Provia 400X Pushed or Superia 1600 - Your experience?

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Lilserenity

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Hiya,

I'm predominantly a black and white shooter but I'm currently on a colour binge 😉 -- I am currently working on a project that I am virtually universally using Kodachrome 64 for, with long exposures (night) using Provia 100F (exceptional long exposure capability, fine grain and just generally brill stuff) -- I was planning on using black and white (either Tri-X pushed 2 stops or Neopan 1600) for night street photography but I have decided that this project will only have consistency and work if it's entirely in colour.

So I need a fast night/low light capable colour film. I'm mostly shooting slides but I am happy to swap to a C41 for these shots.

I have two options I think:

- Provia 400X pushed 2 stops
- Superia 1600 (C41)

If you have done either, what do you like about it, what do you prefer if you have tried both?

I'm not expecting miracles of fine grain, if I wanted that I would get a digital camera like the D700 but I like grain.

I would be looking to reproduce shots at around 8x10 (the size of the book they're going in) so they have to have some kind of clarity.

I'll be using an 81A probably to give a little warmth that the cooler Fuji films sometimes lack (Esp. as the large part of the project is shot on Kodak film which I have always found warmer than Fuji on the whole.)

I'll be using 35mm format. That is a fairly crucial point, I would lumber around with my Mamiya but that doesn't really allow me to do much softly softly catchy monkey that I can with my M2 (it'd be more like shoving a boom box in their face playing death metal...)

Also I'd be shooting at around f/1.7 - f/2.
 
Hi there,

Long time reader, first time poster etc. Am still a relative newbie but have shot both of these so thought I'd pitch in with a couple of images if nothing else. All were shot with a CV 35mm Nokton at f/1.4 and are straight from the CD - no post adjustments.

Provia 400x @ 1600 - I didn't test this in particularly low light, I was just curious so took some snaps at a dinner. In short, I think it worked beautifully. (Although I ended up converting most images to b&w due to a yellowy/greeny hue from the flourescent lighting - if anybody can advise on the correct filter to compensate would be much obliged...)

Pictures here:

3548819783_0c12f51055.jpg


3548821627_cd6c8f2b60.jpg


Superia 1600 - As you'd expect, much grainier. The first two images might be a bit misleading as they came back from the lab with a lot of non-grain "noise". The third image below has been rescanned locally and seems a bit cleaner to me, but there appear to be quite a lot of other differences between these two scans... Generally speaking, I wouldn't be comfortable with these at 8x10.

3548824205_fe2351deed.jpg


3549661366_3082779ae6.jpg


3548830533_cb6cc84818.jpg



What would I use? The "noise" on the superia 1600, whether a result of the film or processing/scanning put me off. There's something about the 400x magically working at 1600 that appeals to my inner geek. From my limited experience I'd likely use the 400x pushed two stops. Otherwise much like you I'm usually a B&W guy and shoot neopan 1600 or delta 3200 (B&W grain bothers me less)...

Hope that's useful in some way - realise the shots are under different conditions etc, but let me know if you've got any specific questions and I'd be more than happy to answer if I can.

yk
 
I have to say for ISO 1600 colour on 35mm, those Provia 400X shots look brilliant.

They won't be printed any larger than 10x8 and I won't be looking for a great deal of shadow detail (a bit of an impossibility on film > ISO 1250 I find) -- it's mostly for street shots. I would usually turn to pushed Tri-X stand developed or Neopan 1600 but as the rest of the book is in colour, I'm keeping things consistent for this project.

I have ordered some Superia 800 for indoor low light and I'll pick up a roll of 400X tomorrow morning and experiment this weekend!

Thanks for the examples, they speak volumes.

I'll report back on some results too!
 
Superia 1600 is crap. Dont waste your money. (That said, I fear any high speed color film looks crap compared to other media available today...)
 
y.k said:
(Although I ended up converting most images to b&w due to a yellowy/greeny hue from the flourescent lighting - if anybody can advise on the correct filter to compensate would be much obliged...)
Click to expand...

There is no such filter. Flourescent lighting has a discontinuous spectrum, so no matter which filter you use to correct one color in the picture, you get other colors wrong.

