Analog photography is quite amazing but, at least, in 35mm world it's not because of the resulting images but more in the cameras. Old, mechanical film cameras are much more pleasant to use for me. And before someone says that camera doesn't matter - it sure does. A camera that you like to use will be used more so you will end up "doing more photography".
I also love black and white films. I've not tried monochrome digital cameras yet but I doubt that you would get the same output as black and white film.
Not much of a fan in color photography when shooting 35mm but it gets interesting again in medium format ( or larger ). Pulling out the slides you've developed for the first time is a magical experience.
Long live film. It got me into many interesting things that I didn't think I would ever so. Like write a ( small ) blog about photography ( https://50mmf2.com ).
Haha. I was meaning true monochrome cameras without the color array filter ( like the bayer or x-trans ) in front of the sensor. Like Leica monochrome cameras ( Leica M9M and later models ). You get a lot more detail that way and theoretically tonal / gray separation should be better as well.
I do actually have two Sigma Foveon cameras ( DP2 and DP3 Merrill ) where the sensor is layered and each RGB pixel is layered on top of another. The detail you get out of those sensors is amazing the first time you see it. Black and white converts better too. That said I would still like a true monochrome camera to play with at some point.
"Old, mechanical film cameras are much more pleasant to use for me."
Me too! The big ker-chunk on my Pentax 6x7 or my Nikon F2 is very satisfying. I also don't mind the weight of either one. Granted, I don't take these cameras hiking. I actually prefer having a little heft to keep things steady.
Oh that's a pretty interesting blog, I do want to try some analog IR photography in the future. Seems like there's even some color IR film that produces quite amazing results but it's quite expensive.
Thanks! Infrared is very interesting. I recently got a digital infrared converted camera but haven't had too much time to use it. What I have shot with it has been cool.
Infrared on film is harder as it's difficult to judge how much infrared light is available. The focus point is also slightly off. Live view definitely helps in that regard.
I would recommend starting with infrared sensitive film ( e.g. Adox HR-50 ) and a red filter which will give infrared-ish results ( https://50mmf2.com/writings/adox-ir-hr-pro-50-film-review ). Since it sees visible light as well, it's easier to meter for and also focus.
I shoot a lot of photos at techno raves and I shoot exclusively on 800 ISO film rated at 3200 ISO. The environments are dark with lots of movement. Not being able to see the results until I get the roll developed keeps me in the moment and I love the delayed gratification I get when the photos turn out well.
Having first learned film photography and processing my own film and printing my own prints I wholly embrace digital photography because it allows me to keep in the moment. Everyone seems to be forgetting how ungodly expensive film photography is compared to digital photography. Decades ago the film cost $0.25-$0.35 per frame and you were quite cognizant of that fact while shooting. Add in exposure bracketing and you were paying $1.25 per shot, and again that was decades ago. A roll of film having 24 frames basically represented 5 shots. You had to have several rolls of film and you were constantly managing that resource instead of keeping in the moment.
With digital photography I can bracket all I want. A lot of cameras can do that automatically. I don't have to worry about running out of film, nor do I have to worry about all the money I'm spending in procuring, processing, and printing that film. I don't have to change rolls of film either. That keeps me in the moment.
Just like in the old days I go back after the shoot and look at what I got and discard the rubbish. I do prefer dodging and burning by hand in the darkroom, but I've made my peace with Gimp over the years and I've learned how to use it to maximal effect - and I can do way more than was ever possible in the darkrooms of yore. It really is progress.
"He shot thousands upon thousands of rolls of film at 36 exposures a roll, meticulously numbering each roll before sending it off to be developed a process he had no interest in by magazines or photo agencies."
“After I photograph I wait quite a while before I actually look at the stuff; a year, two years – sometimes longer. I need to be distant from the subjective experience so I can see what the photograph itself contains.”
“In fact, the work I'm looking at now is from 2002 [the interview was taking place in 2007]. But that time is a good lag time, because what happens is that I forget about the subjective experience of taking the picture, which is always pleasurable. When I look at the contact sheets, I want to be free of that. I want to just look at the photograph and see if it's interesting.”
