This is the my film kit. Biased towards portraiture but with a wide angle lens in there to cover all the bases.
If I'm shooting film this is my standard kit for a portrait shoot. It fits into one rather heavy bag.
2 x Pentax 67's with plain prisms. I load up both and alternate between them whilst the other is being reloaded. I've used Pentax 67's for over ten years. In many ways they're very basic cameras with obvious built in shortcomings, but I like very basic equipment it really makes you think as a photographer.
105mm Takumar - a great standard lens with a lovely rendering.
165mm Pentax - The portrait lens and the one that gets the most use.
55mm Pentax - The 28mm equivalent. Probably the sharpest and best wide angle I've ever owned and sadly probably my least used lens.
Set of extension tubes - because the 67's don't focus very close compared to a 35mm camera, not because I'm a macro freak
Silver/WhiteReflector - Pentax 67's only have a 1/30th Flash sync speed so most of the time reflectors are more useful.
Heaviest tripod I can carry (currently a medium sized manfrotto with a big Gitzo head). Despite what naysayers may say on the internet I never hand hold these cameras below 1/250th of a second because of the huge internal vibrations cause by the mirror.
I tend to rate both films at +2/3 of a stop when using a handheld meter, just seems to work better for me.
Minolta Autometer IVf.
I've had this meter for years and found it very reliable and accurate. When something works for me I'm very reluctant to change it
Waist level finder - Particularly useful if you want to shoot a horizontal portrait with the 55mm wide
Polarizing Filter - I actually mainly use this as a neutral density filter if I want to cut down depth of field
Yellow/Green Filter#11 for stronger skin tones.
Spare batteries
Lens cloth and Rocket Blower.
Black insulating tape
I also carry two other bags with flash kit, but one bag at a time.
Usually around 20 rolls of film
Some more filters that I rarely use but keep in the bag anyway.
I also have a large tripod which is pretty much essentail at everything but the highest shutter speed.
Most of this I'd keep in my car usually just taking out what I needed. Pentax 6x7 cameras are heavy weighing in at 1.75 kilos with the standard lens so carrying two with spare lens and accessories gets boring really quickly.
I don't have metered prisms so I have to trust my incident meter or use a bit of common sense to get the exposure right. I tend to give everything half a stop more than the meter reading unless I'm shooting transparency. One thing I noticed with these cameras over the years is how much the quality goes down if your technique is sloppy. If you shoot them right they are more than a match for 35mm DSLR (not bad for a system that came out in 1969). Get sloppy and the quality dips more quickly than it does with digital, especially when you have the extra steps that come with film like developing and scanning. Do one shoddily and you'll be wishing you took the 5d out with you.
I rarely shoot film for paid work with film these days, but use it to shoot for myself as it doesn't feel like I'm doing my day job and because it is demanding I think it makes me better both technically and creatively.
At the moment I'm trying to shoot seriously with colour negative for the first time, something I've never done before - I've always shot transparency and black and white. I'm always trying to learn new (or should that be old) tricks.
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