During my recent trip to Canada, I stopped to visit the George Eastman Museum, which comprises three facilities: the museum containing articles and objects from photography history, the mansion where Eastman lived and hosted parties in the 1930s, and an outstanding garden.

If you want to take a peak at the article I wrote about the Museum, here it is:

The George Eastman Mansion is a historic 50-room Colonial Revival estate located at 900 East Avenue in Rochester, New York. Built in 1905 (construction started in 1902), the mansion exudes character and charm. During my research, I discovered it was a house constructed ahead of its time, featuring an internal phone system, a built-in vacuum cleaning system, and an early house elevator. Eastman designed the elevator specifically for his mother, to whom he was deeply devoted. Her health confined her to a wheelchair in her final years, and he thoughtfully designed her suite to overlook the gardens. I took a photo of her room and wheelchair as well.

I brought with me the Mamiya 7ii and rolls of Portra 400 for the museum and mansion, along with a roll of Ektar for the garden (photos and a post about the garden coming soon!). Notably, there’s a massive Aeolian pipe organ housed there, with an extensive collection of songs. I later discovered the organ has over 6,300 pipes, which Eastman used to host grand musical evenings for the community. I attempted to photograph it with the Portra 400, but the light was too dim for my f/4 lens, and I didn’t want to resort to digital shots.

The mansion contains rooms of various types, including a game room, library, office, and others.

Several things caught my attention during the visit. One was the safe hidden beneath a staircase, which features an open combination so visitors can open it. And what’s inside? Another safe! I suspect that was a common security practice back then.

It’s also worth inspecting the closets, bathrooms, and products that were used throughout the mansion. The library is particularly captivating. I can easily imagine the winters in Rochester spent inside that place: snow outside, a fireplace burning indoors, and being surrounded by the home of the man who fundamentally transformed photography through his cameras and films.

While at the mansion, you can freely explore the rooms, closets, bathrooms, and other amenities. Some floors and rooms are locked, and notably, I didn’t spot a kitchen. If you plan to photograph there with film, I strongly recommend bringing ISO 800 and pushing it to 1600, as the interior lighting is quite dim. My Mamiya’s lens is f/4, and most of these shots were taken at 1/8 second.

More photos

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I brought the Mamiya 7ii with rolls of Kodak film stocks, I used 3 rolls of Portra 400 and one roll of Ektar 100 for this whole visit (and more films for the classic Kodak building). The interior was a little bit dark, and most exposures were at about 1/8th of a second,I regret not bringing a tripod, I should always bring one. That’s why some shots are a bit blurry (especially indoors ones), but I think the result went OK!

Here is the post I wrote about the Mansion, in case you’re interested:

From Wikipedia:

George Eastman (July 12, 1854 – March 14, 1932) was an American innovator and entrepreneur who founded the Eastman Kodak Company and helped to bring the photographic use of roll film into the mainstream. After a decade of experiments in photography, he patented and sold a roll film camera, making amateur photography accessible to the general public for the first time. Working as the treasurer and later president of Kodak, he oversaw the expansion of the company and the film industry

The location is divided in three areas: the museum, which is surrounded by photography history, and then the mansion, which is the boss’ house, and the garden, which is outstanding and beautiful. I photographed all these three in medium format (Portra for the museum and mansion and Ektar for the gardens), and I will do one post dedicated to each one.

You are in the Museum post.

When walking around, I saw a wall of jars, and took a (very tilted lol) photo of it. I miss the Hasselblad here, it has a crosshair in the focusing screen that helps me composing better horizontal shots.

Can you guess what this wall is just by looking to the shot?

Surprisingly and interestingly, these are powdered synthetic dye samples collected by the Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation during 1929 and 1975.

Since its inception in 1915, the Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation engaged its team of scientists worked to create a sophisticated dye-transfer printing process, using many combinations of different dyes and solutions available from a number of international chemical companies. The museum holds a magnificent set of 3,037 (1,788 showed in this picture), collected by Technicolor over 45 years and displayed for the first time. Only a small number of these dyes were selected for the celebrated “look” of Technicolor films, including The Wizard of Oz, and Gone With the Wind.

The whole museum was very dark for my Portra 400 and I didn’t want to risk some very blurry shots, the Mamiya lens at f/4 was already showing me half-second exposure, which is risky for handlend. I should had pushed it to 800, or even had brought a Portra 800 and pushed it to 1600. That’s my ultimate recommendation if you want to take photos of the place.

I only had the idea of pushing the film when I was half roll in. So I took some iPhone shots as well, because I couldn’t let these pass. I hope you forgive me!

With special attention for these two below:

Can you believe this? I bet it still works! A camera more than 100 years old, precisely, 131 years old!

This camera came loaded from factory with enough film to make 100 exposures, more than 100 years ago.

And this one, which I believe is one of the first photographs ever made. The place was so dark, that even my iPhone with all the software IBIS wasn’t able to do the job very well, but here it is:

My feedback to Kodak Eastman Museum folks is to increase the lights a little bit, the whole place was quite dark, so people can go there with their film cameras and achieve some success, or even better, have some people going there with a light meter, measuring the scenes, and adding little plaques showing the ideal exposure to capture that shot. That would be super cool!

The photos I took from the garden have superb light (the day was beautiful), and I got duplicated exposures of the other shots from the interior of the mansion, so I could elect the less blurred ones.

Eastman had also built a mansion, located at the same place, 900 East Avenue in Rochester. Where he entertained friends to dinner and held private music concerts. I also took pictures in there, which I will feature in the next post. I want to keep those divided and short so it doesn’t clutter too much of your mailbox, while also being easier to digest here in Substack web, so this will be a series of three posts.

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Did you like the picture above? That was only possible because I planned the shot using a mobile App called PhotoPills (and Aurora HDR, since it is an HDR to preserve the clouds composing the scene [it added some cromatic aberration though])!

PhotoPills is a photography planning app that help me plan my photos ahead of time, so I’m always at the right place at the right time to capture the photos I’ve always dreamed about. For the below shot, I arrived at the location 10 minutes before, took a picture of the Sunset, repositioned, took the picture above, and left 15 minutes after. To my surprise (or not!), there were also lots of other photographers in the location, and most of them using the App as well, some of them even wearing PhotoPills t-shirts!

The App’s main feature is the Planner, where you can pinpoint a location you want to be (the “Red Pin”), the location of the subject (the “Black Pin), and it searches for when in the calendar the Sun or the Moon will be poisitioned accordingly to your needs. PhotoPills website has more detailed info of the App’s functonalities, so make sure to check it out!

The App goes way beyond just planning Sun and Moon pictures. I still didn’t explore all the features, but the ones that mostly caught my attention are a VR functionality that shows you where the Mikly Way is, and a FOV (Field of View) previewer that is very helpful when planning a shot, this is instrumental to know what lens to bring, and helping which lens to rent, if you are spending money on renting a lens, especially prime ones, you can predict the FOV according to a specific focal length.

One aspect that I would like to highlight is that PhotoPills has a learning curve. It is not the kind of App that you will be using right after installing. But it’s totally not complex at all, and I learned that this curve only exists because there are too much information and features in a tiny interface with a limited input, like a mobile phone.

There is a nice YouTube channel called Outdoor Photography School with Brenda Petrella, a very smart person and highly skilled photographer from Vermont, with extraordinary communication and teaching skills. I watched some videos and it quickly ramped me up to plan shots like the ones below, which I hope you like it!

This is a sunrise, early morning, precisely at 7:11AM, with the Sun located at the very top of the One World Trade Center’s antenna. I took it from Jersey City, as you can see in the Map! Try to find where the One WTC is located on the map and check the distance I was from it!

This Moon shot with the American flag over it was taken from the same spot I was while taking the Statue of Liberty picture, it’s the same moon that got right there before it raised to the Statue’s torch. The lens I used was the Fujinon 100-400mm. At 400mm, and it would be impossible without optical image stabilization, even on top of a stable tripod. At that range, every little wind messes things up. This photo has a 0.8 second exposure, showing the wind movement over the flag, while being super still, as you can notice by the flag’s pole.

This one was taken from Brooklyn, I planned it 1 day ahead and discovered a nice spot to take pictures of Manhattan, this is the Empire State Building’s antenna matching with the Sun’s position. I forgot to bring my ND big-stopper filter, so the Sun got a little blurry, because it was still high, with a high brightnes level as well, making my camera struggle on Dynamic Range to represent the very top tip of the antenna, but that’s ok, maybe I can recover that in an HDR…

PhotoPills will put you at the right time and spot to take fabulous shots, which comes with an interesting side effect. Because you will be well positioned, you oftenly will also benefit from golden hours! The below shot was not planned, but the light was nice because I was already in position that offered me superb lighting conditions!

I am super happy to include PhotoPills on every photographic journey of mine, from now on!

