Film speed 'hacks' (novice question content)

[MrNutt]

well having blown through my the couple of rolls of film I bought yesterday:

Fujicolour superia 200x36
Ilford HP5 plus 400x35

I've had to dig around the house for any film that we may have had left over from trips to Spain, what do you know I discovered a couple of 24 exposure colour, both Kodak, both probably way out of date and both 100 speed, now I'm guessing that this would have been fine for bright sunny spanish days but not particularly suited to our grey wintery outdoors or my dimly lit house!

Now I've been using my Zenit EM dialed at 125 for the previous COL200/B&W400 film, the inbuilt (blunt instrument of a) light meter has a setting for 100 so I can estimate the where to dial in the lens, say halfway between 2,8-2 in moderate light using the helios-44m 2/58, but I was wondering...

say I dial the lens round to 2 (the lowest my lens can manage) will that give me more chance of getting a better exposed shot? or should I just dial the camera around to 60 rather than 125 and use a (makeshift) tripod??

suggestion appreciated!! cheers!

A

 

[MrNutt]

Also just read this: http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Workshop/4881/photolesson2.html which suggests using only 100 or 400 film, leaving 200 for " non-photographers who don't want to worry about film speed" would that be a fair comment?

 

[Badger UK]

Also just read this: http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Workshop/4881/photolesson2.html which suggests using only 100 or 400 film, leaving 200 for " non-photographers who don't want to worry about film speed" would that be a fair comment?

I'm not entirely sure what they meant by that to be honest. I can't see why 200 is any less useful than 100 or 400.

I suppose you could say that the gap between 100 and 400 is too small to require an in between speed but the 200 does give you an extra stop over the 100 with no real detectable difference in quality which is often very useful as you'll no doubt understand.