Film guys: how do you even use sub 400 film for portraiture?

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>>3056648

Here is the photo of the girl from that same night taken with a Voigtlander 58 f/1.4 on my d750.

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>>3056648
>>3056651

Another question. Said girl has a particularly red face, not sure if makeup or skin color. Sunset also provided very warm light. Basically looked like her skin was super red. Ok, with my DSLR I just adjusted white balance and color profile in Lightroom and in 15 seconds it's fine.

Is the only option with this film camera to just carry around a pile of warming / cooling filters and gels? How did anyone keep all this shit with them casually without having a giant gear bag?

Basically, I somehow believed that being proficient at manually shooting my fancy DSLR might make me capable of film. Nope. I'm an idiot.

Here's another photo of said girl.

>>3056648
Shoulda posted in /fgt/ my man. But there are some options here. Basically use a flash, use proper film for skin colours, shoot b&w, use filters, or just say fuck it and shoot digi if you really don't care for film. Shooting low iso film just means either good light, fast lens or artificial light. Just cause you are lazy with a dslr doesn't mean it's more work with film just that with film you ought to make the image properly in camera, were as digital lets you be sloppy and do most of the work in post.

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>>3056648
With film you deal with what you get. If you need the speed, Portra 800 and Fuji Natura 1600 are the only real options for color. Fuji Venus 800 is excellent but Japanese market only. All of these are fairly grainy in daylight, that's just the way things are. ISO 400 should be more than enough for daylight unless you really insist on stopping down to f/22 or something.

>Today, I tried shooting a flag with a 200mm Nikkor AI-S open at f/4 in full sunlight with a tripod and couldn't even freeze the motion on a flapping flag.
With Ektar you should be getting 1/250 at f/8 or 1/500 at f/5.6. If you got less than that then maybe your camera's meter is borked. 200 and 400 should be enough for all daylight conditions. Naturally the longer your lens is the more speed you need. With a 35mm you can shoot hand-held at 1/15 with no problem, with 200mm even 1/125 is a struggle.

>>3056655
If you scan your film shots, there's little reason to carry anything except for perhaps a blue filter for tungsten lighting. You can adjust the color balance like with any digital shot either in the scanner software or in post. Nearly all color film is daylight balanced, and color rendition depends on the film - for instance Portra is prized for its skin tones, while Ektar has a cool blue cast. All of it is fixable in post.

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>>3056680

This was so helpful.

Yeah, I was wondering if the meter is inconsistent in this FG or if there's something wonky with my nikkor f/200 AI-S because it seemed to be able to shoot faster on my D750 set to the same manual ISO on my dslr, but I wasn't documenting properly as I was shooting. It's possible the TTOL my d750 can deal with the lens better, or maybe a cloud passed as I was fiddling with my stuff, I couldn't say. But now I want to borrow my friend's F3 and compare metering in a fixed environment.

Also, I haven't scanned my film yet, my local shop charges $8 more (reasonable I guess) and I figured all my photos are still shit enough to not be worth it. But I appreciate you educating me on still being able to correct for color in post. Blue filter for tungsten makes sense, do you carry something different for florescent green tones or other crap / indoor lighting?

Also, I didn't know that color film is daylight balanced automatically. And thanks for the info for Portra vs Ektar and other suggestions. Nobody talks about this shit in online in any forums, I guess I am either looking in the wrong place or the only people who know this shit have been shooting for a long time and just don't think about it anymore.

>>3056648
Are you taking pictures into the sunset in this? If not, then yeah, 1/15th of a second sounds pretty normal. You can also remember that you get a couple stops of latitude with Ektar and just underexpose on purpose. One and a half stops under shouldn't be too bad.

Factually, the way they did it was with powerful lights or long exposures. Or, if it's night in a city, you can expose for the lights and not worry too much about the shadows.

>Using Ektar for portraits
Do you also use Velvia for sports?

>>3056689

Like I said, originally for landscapes and wanted to try environmental portraits with them since I mostly shoot people.

But yeah, I have no idea what I'm doing, so even your sarcasm is helpful.

>>3056688

I honestly don't understand how the metering in my FG works very well, I think it's spot metering based on an old manual I downloaded, but I can't do AE-L exposure lock with the FG, so I didn't try shooting directly into the sunset since I figured it would overexpose. I didn't want to take the extra time to shoot fully manual since I didn't have a light meter with me other than using my d750 that way, and I didn't want to look like an idiot in front of said college students, so I only shot what I was familiar with.

Thanks for recommending underexposing, I honestly am still confused about this. The FG allows for exposure compensation. Then I think
I have to tell the developer to "pull" certain photos? Do I just tell them "Hey, frames 12-18 need to be pulled 1.5 stops?"

As for the factual comment, thanks for clarifying that I'm not crazy :)

>>3056689
I-I would like to see some snaps from this combination

>>3056648
After you use film for a while you will learn its limitations. I shoot 100 speed film because I like buying expired film and fast films go bad real quick.

