Best Film for the Nikon FE10
The best film to use in your Nikon FE10 is going to depend on your lens, lighting conditions, and if you want to shoot color or black & white.
Choosing an ISO 400 film or faster will allow you to skip being weighed down with a tripod or flash.
If you have a need to take images inside or anytime there is low light, make sure you have a fast lens. Read my list on the 5 Best Lenses for the Nikon FE10 for lens recommendations.
Color Film
Consumer
Kodak UltraMax 400 - A fantastic option for a plethora of lighting conditions. Kodak UltraMax 400 is fast enough so that you should be able to handhold the FE10 in the majority of circumstances.
The photos will have terrific colors and leans towards the warm side.
Fujifilm Superia X-TRA ISO 400 - Based on where you are in the world, this film can have greater availability. It is a great alternative to Kodak film.
Fujifilm photos appear to have cooler tones with notable blues and greens, when compared to Kodak.
Lomography 800 - There are only a small number of choices if you want a color ISO 800 film. This happens to be the only film geared towards consumers.
Furthermore, if you have a medium format camera, it is also sold in 120 film format.
Kodak Gold 200 - A great means to achieve that mid-1980s through 90s style. Use a flash to get the “authentic” look.
Over-expose it by 1 or 2-stops to create the most popular look the film can achieve. This will give you the eye-catching colors everyone loves the film for.
Professional
Kodak Portra 400 - By far the most popular color negative film among photography enthusiasts online. Overexpose it by 1 or 2-stops to get the appearance the film is known for.
Portra is also sold in ISO 800 and 160 versions. Portra is also offered in rolls of 120 film, 4x5 sheets, and 8x10 sheets.
Black and White Film
Consumer
With reasonable prices and very good favorable to be used in the Nikon FE10.
The major appeal for photography students and budget minded photographers is the competitive price. Even if you would not put yourself in those groups, it’s great to have relatively cheap rolls of 35 film readily available for evaluating recently purchased used gear.
Kentmere 400 - Made by Harmon Technology, which is also the parent company of Ilford. This is excellent since that makes this the most widely available B&W film of the three.
Foma Fomapan 400 Action - Will be much easier to obtain in Europe as the film is produced out of the Czech Republic by Foma Bohemia.
A pretty good 35mm film to employ for your first couple of attempts at home developing or film photography. Also a good selection if you happen to be testing out a camera to confirm that it is working correctly.
Ultrafine eXtreme 400 - The cheapest place to buy this film is online directly from Ultrafine.
If you process color 35mm film at home, you might have used developer produced by them to develop your film.
Professional
The two best black and white 35mm films are Ilford HP-5 Plus 400 and Kodak Tri-X 400. They have numerous characteristics that are comparable that help make them so well liked, while maintaining individual rendering.
You can enjoy quality photographs after pushing both film emulsions 2-stops. A 35mm roll of film can be used at ISO 400, 800, or 1600, making them very versatile.
Ilford HP5 Plus 400 - Between the two film emulsions, HP5 Plus is cheaper and has less contrast. Low amounts of contrast can be an advantage due to the fact contrast can be changed when making a print in the darkroom or through digital post processing.
The film stock has subdued grain and still looks excellent when pushed 2-stops.
Kodak Tri-X 400 - This film possesses a more distinctive style to it. To produce the old-school grain structure, contrast, and look of the film, it should be processed in D-76.
You’ll unquestionably notice considerably more contrast with Tri-X. That’s awesome if it happens to be the overall look you would you like because it means substantially less work when printmaking or editing digitially.
Slide Film
Film emulsions that make a positive image are referred to as transparency, slide, or reversal film. This allows the pictures to be shown with a projector or light box.
Colors are not required to be inverted to be viewable, unlike the more widespread negative film emulsions.
Slide films have much less dynamic range and latitude when compared with negative film and so they are viewed as harder to shoot.
Kodak Ektachrome 100 - This is a film known for wonderful skin tones and fine grain. There’s no hypersaturation of colors. It has a daylight color balance.
Fujifilm Velvia 50 - Makes distinct looking shots that have considerably increased levels of contrast and saturation. It is sharp daylight balanced film emulsion. It has the top resolving power of any available transparency film.
There is also another version that is ISO 100.
