Why does it make any sense at all to use non-professional grade film stocks in this day and age???

[adan]

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Soooo. Here's some evidence. It will take 8-12 posts to display it all (depends on how many pictures I decide are useful and nor duplicative). The smart option will probably be to hold off on opinions or observations until you have seen them all (lest your opinions change).

 

The question being tested - does Pro-labelled, more expensive film produce better results than less expensive, consumer films, with Leica lenses?

 

I photographed several subjects with three films: in no particular order - Kodak Portra 400, Kodak UltraMax 400, Fujifilm X-Tra 400. As what testing mavens would call a "distractor" or a "placebo" I am also including a fourth picture in each set, made with my M9 - just to make sure you don't jump to conclusons or "guess." Additionally, the four pictures will be randomly ordered in each foursome, so you cannot assume that "top-left" is always from the same film/camera. The sets will include both the full frame of a subject, and 100% crops of the scans for detailed view of grain, resolution, etc. Film scanned with a Nikon 5000ED @ 4000 ppi.

 

The films went through Leica M film bodies. The lenses used were Leitz Canada 21 f/2.8 and Leitz Canada 35mm f/2 (v.4). All pictures were made within a 20-30-second "window" as I swapped bodies and lenses. This is a double-blind experiment - you don't know which film you are looking at, and I did not remember which camera held which film by the time I started shooting (The M9 being an obvious exception). All film went through the same Noritsu processor back-to-back at the camera store.

 

(credit Englewood Camera, Littleton, Colorado for the loan of the Leica film cameras, processing, and shooting locations/subjects)

 

The subjects will include (at least) - outdoor hazy sun; outdoor skylit shade (evergreen trees); indoor, human, pushed to 800 (mixed fluorescent; and indoor, human at 400 (mixed light).

 

Film prices and purchase locations:

 

Portra 400 135-36, $11.49 (would have been $10.34 per roll purchased in a full 5-pack), camera store.

Kodak UltraMax 400 135-36, $4.99, (would have been $4.49 if 5 rolls were purchased - volume discount), camera store

Fujifilm Superia X-Tra 400 135-24, $9.99(!), but would have been $4.99 a roll purchased in a 4-pack, Rite-Aid drug store

________

 

First set, outdoors in (very) hazy sunlight. Full image. All pictures individually white-balanced on the small central white label on the vertical electrical box. All exposures identical (1/125 @ f/11-16). Contrast set for black point and white point. Saturation "out of the box and as scanned."

 

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[adan]

Next up - same pictures as above, cropped. Different order.

 

Should have mentioned - in all cases, NO sharpening or noise reduction has been used on any image. They are all "as scanned" or direct from the M9. The film scans (whole image) are the equivalent of 20.2 megapixels.

 

 

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[adan]

Next - ISO 400 exposed at 800 (M9 set to 800) - 1 stop "push". Mixed light, fluorescent and window daylight. Full frames.

 

I made an "executive decision" to white-balance for the gray wall in the center, which I know to be gray-card neutral, and which faced the predominant fluorescent lighting. This puts all the films on an equal playing field, and will reveal biases, if any. Just keep that in mind in considering color rendering, especially the "purples" the daylight produces.

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Edited April 14, 2016 by adan

[adan]

Now the crops at 800 - as a "people picture" I would have preferred to crop from the man's face, but he moved enough in one frame to create motion blur. So I cropped for something more stable.

 

BTW - This may take an hour or more to complete, so don't let me shut down the whole conversation!

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[adan]

Now a totally dumb picture of evergreens (cloudy bright light), but that is one of my "Portra peeves" in 120.

 

White balance for the cement retaining wall's most neutral point - left side of the second segment above the "step."