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What makes it a bit more curious is the fact that it’s hard to measure accuracy and draw conclusions between digital simulations and real film, simply because there’s a whole world of variables involved in the analog and digital processes.

The images we see nowadays in front of our eyes are mostly manipulated, digital and analog alike (and this is overlooked, it has always been; darkroom printing has been changing how photographs look for a while now).

For film, differences come from developing, scanning, and converting analog silver halide into digital pixels, or simply developing and darkroom printing it.

For instance, analog processes can provide drastically different results based on chemistry freshness, or temperature differences when developing, and I’m not even talking about scanning yet.

That’s why these expensive Lab film developing/scanning machines exist. They are there to standardize these processes as much as possible, which is what a professional Lab needs.

Scanners are also a whole universe. Depending on the way you scan and convert, or the scanner hardware used (Plustek vs. Noritsu vs. Frontier, etc.), you can have different color tones, gamma, and results that look dramatically different from each other.

Professional Labs have scanner calibration, test strips from film manufacturers, and all sorts of ways to try to standardize this. It is appreciated, but I guarantee you that not every Lab is on that level of excellence. There are some that even use Negative Lab Pro and DSLR scanning.

That said, how can we make sure that a specific film simulation preset is accurate? How can we confirm something digitally made is accurate to an analog process that is very prone to changes because of real-world variables?

Short answer: we don’t. Film simulations are in the “best effort” of copying something that is already chaotic and hard to standardize by nature.

Because of that, film simulations are also not something that can be standardized. Fujifilm on-camera film simulations are a little bit more consistent because they're locked into the camera's hardware and firmware, meaning the JPG conversion happens in camera, and all cameras share the same color science, raw file conversions, sensor type, etc, but Lightroom preset packs mimicking a "Portra 400"? Sorry to say, this is just a lie.

Yeah, sorry to say that =/

Things get even worse when these people selling film presets on the internet include “Portra 400 v1”, “Portra 400 v2”, “Portra 400 v3”.

What the fuck is that? Portra 400 should be Portra 400, lol.

That's because the sensor that produced that image renders different RAW characteristics. The Portra 400 preset might work well for the camera settings of the author who created it, but apply it to a different camera and it will very likely render differently. If someone sells you a preset that is locked to a specific camera and manufacturer's color science, then it's slightly better.

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and/or

Back to the subject: to make things even more random, people tend to think of RAW files as a universally calibrated standard that stays exactly the same across all camera models in the world. Well, I'm here to tell you it's not, and it's even different across camera models from the same manufacturer.

This is important to mention, because I notice a hot market in Lightroom and film simulation presets, and again, I need to share my knowledge with avid Camera Clara readers:

Again, don’t fall for these. Especially if they come with the promise of “apply this preset and your files will look like X, Y, Z film”.

That doesn’t mean film simulations are just wrong and impossible of doing

It just means that if you wanna do it, you gotta do it from scratch. Take a look at this extensive test I did. Please watch the video below:

I used the fact that Hasselblad cameras let me swap a film back for a digital one while keeping the very same camera settings and composition, so I went out to Coney Island on a very hot day and ran the ultimate film simulation rundown. I brought a tripod, measured light, locked camera settings, took a film exposure, swapped backs, and took a digital shot. Same lens, aperture, ISO, shutter speed, composition.

Here’s me in action doing this:

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When I came back, I did the dev/scan/convert for the film shots and exported them all to a folder. Then I exported the digital RAW files to Dehancer (a film simulation software), and started fine-tuning my preset according to my film shots, placing them side by side on my monitor and fine-tuning the sliders in Dehancer. I refined the preset as I moved to different files.

If you are interested in Dehancer, I wrote an article about it, you can check it here. Now they have a Desktop version which is super fine.

On the left, we have the original CineStill 400D in medium format, taken with my Hasselblad and a film back. On the right, we have my CameraClara CineSteel 400D preset. Color accuracy seems good.

More samples

Let’s analyze the real film with the Dehancer film simulation presets I just created.

Again, on the left side you will see the real film, and on the right, my film simulations made with Dehancer Desktop. Note that the real film is 6x6, while the digital file has a 4:3 crop out of the medium format sensor in the CFV 100C (Hasselblad digital back), so please ignore the crop.

When seeing the comparisons, also please know that I used the very same preset, in batch, to blindly process all the digital files. I didn’t go one by one fine-tuning according to the film. That would be cheating.

That part is important because what we need to point out is that it’s a single preset being blindly applied to digital files. These files hadn’t been seen and fine-tuned one by one to make the digital file look like the analog one.

What you are seeing is the application of a preset that was, yes, fine-tuned according to multiple files, but applied in batch fashion.

I created two presets, the CineSteel 400 and the Yesktar 100. One is inspired by CineStill 400D, while the other is inspired by Kodak Ektar 100.

CineStill 400D vs. CameraClara CineSteel 400D

Kodak Ektar 100 vs. CameraClara Yesktar 100

What’s the conclusion then?

Well, what did you think about the comparison between film and film sim above?

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If all that sounds confusing and you don’t have an opinion formed yet, I’m happy to share mine:

Film development processes are unique. Depending on the Lab, chemicals, temperature differences, standardization of the dev process, scanning methodology, conversion software, or any other real-world analog variable, you can have different results.

Starting from there, if you ever create a preset that greatly mimics real film, you’ll be mimicking that entire process.

So, if you want to have your own film simulation presets that you can use on your digital files, the first step is to lock all these variables out. If you are doing this yourself, you have a better chance of locking out these variables because you control the whole chain. But if each time you develop your film you use a different Lab, or choose a different scanning methodology, you are far from reaching consistent results.

Once you lock these out and are able to consistently reach a film look according to your standards (either by doing it yourself or using a Lab to give you TIFF scans), you should do what I did: get your film and digital camera, shoot the same scene with the same settings, open film simulation software side by side with your film shots, and fine-tune and create the presets that will mimic your rig.

That’s the only way (if you want consistent and reliable results).

That will give you a film simulation that mimics what the Lab scans, and once you do so, that film simulation preset will only be applicable to that sensor and color science from the digital camera, meaning if you change the camera, you need new presets.

In other words, for a preset to be considered good and consistent, it MUST be locked to the equipment it was taken with.

If you do that, you’ve reached the gold standard of film simulations: something that mimics your analog process and achieves similar (remember: not identical) results from a fully digital workflow.

Again, if you are buying Lightroom presets that promise your RAWs will look like a specific film stock, you are most likely being fooled, either by not understanding what the real film stock looks like, or by just guessing randomly.

If you think your images are more pleasant to look at, fine, great, excellent actually, you are satisfied with a pasteurized color science formula. That’s not bad, and I wish I were satisfied with that as well. I envy you because you are able to be happy with small things, God bless your soul!

A philosophical debate about the outcome and comparison

Looking at real film and its simulation side by side made me reflect on some things I want to share, mostly because we feel tempted to compare, or even misjudge the film simulation as “not the same” (hence inferior), or feel tempted to, on a biased judgment, elect a better one…

I don’t think they should be the same, I don’t think there’s a better one, and that’s the discussion I want to promote here…

Film is film, digital is digital, and it’s fine if you only want to work with film. It’s also fine if you want to apply film simulations. What’s not fine, I think, is applying a film simulation and calling it real film. That crosses a line.

But you know what? Real film has film borders, and I even wrote about it as well!

Today’s world is polarized, and we tend to compare media to elect winners, and I don’t think that’s the case here. As I said, film is film, digital is digital. To me, there’s no winner, there’s no better. Each method is a different journey.

I personally like the film look, and sometimes I apply film simulation to my digital files, but I either don’t say anything, or if I do, I explicitly say it’s a film simulation.

Well, I think that’s it! I hope this article left you with something positive from this look at film simulation for digital files, and the philosophical implications of it. Please comment below and join the discussion about this (very hot) topic!

Please consider subscribing to Camera Clara for more articles right in your inbox! Quality over quantity, with the forever love for film photography and its techniques. With a paid subscription, you can shoot me a DM anytime, and we can arrange video calls where I can help you with your photograph needs, let’s be friends.

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Then I came back home and thought, “wait a minute, I’ve been photographing fireworks for so long, and I think people would enjoy a Camera Clara post to talk about it!”

Well, here we are:

Fireworks are a great example of the struggle between what we see, what we intend to capture, and the result we achieve.

Just like the Moon, fireworks are hard to capture in their full grandiosity. Most people fail when trying to convert the magic moment we see with our eyeballs into something we can see and recall later with great memories, especially if relying on automatic exposure settings, or a cell phone.

That photo was taken in 2007 by myself with a Canon EOS 30D DSLR, in Rio de Janeiro, when I was in the early stages of my photography journey. I deliberately chose this one to prove to you that you don’t need the latest and greatest to photograph fireworks. We are talking about a 20-year-old DSLR, with an 8.2 megapixel CMOS sensor, released in 2006.

