The glorious mechanics of film
Digital cameras are like automatic transmission cars: convenient and practical, but make me feel much less involved. So, right now, I’m going through a little traditional film phase.
I recently picked up a FED4b 35mm film, rangefinder camera (see inset image). It is built like a Russian shot-putter, and you don’t half know its weight when you must carry it around for a couple of hours. My very first SLR was a Russian built Zenit E, so this is not my first experience with such chunky beasts. The FED4b models were made from 1969-76.
Yesterday was the first chance to fire a few frames using this camera entirely manual camera. Having used digital almost exclusively for several years now, this was a strange experience.
Doing everything
Sure, the camera has a built-in light-meter, but all it does is indicate light levels and help you decide the most appropriate exposure for the scene. You must still set aperture and shutter speed. Oddly, with the FED’s (as well as several other models of similar Russian cameras), shutter speed cannot be set until you have wound on the film. Forgetting this, apparently, can damage the shutter release mechanism beyond repair!
Long gone are the days when I was able to make a close approximation of the required exposure purely by eye. But yesterday’s light remained fairly stable, so there was not too much fiddling with the controls.
Did it take the shot?
The instant gratification of a digital camera’s screen preview is, of course, missing. It was the oddest experience hearing the click (or, rather, clonk) of the shutter, then… silence. The clonk itself is less gratifying than an SLR because a rangefinder camera needs not to move a mirror out of the way in order to expose the film. “Now what?” I found myself thinking. Then remembered those past days of agony and tightly crossed fingers for the film to return from the processor. With the luxury of instant digital preview, I like this aspect of film even less than before.
The joy of depth of field
This is the one element I loathe about modern digital and DSLR cameras (or at least their lenses): they tend not to sport depth of field indicators.
If you are not learned in the basics of depth of field, here’s a quick explanation (feel free to skip it if you know all about it)…
When you focus your lens on an object, other objects both before and behind that focus point will also be in focus. The distance between the closest in-focus object and the farthest, depends on the focal length of your lens (i.e. 50mm, 200mm, etc), and the aperture setting for the exposure. The larger the lens focal length, the shorter the depth of field it is able to provide. The higher the aperture value, the wider the depth of field. The effect is simply the nature of lens optics, but is a powerful tool for a photographer.
Street and landscape photographers have for many years used a specific depth of field technique called Hyper-focal Distance. Every lens has a hyper-focal point, where everything from a specific distance, all the way to infinity, will be within focus.
The image on the right is the FED4′s lens, and demonstrates the usefulness of depth of field indicators to find hyper-focal distance. The topmost numbers are the aperture stops, currently set to f8. Below that are the depth of field indicators for the lens, which are an identical range of numbers to the aperture stops. Below those are the focus distance indicators, marked in metres.
In this shot, the lens is focused at around 8 feet. At F8 aperture, the depth of field indicators show that everything between 4 metres and infinity. (As you can see, if I switched to f5.6, only objects between around 5 metres and just over 20 metres will be in focus.)
This means that as I wander around snapping images, so long as I ensure I am at least 4 metres from my subject, I will not need to worry about focusing! You can likely understand the benefits of this, particularly for rapid-fire, candid and street photography, where the time taken to focus exactly could easily mean a missed opportunity.
Interestingly, if I set the standard 50mm lens on my Canon 350D to f8, its hyper-focal distance is 16.5m. This translates as only objects from 8.24m (double the near-focus point of the FED4′s lens) to infinity will be in focus. Much less flexible than the FED4′s lens. If I try to replicate the aperture and focus of the FED4′s lens as in the image above, I get a paltry total depth of field of 0.72m, which translates to only objects between 2.13m and 2.85m will be in focus. Zoom lenses tend to be even less flexible with depth of field. (I should mention that the standard 50mm Canon lens is not an expensive model – better lenses generally provide better performance and flexibility – but that lens is far more expensive to buy on its own, than the FED4.)
Film or Digital?
My frustration with depth of field of consumer DSLR lenses (I have not had experience of expensive DSLR lenses so cannot comment), will remain for now and I doubt I will use film as anything more than an enjoyable curiosity. Not being able to post the FED4′s images with this post is a typical reason for sticking mainly with digital.
But there remains an appeal for film, and particularly the pleasure of using an older camera. We have a new (to us) Yashica 635 Twin Lens Reflex (TLR) camera to play with, too (TLR cameras as a particular favourite of mine). Plus older, far more basic, box cameras, such as an excellent, original Ensign Ful-Vue (the older, box design), which has a fixed shutter and aperture – an original point-and-click!
