Best Film for the Nikon N75
The best film to use in the Nikon N75 will depend on your lens, available light, and if you want to use color or black & white.
Working with an ISO 400 film or higher speed will help you skip being weighed down with a flash and/or tripod.
If you need to capture photos indoors or anytime there is low light, ensure that you have a fast lens. Take a look at my article on the 5 Best Lenses for the Nikon N75 for suggestions.
Color Film
Consumer
Kodak UltraMax 400 - The film handles a plethora of lighting conditions well and is a fantastic option for a color film. Kodak UltraMax 400 is fast enough so that you should be able to handhold the N75 in almost all circumstances.
Expect photographs to appear a little warm with pleasant colors.
Fujifilm Superia X-TRA ISO 400 - Based on your location, this film may be more widely available. It’s an excellent alternative to Kodak emulsions.
Fujifilm photos tend to have cooler tones with stronger blues and greens, compared to Kodak.
Lomography 800 - There are a small number of options if you want an ISO 800 speed color 35mm film. This happens to be the only 35mm film geared towards consumers.
Additionally, if you have a medium format camera, it’s also for sale in 120 film format.
Kodak Gold 200 - An outstanding way to get that mid-80s through 90s look. For the classic experience use an on-camera flash.
To bring the ideal look out of this film, make sure to over-expose it by 1 or 2-stops. This will ensure that you get the spectacular colors everyone loves the film for.
Professional
Kodak Portra 400 - Among the photography enthusiasts online, Portra 400 is easily the most frequently used color negative film. Overexpose the film by 1 or 2-stops to get the color the film is known for.
Plus, ISO 800 and ISO 160 emulsions of Portra. As well as in rolls of 120, 4x5 sheets, and 8x10 sheets.
Black and White Film
Consumer
With low costs and excellent favorable for use in the Nikon N75.
The biggest draw for photography students and budget minded photographers is the very affordable price. Even if you wouldn’t put yourself in those groups, it’s good to have economical rolls of 35 film around for trying out recently purchased camera gear.
Kentmere 400 - Produced by Harmon Technology, which is the parent company of Ilford. This is excellent considering that allows this to be the most commonly sold B&W film out of the 3.
Foma Fomapan 400 Action - Is likely to be much easier to acquire in Europe as the film is manufactured inside of the Czech Republic by Foma Bohemia.
A very good film to employ for your initial few attempts at analog photography or developing film at home. Also a good option if you happen to be trying out a camera to ensure that it’s totally operational.
Ultrafine eXtreme 400 - You can get the best price by getting it from Ultrafine.
If you develop 35mm color film at home, you might have used developer sold by them.
Professional
Ilford HP-5 Plus 400 and Kodak Tri-X 400 are the 2 best black and white film emulsions. They possess a number of capabilities in common that make them so well liked, while maintaining unique styles.
Both films can be pushed 1 or 2 stops and while still creating good quality images. A roll of film can be used at ISO 400, 800, or 1600, making them very useful.
Ilford HP5 Plus 400 - Between the two film stocks, HP5 Plus has less contrast and is cheaper. Low amounts of contrast can be a benefit because of the fact contrast can be adjusted when making a print in the darkroom or through digital processing.
The film emulsion has subtle grain and still looks excellent when pushed 2-stops.
Kodak Tri-X 400 - This film stock provides a more distinctive rendering to it. To reveal the legendary grain structure, contrast, and look of the film, it should be processed in Kodak D-76.
You are going to definitely notice greater contrast with Tri-X. That is awesome if that is the style you would prefer because it results in not as much work when through digital post processing or printmaking.
Reversal Film
Reversal film, also known as slide film or transparency film, produces a positive picture. That means a lightbox or projector can be used to exhibit the pictures.
This is unique from the more readily available negative film stocks that result in images that need inverting the colors in order to be viewable.
Slide films are viewed as tricky to work with due to the fact slide film has a smaller amount of dynamic range and latitude compared to negative film.
Kodak Ektachrome 100 - This is a film known for fine grain and beautiful skin tones. There is not any hypersaturation of colors. It’s daylight color balanced.
Fujifilm Velvia 50 - Provides beautiful looking images that have elevated amounts of contrast and saturation. It is razor-sharp with a daylight color balance. It has the best resolving power of any available slide film emulsion.
