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Color Film Choice?


sblitz

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Days are getting longer north of the equator, thankfully. This also means there is renewed opportunity to choose a wider variety of ISO for color films. My personal preference has always been for Kodak products. Portra is easy, plenty of forgiveness, although I do sometimes get a bit tired of the pastel look (I know, I can fix that in PP but prefer it to correct out of the camera). Ektar I enjoy (see Adam's work on this) but you have to get the exposure just right and at times the shadow colors are off. I have used the Cinestill 800 and 50 as well, and many of you might know in looking at my photos (now appearing with a warming filter). Fuji I don't really know, although I have used different versions in the past.

 

What I am looking for here is not a which is best rant, but an exploration of people's views on a wide variety of color films  they use, what they like, what they don't, color biases in some vs others, details in some vs others. Advantages people see in using Fuji reversal vs negatives, etc. 

 

I am not looking to crown a king of color film and I certainly do not want to read people insulting other people's choices. This is an aesthetic choice and there are no wrong opinions.I am interested in reading the aesthetics that draw people to one film vs another.  Since Fuji is the brand I have the least experience with (used Agfa 40 years ago and hated the look), it is the film I am most interested in reading about.

 

 

Thanks all in advance.

 

Steve

 

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thanks! what moves you to prefer 400H to portra 400? velvia vs ektar?

Well Steve, Velvia 50 is unmatched for landscape photography. Ok, I know you don't want dogma on your thread, but this is simply a statement of fact by someone who has used it professionally for years. Nothing touches it for depth, sharpness (clarity) and saturation, it's well enough documented. It takes no prisoners with exposure and colour temperature, it takes time, expense and a lot of effort to get to grips with but even a well handled 35mm transparency will smack you in the face on the lightbox. It needs high quality lenses and filters and a scanner that can cope with the shadows. Velvia is transparency film and Ektar is negative film and you cannot realistically compare the two.

 

Fuji Pro 400H for me is probably more habit than anything, a preference that's associated with years of using NPH400 for portrait and wedding photography which was standard issue in the UK for years for social photographers.

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Not dogma, it is your view and because it is a view out of years of experience it is accepted without question. 

 

I wonder how well Velvia does with urban landscapes? Worth a try, i am sure. 

 

When write that you can't compare negative and transparency film, I understand the latitude difference, but aside from that  (which is a big aside, I know), is the difference that substantial when working with digital scans?

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Steve - Here are my thoughts, which are limited to the "street" style shooting that I know you spend much of your time doing:

 

 

Fuji Pro 400H is very very similar to Portra 400.  It is, however, substantially more expensive in the US ($10 vs $7.35).  So in my view it is not cost-beneficial to use the fuji pro 400H.  I will say, though, that the Fuji Pro 400H prides itself on producing exceptional green and blues.  I have indeed noticed this in the photos of NYC streets (e.g., there is considerably better retention of blue sky brilliance even when I have exposed on what's going on in the shadows of the streets; where with portra 400 the blue would be somewhat washed out in this situation).  Having said this, in my experience the portra 400 is a little better pushing and also scanning.  The differences are not that meaningful; but I do notice it.  So, for street stuff, I really think that portra 400 is the best bang for your buck in the color world for general use.  It has excellent latitude, pushes really well, scans really well, and is considerably less expensive than the fuji analog.  Having said this, I still use the fuji pro 400H from time to time.

 

Slide films are great, but they are not really very good for general purposes and you need the contrast levels in the scene to be moderate to low in order to get "textbook" results; and the exposure latitude is not very foregiving.  Having said this, when you nail a shot you REALLY nail it and will be happy that you used that film.  I would suggest that you try out some Fuji Provia 100 in the streets; I don't recall you using this (or at least sharing it) and I think you would like it.  It is pretty advanced slide film in that it is very well balanced in its color palette (unlike the fuji 50 velvia, which is exaggeratingly saturated and not the best for skin tones), has reasonably ok highlight retention (but nothing close to C41 film like portra) and scanned well.  I like this film better than the fuji velvia 100 for this purpose.

 

I think you do a great job of mixing it up when it comes to using different kinds of films.  Among the best mixer-uppers of anyone I know.  I think that your scaning workflow might be an area that you might consider investing more in as a way of scratching the itch that you are having; I think there is significant upside there that can enhance the colors/WB of some of your images.  I know that this requires more extra time than you have (or are willing to spend); but I am also not sure that there is a film out there that is going to be a silver bullet for you.  

 

Looking to hearing the views of others...

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Ektar closes the gap a little on other transparency emulsions. Whilst it's perfectly viable when there's no option, it isn't a substitute for Velvia. Try to imagine looking at an Ektar negative with it's orange mask and a Velvia transparency side by side on a lightbox! Velvia 50 would be an excellent choice for some urban landscapes, but remember it is 50iso!

