Topic: I want more character...

[4square]

Well, my new baby arrived just a couple of days ago. It's a lovely black Pentax MX with a 40mm f2.8 super compact lens. It's fairly well used with a few areas where the brass is showing through the black paint, but I think this gives is character

Straight away I loaded it up with a roll of Fujicolor 200 that for some reason just happened to be in the fridge (no idea where it came from off hand!!) and took it out for a test run. Lunch time today I took the film into Boots to be developed in 1 hour (I just couldn't wait!) and I've just picked up the photos. They are all very sharp, well exposed and... well... utterly lacking in character...

This was just a test film, so I wasn't expecting master pieces, and at least I know metering/shutter/everything else is working fine, but I want a bit more character... I mean these photos could easily have come from any modern digital camera!

For the last few years the only film photography I have done has been on Polaroid, so I'm not too knowledgeable about different 35mm films these days. And whether you love or hate Polaroid (I'm in the love camp BTW!) you can't deny Polaroid photos always have plenty of distinctive character. In other words I'm not looking for super accurate colours... I guess I'm looking for weird colours, grain etc etc. So... any suggestions film wise? B&W suggestions also very much welcomed.

[LT]

hope this doesn't sound too trite, but in my experience, character and personality in photography does not come from your equipment, it comes from your use of the equipment.  Rely on your eye more than your gear and I'm sure you will start to see the character you are after. 

[Francois]

Like Leon said. For me, the exposure meter is just a suggestion the camera makes and focus is a fuzzy concept that's over rated

And of course, composition is everything...

[choppert]

Being somewhat superficial I just love a bit of
ass showing through 

Hooorah!

[tuanhbui]

Can you scan any of your pics from your new camera for us to see?

[tuanhbui]

Also, if by "character" you mean a distinctiveness specific to the equipment you're using, I'd hazard to say that the better the equipment, the less the "character" - seeing as good photographic equipment is supposed to be accurate, sharp, vignette-less, light-leak-less, and so forth. So, you might try to find some weird, old, messed-up lenses to fit onto your new camera, if you're going for that.

I'd suggest a screwmount to K-mount adapter, and then getting some old russian glass - a Helios 44-2 perhaps?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_%28lens_brand%29

I have this lens and use it on my canons - it's got really cool distorted bokeh:



(and I apologize - I took the above picture with a dslr, a canon 5d, but felt that including it here would be illustrative).

I don't know if that's what you're looking for, but I hope that helps!

[LT]

(and I apologize - I took the above picture with a dslr, a canon 5d, but felt that including it here would be illustrative).

We'll let you off this once ... but no more please unless it's to photograph other gear, or to photograph prints.

[4square]

Leon, I'm afraid your answer is rather trite. I just haven't used a 35mm film camera in a while and I just wondered if anyone could suggest any interesting types of film I might not be aware of... the name of this forum lead me to believe this might be a good place for such discussions...

[LT]

.. the name of this forum lead me to believe this might be a good place for such discussions...

And so it is.  I do stand by what I say though - gear/ materials are never a shortcut to vision.

Perhaps I misunderstood your question.  Character is such a subjective thing.  Do you like grit and grain?  If so try a fast film like delta 3200 or pushed hp5+ in an acutance developer like rodinal. Do you like smooth finishes? try delta 100 in perceptol and you'll have virtually grain free negs. Or maybe you want to use your lens wide open to minimise DOF?  try Rollei ATP or Pan F in  daylight.

Will you be printing in the darkroom or scanning and using digital post techniques?

Maybe you are looking for colour?  Punchy = ektar (negative) or velvia (transparency), or maybe subtle like Portra 160?

perhaps we can start again with a description of what type of character you are looking for?

[vicky slater]

I'm with Leon.
Perhaps if you think about what type of picture you'd like to make..? my idea of character might be a million miles from yours.
Although I have my favourite films I know that they actually play a small part in my pictures.

erm, just looked at your work and you seem to know what you're doing :)

[Francois]

And then, there are questions about how experimental you are. There's regular processing, X-pro, redscale, negative accelerations, infrared, super speed films, alternate processing techniques...

Or how broke/cheap you are.