Things evolved, I moved to NY, got fancier with full frame, film, medium format cameras, I witnessed more fireworks, but the principles stayed the same. And that’s what I wanna share.

Alright! Enough talking. Let’s go to the tips.

1. Timing and quickness

As soon as fireworks start, the sky is clean with no smoke, and your best shots come up early when the atmosphere is clean. 2 minutes of fireworks bursting out in the sky might be your window here, because after that, smoke gets in the way and you don’t have a clean shot. See the image below? That’s not ideal. I think the fireworks were running for like 5 minutes when I did this shot.

Ideally, you’d want to know what time the fireworks show starts, and test some exposures beforehand to check the exposure in the rest of the scene. Don’t fully rely on luck at show time. Get your tripod in place in advance for that.

Wait, tripod? Did I say tripod?

2. Use a tripod

You need a tripod. It is a must-have because you want an exposure long enough that it would show camera shake if shot handheld, even with fancy IBIS on high-end cameras. We are talking about something between 1/10 of a second and entire seconds, like 2, 3, or 4 seconds.

The tripod will guarantee that the fireworks’ light is drawn with no shake.

If you want a tripod recommendation, get the Sirui AT-125+B-00K (I know, horrible model name). It's stable, carbon fiber, lightweight, and cust just over a hundred bucks.

3. Compose with the scene

Don't rely on the fireworks alone! The landscape might be half of the show!

Fireworks usually don’t appear in the middle of the desert. They are naturally paired with great landscape shots. Sometimes, fireworks are as good as the super long exposure shot you will get. Explore looooong exposures, like 10 or 20 seconds. Try using a wide-angle lens and crop in post. That would help you get the whole thing within the frame, while also helping you compose the shot with the landscape.

Remember that you’re doing a long exposure shot, and if there’s water nearby, the lighting elements tend to reflect on the water.

4. Camera settings (focus, aperture, s.s. and ISO)

We are in an unpredictable field (and that’s why I don’t recommend doing this with film very much, but if you’re rich enough to burn film and get results, be my guest). Fireworks are something that explodes in the air without any control from us, so trial and error is very acceptable and there’s no shame in that.

Once my tripod is set and I have my composition, I like setting my camera ISO to 200 or 400. Ideally 200, unless I am doing a super long exposure like tens of seconds, in which case I set it to ISO 100 or 64.

Ideally, I want to lock the exposure settings and just change shutter speed, varying it according to the explosion pops. That helps me mentally count the light spread and adjust accordingly.

Start with this: ISO 400, f/5.6, 3 seconds.

And adjust from there. Something I do that always helps me is mentally counting the number of seconds a full firework takes to burst. Depending on the fireworks, it can be 1, 2, 3, or more seconds. Count that manually, set that in your camera, and do a shot, adjust, and do more.

Regarding focus, I recommend Manual Focus because you don’t want to risk the camera taking time to find focus. You can use Auto Focus to find the firework, then switch to Manual for the rest of the shots.

5. Timer or shutter release cable

This complements the tripod aspect, and it’s a rule of thumb for every long exposure shot. You don’t want to touch the camera while it’s taking the photo, so you need to work with the timer feature to eliminate camera shake as much as you can. To me, a delicate touch on the camera and a 2-second timer do the trick.

A shutter release cable is more interesting because you can explore the Bulb mode in your camera, meaning it will expose the shot for the exact amount of time you’re holding the button. Ideal to start the shot before the firework blooms, and end it right after. But even so, do the mental counting of time, for consistency.

If you wanna do this on film, this is the way, as most cameras will either give you a 10 sec timer or no timer at all.

Save that post for July 3rd, haha. I hope you enjoyed reading it!

Please consider subscribing to Camera Clara for more articles right in your inbox! Quality over quantity, with the forever love for film photography and its techniques. With a paid subscription, you can shoot me a DM anytime, and we can arrange video calls where I can help you with your photograph needs, let’s be friends.

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That’s the whole post: techniques for dealing with slide film with different light meter types. What follows is why that method works and when it doesn’t.

I hope it helps you understanding light metering better so you can architect your shots just like the artists architected the sculptures in Storm King Arts Center.

Quick thing first, as this might save you some reading: if your camera is a point-and-shoot with no exposure controls, it’s already metering and setting exposure for you the way it was designed to, and probably it does that job well enough most of the time. Go shoot, and enjoy it, and save this post for the moment you start wanting to have more control over your exposure with a manual camera.

Let me start with a fact: film doesn’t give you an instant preview, and why that might be a point of frustration…

Film doesn’t show you anything until it might be too late

With no LCD preview, histogram or capture assistants, every frame is a decision you have to make before you press the shutter button, and you find out whether it worked days later, potentially after spending money for a Lab to develop, we don’t want that to happen, and that’s why metering matters more on film than on digital, hence relying on an external light meter. On digital you can be wrong and fix it. On film, you can be wrong (thinking you’re right), and have a bad surprise after developing.

That’s a problem that might get worse when you shoot slides, because if you can go to places again and redo the shot, the loss is time and money, but if you are taking film shots with bad light metering at a trip, that might be more unforgiving (as probably you might get in a plane again!).

We don’t want that to happen, and we are here to help you prevent it.

Let’s dive deeper into light meters.

The reflective meter is configured against grey targets

There are two types of light meters: reflected ones, and incident ones. This article I wrote dives deeper into that difference: The difference between incident and reflective light meters.

Here are more details about both light meter types: a reflected meter (which is likely the kind built into your camera), measures light bouncing off objects. It has no idea what it’s looking at, and it is factory-calibrated with a 18% grey card in mind, meaning the it averages out to middle grey, around 18% reflectance, and it hands you the exposure that would make whatever it sees land on that value.

Here’s a practical example: if you point it at a white wall (or a white towel, a target you know it’s fully white), it tells you to adjust exposure until the object renders 18% grey. This is easier to see if you eliminate colors and shoot b&w: the white target will literally look grey.

Point it at a dark mousepad, or a dark steel sculpture, and the opposite happens, and the steel goes grey too (at the cost of blowing highlights to a clipping state). That’s because the meter will tell you to either increase the ISO, lower the aperture, or reduce the shutter speed to capture enough of the dark target.

That’s because white targets reflect more light, while dark ones do the opposite. The reflective light meters are configured in the factory to measure against something, so they tell you to adjust exposure to match against 18% grey targets.

This is easier to imagine when you convert scenes to black and white, and I invite you to get your digital camera and do some tests and see for yourself. Set the camera to grayscale JPGs and target a white wall with a spot light meter from your camera: you will see that the white wall will look 18% grey.

Test it out and let us know in the comments about your findings!

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A textured white wall actually sits about two stops brighter than middle grey. That’s where it belongs in the picture. Deep shadow sits a couple of stops the other way, and that’s where it belongs. A reflected meter flattens both toward the middle unless you know how far to push back, and knowing how far to push back is a skill you have to train your eyeballs and build experience over time.

There are techniques to measure multiple points in the same exposure, like highlights, shadows, middle points, and calculate averages. If you want to dive deeper into this, check out the zone system, co-created by no one else than Ansel Adams and Fred Archer ,two of the biggest names in landscape photography in History!

But back to our scenario, the thing is that sometimes, an incident light meter might be just simpler to use, because…

It allows you to measure the light, not the objects!

Incident meters are these ones with a white dome on it, rather than using from the camera viewport, you stand where your subject is, point the dome back toward the camera, and it reads the light falling on the scene, not the light reflecting from objects in that scene. It doesn’t care whether your subject is white, black, or weathered steel, and that’s where the name comes from.

What comes back is the exposure for the light itself. Incident meters will make the white wall land two stops up, where it belongs, while making the shadow land down where it also belongs. Shadows stay shadows, highlights stay highlights, and the relationships between tones in the scene survive onto the film.

That’s key for correct exposures, especially if you are shooting slide film, which is less forgiving with exposure mistakes. I love using incident light meter for landscapes because…

It removes a decision, reducing stress

While spot metering is powerful, and it’s what most people recommend for careful work, especially if you have a spot meter capable of measuring with a precision of 1 degree (in other words: really really a spot), it arrives with a question attached: “Where do I point it?”

Meter the highlight, meter the shadow, split the difference, place it on a zone. As I wrote before, that’s a real skill, it takes practice, and it’s one more thing to get wrong while the light is moving.

An incident meter removes the question. There’s nowhere to aim. You put it in the light and press the button, and as long as you are sharing the same light condition, you are fine (and this is important - “share the same light condition”).

Note that I’m not arguing spot metering is worse! For scenes where you can’t reach your subject it’s the only honest option, and it deserves its own post, with Ansel Adams and the zone system and all of it.

For what I was doing at Storm King, multiple spot measurements would have gotten me to roughly the same numbers, but with more steps, more measurements, under 100F on a Summer day.

Why this works for landscapes

The catch is simple. Incident metering only works when the light falling on you is the same light falling on your subject.

