A Photographer's Guide to Film Rendition

Hello everyone,

After a long gap I'm shooting film once again but this time more seriously. Before I was limiting myself to whatever C41 film my local shop had in stock but now I want to know more about the different film stocks and the way they work.

I know there are countless examples and comparisons dotted around the internet but with a few exceptions I don't find these particularly useful, I'd really like to see the resulting photographs in print form. The closest I've gotten to getting such a book is Creative Exposure Control by Les Meehan which is a great but not entirely what I'm after.

Does such a book exist? I'm particularly curious about comparisons between fairly recent Kodak and Fuji slide film (not just velvia, velvia and more velvia).

Dr_Q said:

Does such a book exist? I'm particularly curious about comparisons between fairly recent Kodak and Fuji slide film (not just velvia, velvia and more velvia).

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Not that I've seen. The problem is that the market for such a book is small now, and the emulsions are dropped, introduced, modified or significantly changed often enough that such a book is out of date by the time it gets to press. I can't see anyone keeping this kind of comparison current and available in hardcopy, and limited gamut 8 bit sRGB or Adobe color standards on uncalibrated monitors make it rather pointless to do on the web if you're looking at subtleties.

Best to say what you're looking for in a film and ask for suggestions, then see what your local lab (or you) can do comparing several promising films yourself.

Lee

Thanks for your reply Lee, I thought that might be the case. I've tried out quite a few print films, just not transparency. It looks like more testing will be needed!

I'd just shoot the tests myself. Without keeping lighting, metering, scenes, developing (in B&W), scanners, post processing, etc. consistent, it can be hard to tell the differences in some of these films. Get a couple rolls and setup a test scene and do some side-by-side tests yourself.

Ektar is a good example for me. It does have finer grain and more saturation than a lot of other C41 films. But to my eye, if the grain isn't an issue, it's not *that* different than something like Portra 160VC in terms of color. The lighting and scanning have WAY more impact in my experience than the choice between those two films. Not that there aren't differences between them. I just find it somewhat odd that someone would absolutely rave about Ektar (which they do) and not care for Portra VC. I think they'd be surprised if they did some side-by-side tests.

Tim, you're right about the variables, even thinking about them and how to correct them almost brings on a headache. I suppose it's extremely unlikely to find this sort of thing in a book but I may have more luck in the form of a website. Probably the best of these sorts of comparisons I've found is on Tim Parkin's blog found here, it's not scientific but it gives me a rough idea about how the films react.

It may even be more fun just to suck it and see, grab a roll of whatever comes to hand and see how it turns out.

That's a nice link. Thanks for that. I shot some comparisons of Kodak's pro color negs with some color charts. Was informative to me.