What Film Would you shoot with a 500mm lens?

[JamesWatts]

yes i am kinda new at all of this. what film would you guys recomend shooting with if i was going to be shooting with a 500mm lens. I was shooting EKTA Chrome 100 with a 300mm in like mid day light and some of the pictures came out ok. but most of them were a little dark. Im shooting surfing, so i need the shutter speed...what F stop should i be shooting at? does focus depth mater that much? i was shooting at like a F11 or F8 should I be shooting at a lower F stop or do I need a little faster film. I like the colors of the Ekta chrome, and i need them to be in slides. any suggustions?

thanks

-James


Here is what i was getting with Ekta Chrome 100 at F 11 and a shutter speed of 250

[jryoung]

I would suggest Fujifilm Provia 400. I personally like Fuji better than Kodak, and feel that it has better color saturation. Everything boils down to light, I would think that on a bright day 100 would be fine, but, I guess the 500mm is a bit too much.

As far as aperature (I've never shot with a lens that big), I would think that you could drop it down a bit and not sacrifice focus depth, I would experiment a bit.

I assume you are already using a tripod.

[aceyx]

does your camera have DOF preview?

i second provia, but generally shoot at 320 since i scan. where are you taking your light measurements from? in the first picture, the sky looks ideal, or perhaps the water behind the wave.


cool pictures by the way.

[RD]

I don't shoot film but the rules for exposure are pretty much the same for film and digital (AFAIK). I believe with film if you're a bit underexposed like the shots above you can "push" any given film by telling the camera that it's ISO200, 400 (or whatever). then when you have it processed you tell the developer that and he adjusts accordingly. I believe that can give you the color you're looking for as well as the correct exposure. Film guys: correct me if I got that part wrong.

If you purposely underexposed a bit because you were trying to stay at too high of a shutter speed (to freeze motion or eliminate camera shake) for f11 and ISO100 film then you need to either open it up more (f5.6 or f8 would be fine for those shots) or go with a faster (higher ISO) film.

Now if you tell me you were metering with some sort of auto mode what undoubtedly happened is the camera averaged the scene for the white surf and possibly the sky slightly underexposing the surfer and the water. I always partial spot meter off the guy's wetsuit or calm water when shooting surfing.

Remember that for exposure sake shooting a 500mm is no different than shooting with 100mm, 300mm or whatever focal length because the true physical aperture at any f stop get's bigger with the focal length of the lens to let the correct amount of light in. HTH!

[BillJ]

As RD just pointed out, it's not about what size lens you're using. f11 on a 200mm lens will give you the same exposure as f11 on a 500mm lens.

That being said, the longer the lens the faster the shutter speed you want to use to minimize shake and apparent movement. When I shoot surfing I usually use f5.6 or f8 - you don't need a huge amount of depth of field for surf shot. As long as your focus is accurate f8 will be fine. I want to freeze the action for surf shots, just like wakeboard shots, so I try to use 1/500 as my minimum shutter speed.

The key is metering correctly which can be difficult shooting water or snow.

This shot was done at 1/1000 @ f8 ISO 200 on a very sunny day in September.

[JamesWatts]

BillJ, your friends with Jarad and Jay Right?...Im buddys with Jarad, we are from the same hometown.
-James

[RD]

Bill,

What lens on that shot? Looks like at least 400mm especially when taking into account the 1.3X of your mkII. Have you gotten some long glass now?

[JamesWatts]

yah. that was shot with 400mm
-James