Type of film for Bonica Sea King Snapper?

[Louie]

I have just purchased a Bonica Sea King Snapper and was told by the sales person that any type of film will do and it was best to experiment.
Anybody have experience with this particular camera? What make and speed of film worked the best?
I will mainly be diving in warmer waters with decent visibility.

Thanks

Louie

 

[TexasMike]

Different manufacturer's films are slightly biased towards one color or the other (Fuji has better blues for example) so there is no pat answer to your question. The best thing to do is to try different types of film and keep good records of the film type, conditions encountered, depths, distance, vis, etc. so that you can figure this out for yourself.

Film speed (aka ISO 400, 200, 100, etc) will have an impact on the "clarity" of the resulting image. The lower the speed, the less grainy the photo. This means that you could get an enlargement and still not see the "graininess" of the image.

On my last trip, it was the 2nd time I had ever packed a camera, so I used Kodak Royal Gold (heard that was much better than just Kodak Gold) ISO 400. I chose 400 so it would be more forgiving of any lighting issues. But I also don't plan on doing any big enlargments (unless the one of the sea turtle that nearly ran over me comes out good) and was planning on sharing the images in my album and online.

I hope this helped a bit.

(oh, and the camera was a Reefmaster RC with the closeup lens. Photos due back next week from lab and I will post a link to them as soon as I can)

 

[fooks]

I have a bonica sea kin snapper and I have been useing kodak 400. The pictures that turn out look pretty good.
Did you get the whole setup ie strobe close up kit..etc..?

 

[herman]

I will echo what Mike has said with these additions. To my eye, the Fuji gives more vivid color but the colors are not exaclty "real to life". The Kodak colors are a lot closer to "real". Both are good films and I use both in a MX-10. You need to use several different films and see which you like best, their your pictures..Somewhere I have 2 pictures of a red rose taken with the same camera on the same day and developed at the same time, the difference is striking, esp when I had the actual rose to compair the photos to. As Mike said the Royal Gold is a lot better film for enlargenemens than the regular Kodak Gold or the Fuji, not that you will get bad results from either unless you are doing large blowups. The Kodak Royal Gold is somewhat hard to find, had to look 4 places for it today and bought all they had, 3 rolls and it is about $1 to $2 more a roll. I almost always use 100 speed but 400 is a bit more forgiving. Mike, as a little history on the Royal gold, Kodak use to make a film called Ektar. It was very fine grained and was excellent for enlargements but due to it being "different" than the standard film, processors had a hard time properly developing it, colors can out strange unless you could find a tech who knew how to adjust for it. I use to shoot a lot of it topside. The Royal Gold is a blend of the 2 technologies (Ektar and Gold film) which resulted in a film that had almost as good a grain as Ektar but did not give the developers problems. Oh, and a final note, Louie. If you don't have the strobe, get one. It's almost impossible to get good UW photos without one.

 

[blacknet]

Hello,

My preference is fuji for color (kodak color isn't that great IMHO) for b/w (black and white) I prefer kodak tmax, ilford delta is another good one.

Then again I only shoot slides and tmax, I don't mess with print film.

Ed

 

[Louie]

Thanks everybody.

I also bought the Marine lens (the attachment that allows closeups at 2 feet) and hope to be getting photos of loads of sealife.