At Storm King (and most outdoor shoots, like photowalks) that was true. I was standing in the same open sun as the sculptures, a few steps away from most of them. Same sky, same Sun (hopefully, lol), same everything.

Something I like about the incident metering on sunny days is the fact that I can “set and forget”...

But there is a caveat: if I stay under a tree, while the thing I’m photographing sits in full sun, the incident meter tricks me. Same problem if a cloud passes over me and not over the subject. When I can’t share the light, this method doesn’t apply, and there’s no other solution than reverting to spot metering or walking towards the object to measure incoming light in there.

The “set and forget” and its caveat will also improve the attention I pay to the sky, and consequentially, to the light around myself.

You take a reading, set the camera, and that setting holds, but only until the light condition changes. So, instead of metering every frame, you start watching for the thing that would invalidate your reading. A cloud rolls in. You step into shade. The sun drops behind the hill. Then you meter again. The EV values will differ. You start noticing where the sun sits relative to your subject, which is something you should be noticing anyway, I believe this will make you more familiar with the light, hence making you a better photographer.

In an ideal world you’d meter every shot. In practice, if the sun is high and nothing around you has changed, the reading from three frames ago is still good.

If you don’t have a meter at all

Sunny 16 and cellphone spot light meters are my default fallback, and it’s worth mentioning.

Bright sun, no clouds. Set your aperture to f/16 and your shutter speed to the reciprocal of your film speed. ISO 100 film means 1/100, or whatever your camera has closest to it. From there you open up as the light drops. Light overcast, f/11. Overcast, f/8. Heavy overcast, f/5.6. Open shade, f/4.

It’s rough, and it’ll get you within a stop, which is fine on negative film, but risky on slides. Think of it as what you use when the battery dies.

That’s why I wanted to shoot slides to illustrate this post ;)

How it came out

Box speed, ISO 50, no adjustment. The exposures landed where I wanted them. A few shadows went deep, which is what Velvia does under hard sun, and I’m fine with that. Deep shadow reading as deep shadow is the correct answer. The colors held, the highlights on the lighter pieces didn’t blow out, and I didn’t lose a frame.

I am happy that nothing went wrong and every single frame on my expensive and unexpired Velvia 50 got nicely performed. Proudly developed and scanned by Gelatin Labs, making every penny invested on that film stock worth it!

So, do you need an incident light meter?

If your camera meters for you and you like your photos, no. Genuinely, no.

If you’re shooting a fully manual body, or slide film, or you keep getting scans back where the exposures wander around for reasons you can’t identify, an incident meter is the smallest change that fixes the most. They start cheap. You’ll use it for years across every camera you own, and when it eventually dies you replace the meter instead of paying to have a camera serviced.

If you are starting with film photography, I recommend starting there. The zone system can wait.

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Happy metering, good light and good luck, and thank you for reading so far!

But I also observed something interesting regarding the Mexico culture, this one, related to hand painted subjects on walls, businesses, or anything that would be lit by an LED screen (or neon sign) elsewhere on Earth.

This touched me a lot, and I started collecting photos of it for a zine.

Buy ¿Pincel o Print? Zine

Let me introduce you to ¿ Pincel o Print ?

Preface

Limited edition of 30

If you like it, and/or would like to support this initiative, you can get yours! I printed, received them all, inspected, and numbered each one. This is not print on demand with a cheap and dirty printing service. I value a lot for quality over quantity here at Camera Clara, so I wanted to receive all zines to inspect the printing quality before having it reaching your hands, and I can say, the print quality on those is beautiful!

Send me a DM if you want it signed, if I know you personally, I will handwrite something that will touch your heart!

Buy yours!

What are people talking about it?

Substack community is the best! 🙌

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Over time, I wrote articles here on this platform addressing these topics in regular writings rather than rants. If I remember a post I did about a specific topic, I’ll add a link to it.

I appreciate when people expose themselves and are truthful like that, so I think you will appreciate knowing me a little bit more as well. Let me enumerate my top 10 list of displeasing acts and annoying photography topics I have observed over the last decade.

10. The film vs. Digital conversation

I put this at number 10 on the list because, fortunately, it's a conversation that is fading away and getting better. Film photographers are awesome and humble enough to disengage with this bait. As polarized as the world is nowadays, all mediocre people need are two things to compare and elect a winner. This topic isn’t different. When someone comes to me asking which one is better, I tell them I need to <insert excuse> and get away from that person. I even recorded a podcast the other day to talk about this.

9. A certain company’s toxicity

I don't need to say the name for you to recognize this company. I can just say they were the leaders in photography in the 90s and then abandoned their customers to sell motion pictures to Hollywood because money talks, babe. Now that film is re-emerging, these opportunists come with product renaming and pretend they give a fuck about community, while they're selling the same product with different packaging. They make customers believe that resolving some cross-company politics is for customers' benefit. The fact this company isn't giant is because they are politicians, not lovers of the business they operate.

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8. People who think photography = gear

Once in NY, I met a person who is proud to say they are “Team Alpha,” referring to a specific camera model from a specific brand. I was so sorry to hear that, especially because this person posts bad photos in their portfolio and literally uses equipment the wrong way, like a speedlite strobe pointing to the sky (will that reflect on Mars?). This person is always advocating for the brand rather than the art, has read zero photography books, and is ignorant. I don’t think this is the way, unless you want to work as a salesperson for that brand (and even then, some brands like Leica require you to be culturally invested).

This behavior makes me sad, and there’s nothing I can do to help that person out without having it get far from me.

It’s not a big deal though, just a rant of mine. Let people be happy with whatever they want, Raf ¯_(ツ)_/¯!

7. 100K+ YouTubers who think they’re God

This one happened during an event in NYC. I wasn’t there, but it was so obvious and ugly that a friend of mine came to comment about it with me. The story goes like this: there was a photography event in the city, one of these that lasts the whole day, with panels, YouTubers talking stuff, brands showcasing their nice products, etc. It was a nice event, well organized.

After the conference day, everyone at the event headed to a bar for the night, making the bar fully crowded with most people from the event. This part is important to say because I strongly believe the folks I’m going to criticize would not behave like that if they were at a regular bar with people who don’t know them.

The “famous” YouTubers were cutting the line to get their beer, while the rest of the people waited in line for tens of minutes.

Everybody saw that, Mr... (I won’t say the name, of course).

Note that there are some incredible YouTubers out there, including Nick Lopresti, Max Adams, the Petapixel guys (these are super humble and approachable), David Imel (<3), and many more.

I know people are just trying to make a living out of photography videos on the internet, so it isn’t hard to be a decent person. Do better, YouTubers.

6. Substack folks and their engagement bait notes

This is a practice that I’ve been observing on the internet, and it is worse on Substack because it is an emerging platform with people eager to make genuine connections and grow together.

I noticed that some big Substackers create notes like “Photographers, post your work here” or “Let’s meet each other in this Note,” and nothing else. No further action.

Holy dears, people see what you are doing.

In case you don’t know, they are gaming the system by having people comment on their notes just to generate engagement, while genuinely not caring about what these people post.

Here’s what they can do if they really want to help: get the people who commented and recommend your publication in theirs. Whenever people subscribe to their giant, tens-of-thousands-of-followers publications, a percentage of subscribers will also subscribe to you.

That’s how they can help, in case they’re genuinely interested.

5. Photographers shoppers

This is a common one, and sometimes I fit myself in this category (who says I can’t criticize myself)?

There is a very fine difference between being a photographer and being someone who feels inspired to photograph due to new equipment.

Which one are you? I am not gonna lie, I like photographing with what I have, but sometimes my GAS speaks louder and I can’t resist getting new gear to feel inspired to photograph something. I am not perfect, and I sometimes put myself in this very list.

Here’s a possible solution: temporarily exchange gear with friends. That’s an interesting way to save money and not have to put your hands in your credit card in order to get inspired to photograph something.

I wrote about this here:

4. Photographers who make photography the least important thing when they are out photographing

“Let’s go have lunch” is the phrase I most worry about hearing when I am photographing with a group.

Oh shit, here we go.

They will get in the restaurant and stay there for three fucking hours while golden hour is becoming pee hour (same color, different meaning).

Here’s how it works, in case you missed science classes during middle school: the Sun orbits the Earth and a complete spin takes 24 hours. Thanks to humanity, who is greatly boiling the planet and causing “El Niño v2.0 - AI edition,” half of the year is either too cold or too hot to go out and photograph.

That reduces your “photography window” to roughly 6 hours per day. During these 6 hours, do yourself a favor and value photography. Value the light. Pay attention to the light, to the Sun. Leave the restaurant for dinner, when there’s no more light. Grab a quick sandwich, continue photographing during the afternoon, and don’t miss the golden hour.

3. Photowalk people photographing the very same thing

Monkey see great scene. Monkey press shutter button.

