These photos are from the first roll of Cinestill 800 I shot. I was interested in the film because it is for artificial light, and some people were raving about the halos. It’s motion picture film and the anti halation coat is stripped so it can be processed using C-41. The creative possibilities, taking pictures indoors and with odd effects, seem to tickle a lot of people.
I hate it. The halos just look like shit. The colors are not particularly good, either. I’m sure I could do as well with Portra 800. A few I took in natural light do have that 70s movie look to them, but considering this film stock costs twice as much as anything else I use, I’d rather shoot slides for the price. Or just shoot Portra for high speed. I guess it was the sort of thing you might try once, but not something I expect to do regularly from here on out.1
From what I read, you’re supposed to take a picture of a gas station first 2. So, here we go:
I also took some shots of a band that plays on a trailor in the parking lot behind the ice cream place. Somebody Guitar Somebody… dude has guitar in his name so he must be good at guitar, right? Been stoking the Duane look pretty hard, too. God bless ’em for finding a way to gig, even if they have to drag the stage and bubble machine along with them. They had a dozen happy people watching them, and one obnoxious narcissistic girl who kept trying to pretend she was playing the bass and begging her boyfriend to take insta toks, so everyone would look at her. That’s what a fun band is supposed to do.
And a couple of daylight shots, just to see what colors I could pull out with the light streaming in the window.
That’s what she said
Actually, the In-n-Out was first, but we’re splitting hairs here
As you saw in a previous post, I broke out the GX680III (not S) to practice with tilting the lens. I got that roll of film back yesterday. It was Fuji Provia 100F.
You remember that I began in the yard with the stump in the foreground and the palm trees in the background. I think I tilted it slightly too much, in the full sized scan the telephone pole is tack sharp about to the crossbar, then rapidly becomes blurred above that. I took a second and it’s sharp top to bottom, but I had lost the light even before the first exposure, so the second is even more bland. I won’t share.
The second test was to haul it to the lagoon trail, where I took pictures of the flowers with the train in the background. That worked out well, the telephone poles in the distance are also perfectly sharp and the shrubbery just a couple of feet in front of the camera are in focus. I purposely wanted to get 1/30 or 1/60 to get a sense of movement on the train and would not have been able to get those near flowers and leaves in focus at that speed without the tilt. I’m starting to understand how it works in real life.
The others were just DoF tests, but I’ll post them because they’re nice scans. Have I mentioned how much I love slides?
135 is a special challenge to me. The grain is enough that it bothers me in a lot of situations. I found the Portra 400 tests I did unsatisfying, even though I really like the film in 120. But shooting 6×8 negatives gives me a lot more resolution, so I decided to give up on high speed (for the moment — I have a roll of cinestill 800 in the camera now) and try Portra 160.
All Kodak film is 2/3 of a stop slower than advertised. At least this is my rule
All Kodak film is 2/3 of a stop slower than advertised. At least this is my rule now, and since I’ve been following it I’ve been getting much better scans and more consistent results. In the F6 I just shoot +0.7, regardless. Medium format I set the meter for 100 instead of 160. To expand that rule, I shoot Kodak negatives +2/3 of a stop over, and always miss high. I find I can over expose a full stop from the box speed and the scan is still better than shooting at the speed published.
Since I’m bringing it up, I have experimented with Fuji, as well. Pro 160 NS I shoot exactly at box speed. If I miss, I can go down 1/3, or up 2/3, so I tend to miss high. Fuji slides are also exactly box speed. But don’t miss. At all. Velvia’s lovely, but exposure latitude is narrow.
Enough jibber jabber. Here are some samples, all just taken around town over a couple weekends. I am happy with the grain, and the not over saturated (like Ektar) colors. It’s not fast, but Portra works well enough in 135 for my tastes.
Shots of the dredging in Agua Hedionda and afternoon at the park on Buena Vista. Can’t believe I didn’t notice the dredging barge had moved so far while I was swapping out film and I cut off the flagpole. Dammit! Someone was chatting with me while I was working and I wasn’t paying enough attention. I now know that she has a Mamiya and took photography classes in the 90s, and that I should recompose my damned shot when I look away from the scene for more than a few minutes.