Fujichrome Provia 100F - Produces vivid and realistic colors with moderate color saturation and contrast. It has a daylight color balance and ultrafine grain.
Foma Fomapan R100 - This is a black and white slide film, claimed by Fomapan as having fine grain, increased levels of contrast, and high resolving power. It’s also regarded as a replacement for the discontinued Agfa Scala slide film.
Film Basics
Consumer vs Professional Film
Professional film stock can more easily be pushed, have increased latitude, and dynamic range, which is the reason they are more expensive.
You should be prepared for a big difference in availability. Consumer film stocks can commonly still be bought in pharmacies and big-box stores in small amounts. Professional film will need to be ordered from a online or camera store.
ISO
A film’s light sensitivity is listed as the ISO.
The bigger the film’s ISO, the less light will be needed to capture a film frame. This comes at the cost of noticeably increased film grain.
It might be challenging to handhold the FE10 with ISO 100 or slower speed films (ISO 50, ISO 25, etc). The will most likely be longer will most likely be longer than what you could handhold without leading to motion blur unless you are working in full sun.
A flash, fast lens, and/or tripod can help you with longer shutter speeds. Using a high speed ISO 400 or ISO 800 film will help make the extra equipment not needed.
As a quick note, the dial to select film speed is listed as ASA on the Nikon FE10. The shift to using ISO from ASA (American Standards Association) happened after the creation of the International Standards Organization (ISO).
Film Latitude
Latitude is the amount of stops a film can be overexposed while having satisfactory photographs. Professional film stocks have a greater latitude paired with a somewhat increased price.
Slide film has a smaller amount of latitude when compared to negative film. That is one of the reasons it’s deemed to be more challenging to use.
Dynamic Range
The range between the darkest and brightest parts of a photograph is described as dynamic range. Sections of a picture that fall out of this range will appear as completely white overexposed highlights or solid black underexposed shadows.
When shooting in a variety or quickly changing lighting conditions, film stocks with a bigger dynamic range are a superior choice.
- Digital cameras 14+ stops
- Negative film up to 13 stops
- Slide film 6-8 stops
Slide film is considered tricky to shoot on account of the limited dynamic range. Golden hour is the best time to shoot slide.
Film Type
35mm film that comes in metal canisters is used by the Nikon FE10. In addition, it is the most commonly used type of film and occasionally described as 135 film.
120 or 220 film, used by medium format cameras, is the only other type of film you are likely to encounter}.
One of the marvelous properties of film is that you can change the film stock you work with and get a different look to your shots.
DX Coded Film
Just about all commercially available 35mm film offered for sale at this time has a DX code. This allows electronically controlled cameras to detect and set the ISO of the film canister put in the camera.
ISO (ASA) on the Nikon FE10 is required to be manually dialed in. For that reason DX-coding will not do anything.
Nikon FE10 Resources
Where to Get Film Developed?
You will find just a few possibilities for where to process film. For a more thorough discussion of the possible choices look at my guide on Where to Get Film Developed.
WARNING: Film is no longer developed locally at big box stores and pharmacies. They send film off-site to be processed by a third party. This means that, you will not receive your developed negatives back.
- Develop Film at Home
- Use a Local Photography Lab
- Use a Mail Order Photo Lab
- Pharmacy or Big Box Store
Shipping film to a mail-order lab to be developed and scanned is the least complicated solution if you are just starting to shoot film. If you consistently use film, this may be a disadvantage because it can get really expensive.
As long as you are using a medium to high volume of film, there are a couple of actions that can be done to greatly reduce your expenses.
Bulk Loading Film
Among the common methods to lower your costs on film is to buy a bulk roll of 100 feet of film and load it into canisters by hand.
A 100 foot bulk roll of film can load about 18 rolls of film with 36 exposures each. Based on the film you will probably save 20%-30%.
Take into account that you are going to be limited to 100’ rolls of black and white film. This is in part because black and white film is quite a bit easier and more cost-effective to process yourself.
Home Developing and Scanning
It’s simple to process and digitize film yourself. It is a very good option to cut costs so that you can shoot more film with your Nikon FE10.
Black & white film is significantly less complicated to develop. Chemical temperature and time are both not as crucial to get correct with black and white film as temperatures and time are for slide or color negative.