I think people don’t realize that you can get the most out of photowalks when socializing with other photographers. You’re not gonna get your photography Oscar award from a photo in a photowalk.

I am not stating this as a perfect guy who never did it. In fact, there are many nice shots I took during photowalks, but they are not particularly unique, ya know?

I’m not saying it’s prohibited to do that. Just be happy the way you are, that’s the most important.

2. Photography creators and the low bar

This one is a reflection of number 1. The other day, I was browsing social media, and I saw a guy saying “Are you familiar with the sLoW ShuTtEr TeChNiQuE?”

Curious, I watched the rest of the reel, only to discover that what the guy called the “slow shutter technique” consisted of photographs taken with a slower shutter speed, hence blurring what’s in motion.

Or worse, the ones that call any ordinary thing a “life hack!”, these are hillarious!

The other day I saw a guy saying that increasing the ISO on your camera is a life hack.

What kind of world are we living in right now?

1. Instagram

This one deserves a special place in the fucking hell.

To me, this platform is the number one destroyer of photography on Earth. Little by little, over decades, it imposed the vertical format, then promoted extremely saturated images, then it started showing ads in an insane 1:2 ratio. My Instagram feed is at a point where I basically see 2 posts per ad. Right now, it is full of AI Slop, accounts that steal other people’s content with hundreds of thousands of subscribers, reels with hundreds of images displayed in dozens of seconds, doomscrolling, dopamine needs, uncurated volume, the attention economy that replaced image quality, Meta glasses, etc. The list is infinite.

Some people say that Instagram didn’t destroy photography, just transformed it. Well, okay, you can tell it transformed it, but in my opinion, it transformed photography by trying to turn it into a garbage can.

I feel that we, real photographers, storytellers, and film advocates, are the last frontier to preserve art, history, and good-quality content before Mark destroys everything once and for all in trade for his trillions of dollars.

Instagram is the number one thing I hate about photography in 2026.

As an additional note with underestimated long-term social impact, the hunting for likes made it worse for people under social disadvantage to get serious photographic representation. I even reflected about this in a podcast episode here in CC.

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Then, two friends of mine (Brian and Walmyr) warned me: “next, you’re gonna like to get the digital back. You’re gonna say no now, but you will”.

“Bullshit”, I told them (that was one month ago, lol).

I got very happy with my new high-end, miracle of engineering, film camera, made some very cool shots with it, and got introduced (and quickly fall in love) with the square format, that I even wrote a post about it.

Quickly, the Hasselblad and it’s square format body dominated my soul, and all I wanted to do was to shoot with it. The SLR cube conquered me hard. I didn’t feel inspired to get any other camera to shoot, and I knew it was not just because the camera was new. There was something special in it.

Many people question me why film photographers have the need of owning multiple cameras, I think the ultimate answer is because each film camera has its own spirit.

Given that we hardly use film cameras for commercial work (but for fun instead), each camera sets a different stage when it’s time to choose the weapon of choice for photographing something. Sometimes you want a quick pocketable point-and-shoot, or the challenge of manual focus and the sharpness of a Leica lens, or sometimes you just want to shoot something that looks like an old camera, and here’s the reason why…

There is something special about using a camera that has a waist-level viewfinder, like the Hasselblads, some Mamiyas, Rolleiflex, etc., especially when shooting at the street.

It imposes a respect. Without saying a word, it tells “I am a photographer, don’t disturb me, and this, obviously, is fucking film, so you’d better not get in front of my shot.”

I say that because when I am using it on the street, people avoid passing in front of me on the sidewalk, that’s notorious. Either they pass behind me, or they wait for me to finish the shot. They notice there’s a photographer doing their thing. It sets a complete different stage in the photography scenario.

It imposes photographic authority.

I thought that Leica cameras were the pinnacle of conversation starters, because it is very common for people to reach out and sparkle a conversation about the Leica object I have hanging on my neck, but Hasselblads are even more insane with this. There isn’t a single time that I have the Hassie with me, that no one stops and ask questions, and the conversation is also different.

I think it’s because that this is the camera Man brought to the Moon for the first time. It’s an icon, but not like the M6 emoji 📷 (have you thought about it?).

It’s an icon that is recognizable for photography enthusiasts, landscapes, studio, and that usually sparkles a hot photography conversation, to a point I have to start carrying my photography business cards when I’m with the Hassel on me…

Anyway, back to the Hassel religion and the digital back story.

Brian and Walmyr told me that I woult not resist the temptation to get the 100 Megapixels digital back, the Hasselblad cfv 100c. Hasselblads always got notorious due to the fact that it’s fully modular. It’s the most modular camera ever. And with the digital back, I can just swap the film back to it when I’m tired of shooting digital.

Shit, that’s tempting.

In other words, I can carry the 503cw normally, and when I run out of film, or when I have photo FOMO, or when I’m just lazy to develop the films, I can swap the film back and I have a high-end sensor and image processing at the very film plane that the film back would provide.

I got it.

That means now I have a high-end digital camera, with no IBIS, no electronic rangefinder, but with a hell of an analog feel to it.

I made a video that will help you understand what I am talking about.

It’s such an interesting camera, and there are some things I love about it, which I will try to enumerate by order of priority from a film photographer’s mindset.

1. Reuse the V-system analog body - as described above;
2. The firmware simplicity - it’s a camera that takes photos and lets you see the photos. Period. No video, no crazy menus, it’s fucking simple;
3. Hasselblad’s color science - the 16bit HDR files are so good to work with;
4. When paired with film simulation software, it offers the best that both worlds (analog + film) can offer - let me double click on this…

Film simulation software with it

A huge advantage of the Hasselblad digital back is that you have a complete analog shooting experience, seriously, imagine having 16bit HDR RAW files with a shutter that sounds like this:

_{(Warning: ASMR)}

These files, once submitted to a film simulation software, will give you a very satisfactory end result in terms of color, grain, latitude, and everything. My two favorite film simulation softwares are the Dehancer and DxO Film Pack.

Take a look at these shots simulating a CineStill 50D. I think that the only consideration I must do here is that the 50D is a daylight film with a very low ISO, and I shot these under the shade, that’s not a real possibility :P

Here’s something interesting about film simulations and things I can do with this combo: I can now get the camera on a tripod, and shoot a specific film stock with a film back, and then swap the film back by the digital one, and process a film simulation, and do a more acurate comparison.

Would you like to see this in Camera Clara?

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FAQ

Q: Oh Raf! Is it the same thing as shooting film?

Of course not, and this discussion is kinda out of pointless among experienced photographers who know what they’re doing, and who know how to appreciate art.

Q: Oh Raf! Is it better than film?

Same answer as above :P

Q: RAF! Are you ruining the film experience?

Same answer as above :P

Q: OhRaf! Is this cheating? People think you’re shooting film but you’re not!

Do you pay for my film? Do you develop it? Do you fund my film photography journey? No? Do a litlte favor for both of us, hit the unsubscribe and get the f* outta here 😂. I do whatever I want with my photos. Go study culture and stop being an asshole. D

_{(I’m kidding, I’M KIDDING, JUST KIDDING, it’s a joke, don’t hit unsubscribe .I love you 🥹)}

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Also, if you want to learn more about the Hasselblad V-system, I suggest watching the below live streaming where my friend Brian teaches everything about it:

I tried to gather as much information as possible and add it to each photo’s caption, hoping to bring you the same feeling I had when looking at these in person, where I could get close and inspect the brush strokes, the texture, the patina, the cracking. If you are knowledgeable about painting, please add some interesting information in the comments section, as I’d love to learn more!

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Those fine vertical striations running through the flesh tones are the oak panel's grain telegraphing through the ground and paint layers after 470 years of the wood moving. Isn’t that incredible?

The 100-megapixel sensor allows some aggressive cropping, and it's such a joy because I can see the photos inside the photos I take. I think this is Hasselblad's main superpower. I hope you appreciate it as well!

I arrived at the museum at around 4:10 PM, and it closed at 5, so I rushed a little and didn't have time to photograph the little description next to every artwork. I looked them up online afterward and tried to include as many links and references as possible. Some are impressively old, going back 500 years.

This is a special one. It’s SO BIG. I think it’s the biggest paint I’ve ever seen. Look to the description plates underneath and you can have a feeling about the size.

This one was delightful. Looks like large format photography, check out the details!

This epic painting honors a critical turning point in the American colonists’ war against Great Britain. It was a great success in Leutze’s native Germany, given the country’s own revolutionary fervor of the period, as well as in the United States, where it quickly became an iconic image, frequently recast by later artists.

Evoking patriotic feelings in some viewers, conflict and struggle in others, this unavoidable highlight of the American Wing continues to spark debates about political ideas. It is exhibited here in a reproduction of its original trophy-style frame, based on a photograph by Mathew B. Brady.