There is another version that is ISO 100.
Fujichrome Provia 100F - Creates vivid and natural colors with moderate color saturation and contrast. It is a film balanced for daylight with ultrafine grain.
Foma Fomapan R100 - This is a black and white reversal film, marketed by Fomapan as having fine grain, increased levels of contrast, and very good resolving power. It is also mentioned as a alternative for the discontinued Agfa Scala.
Film Basics
Consumer vs Professional Film
Pro film stock have greater latitude, dynamic range, and are easier to push, which is why they are more expensive.
You should expect a significant difference in business that sell 35mm rolls of film. Consumer films can usually still be obtained from pharmacies and big-box stores in small amounts. Pro film emulsions should be bought from a online or camera store.
ISO
A film’s light sensitivity is listed as the ISO.
The less light there is available to capture an image, the bigger the film’s ISO will be necessary. This comes at the tradeoff of larger film grain.
It may be tough to handhold the N75 with ISO 100 or slower films (ISO 25, ISO 50, etc). The are going to be longer are going to be longer than what you could handhold without leading to motion blur unless you are out in full sun.
A fast lens, flash, and/or tripod will help you with longer exposure times. Using a high speed ISO 400 or ISO 800 film will help make the additional equipment not needed.
The ISO selection knob is listed as ASA on the Nikon N75. The change to labeling ISO from ASA (American Standards Association) came after the creation of the International Standards Organization (ISO).
Latitude
Latitude is the amount of stops film can be overexposed while still maintaining usable photographs. Pro film stocks have a larger latitude to go along with a slightly higher price.
Negative film has more latitude compared to slide film. That is one of the reasons why it is thought of difficult to work with.
Dynamic Range
Dynamic range is the range between the darkest and brightest details of a photograph that can be captured. Parts of a photo that fall out of this range will be rendered as white overexposed highlights or black underexposed shadows.
A larger dynamic range is advantageous given that it tends to make shooting in various lighting conditions easier.
- Digital cameras 14+ stops
- Negative film up to 13 stops
- Slide film 6-8 stops
The constrained dynamic range of slide film is an additional reason why it’s thought to be challenging to shoot. Golden hour is the best time to use reversal.
Film Type
The Nikon N75 takes 35mm film that comes in canisters. The film can also be described as 135 film, and it is the most popular type of film.
120 or 220 film, used by medium format cameras, is the only other type of film you are going to encounter}.
One of the best properties of film is that you can switch the film stock you work with and get a completely different look to your photos.
DX Coded Film
All commercially available 35mm film distributed currently has DX encoding. This lets cameras to auto detect and set the ISO when the film canister is loaded.
The ISO (ASA) on the Nikon N75 must be manually set. Which means DX-coding isn’t going to do anything.
Nikon N75 Resources
Where to Get Film Developed?
There are a range of options for where to get film processed. For a more extensive discussion of the possibilities see my article on Where to Get Film Developed.
WARNING: Big box stores and pharmacies have ended processing film on location. They ship the film away to be processed by a 3rd party. This means that, you won’t receive your processed negatives back.
- Develop Film at Home
- Use a Local Photography Lab
- Use a Mail Order Photo Lab
- Pharmacy or Big Box Store
The least difficult method and what I suggest using if you are just getting started using film is to ship your film to a lab to be processed and scanned. If you consistently use film, this might be a disadvantage due to the fact that it can get really expensive.
So long as you are going through a medium to high volume of film, there are two actions that can be done to lower your expenses.
Bulk Loading Film
Certainly one of the best ways to spend less money on film is to buy a bulk roll of 100 feet of film and manually load it into canisters by hand.
Once you are done, you’ll find yourself with approximately 18 canisters of 36 exposures each. Based on the film stock you are likely to save 20%-30%.
Be aware that you’re going to be limited to bulk rolls of black and white film. This is because black and white film is much easier and more cost-effective to process at home.
Home Developing and Scanning
It is simple to develop and scan any film yourself. In fact it is an intelligence way to save money so you can use more film with your Nikon N75.
Black and white film is much easier to develop. Temperature and time are both not as critical to do correctly with black and white films as they are for color negative or transparency film.