Slower or Faster Film Speeds?

Lately I’ve been thinking that I ought to focus on shooting with one film stock. I’d really like to get to the point where I know one type of film so well that I am fully aware of all its strengths and weaknesses and that making adjustments becomes second nature. But which film stock covers the most bases?

In recent years, I have definitely been favoring slower film in general and Ilford FP4 Plus in particular. My tendencies have been driven in part by a desire for more latitude in terms of exposure settings especially for photographing outdoors and on the street.

Although ASA 400 is widely considered the most versatile film speed out there, I’ve commented that using ASA 400 film sometimes makes me feel pinned in to using fast shutter speeds and/or slow apertures. When I’m out and about during the day with ASA 400 film loaded in my camera, bright light forces me to speed up my exposure time and/or slow down my aperture. When I’m shooting with faster film, my wiggle room in terms of exposure setting choices gets reduced. If I want to open up my lens, I quickly run up against my Nikon F’s fastest shutter speed: 1/1000 sec. I can only go so far in terms of wide-open aperture.

But does using a faster film speed actually push me into an exposure settings corner?

For an answer to this question, I turned to my data. I’m diligent about writing down my film photography exposure settings. To manage all of that metadata, I maintain a custom-built database (I’m a database developer after all). I naturally turned to querying that database for insight.

Over the past two years, I’ve shot exactly 2041 photos with my Nikon F camera bodies loaded with ASA 100/125 or ASA 400 film at shutter speeds ranging from 1/30 to 1/1000 sec. and at apertures from f/1.4 to f/16. More specifically, I have 1475 photographs that I shot at ASA 100/125 and 566 at ASA 400.

Here are further breakdowns by shutter speed.

At ASA 100/125:

With slower film speeds, I have definitely been going for a shutter speed of 1/125 sec. mostly at f/5.6 to f/11.

And at ASA 400:

At that faster film speed, I’ve been gravitating toward 1/500 sec. mostly at f/5.6 to f/11, the same aperture range as with slower film speeds.

At least where shutter speed is concerned, it seems like the Sunny 16 rule has been in mind all this time no matter what film speed I use.

Here are the breakdowns by aperture—this is where it gets more interesting.

At ASA 100/125:

With slower film speeds, I have definitely been favoring f/8 mostly at 1/125 and 1/250 sec. I suppose there’s no reason why I couldn’t have shot at faster apertures and quickened up my shutter speed. It’s just that f/8 is what I have been tending towards all this time.

The trends at ASA 400 showed me something unexpected:

As with slower film, f/8 has been coming in strong especially at 1/500 sec. Again, observing the Sunny 16 rule is probably the cause of this.

But I have also been favoring f/4 across several shutter speeds. I did not expect to learn that I have been opening up my lens as much as I have when using ASA 400 film in my camera.

In spite of my earlier misgivings about shooting faster film speeds, it seems I’m finding enough subject matter that I’m able to shoot at f/4 with ASA 400 film even if my camera’s shutter has a relatively limited shutter speed range on its fast side. It also seems I’m not as cornered into using faster shutter speeds and slower apertures as I thought I was when I’m using faster film.

What’s my conclusion? Maybe faster film speeds aren’t such a limitation after all. Maybe I should be giving faster film stocks more time in my camera. After all, I really liked the results I recently got out of shooting two rolls of Kentmere Pan 400 as a test run for developing my own film at home. And I’ve been increasingly drawn to the gritty appearance of photographs that I take with faster film.