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Response to Best portrait film

from Jeff Spirer (jeffs@hyperreal.org)
Questions like this make me cringe. Why?

1) There is no "best" film for anything. It depends on what you want your photographs to look like. Just as a simple example, some people despise grain, but others love it.

2) Choosing a film won't choose your final result. It's a combination of factors, including developer (for b&w) and paper. In color, choice of paper is just as important as in b&w.

Try a bunch of films in similar environments and see what you like. Pick one (well maybe one b&w and one color) and shoot it until you can tell at the time that you shoot what every photograph will look like when it's hanging on the wall.

It's been my observation that most people shoot way too many different films without ever understanding even one of them. It takes time and experience, and changing films usually means starting over. (And this ignores that most people seem to evaluate film based on low cost machine prints.)

(posted 8811 days ago)

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