Last week, during the sunny weather, I shot a roll of Velvia. It was just after the Provia, but I didn’t finish the roll until yesterday, so I didn’t get the chance to develop it until now. While doing some of the shots I had Ekar in the other back so I could get a direct comparison. Have I mentioned how much I love slides? Like love love them. I like looking at them on a light table with a loupe, they have a quality even these scans can’t reproduce. The sharpness, the saturation, the colors cool and vibrant, they’re a totally different animal than the negative films.
Slides aren’t for everything. The Kodak films have way more exposure latitude, for example. I shot two frames of sleeping tiger each with Provia and Ektar, one frame about 1/3 stop over the incident light, the next one stop up from that. The Ektar scans might as well be the same, you can color correct them in software to be identical and nothing is lost. The Provia that’s 1 stop over has washed out color and the sky color is just plain gone.
Velvia is the same, and the shadows go black extremely quickly, so you had best plan on that. And 50 speed is mighty slow. Shots of the cooling pond have what looks like grey clouds, but they aren’t clouds. They are pelicans. Even in full daylight, if you’re looking for extra depth of field you’re going to hold the shutter open way longer than any Portra. Even the extra stop of Provia and Ektar is appreciated. The trade off is almost no grain, and saturation that is more real than real.
Enough yammering. Here are the photos. Sleeping Tiger, the cooling pond, and the tree were all taken back to back for direct comparisons. The Velvia shot of the dredge was taken before the sun started to pop on the powerplant, so even though it’s only a couple minutes before the Ektar, it is not a direct comparison. The light just got better over the course of 5-10 minutes before dying off completely. I might have gotten a better shot in the good light on the next roll. The Ektar is using 1 stop GND on the sky, but pretty much straight out of the camera, so I’m really hoping I got something as nice on the next roll of slides.
The same week as the previous post I took some shots with the GX680 using some Fuji films. This week I got a roll of Fujipro 160NS negatives and Provia 100F slides processed. The first scan had one a little wonky and I asked to get it rescanned, but they did all of both rolls a second time. I actually think they came out better the second time, and I don’t know why. Something to consider going forward, I guess.
I’ll just dump a few samples here. Look at the file names to see what film they were taken on.
I don’t mean to make too many conclusions just yet, but first impressions are that I LOVE Provia 100F. It isn’t over the top extra like the Velvia 50, which I also love, and the extra stop of speed is welcome. It’s not posted here, but I took a shot of sleeping tiger up one stop and it is very washed out with an ugly color shift, so Provia doesn’t have any better exposure lattitude than Velvia, but I expected that. The negatives are nice, too. I wasn’t sure the first time I tried 160NS, but it’s kind of growing on me. I’ll post more samples of it later.
And this afternoon I made the mistake of not going out with the camera. It was raining and DARK grey so I stayed at work, but minutes before the sunset the clouds cleared out. The sky was spectacular, I could have killed the roll of Velvia I am dying to get developed but still has 3 frames to go.
I did catch some shots of a rainbow that ran from end to end and was as intense as I’ve ever seen. I actually ran inside to grab my 20mm because I couldn’t get both ends in frame at 24mm, but it was dying out by then. Still fun, I go three or four years at a time not seeing one, and almost never as intense as this.
This is a roll of Ektar. Like the previous Portra 400, it’s just snapshots from around town, taken during my evening walks. The dredging photos are all unique, I was experimenting with hyperfocal distance and framing on those. The duplicate shots on the seawall are just cropped to see what 8×10 vs 8×12 looked like.
I was using a Nikkor 28-105 AF-D lens, which I got for dirt cheap. It’s a walking around lens, not the highest of all quality. It’s much more prone to lens flare, and it’s not quite as sharp, as my 28mm prime. Yet it’s sharp enough, and from 35mm up not distorted. In fact, it’s a good bit lower distortion than the newer zooms that replaced it.