Edited by honcho
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Well Steve, Velvia 50 is unmatched for landscape photography. Ok, I know you don't want dogma on your thread, but this is simply a statement of fact by someone who has used it professionally for years. Nothing touches it for depth, sharpness (clarity) and saturation, it's well enough documented. It takes no prisoners with exposure and colour temperature, it takes time, expense and a lot of effort to get to grips with but even a well handled 35mm transparency will smack you in the face on the lightbox. It needs high quality lenses and filters and a scanner that can cope with the shadows. Velvia is transparency film and Ektar is negative film and you cannot realistically compare the two.

 

I agree with with Steve but would just point out that velvia 50 is not ideal for all scenes, particularly those with high contrast in which you want BOTH good shadow detail and highlight retention.  If a scene has more than 4 exposure zones (say, 4-7), velvia 50 is likely going to either produce blown higlights or crushed shadows in a way that will be undesireable.  This is where Ektar comes in a fills in the gaps.  It has much better latitude and can handle a good 6 zones or more.  And it doesn't do a bad job of it and does actually have a signature that a photographer can make his own.

 

So yes, I agree that when the scene is right (specifically landscapes, cityscapes, wildlife and flowers - not people), velvia 50 is pretty much the holy grail.  You want to lick the colors they are so appetizing.    But I also think that there are a vast array of scenes in which Ektar fights for the crown and often wins out.

 

One obvious point is that I don't think makes much sense to shoot velvia 50 in the streets unless people are not your main subject (other than possibly people of African descent) and speed is not an issue.

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Adam -- I have read elsewhere that 400H loses to Portra when it comes to pushing. Nice thing about the longer day, pushing becomes less important. As for my work flow, I do what I like in terms of the results and usually find that aside from WB the outcome from the camera is preferable to one created in the computer. I think the joy of different films is that to get the look you want you start with film rather leave to the pp period.

 

Honcho -- accepted that 50 can be slow, but not on a sunny. In fact slow delivers a lot of choice in terms of f/stop. How does velvia work pushed to 100?

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Adam -- I have read elsewhere that 400H loses to Portra when it comes to pushing. Nice thing about the longer day, pushing becomes less important. As for my work flow, I do what I like in terms of the results and usually find that aside from WB the outcome from the camera is preferable to one created in the computer. I think the joy of different films is that to get the look you want you start with film rather leave to the pp period.

Steve - yes, but the scanner that is being used will make some decisions regarding WB, even on an auto setting.  You are not necessarily getting exactly what is inherent on the negative.  PP is not necessarily meant to change what's inherent in the negative - but bring it life.  As someone who makes hundreds of scans per month, I can say that I don't even trust my nikon coolscan's auto setting to give me exactly the WB that is imprinted on the film... Many times it is spot on but sometimes it is off.

Edited by A miller
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this is very true about scanning, and some color films scan better than others, but i want to keep this post on the topic of the film choices people make and why, especially in this hybrid era. i think it is interesting. 

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I'm referring to the color temperature of the ambient light and correcting it at the taking stage with filters, not playing around with 'white balance' pre- or post-scan. I'm not sure what you're on about Adam, but a Coolscan isn't what I had in mind as a scanner.

 

Steve - you don't push Velvia 50, you use Velvia 100. It's close to 50 but different enough.

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 I'm not sure what you're on about Adam, but a Coolscan isn't what I had in mind as a scanner.

 

 

I'm not "on" anything about you, Steve W, with your scanner or otherwise.

I am just responding to Steve B's comment that he appreciates the WB of film as it comes "out of the camera" and not as it is adjusted in PP.  And I was simply making the point that, in the digital world, the WB that you get in the unprocessed digital file (from the scanner) is not always a spot on representation of the WB that is inherent in the film, which is due to the frequent inaccruacies of the auto setting of the scanner/scanner software (which is particularly the case when a "flat" scan is made b/c the scanner is stretching the tonal range to provide maximum editing flexibility in PP.)  I was referring to my coolscan 9000 as a scanner that is not a drum but also is no slouch by any means and saying that even that thing lies about WB from time to time.  A valid point, indeed, me thinks...

 

One can have a long debate about the relevance of color correction filters in a hybrid digital/film workflow... (clearly it is necessary for certain long exposures; and with Velvia 50, one will need a whole suite of different magenta filters in order to get balanced colors with exposures that are longer than a couple of seconds; whereas with provia you are good without filters at least up to a minute, which amazingly holds up this long w/o any RF)

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I'm referring to the color temperature of the ambient light and correcting it at the taking stage with filters, not playing around with 'white balance' pre- or post-scan. I'm not sure what you're on about Adam, but a Coolscan isn't what I had in mind as a scanner.

 

Steve - you don't push Velvia 50, you use Velvia 100. It's close to 50 but different enough.

 

thanks. Yes I forgot there is a 100 although some say it is different

 

Filters for ambient color temp? Do you mean for different times of day or outside vs inside (tungsten, florescent etc)?

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Portra and Kodak are priced almost the same in the UK making the choice less on economic grounds and pushing, no pun, to the aesthetic. I still don't know which I prefer, it depends on the light at the time which is no help to you or me.

The UK lab I use is run by photographers and this post I think you will find will save extensive work by you but it is UK light and is different.