Hope you enjoyed seeing these details, as much as I enjoyed registering it!
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First thought: dead battery. I use this camera a lot, so it happens. Luckily the M7 has two mechanical shutter speeds, 1/60 and 1/125, that fire even with no power at all. I was already using an external light meter (something I recommend to everyone, honestly), so I just locked the speed at 1/125, opened up to f/16 with ISO 400, and kept shooting.

Got home, swapped both batteries. Same thing. Dead.

People warned me about this. When I bought the M7, more than one person said something like: “you’re buying a thirty year old camera full of electronics, and if that breaks, you’re in trouble”. I ignored them and bought it anyway.

Now I’m paying for it. Probably a flat cable, or some fucking connector inside gave up. Who knows ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

If you’re getting into film photography and picking your first camera, think twice before choosing anything with an electronic shutter. A Hasselblad 500 series has no light meter and no electronics at all, the shutter lives in the lens, not the body. That means more lenses exist than bodies (manufacturers make several lenses per camera), so if a shutter dies, you swap the lens and keep shooting while the broken one gets repaired.

My new rule now is: anything with electronics inside, once it’s past thirty years old, is a risk. My Leica MP has no such problem. MP stands for “mechanical perfection”, and it earns the name, I pulled the batteries out and it still fires at every speed, meter or no meter. Some people bullshit around buying the Leica thas has no light meter, that’s bullshit, because you can buy an MP and take the batteries off…

There’s another upside to fully mechanical cameras: mechanical parts can be reproduced. 3D printing has made it possible for repair communities to remake old parts that manufacturers stopped making years ago, a door latch here, a shutter release button there... Electronics don’t work that way. Once a chip or a flex cable is gone, it’s gone, and if they’re old, you’re pretty much under the bus.

My M7 is at DAG Camera repair now. Probably $500, probably two weeks without it. And honestly, this is exactly why I think the Leica M6 beats the M7 in 2026, at least for anyone buying a first rangefinder. The M6 has no electronic shutter, so there’s nothing in there to die on you mid-roll.

Film is already an expensive hobby, and it keeps getting more expensive. So if you’re shopping for a first camera, my advice is simple: skip anything with an electronic shutter, even if it was made recently. My M7 was manufactured decades ago and it still caught me off guard.

I’m seriously thinking about selling the M7 once it’s back and picking up an M3 or an M4-P instead. But my MP is a battle horse, and it’s not going anywhere.

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A friend of mine works in the film industry. He bought a full roll of Kodak Verita 200D, the stock Kodak built for Euphoria season 3, and respooled part of it into 35mm canisters for me. That’s the only reason I have this film. Kodak doesn’t sell it to photographers. There’s no 135 version, no 120 version, nothing you can order. It exists only as a motion picture product, available by request through a Kodak sales rep, meant for productions shooting hundreds of thousands of feet at a time. I shot two rolls on my Leica M7 anyway.

What verita 200D actually is

Kodak built this stock with Euphoria cinematographer Marcell Rév, chasing a look closer to older film emulsions than the clean, flexible Vision3 line. Technically, it’s the ECN-2 version of Portra 400. Same emulsion family, different chemistry, different name depending on who’s selling it. Rated at ISO 200, balanced for daylight, with no remjet backing. Instead, it uses an anti-halation undercoat that is very efficient, and an anti-static layer that survives the developing process.

The remjet part matters a lot. Remjet is the black backing on most cinema film, and it’s a pain to remove. Without it, this stock opens a door most cinema film keeps shut.

The film does an excellent job on the anti-halation without having an anti halation layer. As a comparison, check out the same shot with the Verita 200 and a CineStill 800T, shot in the same lighting conditions.

Which one do you prefer?

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Why I ran it through C-41

I have a C-41 kit at home, and that’s the chemistry I’m used to. I also own ECN-2 chemicals, but the process is more involved and I haven’t built the habit around it yet, so I didn’t wanna risk. Since Verita has no remjet, cross-processing it in C-41 is possible, and that’s the part of this review I actually want to write about for you.

A lot of photographers who hear about Verita assume two things:

First, that it’s out of reach.

Second, that even if you get your hands on it, you need ECN-2 to make it work.

Neither has to be true. I ran both rolls through C-41 and the results held up. You can judge for yourself from the images.

Smoke, Sun, and one pushed roll

I shot part of this in Hoboken during the days when smoke from Canadian wildfires sat over the city. Low contrast, flat light, that particular haze that makes everything low contrast by nature. I think it suited the film. Verita has a shorter dynamic range than Vision3 by design, and a scene that’s already compressed in contrast gives it less work to do.

I also shot on a clear, sunny day, and got photos from the second roll from ISO to 400 in development. That push made sense on paper too. C-41 stocks usually need about a stop more exposure to reach the same density as their ECN-2 version, which is part of why Portra 400 becomes a 200-speed film once it’s built for cinema chemistry. Check out the results:

The magenta and the blue

Some frames, especially the ones from Washington Square Park, show a clear shift toward magenta in the highlights, with blue creeping into some of the tones as well. Kodak’s own documentation says this stock leans magenta in highlights even under normal ECN-2 processing. Cross-process it in C-41 and the effect gets more visible.

If this was just a difference in dye color between the two processest, shadows and highlights would shift together and a simple correction would fix the whole frame. What’s happening is closer to a chemical clash. The color developer’s pH is different between ECN-2 and C-41, and so is the development time and temperature. That changes how fast each emulsion layer develops relative to the others, and the mismatch shows up strongest where the image is brightest. but I like it :)

How it stacks up against Portra? You might ask!

The negatives dried flat. No curling, no warping, something I can’t always say about other cinema stocks I’ve cross-processed at home. I’d guess that comes down to the missing remjet layer more than anything else.

Is it worth chasing?

Honestly, no. Not because the film is bad. It looks great, and the C-41 cross-process holds up better than I expected. But it’s Portra 400 wearing a different label, and Portra is one order away. If you happen to know someone in the film industry who can get you a roll of Verita, you’re getting a five-dollar Portra. Fun to shoot once. Not a reason to go looking for a connection you don’t already have.

^{If you want more reviews like this one, in film photography that doesn’t come with sponsorship strings attached, consider subscribing to Camera Clara. It’s reader-funded, always will be (just don’t let Kodak know, they don’t like us :P). It’s free to subscribe.}

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The Kodak Ektar 100 is the only color negative film that makes me feel like I’m shooting slide without the slide-film stress. Punchy, contrasty, saturated almost past the point of believable. People online call it the finest-grain color film Kodak makes, the marketing is honest for this film stock.

It's a fil stock with strong opinions, meaning if you shoot against them and you’ll be annoyed, but if you shoot with them, you walk away with postcards like the ones you're about to see in this post.

The blues, we have to talk about the blues

Look at that cloud. That deep, slightly cyan blue is Ektar doing what it does, and it’s why I load it for skies, water, anything with a real blue in it.

Ektar wants sun. If you hand it a flat grey day, the color goes quiet, sometimes a little cold. Hand it hard daylight and it sings. I meter for the shadows like any negative film, but I don’t push into overexposure the way I would with Portra, because Ektar’s highlights leave sooner. Look at roof of the car below: the bright edges are sitting right at the top of the range, almost gone. One more stop and they’d be blank paper, but if you nail the exposure, the film delivers.

That old farm truck is my saturation test. The blue body is shouting, the orange lines on the lettering holds, and it still looks like a real truck on real gravel. That’s the line this film walks. Light, colors, and contrast (but not too much).

Fine grain, and why it scans so clean

People assume the fine grain is Ektar’s secret. But Ektar and Portra run the same grain tech, T-grain, so that’s not where the difference lives…

Quick version for anyone who hasn’t met the term. Most film uses chunky, pebble-shaped silver crystals. T-grain uses flat, tabular ones that catch light better and pack tighter, so you get finer grain and sharper edges at the same film speed. Kodak built it for the T-Max b&w films first.

Ektar scans so clean!! I’ve pulled detail out of these negatives I had no right to get.

A landscape film (and that’s quite the point)

If you remember one thing, remember that Ektar is built for scenery. Bridges, water, stone, big open sky. The internet mostly agrees, and so do I !

That George Croton Dam (above) frame is everything I want from a roll of it. Deep sky, white water, warm old stone, every tone separated cleanly. Shots like this are why I forgive the price. I wish I had it in my last trip to Mexico, where I visited the Chichén Itzá pyramid…

Where Ektar breaks: skin in hard sun

Now the honest part. Ektar and faces don’t always get along.

The skin gets kinda muddy, the blue steals the scene, and there’s no fixing it without wrestling the scan :P

This is the thing everyone warns you about, and they’re right. But another thing is also right: if you have lots of blue in your scene, think about Ektar. I’ve been shootng with that mindset from now on!

As I said before, the film likes contrast, but the more hard is the light you get, the harder it gets to have domain over the contrast on skin color. When I am shooting the Ektar 100 in sun light, I usually wait for a cloud to pass by to redice the contrast of harsh lights, so it purposefly reduces the contrast a little bit, and even though…

Reds, browns, and yellows

There’s more here than blue. The reds and browns are surprisingly excellent.