In a benign example of the YouTube algorithm's radicalizing influence, in a little over two years, I went from watching videos about developing film at home to following some large format photographers' channels and purchasing a large format film camera. There actually isn't that much difference to digital if you're primarily concerned with the end result, but the experience of taking the photos couldn't be more unalike. One example: Yesterday I went on a hike and I carried only four sheets of film with me, meaning I was limited to taking four photos total during the whole day. There's something very freeing about that. Perhaps it's not feeling pressure to come home with a memory card full of images that I then need to cull through. In the end, I only took one and I won't know how it turned out until I develop it next weekend.
> In the end, I only took one and I won't know how it turned out until I develop it next weekend.
Did you take that one because you felt pressure to take a photo?
The old 8GB memory card I use is enough for about 300 raw files.
I frequently go on a hike, and not-infrequently don't take any photos even though I carried camera equipment with me.
otoh if I take 100 I won't know how they turned out until I process the raw files, sometime in the coming months. (I do move them to a computer and rename them asap to limit accidental loss.)
There's something very freeing about having the space to experiment and learn and play, at minimal expense.
Welcome to the wonderful world of film. I’ve shot almost entirely analog after a short foray trying digital in the late 2000s. With my life so digitally connected I found having the analog process kept the joy in photography for me and I simply love the slow process from making images down to the final print in the darkroom. At the end of the day I don’t want to dodge and burn in Lightroom, spending even more time in front of a screen. I want to do it with my hands and home made darkroom tools under red safety lights.
All this to say: if you’re getting into analog photography I suggest following it all the way to the end and making prints over scanning your images. It’s a lot of fun and gives you a lot of respect for every older photograph you look at plus wonder at what image processing has brought us in mobile phone sensors.
I completely agree. Some of my best parts of film photography was in the darkroom. It was one of the most calming and relaxing environments for me. It's magical to see an image slowly appear in a developer tray on the exposed paper.
I agree about the magic of an image appearing on the paper, but in other respects I was never keen on the darkroom itself - the smell of the fixer and the stop-bath, the darkness and the fact that the images I produced were never as good as I wanted them to be kind of put me off.
Still, it was fun, all in all. I've never found digital at all satisfying.
The smell of fixer is pretty pungent. You forgot about processing the film. That has to be done in complete darkness (well, loading the processing tank anyway) and you get the added anxiety of drying the film in a dust-free place because any speck of dust getting on the film when it's wet is going to be near impossible to remove later. Nothing beats the exhilaration of having the perfect shot ruined by a speck of dust! </sarcasm>
Yes, I really enjoyed working the darkroom back in the 80's and 90's but I wouldn't want to go back to that now.
It really makes you appreciate the old-timers. Back when I started we already had computerized exposure control (my first camera was a Canon AE-1 Program). While it was primitive compared to what we have today, it was light years ahead of the old equipment. But damn! Keeping everything dust-free was a real PITA, especially when every time you loaded a new roll of film, changed a lens, or even took the cap off a lens presented a new opportunity for dust to get somewhere it wasn't wanted! Then after getting all the fates to align to make it that far the film gets dust on it while drying after being processed. Aargh! It seemed to me half of photography was about battling dust.
Wow! I'd never even heard of an AT-1! It seemed like everybody around where I lived at the time was either selling the AE-1, the AE-1 Program, or the A-1. Now I see on Wikipedia there was not only the AT-1 that you had, but also an AV-1 and an AL-1. They all had the same bodies and lens mounts but slightly different features. I never knew!
Yeah, I think the AE-1 was probably more popular in the UK at the time (late 70s), but I liked having all the control (and I couldn't afford an AE-1). But what I really liked about Canons was how chunky they were compared to Olympus and Pentax - it made for stable shooting.
A bit later I got a Nikon F3 for work purposes (paid for by work), with lots of goodies (ring flash, macro lenses, etc.), but never really liked as much as the Canon.
True, but i'd have to settle for way older generation dslr tech for that. I'd rather have the fun of analog photography in that case. Vintage analog pictures look great, vintage digital ones don't :)
I have also been playing around with film photography. I am old enough to have actually developed film in college so it's not a new novelty for me.
For whatever reason I got the idea into my head that I should get a medium format camera (perhaps it was the youtube influence). I've always wanted to play around with one of these cameras, so I dropped $350 on a Yashica Mat 124-G TLR camera.
I wish I had done this years ago because film photography is now a rich man's hobby. The prices of everything is shooting through the roof right now.
