When it comes to black and white film photography, Kodak Tri-X 400 remains a firm favorite of many photographers. Among them is Jay P. Morgan of The Slanted Lens, who reaches for this beloved emulsion for low light situations. In case you’re new to film photography and would like to try this film out, he shares his tips and tricks in today’s featured video!

To demonstrate his process of shooting Kodak Tri-X 400, Morgan brought along this film at the Grand Canyon for some gorgeous landscape snaps. While he exposed the film at ISO 1600, he was actually shooting and metering at ISO 800. This is because he also wanted to push it two stops in the processing.

His goal was to get a nice, dense negative that will give him a beautiful contrast with nice highlights. “In film, you expose for the shadows and print for the highlights, unlike digital photography which is almost the opposite.”

However, he also advised not shooting Kodak Tri-X 400 in direct sunlight, especially if you’re rating the film at ISO 1600, as there will be too much exposure. In his examples, we can see that he achieved great results with this process even if he shot the film towards the end of the day or when the conditions produced “flat” scenes.

As a bonus, Morgan also shared some incident meter reading tips for shooting landscapes with this film. But, consider that as an intro to his upcoming lesson on how to meter black and white film!

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