Portra 400NC on sunny vs. cloudy day

[v_roma]

Hello everyone,

This is my best guess as to where this question should go but, if I got it wrong, please accept my apologies and move it to where it belongs. I've shot a more than a few rolls of Portra 400NC at this point and while I love how this film looks on a bright sunny day, I'm not too happy about it on cloudy days. It just gets this sad, brownish look to it. I am having my film developed at a lab (average, nothing too fancy) and do not plan on doing my own developing any time soon, if ever, so I have no control over the developing, My question is whether or not I would be able to significantly improve how the colors look if I scanned the negatives myself and did color correction during scanning/in Photoshop? Does anyone have any experience with this?

Many thanks!

Edit: Sorry about no samples. I'm at work. I can post them later if anyone feels that would be helpful.

 

[bolohead]

I typically shoot 400NC at 200 or 250 instead of boxed speed. Meter for the shadows. Don't worry about blowing the highlights as the film has a lot of latitude at the high end. Overexposing should brighten up those gloomy day pictures and get rid of the color cast.

 

[v_roma]

Thanks much, Bolohead. I had meant to ask if there was something I could do when actually shooting but forgot and focused only on processing. Sign of the times, I guess 😱

I typically shoot 400NC at 200 or 250 instead of boxed speed. Meter for the shadows. Don't worry about blowing the highlights as the film has a lot of latitude at the high end. Overexposing should brighten up those gloomy day pictures and get rid of the color cast.

 

[CorreCaminos]

I absolutely love Portra in all varieties but it needs to be developed by a competent lab (or at home). Otherwise, you'll get all sort of color cast problems. Ask your lab how often they run control strips and if they don't know or don't do them daily, find yourself another lab.

I used to get either cyan or greenish casts on lab scans and scanning the negatives myself was an exercise in frustration. I've since switched to another lab and everything works as it should; the lab scans are perfect and when the negatives are incredibly easy to scan at home w/ a Nikon CS9000.

 

[v_roma]

Thanks, CorreCaminos. But the reason why I don't believe that the color cast (for lack of a better way to describe it), is introduced during developing is that it should then affect all shots somewhat and not just those on overcast days versus sunny days. I'm going to try overexposing next time and see what happens.

 

[CorreCaminos]

That's exactly the frustration I experienced over the past year or so, inconsistency of results even within the same roll, and since switching to another lab (same cameras, meters and metering technique) everything is fine. Grossly overexposing seemed to help but in the end, the problem I had was with development. Just keep it in mind.

I hope you figure out the problem soon because Portra is a great film.

 

[v_roma]

Thanks, I will definitely keep that in mind.