Cameras that nobody wanted now cost over a thousand, film that you could have gotten for $6 is now $15 per roll. Fuji and Kodak either discontinue their film options or raise the prices of existing ones.
Let's do the math (based on my local camera store):
- 1 roll of 120 Portra 400: $14
- Develop and scanned at high resolution: $41
- Sales tax: $3.64
- Total: $58.64
When you shoot medium format you only get 12 shots, which means that each shot costs around $4.88 dollars!
Did you know that it actually costs more money to have a lab develop black and white pictures than color? Which means that if you want to save money you need to develop your own photos and scan them yourself.
Which means buying more stuff and having to deal with chemicals.
Oh and by the way, apparently all home film scanning options are considered to be junk compared to scanners used at the lab. So you either need to spend a lot for a fancy scanner, or rig up some elaborate contraption where you take pictures of your negatives with a DSLR.
I guess developing BW film is more expensive because there's just less volume? Most people shooting BW film probably develop it themselves while it's way harder to develop color film without getting a full lab.
The price for 35mm per shot is a bunch less for me. And it seems like people still have stocks o their old 35mm film rolls I can get for free-ish. Developing and scanning was something like 17 euros for me.
Seeing I spent 4.5 months to fill up my current 35mm roll I think I can accept the higher price per frame.
The reason I've heard why it is more expensive is that color development has been completely standardized. You put the rolls in the machine and the negatives come out the other end with little interaction from a person.
They never standardized black and white photography development so it all has to be done by hand, which is more time consuming.
As for 35mm, yes it's true that it is cheaper, but I got into this for the larger negative, so this is a self imposed financial hit.
You can do the same thing with B&W--buy a standard high-volume film processor and load it up with B&W film chemistry. If you look at the data sheets for XTOL, you'll see instructions for high-volume processing. B&W processing is not standardized (in the sense that there are standards for it, but nobody uses them) but that doesn't mean you have to do it by hand.
I think the reason why it is more expensive is just because it is a specialty service. Even in a large city, the amount of B&W film processed per day is not going to be very large, in 2022. On top of that, it's easy enough to process B&W yourself--it's not prohibitively expensive and can even be done in a small apartment without too much fuss.
(One reason that there are standards for B&W film processing is because it's necessary in order to have standards for film speed. The "ISO speed" of a film is tested by exposing the film to certain amounts of light, developing in a standardized way using a standardized developer, and then measuring some certain part of the resulting density curve.)
One of the hard things about colour film processing in the past was that the chemicals had to be in a narrow temperature range: nowadays that is relatively easy to do by 'simply' keeping them in a warm bath kept in the correct range via sous vide equipment.
Generally if you're doing analog B&W photography at any non-small volumes, it's probably cheaper to get the gear to have your own darkroom and at least process the negatives yourself. Once you see the shots, you can then perhaps take them to a printer if you don't want to do that yourself.
I think film prices have doubled or thereabouts in the past few years, this might be part of the global supply chain issues rather than a long-term condition (I hope).
Funny to read someone discover analog film for the first time, when you grew up with it yourself. While I am happy I learned and practiced manual film development in the lab (bw only), I would not move back from my full frame DSLR anytime soon.
Agreed. I grew up on 35mm with a fully manual SLR too. But seeing someone discover it for the first time is exciting. But during the pandemic, I "rediscovered" film. Growing up, I just bought the cheapest drugstore film (Kodak Gold/Ultramax, and similar Fujis), then sent it off for developing - never giving it too much though.
During the pandemic, I went down the rabbit hole or learning all about film (history, chemistry, etc..), experimenting with the different stocks, developing it myself at home - both color C-14 and BW (moving onto E-6 & caffenol next!). Messing with creative effects (redscale, souping, deliberate ligh-leaks, double exposure, etc...)
What a wondrous, fun, and endless hobby to get into! I'm still just on 35mm, but hope to grow into 120 soon. That said, I also would not give up my modern ILCE mirrorless.
I’d argue ‘the hard way’ is probably shooting large format slide film and developing it yourself ;), but seriously congrats on this foray into the exciting world of analog photography!
Just don’t get too attached to any Fuji film stocks…
Raised on analog film (spent many hours in darkrooms both in high school as well as in elementary school). 35mm was the largest film size I tried.