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[AlanG]

A Miller wrote "These hundreds of photos were all taken, developed and scanned by one person with a specific set of gear.  In this context, it is fair to be able to assess which deviations in his photos that are attributable to the specific film that is used.  This is not exactly the basis of a strict controlled experiment; but it nevertheless supports my "venturing" quite meaningfully. "

 

That would not be a test of film. It is a test of film plus scanner plus software plus operator while viewing and adjusting using a specific monitor. How these films would compare with many different scanners, software, operators, monitors, or when printed onto photo paper, etc. would have to be determined before any conclusion could be reached. 

 

Consider that the films labeled "Pro" are meant for professional use by professional photographers. So if you do not fit into that category, maybe the best thing to do is not even consider using such films.

 

I can't get over how A Miller keeps pushing and pushing for.... what the heck exactly?  This is a subjective interpretive medium and he doesn't seem to understand that concept at all.  There is no universal truth.

 

 

 

Edited April 14, 2016 by AlanG

[adan]

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(jeez, James you are either up late, or very earl(e)y. )

 

Crops from the evergreen series. I wasn't going to bother, but they do show interesting points about shadow detail, shadow tint, and resolution.

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[adan]

Indoors, mixed lighting (mostly fluorescent, some daylight), ISO 400, skin tones and other colors. White balanced for the T-shirt.

 

I am skipping the crops for this image. One image has motion blur, and I missed focus on the other.  Just not fair to those two films (one of which was the Portra 400). The grain differences were totally consistent with the other ISO 400 images, so no loss.

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Edited April 14, 2016 by adan

[adan]

Last picture (with crops to follow) - ISO 400, mixed lighting (fluorescent predominating), lots of fine details. White balanced on gray upright in center.

 

 

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[adan]

The end - crops from the above (with a subliminal plug for Kodak).

 

And I am worn out. I'll "reveal all" and make my own observations in a day or so.

 

(Oh, meant to add - the consumer films were stored consumer-style - unrefrigerated on the shelf. The Portra 400 was refrigerated, as recommended.)

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Edited April 14, 2016 by adan

[earleygallery]

(jeez, James you are either up late, or very earl(e)y. )

 

Crops from the evergreen series. I wasn't going to bother, but they do show interesting points about shadow detail, shadow tint, and resolution.

 

LOL yes had to get up early for a meeting today ;( I'm definately NOT a morning person!

 

These tests are very interesting.

[wattsy]

Which shots are from the M9?  

[A miller]

Adan - You should be commended for your effort and time.  I think it is a positive contribution to this thread, which, no matter what AlanG (and others) says about my efforts and tactics to egg it on, will most certainly be enshrined in the Film Forum's hall of fame

 

I do see differences in the films scans.  But, for me, the scenes lack a bit of liveliness and color and contrast range to really showcase the practical differences in emulsion.  The indoor shots are interesting and valuable as an analytical tool.  But since these film stocks aren't meant to be at their best in artificial light, I question the direct utility of the samples to the question at hand. 

 

May I ask you what scanning workflow you used?  Did you simply run all of the film through the coolscan at auto settings in a manner that prevented blown highlights or crushed shadows?

 

I am headed to Miami Beach next week for a couple of back to back trips (one family vacuum and another work related) and I will try to obtain a roll of kodak gold and fuji superia and shoot some exposures along side the cinestill 50 and portra 160 that I was planning to shoot on the beach.  Hopefully, there will be a good dose of light, contrast, blue sky, blue/green water, earthy beach sands and lovely skin tones to capture.  

 

It may take me a month or so but I hope to be able to share some results FWIW.  

[christoph_d]

 ...

 

 

Adan,

 

Thank you for your effort!

 

Rgds

 

Christoph

[erl]

I'm late to this thread and am not totally across it, but first I will congratulate Adan for his mammoth effort in trialing the films.

 

My immediate reflex is to say, I use many different film developers, as well as a small range of films, both B&W and colour.

The developers I use and more specifically, the way I use them, is totally influential on the outcome. Almost certainly different from what any other users gets from the same film developer combo. I don't think anyone on the forum would argue against that statement.

