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Tim Parkin
Tim Parkin is a British landscape photographer, writer, and editor best known as the co-founder of On Landscape magazine, where he explores the art and practice of photographing the natural world. His work is thoughtful and carefully crafted, often focusing on subtle details and quiet moments in the landscape rather than dramatic vistas. Alongside his photography and writing, he co-founded the Natural Landscape Photography Awards, serves as a judge for other international competitions. Through all these projects, Parkin has become a respected and influential voice in contemporary landscape photography.
Talking to various manufacturers over the last couple of years I’ve always inquired into the growth of interest in film photography. Three years ago the answer was a tentative “yes” to film becoming more popular but the last two years have seen even more positive responses. I asked about film sales, chemical sales and also interest in processing. The general size of growth has been about 30% year on year, and we have also seen a big increase in the second-hand price of cameras on eBay - long gone are the stories of picking up Hasselblads for less than a hundred pounds.
For some reason On Landscape had a reputation as being a cliquey club of beard stroking large format photographers and when we started the business I consciously avoided too much film related content to try to downplay this (mostly false) reputation. However, there is so much interest in film now that I would feel neglectful not to cover some aspects (even Amateur Photographer is now regularly posting film related articles. We can’t let them hog the limelight!).
So what to cover? Well, the big question I get asked is how to meter for film, especially for slide film. So here we are, a first article on metering for film. Some of what I’ll be talking about is also relevant for digital, so if people express an interest, I’ll expand into that area as well - for now, we’ll start with a general introduction to the different types of metering.