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Vintage Pentax

How do I get the vintage look with my film camera?

I have a Pentax K1000, and I want to know how to get a vintage effect for my pictures. Should I develop them myself? What effects can I do with it, and how do I do them? I've looked on google, and so far I haven't really found much.

People often throw the term "vintage look" around as if this means something specific but it really doesn't. It's no different than saying "I want my photos to look like thousands of different types of photos that have been taken thousands of different ways over the last hundred years."

To add to the problem, most people who say this have these sort of ideas of what "vintage" is but really, there is nothing particularly "vintage" about these looks since they never really went out of practice and are just part of the nature of shooting on film.

I'm not all doom and gloom though. Below are a list of things people typically consider "vintage" and ways to do them. You will not find cop-out digital editing solutions in this list because doing so is inauthentic and insulting to both digital and film mediums as far as I'm concerned. Furthermore, the people who use software to emulate "vintage film effects" are the same ones who think the term "vintage look" actually means something specific, because they have absolutely zero experience with making authentic film looks and have absolutely zero idea why the looks result and therefore their work looks silly and unmotivated to anyone who does know.

Here we go:

1--Flat, low contrast images--overexpose by a stop, either by setting the ISO one stop higher than normal or simply by using your meter-read-out to set your aperture or shutter speed one stop higher.

2--Expired film--shoot on expired film. As film ages, it turns weird co lours, usually getting very warm or very cool. People spend their entire lives learning about how to deliberately expire and locate and use expired film. There's an art and a science to doing it.

3--Shoot b&w film--if you are not processing at home, and just taking your stuff to a consumer grade lab, your only choices are Kodak CN400 and Ilford XP2 400. Buy these and you've got b&w that you can process at any pharmacy

4--Light leaks--randomly open the back of your camera between shots. Experiment with how long you keep it open, but generally, you want to do it very very quickly. You could take it a step further and remove the light seals from Your K1000 but that's not really necessary.

5--Big grain--Shoot on grainy film. Consumer grade high speed films are very grainy such as Kodak Gold/Max 800 and Fuji Superia 800 and 1600 (if you can still find Superia 1600.) You can also get bigger grain by using expired film or underexposing your photos by a couple stops.

6--Vignetting--use too small a hood or draw on a UV filter. If you're using a 50mm lens, try using an 85mm or 100mm size hood. When your hood is too long for your lens, it will blacken the corners of your shots even if you don't necessarily see it in the viewfinder. You can also attach a UV filter and use a black marker to draw concentric circles on the circumference of the glass to do this. You'll have to experiment with how thick to draw or how long a hood to use with what lenses.

7--Soft focus--vaseline on the lens is classic. In early Hollywood, people smeared vaseline on their lenses to create soft focus for portraits. Instead of messing up your lens, just smear it on a UV filter.

8--Flare--don't use a lens hood and shoot at points of light to induce lens flares. Cheap zoom lenses make really nasty flares as do any lenses with not much coating. This is often done in combination with overexposure, particularly for portraits.

There are probably dozens and dozens more of things you can do to make your photos look vintage. You are on the right track just by shooting on 35mm to begin with. Processing your own work will help you exponentially for this and anything you do photographically. So I highly recommend that! As you learn to do this stuff and become more articulate about the technical aspects of your work and the looks you create, you will only get better and better at controlling your images and making really brilliant ones. So good luck and feel free to write me anytyme with questions or just to share! JohnnyMartyr@Hotmail.com

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