Medium Format Film 2016 Year in Review

Now that we’re winding 2016 to a close, its time for the annual recap. I love taking the time to look back over my work from the previous year and relive all of the amazing moments and amazing couples that I’ve been privileged to photograph. I’ll get to my full 2016 recap shortly, but I wanted to take the time in this blog post to recap another avenue of my 2016 photography.

This year I continued my exploration of medium format film, finding opportunities to use film at weddings, engagements, personal projects, and travel. My goal last year was to take a roll of film at every wedding. This year my goal was to photograph a styled shoot entirely on film. I’m happy to say that I met both of those goals.

I did continue to use film at weddings and engagements this year, but I didn’t hit up every session. And I’m okay with that. I’m dabbling in medium format film because its fun so I took the pressure off myself this year to bring the camera out (and consequently juggle three cameras on a shoot).

This year I focused on extensive trials of two different film stocks to see how I liked the results after repeated use.

My conclusion is that Portra 800 is my favorite stock. I absolutely love the colors of Portra 800, even in the middle of the day, and I love that the film produced rich dynamic colors and good blacks. I used Fuji 400H for a couple of projects and while I do love it in certain circumstances (desert light, lots of good natural reflectors) I think Portra is going to be my go to for most projects. Too bad its the most expensive of those two options.

I do wish that there was a film that encapsulated the colors of Portra 800 with the grain of Fuji 400H as sometimes I see a little more grain than I’d like. But as long as I avoid underexposure, I hope I can keep the grain to a level I’m okay with.

A sampling of my favorite film images are below!