When I went back to analog a few years back I introduced myself to medium-format as well as the tried-and-true 35mm. I think I was surprised at how inexpensive (eBay) and yet capable the older medium-format cameras were.
I confess to having put down the 35mm cameras though after I saw what the medium-format could do [1-3]. By all means, if you want to dabble in analog, consider an old waist-level, "box camera" and a roll of 120 film (the original Instagram square format, ha ha).
Many of the cameras (twin-lens reflex) have just the one lens. (Or if they have other lens it's an odd sort of attachment — probably not worth the hassle.) There is a lot to be said to "using your feet to zoom" with a fixed (prime) lens.
I did play with both a Mamiya and Bronica that had bayonet-style lens mounts. I cannot say from memory which lens I used with each. They were primes to be sure. I'm thinking maybe about 150mm or so? I believe that because of the film size, they're equivalent to about half their length in 35mm. So a 150mm lens is more like a 75mm lens for a 35mm camera (a decent portrait lens).
Generally though, not an "action" camera, so telephoto was mot so interesting. People and land/cityscapes look best, IMHO so a wide to medium-angle lenses were the best.
One thing that always jumps out to me with photos from "real" cameras is the colors and dynamic range. The film examples (particularly the chickens) have great color and range compared to what I'd expect from a cell phone. Even the Pixel 2 versus dslr.
As I've been learning to shoot on a dslr I've been very impressed with how much modern smart phones are doing for you. Focus, sharpness, and exposure are usually very good with little to no effort.
Negative film has a shockingly high dynamic range. It’s high enough that you can easily run into dynamic range limitations elsewhere in the system (e.g. lens, paper) before you run into the limitations of the film itself. TMX reportedly has a dynamic range of something like 20 stops in the laboratory (not that you’d be able to show off that range in a print).
The colors are a bit exaggerated in consumer film, like the Kodak Gold which the author is shooting. Kodak wants people to come back from vacation with nice, colorful pictures. You can get the same, vivid colors in digital, but I think most digital cameras (including phones) just default to a more naturalistic look—IMO, I am so happy with the default colors on most digital cameras, compared to the brighter color settings you’d get from consumer film. One of the big ways you get colors to pop in film is by adjusting the contrast. You’ll notice that film pays for that contrast and color with reduced detail in the shadows and often garish-looking skin tones.
One thing that people tend to like about film is "highlight rolloff" - or the gradient describing how highlights become over-exposed. In digital cameras this can end up being a harsh clipping of data, but with film, it's usually a softer more pleasing transition.
This is one reason why fancy digital cameras prefer to shoot in raw and log color spaces to help preserve the color data to grade that transition
The analog pictures are reasonably contrasty, but they do preserve highlights in a very nice way.
If you look at the top picture in the post then I'd have more dynamic range with my DSLR for most of that picture, but the parts in direct sunlight would be completely clipped instead.
The author talks about getting into medium-format photography. When shooting film, I usually shoot medium format and I’ve been shooting mostly medium-format for 15+ years. I have observations about what the author says about MF.
> It seems like the vast majority of medium format cameras have fixed focus lenses though.
This is the toy camera movement. Holga, Diana, Lomo, etc. The cameras might cost you $20 or less and exhibit severe vignetting, fixed focus, lens flare, and even light leaks (people put tape on the cameras). These seem really common, but I think that it’s just that toy cameras are still manufactured and sold in stores so you see them a lot. I think you can get these cameras at places like Urban Outfitters.
> The alternative is getting one of the medium format SLRs with an actual focusable lens but those are again ridiculously overpriced for a box with a hole for a lens in it.
The Hasselblads are the other extreme end. They are collector’s items. They are also good cameras, but because they are also collector’s items, they are expensive. You might spend $1,500 for a used Hasselblad system.
There are alternatives between a Holga and Hasselblad, though! You can get Yashica TLRs for relatively inexpensive, as well as Seagull, Mamiya C, and some other TLR brands. I would expect to pay $100 or $200.
Around $500 you open up a number of more modern “workhorse” MF cameras including SLRs, like Mamiya RB67 & RZ67, various Bronica, Pentax 645, etc.
And upwards of $700-$1,500, you can get Fuji rangefinders, Pentax 67s, and maybe a Hasselblad.
