One of the things that drives me nuts is washed out shadows. When my film is underexposed, my scans come back from the lab with shadows that are dark gray instead of black. I can fix this in post-processing of course, but it’s a drag. And what’s more, it means I’m not getting the full dynamic range out of my film.

So why are those shadows washed out anyway? If you underexpose your film, it would make sense that the subject would be less bright, but black should still be black, right? But what happens is the lab scans so that the subject of the image is at the proper density. If your subject’s skin tones are too dark, they get bumped up. And so does the minimum shadow density.

While ideally I would expose my film properly all the time, that’s just not possible in the real world. I shoot weddings! Sometimes you have to sacrifice proper exposure in exchange for a shutter speed that won’t blur your subject. Poor exposure is often more acceptable than a blurry bride. But it’d be nice if I had a film that could handle underexposure a little more gracefully.

I had never used Ilford’s XP2 Plus, which is a ‘chromogenic’ film. It uses the C41 color-film processing, and is in effect a single-layer color film. Upon reading the literature, I took special note where it said the film works well even exposed at ISO 800 (i.e. One stop underexposed). So I thought I’d better try it!

Where I experience problems is during receptions, which are often very dark. Very little light, large rooms, and often the available light is an ugly mix of tungsten and fluorescent. So to simulate this, I placed my sun under a tungsten recessed light in our living room’s ceiling, and turned the rest of the lights off. This would give me plenty of dark shadows, but with lighting that was consistent with the temperature I might find in a reception. I then pitted Kodak Tri-X 400 vs Ilford XP2. Tri-X is of course a traditional black and white film.

I did several tests to compare the film, shooting each roll in matching Nikon N90s bodies, and switched the same lens (and flash, when applicable) between the two. Here’s what I found:

XP2 does really well maintaining good contrast when shot at ISO 800. Tri-X, not so much. Look at the images above. XP2 maintains that solid black shadow very well. But the ISO 800 on the Tri-X is noticeably ‘gray’ compared to the ISO 400 version. In fact, comparing the histograms of each image in Lightroom, the XP2 ISO 800 frame about matches the blacks in the ISO 400 version of the Tri-X.

One of the other things I tested was overexposure latitude. I took an incident-meter reading outdoors in direct sunlight, and then shot a light brick wall with a white rose in front of it. I exposed at ISO 400, 200 and 100 (zero, one and two stops overexposed). Both films performed very well under these circumstances, so I wouldn’t pick one or the other on that basis alone. I didn’t test anything more extreme than that, but C41 process film is known for its overexposure latitude.

Before doing this test, I primarily considered C41 black and white film to be merely a convenience. You could have a local mini-lab process it if you want. You could also take advantage of dust removal technology that scanners offer, which don’t work on traditional black and white films. XP2 is about twice as expensive as Tri-X however, and hasn’t seemed worth it. However with the underexposure latitude XP2 offers, I’m rethinking that math.

So why didn’t I test Kodak BW400CN instead? It too is a C41 process black and white film. However it is no longer made in medium format, only 35mm. XP2 comes in both varieties, and I shoot both formats of film.

One other thing to consider is that Tri-X pushes better than XP2. In fact, the literature recommends that you don’t push XP2 at all, because no benefit would be gained (haven’t tried it myself). However a lab will usually charge extra to push film, and you run into other problems. If I needed to go to ISO 1600, I’d probably choose Tri-X. But for ISO 400 and 800, I think XP2 is my way forward.

You might want to see my film use in action, on my client-centric site here.

So my birthday is coming up. This was fortuitously timed with the almost complete exhaustion of the battery in my Apple iPhone 3G (not GS…I’m behind the times by two generations). So my wife sent me down to the local AT&T store to buy myself a birthday present, which I was happy to do. Behold, my new iPhone 4! Woot woot. There it is, above.

Wait, what’s that piece of paper taped to my new phone? Why, it’s a free incident light meter of course!

There are a number of light-meter apps for the iPhone, although none of them would work on my 3G. So that was the first thing I looked for when I upgraded my phone. However all of those meters are reflective light meters. To use them, the phone’s camera is aimed at the scene to be photographed, and measures the light being reflected from the objects in the scene. Just like the meter found in all cameras.

Reflective light meters are certainly convenient, but they have some drawbacks. They are easily fooled by back-lit situations, because the sun or bright sky causes the meter to underexpose. They also vary as the scene varies, making your images inconsistent from one to another. And they are also fooled by very bright or very dark scenes: that wedding dress in a white room is going to underexpose and make everything gray. Same with the dark forest.

An incident light meter measures the light falling on the object, not the light reflecting from the object. This means that you get the proper exposure, no matter how light or dark your actual subject matter is. This is done by placing the incident meter at the subject’s position, and pointing it back toward the camera. The meter determines how much light is falling on the subject from the camera’s direction, and proper exposure is achieved. A white translucent dome or disc is placed over the sensor, to average the light sources and avoid errors.

