First prints from shooting film!

[xanis]

I'm taking a photography course this semester and I have to shoot B&W film for it. I'm using a Pentax ME Super with a Pentax 50mm f/2 lens, on Kodak Tri-X 400 film. The negatives and prints were developed by me, and the prints are on Ilford Multigrade Deluxe Pearle paper.

This class is awesome. I never knew how much fun working in the darkroom could be! I've also gained an appreciation for good photographs and the work that goes in to them. Most importantly though, I've learned all about exposure, f-stops, shutter speeds, and film speeds. Now, instead of just winging it and putting it on automatic settings, I set the camera to manual and think about every shot I'm making.

Here are the two prints that I made today:

1
Original: f/16 @ 1/125s
Print: f/22 for 5s

2
Original: f/22 @ 1/125s
Print: f/22 for 4.3s

Unfortunately, my scanner didn't scan the photos so well. The scans A LOT duller than they actually are, I promise.

 

[angry hampster]

Sweet, now take some photos that are interesting.

 

[Deadtrees]

If you've all about those things you mentioned, why did you use such a high f/ value?
I'm saying it because the images look fuzzy and I thought it might be due to high f/ value.

 

[finbarqs]

lens diffraction is NOT your friend.. but being new to photography, welcome!! I've done medium format (Asahi Pentax 6x7, hassy) large format 4x5 (forgot the name, since it was a school camera) and my good ol' Nikon FE with it's "wannabe" range finder. After spending hours in the dark room to pull out 3 shots that were "acceptable" I realized that Digital SLR is so much easier to manage and produce high quality prints. That isn't to say I don't like film...

http://farm4.static.flickr.com...96429_b08418d748_o.jpg

shot on my Nikon FE with Velvia 50

 

[xanis]

Originally posted by: Deadtrees
If you've all about those things you mentioned, why did you use such a high f/ value?
I'm saying it because the images look fuzzy and I thought it might be due to high f/ value.

The images look fuzzy because my scanner sucks. I assure that they don't look like that in person.

 

[996GT2]

Originally posted by: Xanis

Originally posted by: Deadtrees
If you've all about those things you mentioned, why did you use such a high f/ value?
I'm saying it because the images look fuzzy and I thought it might be due to high f/ value.

The images look fuzzy because my scanner sucks. I assure that they don't look like that in person.

They are also not as sharp as they could be due to the high F value.

For those shots, f/11 should have provided more than enough depth of field, and resulted in sharper images due to less lens diffraction as well.

Diffraction is less of a problem for film cameras since the resolution is less than today's high megapixel digital SLRs, but it's still an issue if you shoot all of your shots at f/22. With a digital SLR, a good lens may become diffraction-limited even at f/8, gradually resulting in a loss of sharpness compared to f/4 or f/5.6.

 

[finbarqs]

diffraction is a law of physics, no matter what format you use! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffraction