Written by matt on 30 December 2010
I thought I’d give the new Kodak Portra 400 a test to see how it handled in low light conditions. Especially after reading about other photographers and their experiences uprating the ISO, as well as pushing it to 3200.
A quick primer for those new to film speeds. A film stock has a native ‘speed’, which is stated on the box as its ISO (sometimes these ‘box speeds’ are not accurate, but let’s not argue that point for now). If you shoot with an ISO 400 film, you would normally set your camera’s meter to ISO 400. Simple, huh? But what if you want to shoot in lower light, and still have reasonable shutter speeds for freezing motion and preventing camera shake blurring? You could get a higher-speed film. But you have two other options: simply ‘uprate’ the film (pretend the film is faster/has a higher ISO than it really does), or uprate and ‘push’ the film.
Film has a much wider exposure latitude than does digital. Mostly this latitude is to be found when overexposing the film: extreme highlights are compressed in a pleasing way, rather than being clipped to pure white like digital. Film also has an underexposure latitude, although traditionally it hasn’t been all that much. You can underexpose your film and still hope to get some usable images out of it.
You can also ‘push’ the film, which means simply that the film is left to cook in the developer longer. This will increase the overall exposure, although the increase is more in the highlights and less in the shadows. It also increases grain and can shift color, which is not usually desirable. But it does allow you to use a film at a higher than rated speed, with theoretically a better outcome than if you simply uprate (underexpose) by itself. For example, Kodak TMax 3200 black and white film is designed specifically to be pushed in this manner, and can be used anywhere from ISO 400 to 3200 and beyond.
The new Kodak Portra 400 has changed the playing field. It is no possible to uprate/underexpose this film significantly, and still have very nice looking images. While others have done some testing as mentioned above, I thought I’d give it a whack myself. Christmas morning seemed like as good a time as any!
Using my Bronica ETR-s and a 75mm lens, I set up some strobes in two corners of the room (Nikon SB-28s, bounced off the wall/ceiling). I metered so that the main area I’d be photographing—in front of the tree—was at the correct exposure for ISO 1600 (two stops underexposure). I don’t recall my exact settings anymore, so you’ll just have to trust me on that part. I had my local lab develop the roll of film, and then I scanned it on my Epson 4990 film scanner. The film was not pushed, just underexposed. The color was a bit yellow-green, but this was primarily because of our beige walls. I’ve adjusted in Lightroom very quickly, so they’re not very consistent. That’s not the film, that’s just me and my bad color adjustment abilities!
I’m impressed with the results! Obviously the shadows suffer from a loss of detail, which makes the images more contrasty. But the images are very usable, and the grain isn’t out of control. I scanned these at a lower resolution (1200 dpi) just so I wouldn’t be all day at the scanner. I’m pleased with the result, and would definitely use this film in low light situations.
I also exposed another roll later in the day, using the same set up. However for that roll I metered for ISO 3200 (three stops!), and am having the lab push the film two stops. My local lab refused to push it more than one stop, so I sent it to Richard Photo Lab and they’re happy to push it until the film catches fire (or nearly so). I won’t have that back for a week or so, and will scan it post the results when I do.
I hope you had a great Christmas, and wish you a wonderful 2011!
—Matt
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Posted in test drives | 8 Comments »
Written by matt on 22 December 2010
Just got an email from B&H today. The new (and amazing) Portra 400 is now available in 35mm. Link here.
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Posted in nerdy technical stuff | No Comments »
Written by matt on 21 December 2010
I was testing a newly-acquired 50mm f/1.4 lens for my Nikon N90s. It happened to be raining, so my youngest son and I went out to rescue worms from drowning in puddles. Loaded up some Portra 800…yikes is this stuff grainy! This was film I acquired from a friend, and is expired but had been refrigerated. No idea if this stuff is supposed to be this grainy, or the older emulsion is grainier than new versions, or if my cheap CVS scans are to blame (hey I didn’t feel like scanning it myself, nor paying for ‘pro’ scans…so sue me). I did buy some fresh Portra 800 to test, but after seeing the results of up-rating the new Portra 400, or pushing it several stops, I don’t see the point. I’ll just wait a week or two until it has been released in 35mm format.