On a sunny day with 100 speed film I set my camera to 1/125th and f16. I don't like shooting at f/16 so I usually go to 1/500th and f8. If it's winter it can be one stop of light less and in the summer it might be one stop more. Same if you are shooting something bright vs something dark. In the shade I might go down to 1/500th and f4. When it's cloudy I might be at 1/125th and f4. When it's getting late out and there is less light it could be 1/60th and f2.8. That is as low as I go. I mostly shoot with a 50mm and a slower shutter speed is just asking for blurry pictures. Anything wider than f2.8 is comically soft in the lens I use most often. You don't want to go under 1/125th for portraits in my opinion. People move and blink and ruin pictures. For kids I try to keep it at least at 1/250th. Forget about shooting indoors unless it's with the light from a sunny window.

If your lens is sharp at f2 or even f1.4 you can try shooting indoors at 1/60th. I have a flash but honestly for portraits it's not the best. It's better than nothing and saves your bacon indoors but it's not ideal.

If you trust your camera's meter, go with it. Otherwise use an external meter or a light meter app on your phone.

400H is pretty good. I hate getting stuck with it on a sunny day though since my highest shutter speed is 1/1000th. Stick with the 400H, it's pretty versatile. When you stick 100 speed film in your camera you make a commitment to avoid shooting in poor light.

You are not ready for that commitment.

>>3056702

Also really good, thanks. I'm actually going to print this out and bring it with me next time to see if my FG is performing similarly. I'd say I am for very similar shutter speeds on my DSLR (I mean, same physics, right?).

Aperture wise, I still tend to shoot wide for portraits unless I'm intentionally trying to get the background in focus. Some of the manual nikkors have been a learning curve since many of them have to be stopped down pretty significantly to be completely sharp. Someone gave me a 35 f/2.8 and I might as well be shooting through a coke bottle at anything below f/4. However, my 100E, 105 2.5, and 135 2.8 at least have ok center sharpness at 2.8. With portrait lenses like those, unless I'm shooting something far away at infinity, I don't see many reasons to stop down to f/8.

On the other hand, I have 3 voigtlander lenses, and while the 20mm is soft before f/5.6, the 58 1.4 is sharp enough completely wide open (sharp but slight glow), and my 28 2.8 performs similarly. I also have a rokinon 85 1.4 that does good enough at 1.4, since it's not often useful with such a narrow DOF unless I'm doing full body portraits.

None of my manual lenses compare to my newer FX lenses except maybe the voigtlander 58, with my sharpest being the sigma 50 1.4 ART, tamron 35 1.8, and tamron 70-200 2.8. But all of them produce comparatively clinical images that might be described as more stale or flat. Better in the studio or necessary for weddings though. None of them work on my Nikon FG without aperture rings.

I think I'll stick with 400H as you recommended until I learn more about pushing / pulling, and I'll keep carrying around a variable neutral density lens when it gets too bright. I'm actually surprised that more people don't use them for this purpose, since even in modern digital off-camera flashes have pretty slow sync limitations...

Anyway, thanks for all of the great advice and I definitely agree that I'm not ready for that commitment just yet.

f/2.8 was fast a couple of decades ago for semi-wide and wide angle prime lenses, i.e. 35mm and down; and it's still very fast for any zoom lens. Standard primes that'd come as a kit lens with pro bodies were f/1.8 since the early seventies, f/2 being not unusual before then (or even today, see various Fujis and M-mount stuff).

As for shooting 100 speed: consider your de facto minimum shutter speed. For me it's usually 1/30, or 1/15 if I'm prepared to try it a couple of times. At 100 ISO and with a f/2.8 lens (say an Industar m39 model, cyka blyat) at 1/30s this comes to 0 + 3 + 5 = EV8 = past nightfall. For reference, EV5 is home interiors at night with enough light to read in, EV6 is brightly lit home interiors at night, EV7 is indoor sports venues at night.

So I'm wondering if OP is just a scaredy cat about shooting at 1/30, or what. 100 ISO is plenty for daytime outdoors, as long as it's not winter in the far north or south.

That being said, for landscapes, just use a tripod.

>>3056692
>Didn't want to take the time to shoot manual
Oh, well there's your problem. The Nikon FG is not a very advanced camera. There is no AEL that I know of. It just has a simple P mode and an Aperture priority mode if I remember correctly and the same center weighted metering that every camera had in the 80s which is easily fooled. What you need to do with those to trick them into exposing right is point directly at the area that you want to take your meter reading, adjust the settings manually and then recompose. I wouldn't trust the aging electronics either until I'd tested it myself for accuracy.

If you want matrix metering and AEL or just a film body comparable to modern bodies you need an F4, F5 or F100. I think the FA has matrix metering but I don't know about AEL. The FM3a has AEL but no matrix metering

Old cameras like the FG should really just be used as manual cameras. If you aren't willing to do that then you should probably just not shoot that type of camera. Personally, I only shoot manual, even with my digital cameras. It's slower but I've never missed a shot because of it that I can remember and I think it has made me a better photographer.

>Underexposure
You can't pull certain photos you can only pull or push by the roll. What I'm recommending is exchanging some latitude so that you can get an image that isn't blurry. Most of the modern Kodak film stocks have an insane amount of latitude. Portra more than Ektar butEktar still has more than a normal consumers film like Superia or Kodak Gold.

If you're shooting B&W. You can push and pull individual photos if you develop using the stand development in which you use a tiny amount of developer and it basically is too weak to overdevelop any single frame.