Especially the browns.

That cow is the only 35mm shot in this set, and it tells me two things. The browns are rich and deep, no mud, which I happen to like for animals. The 120 is cleaner and glassier, better for the big scenic work. I’ve been reaching for 120 more lately, mostly because the Hassel forces me to slow down.

Those roses make the case. Delicate pinks, deep greens, a restraint people forget Ektar has in it.

Technical stuff about the shots above

When we talk too much about film and colors, there’s always one who will come saying that scanning and converting means everything, and they’re not wrong, so it worth talking a little bit about the computer part of the above shots.

With the exception of the cow shot, all photos were scanned with a Fujifilm GFX 100s camera and a vintage and perfect Pentax macro lens at f/16. The shots are 102 Megapixel each, so I am using one of the best cameras for the DSLRscan job available in 2026.

The negatives (with exception for the cow shot) were converted with Negative Lab Pro using one of the default presets.

I know it’s not clinical like a Fujifilm Frontier, or a Noritsu scanner. For those, I need you to subscribe so I can get funds, LOL.

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Price, and where it sits

A roll of 35mm runs around sixteen dollars right now (June 2026), which puts it over Kodak Gold and under Portra 400. For a professional film with this grain and this color, that middle slot feels fair to me.

Buy Ektar 100 35mm

Buy Ektar 100 120 film

(I link B&H because that’s where I actually buy my film. These above are affiliate links, it costs you nothing extra and helps keep Camera Clara independent. If you are buying films, do the pro choice and prefer buying from B&H because they store the film in refrigerators, that’s something nobody talks about. Thanks, you’re welcome, haha)

Should you shoot it?

If you shoot scenery, skies, water, architecture, anything where you want color to land hard, yes, today. If you shoot mostly people, keep one roll for soft-light days and load Portra for the rest.

I always keep a few in the fridge at all times. It’s the closest I get to the slide-film look without the slide-film headache, and some days that alone is reason enough to carry a camera.

What do you shoot Ektar for? Do you like it?

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The theory behind the two is simple. The practice is not, and knowing which one to use is fundamental.

Starting with the incident meter, or the one with the little white dome on top. You hold it where your subject is and it reads the light falling onto that spot, ignoring what the subject is made of. Dark coat, white wall, doesn’t matter. It measures the light itself, in absolute terms. Shadows read as shadows, highlights read as highlights. That’s why people call it the more accurate reading. You’re measuring incoming light, not the individual light that objects in front of you reflect.

The downside is you have to get close to the subject, or at least stand in the same light conditions. If you’re under a tree in the shade, photographing a billboard baking in the sun, the light at your feet and the light hitting the billboard are two different conditions. An incident reading from where you stand would be wrong. That’s the moment a reflective meter shines.

A reflective meter is the most common one, and also the way more complicated to use. It’s what lives inside your camera. It reads the light that objects reflect back, based on where you point it. Dark things reflect less, so they read dark. Bright things reflect more, so they read bright. Aim it somewhere else and you get a different number, and that's why I say it's more complicated to use.

The easiest way to see this is with a black and white image in your head, that's because B&W images are just a range of blacks, shadows, whites, and highlights on grayscale.

This is where reflective metering gets tricky: where to meter? Where to point the camera at? The complexity comes from the fact that measuring in different places will give you different readings, unlike the incident meter, which gives you an acurate and absolute reading.

For example: imagine a wedding. Do you point at the bride’s white dress or the groom’s dark suit? Two readings, far apart, and neither one is right on its own…

“When in doubt, aim in the middle" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The honest answer is to meter on something neutral, so the shadows naturally fall dark and the highlights stay bright the way they’re meant to. Your film (or sensor) should have a dynamic range wide enough to hold the shadows and the highlights without clipping. When the scene is high contrast and the two ends sit too far apart, you’re in what I think of as a short blanket situation. The blanket can’t cover your head and your feet at once. You pick one. The dynamic range is the blanket.

Also, if this isn't complex enough, there’s a calibration detail underneath all this. These meters are benchmarked against 18% gray. So if you’re on the street and spot a plain gray sidewalk, that’s a good place to set your exposure. Not dark, not bright.

You won’t always have a gray target though. Back to the wedding situation. if you meter off the white dress, the meter will instruct your exposure to turn it into 18% gray, so the dress comes out muddy instead of white, and it should be white, not gray...

Same trap with the dark suit, just the other direction.

Have you experienced that? Share your story in the comments.

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So when there’s no gray to lean on, you carry the rule yourself. What’s bright in real life wants +1 EV to stay bright. What’s dark wants -1 EV to stay dark, with the steps in between. This is the whole reason to shoot in manual, or to learn the exposure compensation feature in your camera, instead of trusting the meter blindly, metering like a newbie and pressing the shutter release button without knowing what you're doing…

The last piece, and a little more advanced, is knowing your dynamic range in stops, for your film or your camera. Look it up on the internet, it’s easy to find. Keep your darks and brights inside that range, and keep the short blanket in mind. Some litght meters allow you to store measurements in memory and calculate the delta in between (some even give you a scale so you can see if you're exceeding a pre-configured dynamic range, the Sekonic ones do that…)

Sometimes, especially on photowalks under the Sun, I like carrying an incident light meter because it's more "set and forget”, and I end up getting consistent exposures that follow the light along my day, that is -that is- if light conditions don't change (like clouds passing by), of course.

This is why using an external light meter requires you being more attentious and aware of your surroundings, you become more familiar with light changes, you remove the crutch, and ultimately, you become a better photographer.

Here are some photos I took using an incident light meter, the Sekonic L-308X-U. Exposure is nailed in every single one, edits are minimal, as you can see per the film border, which is always black, and with consistent coloring on the lettering.

Using a light meter and observing light while shooting is an important exercise that will let you enjoy correctly exposed photographs more and more.

Film cupping, or warping, happens for a bunch of reasons. It can come from the way the film was stored, humidity and temperature differences during the dev process, the drying, or who knows what. What we know is that it’s a frustrating problem, and it usually gets worse the larger the film gets. When I shoot medium format (120), I sometimes end up with rolls that look like the back of a guitar neck.

Leaving them inside books isn’t usually an option, because you need books long enough to cover the whole length of the film (God forbid you use multiple books). Laying it on a flat table doesn’t help either, because you need the table for something else. And besides, books are meant to be read, not used as shelves, door stops, or anything other than read.

I tried a lot of techniques to unwarp film, some of them drastic and shitty, like ironing the film with a towel over it. That destroyed the emulsion every single time. I searched online, including forums, YouTube, and Reddit, and couldn’t find anything that actually worked, just a bunch of crap. That’s why I decided to write this ridiculously simple post.

I figured out two ways to do it passively, without an extra heater, cabinet, blower, or whatever. That helps me keep the instructions assertive and short. Great.

I call these methods the “Backwards Respooling” and the “Backwards Mini Roll.” They’re pretty simple, obvious even, but when you’re desperate with a cupped roll, you don’t think about the obvious.

First, it’s CRUCIAL that the film is COMPLETELY DRY before you try any flattening. With that settled, it’s time for some film chiropractic sessions…

Method #1: The Backwards respooling

For this method, you’re going to roll the film back into the reel, but this time with the concave side OUT (usually the emulsion, but not always). You’ll notice the film doesn’t want to go back onto the spool, because it’s warped and probably conditioned to roll the other way. You might have to route it correctly into the reel for the first loop. Wear cloth gloves for this. Here’s what it should look like:

This method is the least invasive and safer than the second one, though it might take longer to work. The upside is that you can monitor the process along the way by inspecting the reel. Finish rolling it with the concave side out and wait. Since the spool holds the film on both sides, it stays flat and you don’t risk overdoing it.

Close the full loop, and wait…

After 16+ hours, you should have a flat film.

Method #2: The Backwards Mini Roll

I’d risk saying this method is a CameraClara exclusive, because I haven’t seen anyone else do it. I came up with it and refined the process along the way.

It’s more invasive, but more effective. Ideal for extreme warps that look more like the third letter of the alphabet (”C”, in case you missed the reference).

Again, make sure the film is completely dry, or it will stick to itself and jam the whole thing.

You’re going to reuse the backing paper from when you loaded the film into the spool. Grab the adhesive and form a little roll that works as a container, then build a library of them. Here’s a photo of what RafLabs looks like, for instance:

When rolling it back to fit in the cylinder you made, be careful not to scratch the emulsion. Roll it with the concave side out, between your fingers, and pull the tail of the film while holding the other side with your thumb and index finger to reduce the diameter of the roll. Reduce it until it fits one of the pre-made containers.

It will look like this:

Another reason I keep multiple backing paper cylinders is that if I want to open one and inspect, I can just toss it. You don’t want to scratch the film against the paper while it’s tensioned, so to monitor progress you’d have to peel the adhesive and unfold the whole backing paper. You can reassemble it afterward, but it’s just more practical to recycle and grab another one.