Some films are way underrated. Kodak Gold comes to mind. It used to be so ubiquitous that people forget about it. There's also the use of some expired stuff, but to get results that won't disappoint you needs a certain level of knowledge about it.

With film, pretty much anything is possible with the right knowledge.

[astrobeck]

I agree about the film and certain films have a certain "look". Kodak Gold used to be my favorite film of choice since it was easy to get, easy to process and had nice even color.

Now I like Ektar for the same reason, but Ektar seems to have been fed steroids, and the punch is a bit more popped up-and I like that now- at least at this time in my life's journey.

Something I have found helpful is to stop thinking of your camera as some sort of magic box that makes great photos just because it's a XXXX brand and XXXX model.
Brands and models don't mean squat when you get right down to the nitty gritty of photography.
It's your perception and how you view the world that ultimately does.
Show us your world!

Welcome to Filmwasters too!

[hookstrapped]

You might want to take a critical look at your lighting for that roll you shot.  When you say it looks like something a digital camera could have taken, that brings to mind an evenly lit homogenous smiley-faced goodness that bores the crap out of me.

Different films have different qualities but I think the lighting is what brings out those qualities in a way that imparts character (or doesn't).  Study the lighting of photographs you like, that have a character you seek for your own photos.  That's what I do -- also, don't limit your inspirational sources to photographs.  Film (movies, cinema) and paintings are also great to get ideas.

[Photo_Utopia]

I'd say 'character' is one of the more difficult things to define, every step of the process from equipment choice, film choice and processing will all create many different 'looks'.

I think part of the problem is how the film has been printed, you took the film to Boots who use Fuji frontier machines. The printers use scanners which sharpen both edges and tonal area, grain can be accentuated as well as colour saturation with the standard software. Prolabs has access to different tone curves and can switch of sharpening.

Here below is a graphic demonstration; the top print is printed with a lens based system and the lower is scanned– they have a different 'character' The image was shot on a 1959 Rolleiflex T loaded with Kodak Portra 800


(Noritsu 1200 series printed with Nikon lens then scanned on flatbed with no sharpening)


(Scanned image)

Final treatment of your negatives will make a huge difference, using film alone is no silver bullet
Hope this helps

[Windy]

Is it a difference between camera character and individual character?

I'd expect a different result if I shot the same scene at the same time using either a holga or a hasselblad.

A good quality SLR with a good lens, and good quality film that is professionaly developed is going to give a result as good as (if not better) than the same scene shot with a dSLR.

However, if you gave two people the same camera/film and asked them to photograph the same scene then there's a good chance of two completely different photo's because of individuals interpretation. Add choice of film, developers etc. and the results are going to be completely different.

So, IMO, a camera does have 'character', but it's individual interpretation that gives character to the picture.

[Wensleydale Blue]

4Square

Whatever the comments made above you can be sure of one thing from this site, and its maybe why you, and I suspect possibly why many of us have found our way here, and this is that most people here seem to yearn for a photography that is not seeking perfection in a technical or commercially prescribed sense sense but rather they are looking to perfect photography for their own means of personal expression - a way of seeing the world and extracting some sort of meaning from it.

As a result the camera and its add ons is really just a means to an end.  You'll see that many people here fetishise certain pieces of equipment or types of film but this is often because they see it as an exciting possibility for achieving their ambitions.  In a way, and this is certainly true of myself, it seems like a lot of us have learnt the basics of photography, realised its limitations and set off the explore the ways it might be subverted to bring about something more personal.  And I wonder if the 'character' that you are seeking is sort of the same thing - a searching for something different that's out of the ordinary?  If it is then you are definitely in the right place.  And don't worry about Leon's tough love above, he's a cutie really and a mine of knowledge and good sense.

[Skorj]

Equipment-wise, and as others have said:

o Crappy / old lens.
o Shoot wide open.
o Push / pull a few stops.
o X-pro.
o Ektar.

[Francois]

And don't forget, it's only through mastery of the medium that uniqueness can be produced. When you've come to the point where you really understand how film and your gear works that you can with some degree of certainty explore the non standard ways of treating the film...

Last roll of B&W 35mm I shot was exposed and processed in a non-Ilford-recommended way in order to ditch shadow detail and get huge grain. But to get consistent results, you need to first understand what was going to happen before burning through the film. Planning ahead is a big part of experimentation.