learn how to use a film camera well

a Pentax ME. Compact little manual-focus, mechanical camera – works with all my lenses, fits in my pocket.

It has a few features my K-1000 lacks – Apeture Priority, which Is convenient but has it’s draw-backs (No manual over-ride) and it has a function that allows you to hold the apeture open for photographing night skies, the moon – etc.

a 35mm Pentax half-frame SLR.

A compact and elegant little odd-ball from days-gone-by. It spilts the exposure coming through the lens so it only takes up half of the space – it was a popular format in the 60s, like everything Pentax makes it’s just a little step outside the norm. This camera, clearly was built after the half-frame hey-day.

It uses the K-mount lenses – which Pentak introduced in the 70’s, is fully manual and an SLR (most half-frames were range-finder styles)

Mini-labs can’t process the images, you need an old-school lab. The woman at the lab I went to today wasn’t sure If THEY can process it. She’s checking with the cameras’ owner – he wanted $200 bucks for it but she says it’s been there forever and he may take a hundred – plus, she’s going to check and call me if it would be OK for me to try it out with a roll of film before I buy it – just to make sure they can take care of the processing.

Wouldn’t it be cool if the back up body for my camera system was a Pentax half-frame?

I’d keep a roll of film in it all the time and carry it everywhere…

(plus, they have a Ricoh body there, $100 bucks – it uses the same lenses as my K1000 but has a few nifty features mine dosn’t. Timer, double exposure setting…)

me brother-in-law & his wife have just become parents. Jack dropped by the ‘ospital room just after the birth o’his Lady’s niece…

Shot of a roll of 3200 B&W film and took another dozen or more shots with the lady’s Sony whatchemcallit, some credit card sized 8 mega-pixel POS digital.

People say there is no difference between film and digital anymore. Some say digital is now better than film. Looking through the stack of photos that came back from the film and the digital I’d say there was a quality to film that does not show up with the digital.

I think it comes from the process, the awareness of light, apeture and shutter speed that comes from operating a manual camera. With a digital you just snap off a hundred shots and maybe catch ‘something’ in one or two of them. When you use a vintage piece of equipment like the K1000 you have to look, concentrate on the shot, wait for it, imagine it…it’s mindfulness – zen. connecting your consciousness to the task at hand…

Good candid photography is an art form. Speaking for myself the only good pictures ever taken of me occured when I wasn’t aware of someone was taking them. The best picture I ever took of my lady was one I snapped after she thought I’d taken her picture and caught her in mid-laugh.

I Found these tips for better candid photography at digital-photagraphy-school.com.

Take your Camera Everywhere.

Use a Long Zoom. I kind of dispute this. I think using a compact camera with a discreetly sized lens is less likely to draw attention than a Papparazzi-style bazooka lens. I use a doubler and my 50MM mostly.

Kill the Flash. High-speed film and the bigger f-stop on the 50mm let me take shots in some pretty poor light conditions. Flash tends to draw attention and disrupt things…with highspeed film you get a grainy image that has an inherent nostalic quality. Looks like old images from ‘Life Magazine’

Shoot lots. If you can catch your subject in a sequence of photos you may get something interesting.

Position Yourself strategically – try you will still want to compose your subject in the space – even if they are not aware of it. The dirction of light, where the shadows fall in teh image…

Photograph People Doing things – much more interesting if you wait until the subject is distracted or engrossed in what they are doing than when they are alert to your presence.

Photograph People with People – the interaction of people in a candid photograph suggests a story or possibly emotion.

Mix up your Perspective. Take pictures from different angles – looking straight down, from waist-level. Position them in the shot with consideration of what the ‘negative space’ will contribute.

Frame Images with Foreground Elements. Shoor over a shoulder or between bumpers, etc. A candid shot should show the subject in their surroundings.

this site may help

I picked up a roll of this high-speed black and white infra-red film a couple days ago. I heard it had been discontinued. I loaded my camera in complete darkness like it said on the box.

My question is: now what? It dosn’t have any film speed listed, can’t make sense out of anything I’ve read on line so I don’t know what I should set it for, I don’t own a filter but I think it’s possible to take pictures without it…but my light meter dosn’t mean anything when you’re dealing with IR film.

Does High-speed IR mean you can take pictures in low light?

I’d heard you can tale some stunning portraits with HIE film, it washes over blemishes and gives the subject a luminescent quality…sounds great, just I can’t tell if I’ll be taking pictures of anything with out figuring out how to set the apeture and film speed….

A pentax K1000: the quintessential students’ camera. Even when it was new it was a throw-back to older camera design. Fully manual, rugged and simple. It remained in production from 1976 to ‘97.

I’ve done some research and determined mine to be one of the earliest models – assembled in Japan, metal body. It was made sometime in the first few years of production.

I’ve picked up a few different lenses and other vitage equipment for it, the vivitar 283 flash gun (as much an old standard as the pentax itself), a doubler, 50mm, 38-105mm and 58-210mm lenses.

I’ve been snapping off a few rolls of film here and there learning to use the manual focus, light meter, f-stop. What the various lenses are capable of. I just bought some odd-ball film to experiment with and see if I can make some ‘Art’ – a roll of B&W Infrared and one of 3200 B&W. Todays’ project though is to load up a roll of 100 Ultra-Colour and see if I can snap some thing interesting down at the ravine with mu dogs…