If you are doing this as a hobby and just want to see if you like MF, I recommend going for a used TLR—they are inexpensive, light, and fun to use. If you want to suffer a bit more and have more control over your pictures, read lens reviews for MF SLRs.
> The film scans I've seen online taken through such cameras make it look like there's way less detail than my 35mm film pictures though.
Complicating the issue is the fact that you can get good scans of 35mm film with relatively inexpensive equipment. The only ways I’ve been able to get really good scans of MF film is with the Nikon CoolScan 9000 or drum scanners. Epson flatbeds do the job but getting good MF scans from flatbed scanners is tricky and requires some passion. Getting drum scans has, in the past, set me back around $30 PER PICTURE so it has to be something you care deeply about.
Unless you have a wet lab or are willing to invest in high-quality equipment, you are not going to get near the level of quality from MF that you’d expect, given the size and lens quality.
Ah with the cheap medium format cameras I mean something like the Agfa Clack. Really cheap to get second hand but I don't see it producing decent quality pictures.
I did get an Epson V600 to do photo scanning, do you have any detail on why it would not produce good scans? I tested it with a few old 35mm negatives and it looked quite alright after disabling _all_ the postprocessing crap in the official software and loading it into darktable to do the negative processing.
Also thanks for the pointers on the medium format cameras. I guess I'll keep eying ebay for those cameras a bit longer.
The first problem with MF scans is that it is hard to mount film so it is completely flat. If it is not flat, it cannot be in-focus from edge to edge. 35mm is smaller and has wider borders (where the sprocket holes go) and so this is much less of a problem with 35mm. There are various techniques and tricks to get MF flat, like using tape, using glass, or wet-mounting. Tape might not work in your film mounts at all, depending on construction.
The next problem is that your film has to be held in the focal plane of your scanner. There are film mounts which let you adjust the film height with screws, and some scanners have focus adjustments (usually automatic, I think).
Next, you will want to enable the IR channel for chromogenic film (including B&W chromogenic, like Ilford XP2) and disable it for non-chromogenic film. Generally speaking, I would use one of the aftermarket scanning software packages like VueScan or SilverFast. You can save the IR channel as alpha and use it to remove dust later.
Do tests to find out the actual resolution to scan at.
My experience with flatbeds like the Epson V600 is that you can get very good results, but you are getting like half the resolution MF film actually provides and the image is less clean than it could be. For 35mm it is not hard to find “film scanners” that let you feed slides or strips of 35mm and get better results. For MF, flatbed is as good as it gets until you go to like an Imacon (expensive, IMO not that much better than a good flatbed) or drum scanner (best results, maybe $30 per scan).
In the lab, you focus the enlarger carefully using a “grain focuser”, use a high-quality lens for your enlarger which has enough covers for your film size, set it to a middling aperture (tiny apertures affect focus), and you can get sharp, sharp prints for less than the cost of getting that same sharpness in the digital domain.
It's funny because my school (back in the early 80's) had Hasselblads but nobody wanted to use them because they were old - like 20-30 years old even then! They were a nightmare to operate, had no light metering let alone expose control - but damn! You could get some great photos if you said your prayers right! I had a brand-new Canon AE-1 Program but still liked using the Hasselblads from time to time because you could get some great shots that you could enlarge to poster size without any grain! Incredible to think how much those cameras would be worth today!
$1,500 is about the entry price for a used Hasselblad 500C/M with kit lens (80mm f/2.8). If you're paying $15,000 for a Hasselblad, you can get something brand-new with two or three lenses. If you're buying straight off eBay auctions, it's easy to end up paying too much, but even then, you aren't likely to be paying more than $2,500 for a typical 500C/M kit.
Last chance to see. Long-outdated of a material we will never see again (barring a "Impossible Film Project" type revival.)
I'm not happy to be aging, but I'm lucky that earlier in life I still experienced all that. Black & white developing, roll film in a medium format twin-lens reflex camera, my brother's experiments in taking pictures on blueprint paper (another long-gone technology)...
But for me, the earliest digicams (0.75MP, then 2MP for me) were already a clear indication that film's days were numbered, and since first experiencing a DSLR (the Canon EOS300D "Digital Rebel") I've never looked back; in fact that's when I gave away all my darkroom equipment.
I can totally see nostalgia for this stuff if you've never experienced it, and I'd probably want to try it too. But I've already been there, done that.
