Using 800 ISO Color film

[froyd]

portra 400 @ 1250


hangman by Marcelo Colmenero, on Flickr

Is this a scan of a print or of the negative? Does the image reflect what's on the negative or did you have to fix it during the scan or print?

I'm trying to understand how people are getting good results underxposing Portra400 as much as EI1600. I read good reports from photographers who have shot images metered at box speed and then +1 and +2 on the same roll, and developed it normally. I would imagine the "normal" exposure would yield a nice negative, with thinner and thinner negative for +1 and +2. In that case, do the underexposed frame ger recovered during scanning? When I have sent rolls to NCPS with similarly exposed images, I have receivd scans that looked great for box speed exposure and progressively worse for each stop of underexposure. I could tweak the underexposed scans in PS a little bit, but the images were not great.

 

[umcelinho]

Is this a scan of a print or of the negative? Does the image reflect what's on the negative or did you have to fix it during the scan or print?

I'm trying to understand how people are getting good results underxposing Portra400 as much as EI1600. I read good reports from photographers who have shot images metered at box speed and then +1 and +2 on the same roll, and developed it normally. I would imagine the "normal" exposure would yield a nice negative, with thinner and thinner negative for +1 and +2. In that case, do the underexposed frame ger recovered during scanning? When I have sent rolls to NCPS with similarly exposed images, I have receivd scans that looked great for box speed exposure and progressively worse for each stop of underexposure. I could tweak the underexposed scans in PS a little bit, but the images were not great.

In this case I've exposed as 800 and had it pushed +1.5 stops in development. What I do is to just scan the negatives and adjust the best I can to be as close as the image I saw, so I confess I'm not 100% sure on how different it would be vs a printed image directly from the negative. I've once shot portra 400 @ 800 and didn't push, results were fine, but the thing is, I estimate metering by eye, so sometimes I might miss it by a stop or so under light situations I'm not so familiarised with, so I can't tell for sure if they came out nice because of the film dealing well with underexposure or because I ended up estimating an exposure fitting for 400 instead of 800 iso... I haven't done any controlled test with a metered camera so far.

 

[Nikon Bob]

Plain old Fuji 800 Superia used to be my favourite travel film for it's flexibility in allowing me to shoot in varied light conditions while only carrying on film type. Add an ND filter and you are good to go. If possible I always erred to overexposure by as much as one stop. If I could not over expose needing all I could in shutter speed then I just shot it at 800 or 1600 and lived with the extra grainy appearance. You can add contrast and saturation in post if you like. It is in some ways flexible like the Kodak and Ilford C41 B&W films as far as over and under exposing is concerned.

Bob