Testing Film

I completely understand the desire to short cut the learning curve. I support any effort to do so. Here is the thing, it does not work. What I am talking about is film testing that seems to be all over YouTube. Many people do it very scientifically and I am impressed by the amount of work they put into it. But lets walk through a typical "test" and see where it usually goes wrong.

A post digital film adopter (I love them and consider myself one of them) wants to know what type of film he/she should buy. After reading some forums they decided to do a test. So far so good. They buy ten different film types and load it through one or more cameras. For scientific reasons, I obviously prefer the same camera.

They set up a standard scene and take a ton of pictures of it with the different film. They then develop the rolls in the same method and compare the different films. The problem is that film is more nuanced than that. You cannot replicate your typical shooting scenes in a fabricated set up. Sure you can test your development technique to see what kind of grain you could get but again this depends on the scene.

If you want to test different films, I suggest the following method. Buy five rolls of film of any make or model. Shoot the rolls normally. Chase the kids, go on vacation, hang out with your friends. Just shoot what you normally would shoot. Develop the rolls normally. Then go out and buy five rolls of another type of film. Now repeat.

After a couple of years you can look back at your 30 rolls of film and look back at which one you like more. Then stick with it. Every year go out and buy 3 rolls of a different make and test it out.

That is it. You need to get a few rolls under your belt to understand and be able to predict how the film will react. Testing in a lab type setup will not give you real world results. Shoot more, worry less. Frankly all film is made to work the same way, to capture an image. Grain will differ, contrast will differ and reaction in certain environments will differ. Stop worrying and shoot!