Oh, one thing that you just don't get in digital is "honestly flawed" low-light photos. The brutal but honest noise of b&w film push-processed to 1600ISO is more aesthetically pleasing than all the computational photography crap used to hide it in a modern digicam. But probably the "honest noise" of a digital sensor pushed to its limits isn't very pretty.
Luminance noise can be surprisingly pleasant on a full-frame sensor, although I still go out of my way to avoid it where possible - not hard lately as my full-frame body has been dedicated to macro, and macro wildlife photography already requires the kind of exuberant flash setup that makes noise very easy to avoid.
(For those interested: Nikon D850, Micro 105mm f/2.8 VR II, three SB-R200 heads on a forward ring with a wireless controller on the shoe. I usually shoot at 1/250. f/11, and "L1.0" ie ISO 50 equiv, with the flash set to make up exposure. It's a fairly complex rig, but very simple to use, to the point where I don't worry much about whether I'll get keepers when shooting wild wasps unless I'm right up at 1:1 and a 6" working distance.)
Right there with you on film versus digital. I get the nostalgia and I do still have Grandpa's Nikkormat FTn that I learned on as a kid, but I did shoot film as a kid and I'm not sorry to have moved to digital, not least because I'm certain I could not do the kind of work I do - chasing wild wasps around or finding places where they congregate, and shooting them as they go about their occasions undisturbed by me - without digital.
So far as I can tell, there aren't that many photographers out there who do that kind of work at all, and I refuse for both ethical and competitive reasons to join the ranks of those insect macro shooters who capture and kill their subjects - they certainly do produce beautiful images, but I don't respect the means by which they do so. Sure, I can't stack focus to get shots sharp all the way through, but so what? When you look at my work, you can do so in the knowledge that the trajectory of life out of which you're seeing that 4ms slice was in no way deflected by my efforts in documenting part of it - and I also have the satisfaction of knowing the same, as well as that I'm doing a kind of work that is in a lot of ways harder than theirs. Sure, you can screw up a stack and have to reshoot, but when your subject will never move again because you've killed it, all that costs you is time. Meanwhile, my dilettante ass is over here trying to capture moments that have never existed before and never will again, and sure, I don't always get them, but I do get them. [1]
I think that's worth more than all the perfect focus stacking in the world ever will be, and on film I can't imagine being able to work that way at all, because those wasps aren't waiting around for me and I wouldn't want them to. (Well, aside from the one time they got so used to seeing me by a caterpillar nest that they started using me as a waypoint on their route to it! That was oddly sweet to realize, but it was their choice, not mine, and I suppose that's the point.)
Well, back in the day, when California still had "extras" in public schools like photography with real 135 and 120 cameras complete with darkrooms, I learned photography "the hard way" like this and that included processing B&W film and printing it. There's a lot to be said for such a learning experience.
Reading this article I decided to see how much a C41 color film (Kodacolor/Fujicolor) processing system sells for - well, turns out they are not cheap but also not bizarrely expensive either. With some extra cash and time, you could set up a service for C41 processing using one of these machines. Sadly I don't have enough lifetimes for it but...
I'd still love to do Kodachrome though - I grew up with magazines shot in Kodachrome and I still like the look.
They are not expensive, but most good C41 processing systems are designed to be used at a certain rate and may not give you expected results if you are using them at home.
With your standard non-chromogenic process, you often mix up a fresh batch of developer and then then throw the developer out after using it. This gives you nice, consistent results in a home lab. The chromogenic chemistry (C-41, E-6) is usually designed for high-volume, and that means much less waste, but it also means that the chemistry will be go of spec if you don’t process enough film.
Basically, your chemicals are changing over time due to both natural aging processes (e.g. reacting with the oxygen in the air) and due to usage by processing film. If you don’t process enough film, the chemicals still react with air but aren’t being used to process much film.
The same applies to RA-4 color paper. Even a small college lab is unlikely to print enough photographs to keep the RA-4 chemistry within spec. And unfortunately, out-of-spec color chemistry means color shifts, which are hard to correct in a wet lab. It’s not like B&W wet labs where you can easily fix problems with printing technique.
There are alternative C-41 chemistry kits designed for home use. I don’t recommend them in general, because they are wasteful and very sensitive to temperature.
