help: beggining photographer

[hamburgl4r]

Umm lets see, I'm gonna take a beggining photography class this summer, and I decided on purchasing an SLR camera. I read a lot of reviews and purchased a Canon Rebel Ti.. now I'm concerned about what types of film i should use. As i said before its a class and i don't know what to expect

A) what type of film do you people recommend for just regular color photos?

B) film for black and white?

C) what does ISO 800/400/200 mean? quality?

thanks a lot

[Pose]

Well..I'm by no means an expert..but I might be able to help you out some.

A.)I just get the B&H special on Kodak Max 400 for my everyday shooting. Gives me 36 exposures per roll to experiment with, it's cheap, and can be developed anywhere.

B.)For B&W..most will agree on Ilford Delta 100. It's amazingly sharp.

C.)The film speed indicates its sensitivity to light. So, the larger ISO number (400, 800, 1600, 3200), the less light it needs to create the exposure. The higher the ISO (depending on the film, and enviorment), the more grainy/noisy the picture will usually be.

Hope I helped.

[another view]

Film ISO speed is one of three variables with exposure - between f stop, shutter speed and film speed you determine correct exposure for what you're shooting. With ISO, 400 is twice as "fast" as (aka one stop faster than) 200, 1600 is two stops faster than 400, etc. This means that 400 is twice as light sensitive as 200 and only requires half the exposure. 1600 only requires 1/4 the exposure as 400.

As you can probably tell, faster films become really useful when shooting in low light. The trade off is that the grain is much more noticable. With black and white especially, it's almost a style and not necessarily a bad thing. Generally, you would want to shoot the "slowest" film speed (lowest ISO number) that you can get away with. There's a lot more to it than that, but this will get you started...

Good luck and welcome.