Old School Photography

Old School Photography is a must-have modern manual for learning how to create great photographs with a 35mm film camera. Famed YouTube personality Kai Wong expertly and humorously shares 100 essential tips for selecting and using film cameras, shooting with film and various lenses, and employing specific techniques to ensure you can get great results quickly. Known for his breadth of knowledge and quick wit, Kai Wong delivers an informative and entertaining read on how to take great film photos. • An informative and entertaining read on how to take great film photos • A must-have guide for those new to old-school film techniques • A much-needed book for the current resurgence of vintage 35mm film cameras Renewed interest in film photography has surged in the past few years, both among those rediscovering their past passion and those discovering it for the first time. Vintage cameras that had previously lost their value are now often worth more than they first sold for due to high demand amongst enthusiasts, students, and collectors. Film manufacturers have even started reissuing long discontinued stocks—for example, Kodak's much-loved and recently re-released classic Ektachrome slide film. In our modern world, billions of people have access to instantaneous photography on their mobile phones, but as a result there has been a resurgent desire for a more tactile, physical, unaltered, and thus honest medium. Much of which, ironically, ends up on the internet, with photography fans and influencers sharing their images across Instagram, Flickr, YouTube, and the like. More so than with digital photography, film photography requires a sense of craft, skill, patience, technical knowledge, and a trial-and-error process that results in a greater sense of accomplishment. Old School Photography is both enlightening and humorous, and attracts a new generation of fans who are eager to experiment with film cameras, make prints, and post their film photographs online.

Attracted by the image quality, the tactile joy of a finely made camera, and the affordable prices of vintage equipment, photographers around the world are rediscovering the joys of manual photography. This comprehensive guide to shooting film photography covers all the bases, from setting up a camera through film processing. In a convenient format, filled with diagrams, examples, and illustrations, Analog Photography is a portable reference tool for neophytes and experienced photographers alike. With an irresistible package inspired by the aesthetics of vintage user manuals, this is "a great-looking publication and a fantastic place from which to start, or rekindle, a journey into film photography" (Creative Review).

In recent years, film photography has witnessed a significant renaissance—and not just among those who have previously shot with film. Interest in film photography and analog photography has also grown enormously among those who only have experience shooting digitally. In The Film Photography Handbook, 2nd Edition, authors Chris Marquardt and Monika Andrae speak to both types of film photographers as they offer an easy-to-understand, complete resource to shooting film. In this updated and expanded edition, they address today’s working climate, including such topics as the hybrid film/digital workflow, the digitization of negatives, and using smartphones for light metering and to assist in film processing. This book is intended for anyone who is curious about film and analog photography, whether you need a refresher course or are discovering this wonderful format for the first time. You’ll learn how easy it is to shoot and process black-and-white film at home, and that just a little special equipment is needed to get into film photography. You’ll learn all about: • The important differences between film and digital photography • Numerous film cameras, as well as how to buy a second-hand camera • Film formats, from 35 mm to medium format and large format • Exposure settings, tonal values, and tonal representations in different types of film, from color negatives and slides to the enormous spectrum of black-and-white films • Processing film, covering everything you need to know: equipment, chemicals, and workflow • Scanning negatives to bring your analog photography into a digital workflow • Both presenting and archiving your prints and negatives Working in such an “analog” medium requires a unique approach to photography, and it fosters a completely different form of creativity. Working in film and embracing analog photography can also prove to be a great inspiration for your own digital photography, as well. The Film Photography Handbook, 2nd Edition covers it all—from the technical to the creative—and will have you shooting film in no time, whether it’s with an old rangefinder, an inexpensive Holga, or a medium-format Rolleiflex or Hasselblad.

A History of Photography in 50 Cameras explores the 180-year story of perhaps the most widely used device ever built. It covers cameras in all forms, revealing the origins and development of each model and tracing the stories of the photographers who used and popularized them. Illustrated throughout with studio shots of all fifty cameras and a selection of iconic photographs made using them, it is the perfect companion guide for camera and photography enthusiasts alike. The cameras include: The Nikon F, the "hockey puck" that saved photographer Don McCullin's life when it stopped a sniper's bullet during the Vietnam War. Its indestructibility, reliability and interchangeable lenses made it a favored workhorse of photojournalists. The Leica M3-D was also favored by war photographers, including David Duncan Douglas, who used the camera during his coverage of the Korean and Vietnam Wars. In 2012, one of his four customized Leica cameras sold at auction for nearly $2 million. A Speed Graphic was used to take Sam Shere's widely published photograph of the 1937 Hindenburg disaster, "the world's most famous news photograph ever taken." With few shots left and no time to get the camera to his eye, he shot his Pulitzer Prize-winning image "literally from the hip. It was over so fast there was nothing else to do." The camera phone has transformed picture-taking technology most profoundly since the invention of cameras. The "selfie" has become a new genre of photography practiced by everyone, and shared globally. This is an ideal book for camera collectors as well as anyone researching the history and art of photography.

A simple-to-follow manual for film camera enthusiasts wishing to improve their skills, devised by one of the world's leading photography professionals - an essential reference for everyone interested in learning the techniques of classic film phootgraphy, from 35mm, medium and large format to single lens reflex cameras.

Whether you prefer the term retro, vintage or "old skool" there's an undeniable truth to the familiar quote: "What's old is new again." This is increasingly obvious among next-generation photographers who are already reacting to the established digital norm and actively seeking out something more soulful and personal than the pixel-pushing, quick-fix of the digital age. And that something is film. Yet this is a generation that has never experienced film photography. They have not felt the unique combination of fear and excitement at taking a once-in-a-lifetime shot and not knowing if it's perfect; nor have they waited with bated breath to see if their labours are good, bad or indifferent. And they certainly won't have experienced the "happy accidents" associated with badly loaded film, light leaks, collapsed shutters or any of the other "defects" that can transform an average shot into a one-of-a-kind photograph. "Mastering Film Photography" is a fast-track guide to shooting emulsion in the digital age. After a crash course in how film works and how to choose the ideal camera to use it with, readers will learn how to overcome the challenges of getting the exposure right when there's no instant feedback; how to use flash systems in the pre-TTL era; and the importance of filters before Instagram; as well as exploring the creative world of lensless photography. With profiles of leading film practitioners along the way, the book is rounded off with a guide to the traditional, digital and hybrid processing options that will enable you to make the most of your negatives and slides

This work is an explanation of the role of the nineteenth-century photographer as a conscious historian of the West - a recorder of events, people, and places as surely as they were the diary-keepers, journalists, and writers. Like them, he exercised choice in what he recorded; unlike them, he documented aspects of reality that we can know in no other way. Photographers as documenters are too often casually, even carelessly, regarded. Photography And The Old West is intended to convey as clearly as possible how people learned to use a camera and became camera-wise in an individual way; how tools and materials affected photographic seeing; and what a few of the many photographers hoped to express. This work is not a comprehensive survey but rather a selective look at some of the imagery of the West that a few conscious photographers produced.

With exquisite original photos and boundless enthusiasm, David Ellwand offers a love song to film photography and the vintage cameras that capture it. From the pinhole to the Pentax, Retro Photo: An Obsession is a visual journey through the history of photography, highlighting some of the iconic cameras of the analog era. Appealing to those new to film photography as well as the seasoned professional wanting to explore new avenues, this beautiful keepsake volume showcases more than one hundred cameras from the collection of photographer and author David Ellwand, along with photographs he has taken with them. At once an accessible guide to vintage cameras, a highly personal take on photographic history, and a celebration of classic design, here is a book that takes the fear out of old-style photography and puts the fun back in.