The current resurgence of film has lead many photographers to offer "Shot on Film" packages at a premium to differentiate their offering.  When we first started doing Wedding and other event photography, there was no choice.  The additional complexity and lack of feedback of film, coupled with the "You have one shot" nature of photographing a life event like a wedding, made a wedding photographer a very specialized pro. 

The goal of this article is to set up a photographer for success if they choose to pursue a film wedding. While we still OFFER a film wedding package, we strongly prefer and advise digital. But, we’d hate to see anyones wedding spoiled by a photographer making a rookie mistake, we’ll share some tips. Please read and internalize these.

Get good film stock!

Kodak specifically formulated a negative film for 120 and large format cameras capturing people. This was Vericolor III (commonly and heretofore referred to as VPS). IT was a daylight balanced, low contrast, small grained formulation tuned for beautiful skin tones and color. VPS was rated at an ISO of 160. It has not been manufactured since 1997 – If you find some, it will be EXPENSIVE and, simultaneously, very unreliable – if it was stored improperly (which means anything other than FROZEN in its sealed, original packaging) the film WILL have a pronounced color shift, and that shift will be difficult to correct. It could be fogged by heat to a point that it is unusable. The emulsion may have delaminated. You cannot know until you test – and you should NEVER test anything when shooting someones wedding- if you aren’t SURE of your stock, it is imperative to run at least one roll through with people subjects, process and evaluate the resulting images. If you cannot get enough stock of similar provenance to cover 1.5 weddings, you don’t have enough stock to shoot a wedding.

As I write this, 30 year old VPS is going for $20-30/roll for 120. A single 35mm 36 exposure roll, expired, uncertain provenance, is over $40.

VPS was replaced by Portra 160. The good news is, as of today, unexpired Portra is available at less than half the cost of the 30 year old stuff. It is same process (C-41), and the same lovely skin tones. If you’re going to shoot color, this is the stuff!

The current thirst for film stock has lead some other manufacturers to spin up their own formulations. These are generally “Consumer” rather the “Professional” offerings – more shelf stable at room temperature. Some, particularly higher sensitivity films, are both grainier and higher contrast. Generally, those are qualities that world recommend against its use for weddings. Over contrastiness in a negative is not correctable later – the detail is lost in the original.

Consider Black and White

The easiest way of avoiding the possible pitfalls of bad color is …. avoid color altogether! Modest speed films (ISO 100-200) generally are preferred – Leave that Tmax 400 for your street photography sojourns, and go for that creamy, small grain look.

If shooting B&W, know your filters! Adding a yellow or, even better, the elusive yellow-green, filter to the front of your taking leans will render the tonality of the negatives closer to the classic look.

VPS mostly replaced int he current offerings from Kodak if actually but common practice was to overexpose one stop – so you would set your meters for ISO 80 – this was