If I’m shooting only landscape at 28mm, I can grab that lens. but for random street shots, I’m sure not complaining much about something that only cost me $85. It’s truly a bang for the buck bargain.
Walking around the Village on a bright, sunny afternoon, burning film just to see how the colors come out. Most of these were taken over the same wonderfully warm weekend, Friday and Sunday. This is all Portra 4001, 135, from the same roll.
My last attempt at Portra I shot +2/3 of a stop, but I accidentally forgot to set the camera to overexpose on Sunday, which I genuinely meant to do as my last experiment with that produced better scans than shooting at box speed. Especially on the more contrasty photos like the Cantina, where I could have used a little reach into those shadows. The picture of Fiesta Liquor taken on Friday is +0.7 and scanned nicely. I could have gotten away with more. The beach shots definitely would have benefited from a little extra, it’s easier and less grainy to pull back a highlight on Portra than to try and recover something in a shadow.
Speaking of… One thing I’m noticing in 135, the grain is a lot more apparent. I’m cool with it on the 6×8 negatives, but these tiny little baby negatives certainly suffer for the higher speed.
1. The B&W photo is from the same roll, I did it in the photo shops just to see how it compared to actual black and white film. I uploaded it by mistake but, what the heck. Might as well share.
Velvia is the standard for landscape photography. Or at least it was when I was taking pictures on film in the ’90s. I seldom used it as much of my photography was out the window of a glider and the combination of low speed and dynamic range made shooting slides a fraught endeavor. But since I’m always on a tripod these days, why not try?
Well, I’ll tell you why not. Medium format is expensive. It’ll cost me $4 a shot for film, develop, and scan, so I practiced with more forgiving negative film stock before I tried the slide film. Velvia is 50 speed, has significantly less exposure latitude than negative film and digital, and is prone to reciprocity failure on longer exposure shots. You have to nail the exposure, and either have a lower contrast scene or be fine with certain shadows going pure black or highlights pure white.
I have two backs for the GX680, so I loaded one with Velvia, the other with Portra 400 (it was in the back already, else I would have shot Ektar as my comparison negative stock) and went to the village for some experiments.
First, here are the scans straight up. Minimal editing makes a better comparison. Note, the liquor store I took from the middle of the street, so I was running into the street, snapping the shot, then scurrying out of the way of the cars, so the unedited scans needed a little rotation and composition hygiene.
And edited comparisons below. Note, these are minimal edits, just a touch of optimization and a little rotation and cropping for the most part on the liquor store. It was a perfect scene for this test being well lit with a variety of interesting colors, and shows how much warmer Portra is, as well as how much the blues and greens pop on Velvia. The Village Kitchen and Pie Shoppe with extra Ps and Es to make it fancy I chose for the opposite reason, the light was washed out and there were some shadows and bright clouds so I could see the dynamic range. This isn’t the raw scan, I pulled the sky back about 1/4 to 1/3 of a stop in editing to see what there was to be found in those highlights, and it has a little dynamic contrast boost, too. You can see the sky is blown out on the Velvia in the lower right corner where there’s detail to be pulled out on the Portra.
I don’t have any direct comparisons from later in the day. Instead I was just trying much more challenging shots. The clouds turned a crazy pink and red after the sun set and, though I understand that Velvia is not a high contrast film, I tried some high contrast shots. The blacks are black. I mean, there’s NOTHING to be pulled up there. But I was shooting for the sky and the highlights, so I expected that. These long exposure shots really show the weirdness of Velvia. The sky was blue and pink, and it did hint toward purple, though the Velvia just made everything… extra. A digital shot of the same scene is below to compare to the Velvia version.
I am also including a few other shots I got back. The sunsets and pictures of the Village are from a roll of Ektar I ran through the F6. I am shooting most everything up 2/3 of a stop and the scans seem to come back better. I’m also pretty darned happy with the sunset scenes, considering how contrasty the exposures are. You can definitely see the grain with the tiny little baby negatives, but it’s not distracting in these shots.
