Flowers on Medium Format Film | Film Friday – August 28, 2015

One of my business goals this year is to try to shoot one roll of medium format film at every wedding. I’m enjoying this process so far, focusing on using the camera for portraits alongside of my amazing digital camera.

Your can follow along with my results on Film Fridays.

Portra 800
Pentax 645
75mm f/2.8
Indie Film Lab

Flowers on film.

I take a photo of a bride (or brides) holding their bouquet at every wedding.  Not only does it highlight the style of both the outfit and the flowers at the same time, it also produces a great tight image for the florist.  Its a quick and easy photo to take, so at Monica and Jason’s wedding at the Chatfield Botanic Gardens I grabbed a snap in both digital and film.

Film:Digital:
Film:
Digital:
I happen to love both photos for various reasons.  The color tonality is a bit different but I happen to really like both.  I edited my digital to be a bit warmer overall because we were in shade, but I think the skin tones in each image are both very natural and pretty, which I think shows that neither is a bad option. The main difference shows up in the tone of the green background and the tone of the pinkish/ purplish flowers.  I think the digital image showcases the flower colors a little closer to what I observed in real life, but even Monica loved the color in the film images.  She sent me the following note:

“Those pinks and greens in the flowers and foliage really pop!”

At this point I’m not including my film files as part of the wedding day image delivery (they’re a bonus I send along, typically after the digital gallery is delivered), so I’m not trying to get my digital images to match my film images exactly.  For this reason, I’m okay with the color differences.

You can also see the difference in depth of field, though I think this might be partly attributed to where my focal point was.  In the first digital photo, I was clearly focusing directly on the flowers while in the film, my focal point is a little back from the front of the flowers.

There is also the difference in lens perspective.  The film photos was taken with my 75mm f/2.8 (equivalent to around 50mm in a 35mm camera) while the digital was taken with my 85mm f/ 1.8.

Which do you prefer?

I’ll showcase more flowers on film in upcoming posts!