You could be thinking “I wish there was a way I could shoot film at night and have my pictures look better.”. Typically, shooting night photography on film cameras can be a big challenge, mostly seeming impossible to do. Luckily there are little tips to shooting film in the dark and having it look correctly exposed. I’m talking about pushing your film.
Film pushing is when you shoot your film camera at a higher ISO than it’s film is rated for. To better understand what I’m saying, The picture up above can help you out. Film pushing would be, much like the example above, like taking 200 ISO film and pushing it by shooting at 400 ISO on your camera. It’s called a stop when you push it from 200 to 400 because it’s doubled. If you wanted to do two stops, then the film would be at 800 ISO. Let’s take 400 ISO film, the most widely used film amongst film photographers. If you were to push it once then it would be at 800 ISO, and if you pushed it by two stops then it would be at 1600 ISO.
The reason for doing this is to gain more exposure. This makes shooting film at night much more effective, and capable of capturing an over all better image. This is mainly how people shoot any form of film photography at night. One thing that would make this easier, is if 1600 ISO film was more common to come by. Unfortunately, 1600 ISO film is so tough to find that most photographers stick to pushing their film.
When doing this with your film, it’s best to write plus 1 on the roll of film you’re sending in to let the lab know you’ve shot this way. If not the lab has a chance of developing it normally and you’d run the risk of the pictures looking completely over exposed. The same goes for pulling your film. Although it is used much less, pulling your film is doing the exact opposite of pushing meaning it you would be under exposing the film.
(61) The EASIEST way to Push/Pull Film! – YouTube
If you’d like a video explanation of this as well, I’ve posted a video above of the photographer that helped me better understand pushing and pulling film. Let me know, have you ever attempted pushing your film to brighten it up? As always, if you liked my post feel free to comment on it and share it with friends or family. If you want to see more by me and to stay up to date on my blog, follow me for another day in the life of music and media.