Going Analog, Baby
I like to think that I know something about photographic lighting but with TTL technology and the fail-safe nature of digital photography it can be difficult to tell. Last Sunday I decided to test my knowledge by shooting on film. With around two out of 24 frames correctly exposed, I have a way to go.
I have a few fun facts to start. The first is that modern-day speedlights still function with older film cameras: my Canon AE-1 Program is compatible with my Canon 600EX ii-RT, either on the hotshoe or through a PC connector cable. For this shoot I used two lights, one wired to the camera which was used to trigger a slave.
The other fun fact is that film cameras aren't able to sync to the lights at the same shutter speed as digital.
Most digital cameras are able to sync with speedlights up to 1/250th of a second without using a different feature called "high-speed sync." Digital cameras usually won't let you shoot at higher speeds if you have a speedlight attached so there's nothing to worry about. This is to allow enough time for the short burst of light from a strobe to fully hit the frame/sensor. Older SLRs don't have this feature so you have to pay more attention to it. My AE-1 syncs at 1/60th of a second. I did not know this.
You see that little lightning bolt next to the 60? It's pretty hard to miss if you're looking for it. It's especially hard to miss after you've spent hours setting up and testing lights to be shot and then shooting at 1/125th of a second.
I spent all of Sunday night mixing and storing powder developing chemicals and subsequently developing film. Imagine my surprise at 2am when I finally looked at my developed film to find that almost all of the shots looked like this:
(The top third of the photo looks nice though, right?)
If you work with lights, you may have come across this sort of thing. If the shutter speed is too fast, the shutter itself will actually cut off the pulse of light from a strobe. This is illustrated to the right where the first third is being lit by my strobes while the rest of the photo is exposed only by the ambient light. The first curtain is literally blocking my light from hitting the frame.
This is something that is very easy (painfully easy, I would say) to fix---just slow down the shutter speed---but it's only easy to fix if you know that it's happening. If you're shooting on film for the first time, you don't know that it's happening.
Fortunately, I was bracketing using shutter speed so I did set the camera at 1/60 for a few frames and got some full images like the top image.
This is an educational experience for me, if nothing else. You can be damn sure that I'm not going to make this mistake again now that I know to look for it.
I'm actually pretty pleased with how successful developing itself went, I was anxious about mixing my own chemicals and processing the film without having a space designed for it but it worked out well. I'm more confident with the process and will probably start working with film a little more regularly. I'm planning to try this or a similar shoot again in the near future with the goal of getting more than two frames out of my work so stay posted for more!
