Photographic Film - Film Basics

Film Basics

There are several types of photographic film, including:

• Print film, when developed, turns into a negative with the colors (or black and white values, in black-and-white film) inverted. This type of film must be "printed"—that is either enlarged by projecting through a lens, or placed in direct contact as light shines through it—onto photographic paper (which in turn is itself developed) in order to be viewed as intended. Print films are available in both black-and-white and color. Color print films use an orange color correction mask to correct for unwanted dye absorptions and improve color accuracy. Although color processing is more complex and temperature-sensitive than black-and-white processing, the great popularity of color and minimal use of black-and-white prompted the design of black-and-white film which is processed in exactly the same way as a standard color film.
• Color reversal film after development is called a transparency and can be viewed directly using a loupe or projector. Reversal film mounted with plastic or cardboard for projection is often called a slide. It is also often marketed as "slide" film. This type of film is often used to produce digital scans or color separations for mass-market printing. Photographic prints can be produced from reversal film, but the process is expensive and not as simple as that for print film.
• Black-and-white reversal film exists, but is uncommon. Conventional black-and-white negative stock can be reversal-processed, to give black & white slides, as by dr5 Chrome. Some kits were available to enable B&W reversal processing to be done by home-processors, but most are discontinued. B&W transparencies can be produced from almost all B&W films.

In order to produce a usable image, the film needs to be exposed properly. The amount of exposure variation that a given film can tolerate while still producing an acceptable level of quality is called its exposure latitude. Color print film generally has greater exposure latitude than other types of film. Additionally, because print film must be printed to be viewed, after-the-fact corrections for imperfect exposure are possible during the printing process.

The concentration of dyes or silver salts remaining on the film after development is referred to as optical density, or simply density; the optical density is proportional to the logarithm of the optical transmission coefficient of the developed film. A dark image on the negative is of higher density than a more transparent image.

Most films are affected by the physics of silver grain activation (which sets a minimum amount of light required to expose a single grain) and by the statistics of random grain activation by photons. The film requires a minimum amount of light before it begins to expose, and then responds by progressive darkening over a wide dynamic range of exposure until all of the grains are exposed and the film achieves (after development) its maximum optical density.

Over the active dynamic range of most films, the density of the developed film is proportional to the logarithm of the total amount of light to which the film was exposed, so the transmission coefficient of the developed film is proportional to a power of the reciprocal of the brightness of the original exposure. This is due to the statistics of grain activation: as the film becomes progressively more exposed, each incident photon is less likely to impact a still-unexposed grain, yielding the logarithmic behavior. A simple, idealized statistical model yields the equation density = 1 - ( 1 - k) light, where light is proportional to the number of photons hitting a unit area of film, k is the probability of a single photon striking a grain (based on the size of the grains and how closely spaced they are), and density is the proportion of grains that where hit by at least one photon.

If parts of the image are exposed heavily enough to approach the maximum density possible for a print film, then they will begin losing the ability to show tonal variations in the final print. Usually those areas will be deemed to be overexposed and will appear as featureless white on the print. Some subject matter is tolerant of very heavy exposure; brilliant light sources like a bright light bulb, or the sun, included in the image generally appear best as a featureless white on the print.

Likewise, if part of an image receives less than the beginning threshold level of exposure, which depends upon the film's sensitivity to light—or speed—the film there will have no appreciable image density, and will appear on the print as a featureless black. Some photographers use their knowledge of these limits to determine the optimum exposure for a photograph; for one example, see the Zone System. Most automatic cameras instead try to achieve a particular average density.