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Written by matt on 14 December 2010
While I don’t condone the use of this technique on a dSLR (oh ok, I’m not THAT much of a luddite…), it would certainly work well on a film SLR too. Advantage for film is that you get all the shutter-speed flexibility of the dSLR, but don’t have to worry about getting dust on your sensor.
http://blog.willseberger.com/2010/12/adapting-a-holga-lens-to-a-nikon-digital-or-film-camera/
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Posted in on the web | No Comments »
Written by matt on 30 November 2010
I thought I’d show some of my recent back-to-film portrait shoots on the blog, with some quick notes on how it’s been going.
My goal is to eliminate digital completely from most of my portrait shoots, with the exception of using a dSLR to ‘chimp’ my lighting, since I use a lot of strobe. As an intermediate step though, I’ve been shooting the ‘posed’ portraits on medium format film, and using my dSLR to capture the candids (e.g. kids running around like monkeys after I told them they didn’t have to sit still anymore). I recently did a shoot where I captured the candids on 35mm film, but I have not gotten those back from the lab yet.
My first official “without a net”, no-digital shoot was a family affair. By that I mean my wife’s cousins from one branch of her family. A large group of us were camping at the beach a few months ago, and I was asked to shoot some casual group shots while I was there. I had previously vowed to shoot only film while on vacation, so when asked, I decided I wasn’t going to bring a dSLR just for this group shot. Instead I simply shot it on the Bronica ETR-s, which I had along with me anyway.
The film is Fuji Pro 160S on 220 format film. I exposed for their faces using an incident light meter. I then set up a strobe (Nikon SB-28) at camera position, on auto and underexposing a stop, for fill. No chimping and I don’t think I even brought a strobe meter. The ambient was doing the heavy lifting, and the strobe was just to fill the shadows a little bit.
Ok time to get a little more serious about film. Below you see some long-time clients of mine. Ironically the last time I shot them, I also used a mix of film and digital then as well! It’s been a few years, and they managed to (just barely) skip my all-digital period. Below I’m shooting on Kodak Ektar 100, probably f/8 or so. For this shoot, I had a flash meter as well as ambient. So I first picked an aperture that a) I knew my strobe could expose properly for, given the distance to the subjects, b) would not yield a shutter speed that was too slow to prevent subject blurring, and c) would give me the depth of field I needed to have my subjects in focus. I then set my main strobe (Metz Mecablitz 60 in 43″ shoot-through umbrella) to expose properly for that aperture. I don’t recall if I used a fill light or not, but I would have set that about 1 stop down. And then I picked a shutter speed that underexposed the ambient…by a stop? More? I don’t remember now. You can see how dark the distant trees are though, which is probably a stop underexposed.
Unfortunately, when I switched backs for a new roll of film on my Bronica, something went wrong. The camera felt like it was advancing the film, but the counter wasn’t moving. So I quickly baled on the Bronica and switched to digital, not missing a beat. The film images are by far the best ones from the shoot though, and I wish I’d had another roll of film. That’s right, I showed up with two film backs and only two rolls of film…hey I’m still working out the procedural kinks in this process!
Fresh from my scare with the Bronica film back, and not sure what the problem was, I decided to use my Yashica-Mat twin lens reflex camera for another repeat client. Who, as it happens, also had their first shoot done as a mix of film and digital. This was also shot on Ektar. I had a major panic moment on the way home, when I discovered the easily-moved flash sync switch was on “M” rather than “X”. Without going into the technical details at the moment, if I’d shot with it set to “M”, all my exposures would have missed the flash timing, even though the flash would have appeared to behave normally. I would have ended up with silhouettes instead of nicely exposed people. I pestered the lab to report back on the negatives, and fortunately the switch must have shifted after the shoot.
I did however start hankering for faster film. ISO 100 film means I’m shooting at f/8 a lot of the time, at least for full-body shots (distance of the flash reduces the power, and therefore I need a wider aperture). But f/8 didn’t give me the depth of field in medium format that I needed for groups of people. F/16 was more like what I needed, which meant that—with the current strobe power I have—I needed to shoot at ISO 400. So where the heck was that new Kodak 400 Portra film?? I need it!!