"The larger the sensor the blurrier the background can be, and this also changes the distance at what you can make a picture of something and still have a blurry background."
Blur is totally determined by optics and has no direct relationship to sensor / film area.
One of the factors that influence depth-of-field is focal length. To get the same field-of-view with a small sensor / film area, the focal length needs to be smaller too, and hence the depth-of-field will be larger.
So yes, practically speaking, a camera with a much larger sensor / film area does allow you to take pictures with a much more narrow depth-of-field.
That seems an odd nit to pick - the choice of optics is intimately connected to the size of the sensor; plus it's not even right.
The size of the circle-of-confusion depends also on the degree of enlargement and viewing distance in the final product - i.e. what looks sharp when viewed at arm's length on a phone with a Retina display can look not-sharp when cropped and enlarged to 20x30 and seen up close.
Honestly this is one of the HN top-voted comment archetypes: Nitpick which is technically correct in some limited form, but actually completely useless.
> Blur is totally determined by optics and has no direct relationship to sensor / film area.
You’re both correct—optics are constrained by sensor size, so while the amount of background defocus is determined directly by optics, it is determined indirectly by sensor size.
The amount of blur at infinity is proportional to the ratio of the aperture size (e.g. measured in mm) to the subject size (e.g. measured in mm). For a given lens design, the aperture size is proportional to the sensor size.
You do get higher aperture numbers for smaller sensors but we’re talking about a factor of, say, 2x weighed against much larger numbers. This is just because wide-open lenses are impractical to manufacture at larger sizes (weight goes up with the cube, after all).
I see phone cameras with lenses at like ƒ/2.2 or something thereabouts and it’s not radically different from what you’d see on larger cameras until you get to LF, but if you dive into vintage LF lenses you’ll see “barrel lenses” with crazy, like, ƒ/2 designs for shooting on LF film. These are not scaled-up versions of sensible, modern designs. Instead, they are really old designs, and they are not gonna be sharp.
I can assure you that if I put a 50mm prime on my 5D (full frame) and then on my GH5 (mFT), the 5D focus will roll off noticeably more than the GH5. This is a thing to consider when using cropped sensors.
>A crop-sensor camera also comes in handy for macro shots. Recall that depth of field (DOF) is the distance between the closest and furthest parts in an image that will appear in focus. At the same aperture and for the same field of view, an APS-C sensor will have a higher depth of field than with a full frame camera.
Ah okay if you have an f/2 50mm-FOV-equivalent lens (~25mm) on an MFT body and a 50mm f/2 on a full-frame body, yes, there will be more blur because the aperture radius is twice as large on the full-frame lens.
I read your comment as saying that the exact same 50mm f/2 lens will produce less blur on an MFT body than on a full-frame body. That'd be a narrower FOV (~100mm equivalent) but the same blur as full frame. Perhaps I misinterpreted?
For a given field of view for the image, and a given f-stop, a camera with a larger sensor will have more out-of-focus blur. Of course, the camera with the larger sensor will need to use a lens with a longer focal length to get the same field of view. In turn, that means that the absolute aperture (not the ratio that gives the f-stop) will have to be bigger. The absolute aperture (roughly, the diameter of the front of the lens, though things get funny for wide-angle lenses) is what really determines how burred the out-of-focus parts of the image are.
To see this, imagine that you're focused to a distance of 9 meters. That means that all the light from any point in the plane that is 9 meters away gets focused on one spot on the sensor, with this spot on the sensor corresponding to the location on the plane. Now imagine what happens with the light from a point 10 meters away. On the way to the sensor, all the light rays from this point will have to pass through the plane that is 9 meters away, and will then behave just as if they originated from that 9-meter-away plane. Since that plane is in focus, these rays will show up on the sensor in positions corresponding to where they were in the 9-meter-away plane.
Now imagine where those rays from 10 meters away that end up on the sensor actually are when they reach the 9-meter-away plane. Suppose the absolute aperture (diameter of lens) is 20mm. The rays that hit the lens (and then the sensor) starting from 10 meters away form a cone, which spreads out to 20mm at the camera. So at 9 meters away, 1/10 that distance, the cone will have spread out 1/10 as much, which is 2mm. So single points at a distance of 10 meters look just like disks 2mm wide at 9 meters. That's the extent of out-of-focus blur.
