I am trying to experiment with a borrowed Hasselblad for a few weeks. What are some cheap films to buy and where do you get them developed for prints/negatives.
What is a cable release option - we are used to IS with digital cameras that our hands are not steady anymore!
Thanks for helping a novice with film!
B/W: Acros (virtually no grain) or FP4 (very tasteful gain). If Acros is too expensive, Ilford Delta 100, Ilford PanF, and Ilford Ortho are almost equally free of grain.
Negative color: Ekar and Portra 400
Slide: Velvia 50
Ektar and Velvia will need a good light meter too.
I’ve purchased much of my film from Freestyle Photo in California. EDU Ultra comes in ISO 100, 200 & 400, which represents the speed of the film where you pretty much want to be shooting during the day with 100, which will have less grain than the progressively faster films. Here is Arista EDU 100
Velvia is a more saturated film which yields slide transparencies. It requires more careful metering of light and is a bit difficult when shooting images with a large difference between the brightest and darkest areas of the scene. This is from a 6x7 camera. The Hasselblad is 6x6.
Portra is just the opposite… It is pretty good with higher contrast scenes and renders colors with greater subtlety and is especially good for rendering skin tones. This is from 35mm. Same daughter as the image above.
This is Ektar. This shot is from 35mm, but it gives you the sense of the film. It is less saturated than Velvia, but more so than Portra and like Portra, it is easier to meter than Velvia.
What the others said on film and cable releases. Are you shooting on a tripod?
Assuming you have a standard 80mm lens, shoot at 1/125 and you'll be safe. 1/60 is doable just keep steady. 1/30 is a stretch, at leas for me, with the Hasselblads even though I can shoot much slower with other cameras.
My favourite film is Portra 160, then Portra 400. Black and white, HP5, Ilford Ortho80, XP2. Maybe try a roll of Cinestill 400D for a different vibe.
Send them to a good lab, ie expect to pay $15-20 to get some proper scans back. Then you know if you like it or not and can work down the cheaper options.
panos.v wrote:
What the others said on film and cable releases. Are you shooting on a tripod?
Assuming you have a standard 80mm lens, shoot at 1/125 and you'll be safe. 1/60 is doable just keep steady. 1/30 is a stretch, at leas for me, with the Hasselblads even though I can shoot much slower with other cameras.
My favourite film is Portra 160, then Portra 400. Black and white, HP5, Ilford Ortho80, XP2. Maybe try a roll of Cinestill 400D for a different vibe.
Send them to a good lab, ie expect to pay $15-20 to get some proper scans back. Then you know if you like it or not and can work down the cheaper options....Show more →
I rarely shoot film these days. My last roll was using expired Portra 160, which I posted above. Besides the expense of buying the film, you must either walk the film into the lab, or use the postal service, then you pay for development, then scanning and lastly you pick the film up, or pay for post. The one variable here is the resolution of the scan. I used a high resolution scan and utilized the postal system and this cost for all the steps above (I already had the film) around $50. Prices can be lessened by reducing the quality of the scan and by sending multiple rolls of film at a time. Post both ways was around $10 total, development $7-$10 and then the cost of scanning.
For editing purposes, you want TIFF files of your scans and not JPEG and you can save $5.00 by having them trash your original negatives rather than sending them back to you.
Here's a bunch from when I had a Hasselblad. They're a mix of 501CM and 553ELX, pretty much all with the 80/2.8 CB (except the sunset which is with the 160CB). These were all developed and scanned by the Canadian Film Lab (https://canadianfilmlab.com/)
If I have the camera only for few weeks so I would think about what I want.
Do I want B&W or color ?
Am I shooting Portrait or landscape during these weeks?
Do I like smooth/sharp as digital or grainy that gives retro feeling?
If you have the camera for long term that you have plenty of time to test and found out which film you like.
zi464 wrote:
If I have the camera only for few weeks so I would think about what I want.
Do I want B&W or color ?
Am I shooting Portrait or landscape during these weeks?
Do I like smooth/sharp as digital or grainy that gives retro feeling?
If you have the camera for long term that you have plenty of time to test and found out which film you like.
A more fundamental question is raised by your original post. You were looking for a “cheap” film and yet film photography is a very expensive endeavor. You can drastically reduce the cost by exponentially increasing your up front cost by developing and scanning at home.
bwcolor wrote:
A more fundamental question is raised by your original post. You were looking for a “cheap” film and yet film photography is a very expensive endeavor. You can drastically reduce the cost by exponentially increasing your up front cost by developing and scanning at home.
IMO, there are lot of things to think of before " cheap " .
To ask myself what I want first, if I'm shooting portrait and landscape or even architecture Gold 200 is fine. But if the city I live is cloudy/raining most of time then Gold 200 may be too slow especially 500cm is not a lightweight camera.
To have the camera for only few weeks, I would not bother develop/scan by self.
Honestly I think you are over thinking it. When you step up to medium format, any film looks good - even Phoenix 200!
Just grab some film and go shoot and have fun. And the beauty of the hybrid workflow is if you decide on colour, one click in post prod will give you a b&w image. But you can’t do that the other way round!
Thank you to all the responses. Very helpful.
Granted there is no such thing as free lunch, so worthwhile to play around with a few rolls of film by spending some money, have fun and enjoy a legendary camera.