The train was with the GX680. I’d lost the light so the bush wasn’t as bright as it had been, but I like the composition. I converted it to black and white because, if I like B&W, then the composition feels good to me. The last image is a from the same roll of Portra 400, and I liked it so I thought I might as well share.
So… Velvia. It’s something. I’ll have to shoot more of it, maybe find some other fun colors. And if in town, I should bring the 100mm or 135mm so I don’t have to stand in the street to take a picture. I love that 50mm lens for landscapes, the view is expansive, but it’s about the equivalent of a 22mm lens on digital as far as field of view. I could definitely use more reach for a walking around lens.
This will be a big picture dump. Mostly so I can share with a friend. I’ve shot some more film, and some of it on 135. I’m using an F6, which should be far more foolproof than my Fuji. And just about any film camera ever made, for that matter. My goal in getting it was to do experiments like bracketing exposure that are expensive in medium format, or taking more dynamic shots that are kind of difficult with a 12 pound beast on a tripod. The camera writes exif data, so I can work faster and match up exposure data when the scans come back.
The F6 I just set the exposure compensation up 2/3 of a stop. The Ektar I shot with the 680 I fudged up to the next stop
My first two rolls were Kodak. First Portra 400, then Ektar. I wasn’t completely happy with what came back. While technically correct, even shots taken using Program Auto were still a little dark, the Ektar was kind of red with lost details in the shadows, and the Portra seems a little grainy.
That second reminded me of something. I have a new method based on what I read on someone’s site — I don’t even remember where I read it — but the writer said that he was shooting portra up 2/3 of a stop if it was meant to be scanned. Like, he’d shoot Portra 160 at iso 100, but not push the film at all. So the most recent roll of Portra 400 I ran through the F6 I just set the exposure compensation up 2/3 of a stop. The Ektar I shot with the 680 I fudged up to the next stop, since that camera only works in whole stops. When I bracketed, I wanted to see the exp on the dark shot and a + with the angry beeping on the light shot. In fact, I’m not convinced that for anything with more than 4 stops of range, if I don’t get the overexposed warning I might consider another shot at one stop longer exposure time.
I’m happier with what I got back this time. Both the medium format Ektar and the Portra 400 in the F6. If I stumble across that website again I’ll have to drop a thanks to the author for that suggestion, assuming it wasn’t written 15 years ago.
Enough writing. Here are some photos.
Portra 400 from the first roll in the F6:
And the first roll of Ektar. The bird and surfer shots are all hand held, so while the pelican is a little soft and underexposed, getting sharp enough to see him taking a shit at 500mm, offhand, with no monopod or tripod, I am going to count as a win.
I needed some magic from the photo shops to bring up the shadows in the photos along the bluffs, and they’re very red. Strangely, pointing straight into the sun works better, the sunset shots are almost exactly what came back from the lab.
For contrast, here are a few shots from my third roll in the F6. For most of this roll I had the camera set with +2/3 exposure compensation. And, yes, they’re very random. I had no goal in mind other than burning a roll of film to see if the exposure compensation worked.
More exposure seems to mean less grain there. Important with the higher speed film, and it’s pretty hard to blow a highlight with these negative films, so I’ll fudge up from now on.
Here’s the roll of Ektar. I was playing with filters as well as bracketing. Even 1.3 stops over exposed (from the meter reading) I like it better than shooting at what the meter tells me.
This next gallery wasn’t here when I originally posted as I didn’t get the film back until after I made the post. But nobody reads this blog so I’ll add it here to make for an easy reference since it’s the same scenes.
Portra 800, shot at the same time as the Ektar above. I metered at 640, then fudged up, so everything would be at least a quarter stop over, but as much as a stop and a third over. Most of these shots the camera was beeping and flashing +, so it thought I was overexposed. The first three have very little editing, the bottom two I pulled the highlights back, but they were more than 5 and 6 EV over the reeds. The fact that I was able to compress the dynamic range enough to get it all printable means I’m on the right track with my shoot 2/3 stop over method.