 

So, I wonder, why so much differential angst about colur films, not to mention the developement, scanning and of course exposure. It seems patently obvious to me that a multiplicity of variations must occur. My own experience affirms that different films and subsequent handling will produce quite varied outcomes. Professional films in my experience are more predictable in controlled environments, but the moment you move into uncontrollable environments, amateur films will likely perform more pleasingly. Not guaranteed. You must know what to expect from a given film in a given environment, otherwise you are gambling.

 

I found Pro film when travelling to be more unreliable than amateur because extreme environmental variations (temperature). For stage and theatrical I found FujiPress films more suitable because of higher saturation, but terrible for skin tones. I found the old Ektar films great for landscape and especially for aerial work, but the current crop of Ektar is too heavy on red, IMO.

 

So I declare there is no absolute answer, only personal preference. Know your films and choose accordingly, regardless of what anyone says. Your taste is unassailable, if you are shooting for your own benefit.

[Phil U]

Adan - You should be commended for your effort and time.  I think it is a positive contribution to this thread, which, no matter what AlanG (and others) says about my efforts and tactics to egg it on, will most certainly be enshrined in the Film Forum's hall of fame

 

I do see differences in the films scans.  But, for me, the scenes lack a bit of liveliness and color and contrast range to really showcase the practical differences in emulsion.  The indoor shots are interesting and valuable as an analytical tool.  But since these film stocks aren't meant to be at their best in artificial light, I question the direct utility of the samples to the question at hand. 

 

May I ask you what scanning workflow you used?  Did you simply run all of the film through the coolscan at auto settings in a manner that prevented blown highlights or crushed shadows?

 

I am headed to Miami Beach next week for a couple of back to back trips (one family vacuum and another work related) and I will try to obtain a roll of kodak gold and fuji superia and shoot some exposures along side the cinestill 50 and portra 160 that I was planning to shoot on the beach.  Hopefully, there will be a good dose of light, contrast, blue sky, blue/green water, earthy beach sands and lovely skin tones to capture.  

 

It may take me a month or so but I hope to be able to share some results FWIW.  

 

 

Adam, I'm probably not the only one wondering if you are going to make a call on which is the "professional" film from Adan's examples? Or perhaps just tell us which you prefer or don't prefer and why?  

 

I take your point that these film stocks aren't meant to be at their best in artificial light but it's an equal playing field in Adan's examples and earlier you seemed to be saying that a "professional" film such as Portra would perform better in such situations than a "non-professional" film such as ultramax or superia. 

[earleygallery]

It's exactly the response I expected, the old 'these examples aren't good enough' excuse!

[Phil U]

I'm late to this thread and am not totally across it, but first I will congratulate Adan for his mammoth effort in trialing the films.

 

My immediate reflex is to say, I use many different film developers, as well as a small range of films, both B&W and colour.

The developers I use and more specifically, the way I use them, is totally influential on the outcome. Almost certainly different from what any other users gets from the same film developer combo. I don't think anyone on the forum would argue against that statement.

 

So, I wonder, why so much differential angst about colur films, not to mention the developement, scanning and of course exposure. It seems patently obvious to me that a multiplicity of variations must occur. My own experience affirms that different films and subsequent handling will produce quite varied outcomes. Professional films in my experience are more predictable in controlled environments, but the moment you move into uncontrollable environments, amateur films will likely perform more pleasingly. Not guaranteed. You must know what to expect from a given film in a given environment, otherwise you are gambling.

 

I found Pro film when travelling to be more unreliable than amateur because extreme environmental variations (temperature). For stage and theatrical I found FujiPress films more suitable because of higher saturation, but terrible for skin tones. I found the old Ektar films great for landscape and especially for aerial work, but the current crop of Ektar is too heavy on red, IMO.

 

So I declare there is no absolute answer, only personal preference. Know your films and choose accordingly, regardless of what anyone says. Your taste is unassailable, if you are shooting for your own benefit.

 

I'm interested in your comment about different developers and they way they are used affecting the outcome. 

