Everytime I look at pictures taken on film, or read about shooting film instead of digital, I want to shoot film, too. And I could, as I have a film rangefinder loaded with Ilford HP5 lying around. But I just don’t do it. Why is this? I have a possible explanation.

Digital is just so versatile. You can easily push the ISO anywhere from slow to fast, you can shoot color or b&w just as your mood is, and you have instant pictures – at least to view on your screen. With film, you’re fixed to one speed setting, either color or b&w, and you have to either wait for it to be processed (and scanned), or take the time to process (and scan) it yourself. Also, you have to wait until your roll is filled with shots. With digital, you can easily take a look at (and process or publish) the pix anytime you want.

Now, I like the look of film compared to digital, I find it exciting to not instantly see the results, and I find it refreshing to stick to either color or b&w. But the ISO rating – well, that’s another story. As I regularly shoot indoors as well as outdoors, I’m so used to change ISO speed from one instant to another, that film seems so restrictive to me. At the moment, I have HP5 loaded into my Yashica, which has an ISO rating of 400 – too fast for outdoors (unless stopping down to f/5.6 or further) and often too slow for indoors (even when shooting wide open at f/1.7).

So the question is: Which film should I shoot in order to have fun both indoors and outdoors? Here are the two possibilites I came to think of:

1. Ilford XP2. Nominally rated at 400 ISO, it is known to be quite flexible and can be over- or underexposed anywhere between 200 and 800 ISO without the need for push-processing. I could set the Yashica to 200 for outdoor shooting and to 500 (it doesn’t go further) for indoor shooting.
2. Kodak Ektar 100. Kodak’s latest 135 color negative film, rated at 100 ISO. Said to produce very nice pictures with very low grain, great colours and great dynamic range. I’ve been wanting to shoot a roll since I heard about it. I’d have to stick to outdoor shooting, though, but this wouldn’t be much of a problem as indeed indoors I prefer digital (for its ISO versatility).

Another possibility would be to get a second Yashica body, preferrably a later model that goes up to 1000 ISO. This way, I could have one body loaded with slow color film (e. g. aforementioned Ektar 100), and the other body loaded with fast b&w film (e. g. the aforementioned XP2).

In any case, my next roll of film will be Ektar 100 – whenever I am through shooting that roll of HP5 …