And then, there are several different types of these lamps (daylight, white, warmwhite, ****ty green, what not .....).

Best way might be to get a set of CC filters and trying to adjust for acceptable skin tone.

Someone once told me to use 30M + 20C for white lighting, but i never really tried that. I keep ordering whisky till daylight comes or use B&W 😀
 
Thanks for the views on Superia 1600 too.

I've seen some good examples and the common theme people are saying is "don't underexpose!" -- as I noted I'm not expecting some miracle of low grain, if I wanted clean high ISO I'd need to get a digital camera like the current Nikons or Canons.

Provia 400X looks like it'll do the job the best though and I'll try the 800 and 1600 at some point and see what happens.

If I was using medium format for this I'd have even more choice!
 
400x pushed, without a shadow of a doubt. Fast print film just looks muddy. In low light I like to have deep blacks, and print film just gives a kind of brown grey in my experience.

400X at 1600:
3371321738_7f66df71ff.jpg


Natura 1600 (probably very similar to Superia 1600)
271479184_cbf5bb5e9a.jpg
 
Provia 400X is the film you want -- color correcting will help a lot if you're shooting under artificial light / mixed lighting. Provia pushes nicely.

Also -- if you check out Dirk's site - megaperls - he's got some wonderful Fuji Natura - it's 1600 and nothing short of wonderful - I highly recommend it.

Here's some Provia 400X - Contax T3 - no push:

3473337061_1691422640.jpg
 
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historicist said:
400x pushed, without a shadow of a doubt. Fast print film just looks muddy. In low light I like to have deep blacks, and print film just gives a kind of brown grey in my experience.
Click to expand...
I've not had much luck in really low light (esp. tungsten) using Superior 1600...

but Portra 800 seems pretty good:

[URL="http://www.flickr.com/photos/mfunnell/1213131947/]"][/URL]

Superior 1600 does seem to work, somehow, in better light where it can allow you to stop down yet still maintain shutter speed for hand holding:


No experience with Provia, though.

...Mike
 
Agreed, though I think everything depends on what you're looking for. No question that slide films like Provia have deeper blacks & snappier contrast, but they have serious problems w/mixed lighting & anything lit w/red gels (like all too many stage shows). Per MRohlfing's post, you can use color correction filters, but there's only so much you can do (& only so much you can do in post w/Photoshop). I've found the fast print films like NPZ/P800Z & Natura 1600 to be much better in dealing w/the nasty mixed color temperatures that come w/low-light environments, probably because of their multi-layer technology.

historicist said:
Fast print film just looks muddy. In low light I like to have deep blacks, and print film just gives a kind of brown grey in my experience.
271479184_cbf5bb5e9a.jpg
Click to expand...
 
I want to echo Furcafe here. I love 400x and I have pushed it to 1600 many times. It has lower grain and much more punch than Superia 1600. But Superia 1600 and NPZ/P800Z will handle color temp problems better.

Slide film just doesn't seem to be designed to handle color temp problems. They all seem to be aimed at one lighting condition at a time, and for 400x that is daylight or flash. Should you be trying to get "natural" color indoors under mixed light then slide films, including 400x, are going to cause problems.

That said, if you like the funky colors, shoot away!

400x at 1600 wonky street light:


400x push to 1600 (and probably underexposed a bit) in Washington at the National Gallery of Art:



Take a hard look at 800z, shoot a test roll of it and the 400x. Another advantage of C41 is cost - pushing 400x, at least at my lab, gets expensive.

Also, I can't tell Natura 1600 and Superia 1600 apart having shot them side by side - you're on your own figuring that one out.
 
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portra 800 is my favorite low light color film, since pushing Provia400X is expensive and the film itself is already pricey.
on a side note i found portra 400 looks good pushed to 1600. I've only tried medium format tho
 
superia 1600 is too grainy. i regularly shoot superia 800 and it gives me 1/15 at night at f2 under streetlights. you might wanna consider shooting portra 400 at 3200 and pushing 2 or even 3 stops with good results.

but looks like you can shoot 400x and push to 1600 with good results, which should be a better option.
 
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