Using an incident meter is also useful because you can meter for the shadow side of something, without worrying about any back-lit light sources causing your meter to underexpose. I do this all the time with portrait photography. I place my subjects with their backs to the sun, and then use an incident meter to measure the light falling on their faces. I use this exposure reading, and let my highlights blow out if necessary. Since I’m shooting film, I’m not too worried about overexposure: film can handle a lot more highlight information that digital can. Here’s an example where I metered for the shadow side with an incident meter, and then shot in manual mode. I didn’t have to worry about exposure as long as I kept my clients facing the right way. (By the way, my work is filled with examples of back-lit images such as this, some strobed and some without. You can see more here.)

So incident meters are useful for film photography especially. They take a little more effort, but the results are worth it. Wouldn’t it be great if you could use your phone for an incident light meter, and not have to carry a dedicated meter around with you?

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Just received my first rolls of the new Kodak Portra 160, and have the scans back from the lab. I took the boys to the zoo and figured it’d be a good time to a) test the new formulation of the film, and b) practice using my manual-focus 80mm f/1.9 lens on my Mamiya 645AF. Yes that’s right, f/1.9. You Contax 645 users and your measly f/2 lenses can eat my bokeh. My images are all 0.1 better than yours now. Hah!

But I digress.

The preliminary results look really nice! Because I wanted near-instant gratification, I took the film to my local lab to be scanned. They turned it around in two days, but unfortunately the scans don’t look as nice as the lab I use for my serious work (Richard Photo Lab in Los Angeles). They’ve been sharpened and there’s some jpg noise…so I can’t really comment on the grain structure compared to old 160 NC, or new 400 or whatever. So for now I’ll just have to say…hmm, very promising!

As we were eating lunch after our zoo visit, I remembered reading that Portra 160 could tolerate two stops under exposure. So I popped one frame at ISO 160 and another at ISO 400 (I know, only 1.3 stops underexposed). See the combined image below.

When I got the scans back, I couldn’t figure out which frame was underexposed! That’s a very good sign. I did finally figure it out, by putting the frames on a lightbox and noticing that the blown out window on one frame was slightly less dense than the other frame.

Note I was manually exposing here: since the scene was heavily backlit, I got a reading off my palm and opened up one stop, which yields roughly an 18% gray (for the ISO 160). This ensured proper exposure for the face in shadow. Since this was a fun trip, I didn’t want to bring a heavy medium-format camera AND a meter! Shutter speed was 1/125th at f/1.9. I then underexposed by bumping the shutter to 1/500th.

Can you tell which frame is the underexposed one?

It’s the second frame. Looks pretty darn good, eh? The first frame is out of focus because I was using a manual-focus f/1.9 lens, with very limited depth of field and a bouncing child. I will want to test this further, on stationary subjects.

This is a fun benefit of shooting with Fujifilm FP3000B instant film. You get a nice ‘positive’ black and white print from the process, but you can also use the throw-away ‘negative’ part to get a funky, retro version of the same image. I shot this on my Toyo-View C view camera, with a Caltar 250mm f/5.6 lens. Ambient window light, and exposure was f/5.6 and 1/8 sec.

Making portraits with shallow depth of field on a 4×5 view camera is a tricky process. The depth of field is so shallow that any minor movement front to back can bring the image out of focus. So I used a technique employed by photographers in the 1800s,when exposures were so long that they had to practically nail down their subjects. In fact many of them would use some sort of brace or support behind the head, so the subject could remain still for several minutes.

My exposure wasn’t that long of course, but I did need to keep an eight year old from moving while I focused, then inserted the film back and exposed the image. So I had him kneel on the ground, and set a dining room chair behind his head. He used this as a reference point to keep his head still.

The negative part of the image seems to solarize very easily, which simply means that portions of the image that are at the extreme highlight or shadow range will reverse. I’ve been told that’s due to not enough development time and/or the room being too cold. I increased development time from my earlier experiment, and it is much improved. But you can see the bars of the dining room chair in the negative version, which have solarized. They’re not visible in the positive version below. There’s also a weird solarized edge effect, visible around his cheeks and earlobes.

The process is simple: once you’ve made your exposure and pulled your positive print away, remove the paper edges from around the negative portion, including the bottom part where the chemicals were stored. Wipe that clean with a paper towel, and go wash your hands. Let it dry (or use a blow dryer), so you don’t get goo on your scanner later on. We’re talking several hours of drying if you don’t use a hair dryer. Then scan like you would a photo or document, in reflective mode. Flip and invert the image in Photoshop (the negative will also be flipped right to left), and then tweak the contrast as you see fit. I’ve toned these in Lightroom with a traditional silver print two-tone look.

I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise. Still, it’s a great thrill to hear that Kodak has followed their New Portra 400 formulation with a New Portra 160. Gone are the VC/NC designations. And gone also is much of the grain! According to Kodak’s “idiot-grams” (simplistic charts), New Portra 160 will have the saturation of the old Portra 160NC, but with a significant grain improvement. Portra 160 is the least saturated, Portra 400 in the middle, and Ektar is practically glow-in-the-dark. I like Ektar during daylight conditions, but it sucks for skintones during the ‘golden hour’. So having a New 160 will help fill that void.

What I really want to see is the the latitude. Will it be similar to Portra 400, or will it be less flexible, like Ektar?

I first heard about this on Leo Patrone’s blog. You can read the official Kodak stuff here. Oh and it should be available in about a month!

Just got an email from B&H today. The new (and amazing) Portra 400 is now available in 35mm. Link here.