Next we come to a shoot on my Mamiya RB67. 6×7 medium format needs even more depth of field than 645 like the Bronica…the format is bigger, so relative DOF is smaller compared to smaller film formats. The images below are shot using the old Portra 400 NC, and I exposed it at ISO 200 for better scanning. That gave me one more stop’s worth of depth of field, compared to Ektar. I really like the quality of these images…I don’t know whether it’s the camera, the film, the light or the people. Lighting: Metz to the right in an umbrella as main light, fill flash at camera position (Nikon SB-28), and sun to camera left, behind the subjects. It helps that we had a really nice day too!
So there are more family portrait images coming, including some shot on the elusive New Portra 400 (at ISO 400, natch!). It’s my busy season in the lead up to the holidays, and I’m burning through film. You can see more of my family portrait photography here.
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Tags: 120, beach, bronica, camera, etr-s, film, fuji, Kodak, medium format, photography, zenza bronica
Posted in professional use | 5 Comments »
Written by matt on 17 November 2010
[NOTE: This giveaway is now closed. See below for the winner.]
This is the third free film giveaway, and it’ll be a regular occurrence until supplies get low.
I recently acquired several grocery bags full of film from a fellow photographer. It’s all expired, but has been kept refrigerated and so is still perfectly fine. I thought I’d share the wealth!
This time, one lucky person will receive five (5) rolls of Kodak T400CN 35mm film, 36 exposures. This film is ISO 400, C41 process black and white film. You can process it at any minilab or photo place. I’ll ship it anywhere in the world.
The rules:
- Void wherever taxed, licensed or prohibited. Don’t enter if it will get you or I in trouble. No purchase necessary (or even possible, as I am not currently selling anything).
- You must tweet (or retweet) the link to this post on Twitter. Use the handy icon below. If you don’t have a Twitter account, perhaps it’s time you signed up for one?
- Comment on this post, by putting your Twitter user name below. That way I can verify that you’ve tweeted a link to this post. Make sure you enter a valid email address when commenting (in the non-published email field), as I will contact the winner that way.
- The winner will be randomly selected from those who participate. The Twitter user name of the winner will be posted in the blog post itself, on Friday November 19th, some time in the morning (Pacific Coast Time). I will email the winner for his/her mailing address at that time.
- Previous winners ARE eligible, since it’s been awhile.
And the winner is: @f83photo
I used the random number generator at www.random.org to generate a number between 1-10 (the number of entrants). The number ’2′ was selected, which I then matched to list of comments. @f83photo was number 2 in the sequence.
Thanks everyone for entering, and please add the RSS feed so you can be notified of the next one.
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Posted in Uncategorized | 10 Comments »
Written by matt on 12 November 2010
Ever since I read the Twin Lens Life brothers blather on about Kodak’s Vision3 movie film, which they were using to shoot wedding stills with, I’ve been in search of the new Portra 400. Apparently Kodak took some amazing film technology from their motion picture division, and were repurposing it for the photographic crowd. I’ve been searching for the new Portra 400 (no “VC” or “NC” designations anymore, those are all being discontinued). It was supposed to be released in October, but by the first of November I’d seen nothing.
Then I got an email from Freestyle. They had received 120 format in the store, but it was phone-order only. It was too new, and too limited of a quantity to be up on their website. So of course I ordered 10 rolls of 120 right away. Meanwhile Samy’s has it, and I’ve ordered from them too (semi-local pickup in Santa Barbara).
So how does the film stack up? I shot the above image at box speed. The shadows appear to have less grain than Fuji Reala 100! I have yet to do a same-camera, same scenario test, but comparing negatives of the Reala vs the Portra 400, both scanned at 2400 dpi on an Epson 4990, showed considerably less grain in the 400. That’s pretty friggin’ amazing.
Having a film that I can shoot at ISO 400 is a big deal, because I can finally get good depth of field from cameras such as my Mamiya RB67. Shooting at f/8 with a 35mm or equivalent dSLR is perfectly acceptable for a group shot. But with a large negative like 6×7, f/8 turns into a pretty limited depth of field. Suitable for individual subjects only. F/16 is really what I need for an aperture, which means I need a film that is rated two stops faster to keep the same shutter speed. That’s where Portra 400 comes in.