When you roll the film to fit the paper cylinder, you might feel you’re doing the wrong thing, forcing it into an uncomfortable position. But remember these films are used to it. They came in a roll tighter than a sardine can, got stored for months (sometimes years, even decades!), and never complained about it on Reddit like humans do.

PS: If you’re doing this with 35mm film, save the plastic tub the canister came in and do it in there. That should be enough, the logic is the same.

Leave a comment if you liked it, disliked it, approved, disapproved, or if you have other techniques. I want to learn and hear from you too!

Thanks for reading ❤️

Converting your own scans is the part of film photography nobody puts on a postcard. I scan with the film borders, so a big chunk of my time goes into cropping, rotating, fixing the rebate, then moving the file from one piece of software to another because the white balance broke or the gamma got encoded wrong somewhere along the way. It works. It’s also a small pile of hacks I’ve made peace with over the years.

So when Yahya Rahhawi reached out about a converter he’s building, I was curious in a tired way. I’ve seen a lot of these. Most do one thing well and leave you needing three other apps to finish the job. My friend told me “I’ve used just about every conversion app out there, and this one by far has been the most complete”. And I completely agree! I’m on the same boat, also used tons of software, and EmberFilm is very promising!

Yahya and I sat down on a Camera Clara livestream and went through an entire roll together, live, with negatives I had scanned that same morning. I’ll post some of the results here, but I strongy recommend watching the whole video.

Yahya is a solo developer. He’s a computer science student finishing his degree, he started shooting black and white in a high school darkroom about four years ago, and the app, EmberFilm, grew out of his own frustration with the conversion process (we’ve all been there!). Before this he made a small open source tool that only removed dust. That one got enough good feedback that he kept going, and EmberFilm is the result of a few months of work and more than fifty beta testers texting him every single day.

What got me is how much is already in there for a first release.

The part I want people to understand first is the AI, because the words “AI” and “film scanning” in the same sentence usually make us all nervous. The software uses machine learning for dust detection, for the auto crop that finds your frame inside the border, and for white balance. The dust model is the clever one. It reads the actual RGB pixels, no infrared channel, and it still finds the specks and paints them out while keeping the grain intact.

And all that runs on locally on the machine.

I repeat. Every single AI feature runs in my machine only. Nothing gets uploaded. Your scans never leave your laptop, the models are compressed to run locally, and there’s no account, no cloud, no app quietly phoning home to a server somewhere. Yahya was clear about this on the stream and I think it matters. This is a good use of AI.

The other thing I kept noticing was the one button conversion. You import the roll, you hit convert, and the scans come out looking right. That sounds basic. A lot of converters still get it wrong, and you end up babysitting every frame to make it usable. EmberFilm treats a project like a roll, reads the white balance once, and keeps it consistent across the whole strip, which is most of what I actually want from a converter.

Now the part I cared about most. EmberFilm doesn’t push its own look on you. It doesn’t bake in a LUT to fake a “filmic” result and call it a day. It pulls the information out of the negative, the way a Frontier or a Noritsu does, and hands you a clean, flexible file you can take wherever you want. If you feel like adding a print look later, you can. That’s your call, not the app deciding for you. Portra 400 should look like Portra 400. One version of it, please.

We hit a couple of bugs on the stream. An export that failed, a zoom that crashed because I zoomed in to roughly a billion percent. Beta things. None of it changed my read. The conversions were fast on 80-something megabyte GFX files, the memory use stayed around half a gigabyte, and the results were genuinely good.

EmberFilm is Mac only for now, still in beta, with a waitlist on the site. No firm release date yet.

Info and Links

The app lives at emberfilm.app, where you can join the beta waitlist. The instagram is @emberfilm.app.

One flag: there’s also an Instagram account called @ember_films (plural, with an underscore), that one does NOT belong to the app rather than some unrelated video outfit. Check it before you link it.

This was our first livestream with Yahya and I doubt it’ll be the last. He’s that rare developer who’s also the user, and I want to keep following where this goes. For the record, nobody paid for this post. I just liked the software and contacted him out via Instagram. Thank you, Yahya! 💪 🇮🇶 🎞️ ✨

Last Saturday I went anyway. Weekend, sure. Crowded, yes. I brought the Hassel and a roll of Ektar and figured I would just deal with the people, wait until I had clean frames, things like that.

The cherry blossoms were long gone. June offers a different game. Roses everywhere, meadow flowers doing their loose, messy thing. I think summer might be the honest season here. If Spring is the postcard, June is the garden actually living.

Without a proper light meter, I followed the Sunny16 rule, which barely fails. If yo udon't know the Sunny16, it's pretty simple: on a sunny day, you use 1/ISO as shutter speed (1/100 if ISO100, 1/400 if ISO400, etc.), and set your aperture to f/16. Done! You are in EV 15 zone, typical for shooting under sunlight.

Since my camera doesn't have a 1/100 shutter speed, I used 1/125 - it's fine. Exposure was not always perfect, but I was able to slightly push/pull some sliders when converting, and voilá. Look at these Ektar 100 colors…

Ektar was a deliberate choice here, I left home with it loaded in the camera. It is the most saturated color negative Kodak makes nowadays (finest grain too). People describe it as slide film with a safety net, all that punch and contrast but with the forgiving latitude of a negative. And i agree!

Bright daylight is exactly when Ektar comes alive. I am happy with the results!

By the way, Camera Clara runs on no sponsors and no ad money. If these posts are worth something to you, a paid subscription is what keeps them coming, and keeps me honest about what I actually shoot! Join the club!

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What it wanted, it turns out, looked right. The blues went deep and a little electric, the reds stayed rich, and the cool cast sat on the chrome in a way I liked more than a "correct" version would have. There is no right or wrong here. There is the film you have and the cars in front of you, and sometimes they just agree.

I went in expecting halation because I could see it coming when framing: little stars of specular light bouncing off bumpers, off a hood, off a headlight rim. 800T is known for haloing those bright points in red, and in a dark night scene it can bloom hard. Here, in daylight at box speed, the highlights were small and tight, so the red glow stayed gentle, I like saying the’re sexy without being too vulgar, looks like medium format. A soft ring around a headlight instead of an explosion. On 35mm that restraint reads as elegant rather than a gimmick. I'll take it.

The cars earned the trip. There was a deep blue Maserati with a tartan umbrella tossed on the rear shelf and a sticker in the window telling the diet exactly where to go, which felt like the most honest thing at the whole event. A red Mercedes 380SL on Jersey plates, parked next to a white roadster wearing a small American flag. A dark blue Ferrari with a period New York plate, all that bodywork folding the sky into itself.

And then the one I keep coming back to. I half-recognized it on the day, and a little digging confirmed it: the red roadster on my last three frames is a 1957 BMW 507, brought by Gooding Christie's as the auction centerpiece. BMW built only a few hundred, and this was one of 34 Series 1 cars. I didn't know any of that when I shot it. I just liked the shape. The giveaway is sitting right there in my interior frames, two little Christie's cushions on the seats. I photographed the star of the morning without realizing it.

This is the part where I say something about Leica, and I mean it. The store didn’t need to host a car meet. It did, with Duane Wilson of Porsche Stimmung, because the people who fuss over a hand-built lens are usually the same ones who notice a perfectly set ride height. That overlap is the whole point. Leica stays a strong brand less for any single camera and more for mornings like this one, where the gear is the excuse and the community is the thing that actually shows up. You don’t build that with a spec sheet.

I have more frames from that day still waiting, shot on Kodak VERITA 200D (the new prohibited film for photographers), the new daylight-balanced cinema stock that I’m about to run through ECN-2 at home. After a roll of tungsten film bent to fit a sunny morning, I want to see what a film that actually wants the daylight does with the same cars. More on that when it’s dry.

I’ll do another post when I develop the ECN-2 film. Don’t send that to Kodak.

If you like this kind of thing, film, old cars, and the small accidents that make a frame, subscribe to Camera Clara and pass it to the one friend who’ll get it.

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Here is the project I mentioned: Hope in Shadows.

You can find their website here. It’s such a beautiful and nice project!

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And there it was. Blue and orange across the top of the buildings, as expected, the Empire State Building leading the line. The river caught all of it and threw it back in purple and orange, the Knicks colors.

I shot this on the Fujifilm GFX 100s. Tripod, long exposure, the water doing most of the work. 53 years of waiting, and the whole skyline knew it. I intentionally happened to be across the river with my camera!

If you know a Knicks fan and would like to give them a gift (as well as support an independent photographer like myself), I made prints of this. Note that shipping is included (and that’s half of the price).

Manhattan Knicks 2026 - Fine Art Print

I can sign the photo upon request. Buy it on the link below.

Manhattan Knicks 2026 - Fine Art Print