How blurry that seems to the viewer of the final image depends on the field of view, which for a fixed focal length depends on the sensor size. With a small sensor, the field of view at 9 meters might be only 200mm, and 2mm looks fairly blurred. With a large sensor, the field of view at 9 meters might be 2000mm, and a 2mm disk might look almost like a point to the viewer.
EDIT: I realize now that the concluding paragraph may be confusing, since it seems to say that it's the small sensor that will have more blur. The problem is that I shouldn't have compared images with different fields of view - when deciding which camera to use to take a picture you have in mind, you of course envision using lenses for each camera that will give the same field of view, as appropriate for the result you are trying to achieve. Looked at that way, one can see that with the field of view fixed, an absolute aperature of 20mm will correspond to a smaller f-stop for a camera with a small sensor size than for a camera with a larger sensor. For instance, a 100mm focal length lens with a 20mm aperature is an f/5 lens. With a sensor 1/10 as large, one would need a 10mm focal length lens for the same field of view, which would need to be f/0.5 to have a 20mm aperture, if one want to produce the same background blur. It's either impossible or extremely expensive to get an f/0.5 lens.
Alas, film's recent popularity comes with (literally) a price. Cameras that were practically being given away are, thanks to "influencers", now insanely priced. Film was expensive enough but pandemic-related supply issues and Fuji's slow withdrawal from the film market have just made things worse.
I was lucky in that I picked up a bunch of film cameras when they were cheap. Processing hasn't risen in price all that much (yet) so that's nice. I even shoot 4x5 B&W that I process and scan myself. I still shoot digital, but it's 50:50 with film these days.
I get mostly annoyed with how expensive some old cameras are because branding. I mean the medium format box cameras are literally just a box with a hole for a lens and a bit of mechanics to move the film and shutter. There's no reason for them being a thousand dollars still. There's even some company 3d printing new medium format cameras and made them expensive :(
> I get mostly annoyed with how expensive some old cameras are because branding.
Regarding branding, I'd say you're half-right: In the same way that a Leica or Contax 35mm camera costs more than a Nikon or Canon 35mm camera, and the Nikon and Canon cameras cost more than a Yashica or a Konica (or even lesser known brands), so do the more luxurious medium format brands cost more. If you've never shot with (for example) a Hasselblad and a Kiev 60 (a budget Soviet knockoff of a Hasselblad) then you might be missing an understanding of the literal quality tradeoff, but brand names do command higher costs regardless. This is the same now with new cameras as it is (and always has been) with old cameras
> I mean the medium format box cameras are literally just a box with a hole for a lens and a bit of mechanics to move the film and shutter.
Every 'old' camera - SLR or rangefinder or viewfinder, 35mm or medium format, etc - is a box with a hole for a lens and some mechanics to move the film and shutter. New cameras are just boxes with holes for lenses and a lot of electronics.
Part of the original cost of camera bodies has to do with the fact that you're buying into a system; it costs more for a company to exist that builds good camera bodies as well as an extensive lens and accessory lineup, compared to a company that only has a few or poor-quality lenses to pair with their camera bodies. Some camera companies invested a lot of money into their ergonomics, or their materials and finish, or durability, or new viewfinder and shutter technologies, or autofocus, and so on. These companies typically charged more for their products.
Making cameras and lenses in a larger format format compounds all production costs. They literally have bigger viewfinders and mirrors and film transport systems and more glass in their lenses.
> There's no reason for them being a thousand dollars still.
Nobody is making them anymore, which makes supply-vs-demand an issue. You can only repair cameras so many times, and some are very difficult to repair at all.
Nowadays, you pay more for a used film camera if it's extremely popular, and usually it's the best performing, best handling, best looking cameras with the best used market for lenses and accessories that command the highest premiums.
It seems odd that there isn't cheap black and white film. I think they sell cyanotype at the local craft store here. Maybe if dissolve that in acetone you could make cellulose acetate film with it?
I also love black and white films. I've not tried monochrome digital cameras yet but I doubt that you would get the same output as black and white film.
Not much of a fan in color photography when shooting 35mm but it gets interesting again in medium format ( or larger ). Pulling out the slides you've developed for the first time is a magical experience.
Long live film. It got me into many interesting things that I didn't think I would ever so. Like write a ( small ) blog about photography ( https://50mmf2.com ).