Because I want to end up with silver gelatin, black-and-white prints that I do myself in the darkroom, I’ve begun shooting film alongside digital when I do a portrait session. I used both cameras when I photographed a friend recently at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco.
Getting images that are in sharp focus and properly exposed is a no-brainer with my state-of-the-art Fujifilm camera. That’s not to hype the camera, in fact, almost the opposite. It’s no challenge to get a technically spot-on image with that camera, and, frankly, that deprives one of some of the satisfaction. You still have to pose the subject, find a good composition, get a good expression, pay attention to the lighting, etc., but much of the technical issues are already solved.
Here are some images with that camera.
One challenge at shooting at the Palace of Fine Arts on a nice day is that there are tourists everywhere. I often had to wait for them to get out of a shot. So, at times, I solved that problem by shooting down, which is also a flattering portrait angle.
The image below also eliminates background clutter—and it has good lighting, a good pose, and a good expression.
These last two are with my 35mm film camera. Not everyone likes the grain you get with film—I don’t mind it, but I don’t process to emphasize it, either.
This last one I printed in the darkroom. It took me nine iterations to get a print I was satisfied with. Using split-grade printing to get the highlights and shadows right, including bringing out detail in the black sweater, and then burning down the pants and shoes, and dodging her face, took a lot of trial-and-error to get right. But I had a pretty good darkroom 8×10 print in the end. It differs from the scan of the negative, which is what you see here, in that the sweater is a blacker black, the highlights are brighter, and overall it has less sharp detail.
Bringing two cameras is more equipment to manage on a portrait shoot, but the different looks I get from doing that—and the ability to make darkroom prints—makes it worth the extra trouble.
