Being relatively new to LF photography, I've been extremely eager to experiment and play with different types of film. I appeal to you experts to point me in the right direction. Also, if you have any tips when using certain types of film, that would very much be appreciated.
When my professor gave me his entire 4x5 camera set, he included film holders of which six had Provia 100 (transparency). I bought a box of Kodak Ektar 100 (negative) to fill the other empty holders and was on my merry way. When I finally had the courage to get my film developed, I was blown away by how amazing the quality was by both types of film. I loved the immediacy of transparency, but I also loved the the extra wide gamut of negative.
I'm not sure where to go from here. My professor did say that he always recommends negative, especially for landscape photography, my preferred style. He said that negative renders more details and is much more forgiving/flexible. He also told me to rate negative at always half its recommended ISO, which I'm not too sure about.
1.) What type of film do you guys like to shoot and why?
2.) What type of photography calls for transparency or negative?
3.) Is there a certain type of film that's better/best for night photography?
4.) Is negative or transparency better for extremely large prints? (I know that Gursky and Struth use/used transparency for a lot of their work.)
5.) And finally, my professor (and, believe or not, Stephen Shore himself!) told me that, when metering, to rate negative at half its ISO (so, for example, for Ektar 100 to meter it at 50) and transparency at exactly its recommended ISO. Do you guys think this is generally correct?
Many thanks, as always!
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