The above image was shot on my Mamiya RB67, f/11 and a half, shutter speed somewhere around 1/60 or 1/125. Metz Mecablitz 60 with a shoot through umbrella to camera right, with a Nikon SB-28 in a Lumiquest SoftBox III for fill, one stop down. I metered the ambient with an incident meter, so that it was two stops down. You can see the shadowed side of the background tree to see what my subject would have looked like without strobe.
These shots, by the way, are of my oldest son. My wife insists that he get school portraits every year, even though they’re a) cheesy and b) I’m a professional photographer for cryin’ out loud! Apparently it’s part of the childhood experience to have really bad photos. This year it was super-bad though. They ended up taking (according to my son) ten shots, because he kept blinking and/or was sensitive to the lights. The resulting image was horrible. When faced with the idea of retakes, he rebelled. I offered to take some portraits, which my wife and son agreed to. So I took him to the park, and got to try out the new Portra 400 as well. Win-win!
So does the film work miracles? I’ll have to wait to see the first professional scans come back from the lab to be sure, but it appears that maybe it does. Long live film!
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Posted in test drives | 5 Comments »
Written by matt on 21 October 2010
A few months ago I had the opportunity to shoot Mackenzie Rosman for Zooey Magazine. Mackenzie is most known for her long-running role as “Ruthie” on the TV show Seventh Heaven. She’s all grown up now, and we spent the day shooting at a wonderful bed and breakfast in South Pasadena, called the Arroyo Vista Inn. I’ve detailed the shoot on my other site, Fashion+Light, but I wanted to discuss the film aspects of this shoot here.
I used both film and digital cameras on this shoot. Which turned out to be a really good thing, because I had some problems with many of the film images! If I’d shot primarily on film, I would have been, well…screwed.
I chose my Bronica EC for this shoot for the larger negative, and more a trivial reason: the cable release works on it. My other medium format system camera is a Bronica ETR-s, and the cable release is broken on that. I know, I should just replace the body, and I will eventually. While I don’t have as much experience with this camera as I do, for example, with my Bronica ETR-s, I had used it often enough that I didn’t think twice about my choice. However my style of shooting that day happened to coincide with the weak spot of the camera: mirror slap.
I had discussed the look with the editor of the magazine. She wanted a natural light look, not too ‘lit’, not too over-produced. The B&B had some nice windows, and I shot a few of the images with just available light and reflectors. However to get the proper exposure (Fuji Pro 160S film), my shutter speeds were in the 1/8 to 1/30 s range…yeah, you see where I’m going with this, right?
Mirror slap occurs when the mirror of an SLR camera vibrates the body as it moves. At fast shutter speeds, this isn’t a problem because the shutter moves so fast that the vibration effect doesn’t come into play. And at very long shutter speeds (1 second, for example), the portion of the exposure time that experiences vibration is very small, and so doesn’t have an effect on the sharpness of the image either. But there is a “sweet spot” (sour spot?) where the vibration can be a real problem. Turns out that’s the shutter speed range where I was shooting. And because I was under pressure and didn’t want to slow things down too much, I wasn’t using the “mirror raise” lever on the camera, which pulls the mirror out of the way manually. That lever is designed to reduce or eliminate mirror slap…but I wasn’t using it, because I’d never had a problem before. Duh.
So most of the images are blurry, and were unusable. Interestingly, the only ones that were sharp – even at the 1/15th shutter speeds – were ones where the tripod was on a wood floor. All the other shots were taken on carpet. The carpet seems to have accentuated the mirror slap. And no I don’t think it was the strobe freezing the action, because the ambient light is quite significant in these images.
