Film Photography Techniques by Hans Ter Horst

アウトフォーカス Film Photography Techniques Infrared Film Techniques I have been experimenting with infra-

red photography with the Efke IR820 Aura and Ilford SFX200 films. If you start looking into IR photography it can be a bit confusing at first. Googling the film name will probably yield lots of unexpected questions in forums and even more, seemingly, conflicting answers to these questions. While getting into infrared photography myself, I started to make sense of it slowly and wrote down my findings below; I hope that it helps you to get started too.

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off the back of the camera. This film is also sold under the name Maco IR820c Precision Infrared film. Unfortunately, this film is not available anymore after the Fotokemika factory in Croatia shut down. Rollei Infrared IR400 Ilford SFX200 film which isn’t a true infrared film but does have some extended sensitivity to infrared up to 740nm. Rollei Retro 80S is also red sensitive to 750nm which puts it in the same class as the Ilford SFX200 film.

sensitive film without any filter, you can expect a normal black and white photo. Some people recommend a normal red filter, like the 25A as is used in black and white photography, but I would recommend buying one of the special infrared filters like the Hoya R72 or the IR-720 filter to maximize the effect. Both filters block all wavelengths shorter than 720nm to only let the infrared light through. The problem is that the filter will appear opaque to the eye so you will need to do all focussing before putting the filter on the lens. I usually focus, put the lens in manual focus mode if it is an auto focus lens and proceed by putting the filter in front of the lens. Ilford does make the Ilford SFX200 filter available but I didn’t have good results with that filter in combination with the Ilford SFX200 film, the results I got with SFX200 film in combination with a Hoya R72 filter were much better. There are other, stronger infrared filters available, but do make sure that the filter still passes through light for which the film you are using is sensitive, or else you will end up with no image. Smile

Exposure

As the result of an infrared photo is quite unpredictable and you cannot chimp on an SLR, I would certainly recommend bracketing each shot at least +1 and -1 stop.

Infrared films

At the moment of writing, I think only two infrared films are available and several more films that have extended sensitivity to red: • Efke IR820 available in normal and AURA versions. The latter doesn’t have an anti-halation layer and can create some interesting effects when the light reflects

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Ilford Delta 3200 The popular Kodak HIE film has been discontinued in 2008, unfortunately.

Filters

The use of a filter is required to bring out the sensitivity of the film to red light. If you were to use an infrared

As the filters usually recommended with infrared film are blocking out so much light, the exposure needs to be corrected. For example the filter factor for the Hoya R72 filter is 16 which translates into 4 stops. If you are using an external light meter or would like to use the TTL lightmeter on your camera before putting

on the filter, the clever thing to do is to take the filter factor into consideration when setting the EI of the film on the meter or camera. For example, the boxspeed of the Efke film is 100 ISO, to take the filter factor into consideration, you would set the EI at the meter at 6 ISO (100-50-25-12-6) and then you can set the recommended exposure time for the aperture used manually on the camera. If your camera has TTL metering, you could use the camera settings of the exposure after you put the filter on the lens, in that case leave the ISO settings on the camera at the boxspeed of the film. This could be a bit of a gamble as it is possible that the lightmeter your camera uses is not (very) sensitive to the light that passes the filter which may result in bad exposures. You’ll need to experiment to find out. Another option is to use the various rules of thumb you can find. I did some research and found that the recommended starting exposure for Efke IR820 is 0.5 seconds at f/11 for a bright sunny day. This is also a good way to find out how your camera TTL lightmeter works: if the camera recommends something close to this under these circumstances, it is likely that the lightmeter of your camera works fine with this filter.

Focussing

If you have manual focus lenses you might have noticed the red line/dot/ diamond that is located just to the left of the centre of the lens in the area that usually lists the different apertures and that you may have used to maximize the depth of field for a given aperture. As infrared light with its long wavelength focuses slightly differently from visible light, you need to adjust the focus a bit after you focused for the visible light unless your lens is marked as APO. The idea is that after focussing and optionally correcting for the depth of field, you turn the focus ring to the left such that the point of the focus ring that was in the centre of the lens now aligns with the red line/ dot/diamond. Unfortunately this is usually not possible for auto focus lenses. In that case you will need to solve the problem by selecting an aperture such that the object you want to focus on is included in the depth of field. However, be aware that infrared light will increase any

lens diffraction so it is recommended to not automatically select the smallest of apertures. Keep it at f/11 or f/16, I would say, and avoid f/22 or f/32.