Reversal still has that "punch" I just re-scanned some Kodak from 40 years ago and they could be, less the durst, have been shot yesterday for sharpness and saturation.

http://ukfilmlab.com/2014/04/24/film-stock-and-exposure-comparisons-kodak-portra-and-fuji/

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My aesthetic interpretation of film is this

 

Fuji Velvia - caveman banging you over the head with a club effect

 

Kodak Portra - feet up, relaxing, sipping a tipple of your favourite drink effect.

 

That's as much as you need to know.

 

 

 

Steve

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I should say at the outset that I always hesitate to get involved in discussions like these (even though Steve's original post makes it clear he would simply like to hear people's experiences and preferences) which are potentially fraught with a lot of emotion (and this is a main reason I avoid most of the subfora on LUF, esp the gear-related ones - interestingly RFF appears to be a lot more civil, generally speaking, but I digress).

 

The majority of the film I've used since my teens in the 80s has been Fuji and most of it has been Velvia. I have boxes of Velvia 50 slides which I generally pushed one stop because I enjoyed the added saturation. As I grew older I stopped doing this, in part because I had adopted a hybrid workflow and could adjust the image in post and in part because I began shooting Velvia 100 much more. Obviously, as a happy amateur, I have less strict demands in terms of the look and colour, for instance regarding skin tones. That said, I think (for my purposes and taste) Velvia does give nice skin tones. It is very true that Velvia, esp 50 pushed a stop, will often give very saturated images. I rather find - if I am to generalise - that not only Velvia but slide film overall often has the "clean" look of digital without looking like digital (if anyone can decipher that convoluted view). In other words, slide film will look like reality but with "filmic" qualities retained. I like this a lot, personally. My uneducated eye is not able to discern meaningful differences between, say Precisa and Velvia or Velvia 100 and Velvia 100F (but I am sure other photographers can).

 

I also shoot other slide films and generally care very little which film I use. Perhaps it sounds contradictory; what I mean is that, while Velvia got me hooked on slide film a long time ago and I continue to enjoy it (a lot) today, I also like the results I get, and over the years have had, with Precisa, Provia, Kodak/Ektachrome etc etc. And in 120 I use only Provia 400X and 100 because I was lucky to find a big batch for a good price so have not seen any reason to add Velvia to the mix. Again I accept that other people may have other views as to film choice. As for colour negative, I shoot a lot of Superia, partly because I like the results and by now know how the film handles in post, and partly because it is rather inexpensive here in the Netherlands compared to the Portras. But I also use other films, like Gold 200 or even "no name" films. I'm really not very picky. And I do enjoy Portra, esp 160 (although the 400 version does, sometimes, have a bit of a dusty/sandy look which I find difficult to like). 

 

Fundamentally, for me, an image is not finished until I have post-processed it and I have difficulty relating to the view that an image should be considered final out of the scanner. In other words, the importance of using a particular film to obtain a certain look out of the camera doesn't really register with me. Naturally, I fully accept that other photographers may have other views. For instance, I spoke with the Swedish photographer Leif-Erik Nygårds not long ago. He told me that when Bert Stern (whom he worked for at one point) heard that Kodak was dropping Kodachrome in 8x10 he bought enormous quantities of it because he was so attached to the particular look of that film (and, apparently - in what must have been a coincidence (if this is at all true) - just days after Kodak announced that it wouldn't develop this version of the film any longer Stern died; he had a very large 8x10 stock left at that time apparently). 

 

The scanning and post-processing processes are very important to the look of the final image (obviously; and apologies for going off-topic here). Personally I've had to experiment a bit to find a preferred workflow for b&w, c41 and e6. Especially for slides (but increasingly more for colour neg) I am abandoning ColorPerfect (except for simply inverting a colour negative image and getting rid of the orange mask). Scanning slide film as normal (non-linear) tiffs and adjusting them in ACR or Photoshop gives vastly better results than making linear scans to be "developed" in ColorPerfect. With slides it's obviously easy to see this by comparing with how the image looks on the light table. In particular the highlights will look better but I also see more shadow details (even without increasing the number of samples on the Coolscan 9000).

 

Anyway, we're still lucky as film photographers that there is quite a good selection of films in all three formats. Clearly things were better before but, in my view, it isn't only bad today. In fact, with very modern emulsions, like the Portras, around the high-end of film seems to be even better than it was before. And we shouldn't forget that there are new developments as well, with Ferrania, Cinestill etc.

 

All this to say that, there really is no reason to avoid trying other films. Evidently, one's life becomes somewhat easier if one manages to settle on one or a few films (and developers). So it is a process/journey to discover this and come to a conclusion. While I've come down rather firmly on the side of Fuji I do enjoy using Kodak films (and in fact in b&w I virtually only use Kodak).

 

philip

 

 

 

 

but an exploration of people's views on a wide variety of color films  they use, what they like, what they don't, color biases in some vs others, details in some vs others. Advantages people see in using Fuji reversal vs negatives, etc. 

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