Shooting at Box Speed

A recent Twitter poll I put up quite surprised me with the results.

I asked the question ‘how do you shoot your film’ with a choice of 3 answers –

1. Shoot at box speed
2. Pull Your film
3. Push your film.

I was a little surprised at the results, based on 108 votes shooting at box speed received 80% of the votes, 19% voted for pushing film with pulling film garnering only 1%.

As someone who has dabbled with film on and off for a few years now it’s fair to say I could count the number of times I’ve shot a roll of film at box speed.

I ‘usually’ pull my film by at least a stop, so if I have 400ISO film in the camera I’ll shoot it at 200 and then develop normally.

I’ve also recently started pushing black and white Kodak Tri-X 400 to 1600, which I quite like the look of to be honest.

Tri-X 400 pushed to 1600

What’s it taught me?

Well obviously the amount of people shooting at box has piqued my interest and I’m going to shoot a couple of rolls at box speed to see how it goes.

For sure I’m thinking that perhaps some of my angst with film at times is my lack of understanding about pulling & pushing film so maybe it would be good to go to basics and shoot at box.

If you’re reading this and thinking WTF is he on about, I’d love to hear how you shoot your film stock.

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