 

You say what you would get would be different from what any other user gets from the same film developer combo - do you mean for c-41 also and is that because you use home processing kits and/or tweak your process away from the C-41 standards - e.g. different chemicals, different time, temperature or agitation to get the results you like from different films or when shot under certain conditions (i appreciate you may push or pull but that is a standard for c-41 also). 

 

In any case, Adan's examples have all gone through the exact same commercial c-41 process in the same machine and been scanned the same way in the same machine - so there is no "multiplicity of variations"in Adan's examples is there?

[adan]

As to scene choice - subtle colors are exactly where the biases and idiosyncracies of color films show up most clearly.

 

Most films can reproduce fire-engine red as fire-engine red and blue sky as blue sky - see first series, signs and sky. It is the subtle brick-reds and dark evergreen greens and desaturated colors of cloudy and foggy days, and the delicate tints and shades of brown that we call "skin tones," that separate the sheep from the goats. Mixed lighting (as Adam should know, since he combines flash with blue or gray daylight quite a lot in his street shots) is another "acid test" of what a film (or a sensor) can handle gracefully.

 

The workflow (scanning and more) for this test: I used the 5000ED and Vuescan. Vuescan has the option to output a TIFF as a .dng file, which allows the scan to be further processed just like a digital camera raw file, with all the controls that offers. So I scan with dead neutral adjustments, except "auto levels" with zero clipping, for exposure. And make further adjustments in Adobe Camera Raw on opening the .dng files. For this test, I made no corrections in ACR, except white balance (eyedropper). In Photoshop, I white-balanced again (gray eyedropper in "Levels", with an 11 x 11 sampling area so that no one brightly-colored grain would bias the results) to make sure I had equal RGB in the sample tones. Resized or cropped as required. Output as jpg/sRGB via "Save for Web" at the highest quality setting that would sneak under the Forum's 500kb limit.

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[adan]

Well, Adan, yes you were most certainly bullying me around a bit but I will accept your retraction.

 

I also accept your general logic.  But it is incomplete and thus ineffectual.  B is only not true if A is not true.  But just b/c I haven't taken the time and effort to establish that A is true doesn't logically follow that A is NOT true.  And so if it hasn't been established that A s not true, it cannot be definitively established that B is not true.

 

So the only real way to definitively prove that B is not true is to definitively establish as a fact that A is not true, which neither you nor anyone else has done.  

 

Given the fact that professional film stocks are up to double the price of consumer stocks, to say that they are not "better" in any way is going against capitalist market efficiency principles (it is also, btw, going against what the film companies say in their data sheets).  This is not to say that it is an absolute fact that price=quality; but I do think that it gives rise to a presumption that needs to be rebutted.....

 

Taking your points in reverse order:

 

If price is automatically a sign of quality, then we can obviously just cancel next month's Kentucky Derby. We need only find out which horse commanded the highest price at auction (capitalist market principles) and award it the necklace of roses. It must be the best, correct?

 

It's not a smart way to judge the world - if you want to know which film is best, or which horse is fastest, you don't compare prices, you run a race. Then you know, and don't have to "venture to guess."

 

On the question of proof - I take it you would be comfortable flying on a plane, if the aviation engineer who designed it told you, "Well, we haven't tested it, but no one has proved it is unsafe, therefore we can assume it is NOT unsafe."

 

A basic principle of knowledge is, if you make a claim, it's up to you to prove your claim is correct. Unlike humans in a court of law, "theories" are suspect until proven innocent. By the theory-holder. In fact, when a competent scientist comes up with a theory, the first thing they do is try to prove it wrong, by poking holes in it from every angle. If they can't find any flaws, after vigorous examination and checking of assumptions and fallacies - then they publish it and let everyone else have a chance to disprove it.

 

I guess it's just the journalist in me. "If your mother tells you she loves you - check it out with a second source."

 

I didn't "retract" anything. I simply denied your claim that I was picking on (or bullying) you.

Edited April 14, 2016 by adan