This is my favorite image from the shoot though, and I don’t think it’s simply because I shot it on film. I wanted the background to blow out, and I wanted the ambient window light to play a significant role. The details are fuzzy now (no pun intended), but I think I took an incident meter reading from where her face is, and then dialed in an exposure one stop down. This gave plenty of detail in the room, while ensuring the scene through the window mostly blew out to white. That would give me the “sun streaming through the window” look, even though the sun happened to be on the other side of the house. The sky light coming through the window also acts as a soft rim light, giving an edge to her hair that separates it from the leaves in the background. I set up an Alien Bees 1600 and 40″ octabox outside the house, firing through the window to camera left (this is in the corner of the Inn’s front room) for the key light. So I guess technically it is window light, but of the momentary kind. I also set up a reflector camera-right, to fill the shadows on Mackenzie a little more.
I’ve since sold my Bronica EC. Not because it let me down on this shoot, but because I needed to finance the recent purchase of a Mamiya RB67 system, and felt that my Bronica ETR-s system was the more useful of the Bronicas to keep. With my recent switch to film for client work (or at least, a lot more of it), you can expect to see more than just “for fun” shots in this blog in the future.
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Posted in professional use | 5 Comments »
Written by matt on 15 September 2010
Go Shoot! An occasional series where I just post my images from a recent shoot or outing, consisting usually of family snapshots or personal work.
Spent a recent weekend camping at Carpinteria State Beach here in California. Mostly overcast skies and cool weather, but that didn’t stop anyone from having fun. I made it a medium-format trip, by bringing my Yashica-Mat (6×6 twin-lens reflex camera) and my Bronica ETR-s (645 format medium-format SLR system).
My wife’s family has been going to this same camping spot every year for the last 30+ years, and I’ve gone for about ten years now. Every year I bring a camera, and sometimes it gets difficult to find something new to shoot. I had originally intended to stretch myself by shooting black and white macro images while there. I had planned on doing this with my Bronica EC, which easily handles macro just by flipping the lenses around with an adapter ring. However at the last minute I was asked by my wife’s aunt to photograph her side of the family, as all fourteen of them would be together for the first time in a long while. I said “fine!” (And then to myself, “but I’m shooting it all on film, because I’m on vacation”).
I’ll probably post those images when I get them back from the lab, assuming they came out ok. Risky business, shooting on film for such a rare gathering. I’m crossing my fingers that nothing got screwed up.
Meanwhile, the Yashica-Mat was used for a few snapshots. I shot using some long-expired Konica 160 film I bought from someone locally, and this was my first time using it. A little grainier than I’d expected for 160 ISO film, but the colors look good. And I do like the way the Yashica-Mat makes photos!
An action shot using a twin-lens reflex is always a dicey proposition. What this image lacks in sharpness it makes up for in energy! And in my defense, it would have been sharp if he hand’t been moving. Note the sharpness of the stationary foot. 
Pure snapshot time: my wife and father-in-law relaxing and waiting for the sun to arrive.
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Posted in go shoot! | 7 Comments »
Written by matt on 15 September 2010
I’ve been seriously considering switching my professional photography from purely digital, to some mix of film and digital for a few months now. I shoot almost exclusively film when I’m shooting for myself (family snapshots, ‘fine art’, street etc). So why switch, and why not?
It’s a little scary to contemplate, because a) film seems to be dying and b) I’ve gotten used to ‘chimping’ my images and seeing them in real time. It’s one thing to shoot “fingers crossed” when it’s your own project, but when there’s a client with demands and time constraints…that’s another story.
And yet, and yet: I love the way film looks. I love the analog way it handles extreme contrast, deftly compressing highlights that would clip in digital. Much like an analog synthesizer or tube amplifier—hey, I come from a music background!—there’s a certain warmth and texture that you can’t quite get with digital. Even when you record with film and then scan it, the benefits remain.
So why is this a good time to shoot film? Go read this blog called Twin Lens Life. Specifically this post, but the whole site is great as well. These guys are great wedding shooters, and they do it all on film. The images are friggin’ gorgeous. I want mine to look…well not like that, but I want them to evoke the same feeling.
The big fuss is that Kodak is releasing yet another film technology, at a time when many say film is dead. The new Portra 400 is based on Kodak Vision technology from their cinematic film division. If it’s going to be the same thing the Wright brothers have been testing at Twin Lens Life, then this film is going to be amazing.
The only bummer is that you have to wait until next month to get your hands on it.
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Posted in nerdy technical stuff, on the web | No Comments »
