Please ring on 0417867476 or email geoff.g.thompson@gmail.com

Shooting a wedding with film

 

I am aware some people still shoot weddings on film. Usually they are the high end photographers who are charging that much they can shoot without regard to cost and prefer the look and quality of film.

So what if you came into photography after the film era and someone asks you to do it or you would like to try it anyway?

Well here are some tips.

1.     You need a good slr film system with at least one wide angle prime lens (28mm) also a mid range zoom say 28-105mm and maybe a longer zoom up to about 200mm.You also should have two bodies.One can be a back up to the other or dedicated to black and white film.
My favourite 35mm camera is the Pentax MZs, a professionally specced camera.
I recently saw a Nikon F5 selling for about $450. 
A great film camera,probably the best Nikon made.

2.     Cameras that meet the bill are any by Nikon,Minolta,Canon,Pentax,Olympus preferably with auto focus.If  you wanted to be a purist you could use a roll film camera like a Hasseblad, Rollei, Bronica ETRs or a Pentax 645. This is a more expensive exercise but the results from such cameras will blow you away but you have to change films more often.Using 220mm film instead of 120mm helps speed up the process as you get twice as many shots on 220.On a pentax 645 you get 15 shots at 120 and 30 at 220mm.
There are many good bargains now on used medium format cameras.
       On a 6x6 format camera you will get 12 and 24 respectively.
       35mm cameras film comes in 36 frame lengths or 24.

3.     A  flash system of either one dedicated to the camera with full tilt and swivel and also ttl metering, or alternatively the Metz 45 range of hammerhead type flashes are great.Preferably your flash sync on your camera should be at least 1/125^th of a second.(for daylight fill flash)

4.     A tripod would be useful.

5.     For film I used to use colour negative film of 160iso,400iso,800iso  and Ilford xp2, iso 400 for black and white shots. My preference was for Fuji film rather than Kodak.
Fuji Reala film was rated at 100iso and gave great skin colours and as good as medium format sharpness. It was very fine grained.I used it on some weddings. 
Film is getting increasingly hard to find.

6.     Towards the  end of my film weddings days I would shoot about  11-12 rolls of  35mm colour and  3 rolls of 35mm black and white.I would get them processed and printed as 6x4’ or 5x7” proofs and also get them scanned at he same time. Not highest resolution but good enough for an 8x10”enlargement.

7.     If you have an assistant you could get them to back you up with a digital slr. During the transition to shooting full digital that is what I did.

8.     Remember when shooting with colour negative film it is better to over expose rather than underexpose as film has a great tolerance for error. I would often deliberately set my meter to overexpose by one stop.

9.     You need to pay closer attention to how much film you use as you go, maybe allowing for say 2 rolls of film at each shooting segment of your wedding shoot time table. (see my earlier blog on the Wedding Timetable)

10. When you are about to film the ceremony I would always make sure I had a fresh roll of film loaded as it is not good to run out of film just as the bride and groom kiss.

11       Make sure you have lots of spare batteries if your camera relies on them or  your flash

The Pentax Super A(super program in America) was a great camera and I shot many weddings on these cameras.It was really a 35mm version of the Pentax 645. The controls and programs were identical.The camera was manual focus and I usually set manual exposure readings.I used 2 of these during weddings for colour and made sure the meters were set to the same calibration.I had a separate camera loaded with black and white.The idea of using multiple cameras was that you could not tell that your camera had a fault until you got your proofs back.If you had used more than one camera you were assured of getting something back.

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Pentax 645 film camera

A hand held light meter is very useful for film and digital cameras

12   Using film will make you think more about what you are doing and of course you will not know how you went until you get your proofs.A bit of anxiety such as this will make you a better photographer but practice with film first on something less important than a wedding.All the other posts on wedding photography on this blog are just a s relevant to shooting with film as using digital.