Other considerations

Be very careful when loading infrared film as it is easily fogged. Surprisingly enough, it is the 35mm versions of these films that are in danger of fogging the most. The felt in the light trap of a 35mm film cartridge is not infrared opaque and loading the film in any other place but a dark room could easily spoil the first few exposures. Beware of unexpected light sources or leaks that can fog the film. For instance, my Pentax 645NII camera imprints exposure data on the edge of the negatives and this did fog the Efke film I was using. Plastic development tanks and plastic backs of cameras are usually safe to use, but note that the transparent window in the back of some 35mm cameras that shows the film information on the cartridge inside can be a cause of fogging and it would be probably best to cover it up with some aluminium foil and tape. Note that infrared film is not sensitive to heat radiation, it doesn’t supply night vision or heat vision. Heat is indeed infrared radiation but with wavelengths far longer than the wavelengths in the sensitive area of the film. This is a good thing, probably, as otherwise we could only shoot infrared film from very expensive cameras with extensive cooling. The infrared films register the infrared radiation from light sources as it is reflected from the different subjects. For instance, chlorophyll in leaves absorbs the ultraviolet light and reflects most of the infrared light which results in leaves turning almost white on infrared film. Still, you should develop exposed infrared film as quickly as possible, preferably on the same day as waiting longer than necessary will only increase the risk of increased base fog on the negatives. And, like any other film, do store infrared film in a cool place before use, preferably a freezer.

DIY Film Drying Cabinet This might come in handy for other people starting developing their own film. Together with using de-ionized or distilled water in the last few washes, this solved all my problems with “spotty” negatives!

I was having big issues with dust on my negatives, the often recommended and repeated solution of running the shower in the bathroom for a few minutes and then hanging the negatives in the steam-filled bathroom didn’t solve the problem at all for me: every negative was just covered in white specks. I did wonder whether the people recommending that were actually having problems with dust or just repeating something they had read once on the Web and thought it made sense.

I started looking at film drying cabinets but affordable solution were not obvious and it looked like I was about 5 years too late to buy a ready-made one. In the end I decided to buy a cheap IKEA Billy bookcase with glass door and put some hooks in the top and cut

a large hole in the middle shelf to allow it to be used for 35mm film as well. I attached some clothespins to the hooks and glued some felt around the inside of the door to keep even more dust out. No fan, no heater, just give a film a few hours and it’ll be dry Solved my problem for a very decent price!

Redscale film Redscale film is easy to make if you

Fomapan Film and Grain Over the last few years I have had

long discussions about the use of Fomapan film on several occasions with different people as I do use a fair few rolls of Fomapan film. These discussion typically start of with specific questions about developer dilutions and times and sometimes agitation. Often the problem is that people have excessive grain and want to make sure to avoid that in the future.

TTL light meters. If you are using the ‘sunny 16 rule’ or similar as one of the people asking me was using, you are better off using Fuji Neopan Acros 100 in my opinion as its latitude is impressive and this rule of thumb is not very accurate. But even if you are using the TTL meter of your camera you must be aware at all times how the light meter works and when it can get fooled in either over- or underexposing the photo. And it does get it wrong! I recommend to use your camera’s spot

have a dark room or a change bag: Simply take all of a C-41 film out of the canister, cut it off and tape it back, back to front, and spool it back into the canister so the film will be exposed on the wrong side. All layers of C-41 film are sensitive to blue light, so the blue layer is positioned on the top normally absorbing the blue light. The result of using redscale film is a clear colour shift to red due to the red-sensitive layer of the film being exposed first as it is now on top. You would need to overexpose a few stops to avoid having just everything in red as overexposure allows light to reach the less sensitive green and blue layers of the film. And if you are using expired film for this, you would need to overexpose even more. It is a bit trial and error.

I don’t claim to be a specialist but I know from experience that when exposed correctly and developed via the standard methods, Fomapan 100, 200 and 400 does not have excessive grain at all. I think the problem is in the first part of that statement; indeed when you expose Fomapan film incorrectly, the latitude of the film is not very great and this will result in heaps of grain no matter how you develop it. I’m surprised how little attention many people pay to correct exposure, blindly following rules of thumb or their

meter function and exposure locking feature or use an external spot meter and the manual mode of your camera for best possible results on Fomapan.