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Desaturated Color Film

Arthurwg

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Taos NM
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Can someone suggest a color film that will give soft, muted and delicate colors? My experience with Portra 400, for example, is the exact opposite, and I don't love it for what I'm doing. I believe the look I'm after may be achieved in post processing, but there may be other ways, including in-camera techniques.
 
Kodak Vision3. A.k.a. CineStill if you want/prefer/tolerate the lack of remjet. The 250D version comes close to the applicability of Portra 400. The 50D version is virtually grainless - but kind of slow.
 

Perhaps if you gave us an example of a picture of what you want we will be able to suggest some kind of film you can buy or something you can do that gets you what you want

Unless I am ignorant of some film out there that gives much more muted and delicate colours than Portra 400 I do wonder if your best chance of achieving what you want lies with some form of post processing

pentaxuser
 
Portra 160 is softer than Portra 400, but it all depends on just how far you want to go. In camera, you could add pre-flashing if you have double-exposure capacity; but that takes some practice.
 
Add more diffusion and flare to the light reaching the film.
With a time machine, go back to a few Agfa films that relied on proprietary processes.
Modern, high contrast lenses may be counter-productive to this.
 
If you could still get your hands on it... Fuji 400H is reputed to be more muted, and in my hybrid results it also seemed so. I donät know how the 160NS might have been in that sense.
 
Two more alternatives.

Bleach bypass. Skipping the bleach step and going directly from developer to the fixer. The retained silver decrease saturation but increase contrast (highlights density really).

LomoChrome Metropolis 2021 formula is a very low saturation film, but it is not totally neutral (tendency to greenish tones on daylight) and grainy in 35 mm.
 
Going the lo-fi route, I'd recommend Orwo NC500 instead of Lomo Metropolis. Horrible grain and a colour palette not to my liking, but the colours are definitely muted.
 
When i think of desaturated color images, the work of David Hamilton from the 1970's comes immediately to my mind. See if this is the look you had in mind: https://walkaboutblog.wordpress.com/2010/03/04/david-hamilton/

If so, he used a Minolta SRT 101 fitted with a 50mm rokkor f1.7 lens and kodak ectachrome 400 pushed to 800 or beyond to increase the grain. He also used a very simple trick of spraying hairspray onto a UV filter from varying distances to achieve the desire amount of diffusion and softness, which also helps to lower contrast and mute the colors. The same effect can be achieved with Tiffen Softnet filters, or breathing on your lens before exposure. I personally used to use Kodak 5247 cine film to achieve something similar. Today, I have used Lomography's LomoChrome Color '92 Sun-kissed film to get something similar - see it here: https://shop.lomography.com/us/lomochrome-color-92-sun-kissed-35-mm-iso-400.

Good Luck!

Paul
 
Lots of good suggestions. Love the Hamilton pictures but that may be too extreme for me. The Lomochrome looks good. I'll try it.
 
(Moderate) overexposure reduces saturation. You might want to watch Kyle McDougall's videos on Youtube where he tested popular film stocks for handling under- and over-exposure. Vintage uncoated lenses tend to reduce contrast and give softer colors.
 
Without a doubt, Vision3 are the films with the lowest color saturation.
 
Prest_400 said:
If you could still get your hands on it... Fuji 400H is reputed to be more muted, and in my hybrid results it also seemed so.
Click to expand...

Exposed at box speed, Fujifilm 400H is indeed a bit more muted compared to Portra 400, Ultramax 400 (and its repackaged version Lomography CN 400), Superia X-Tra 400.
But when you expose 400H at EI 200/24° it will give you wonderful saturated colors. The difference is very significant.
With 400H you get "Two films in one box".
 
Romanko said:
(Moderate) overexposure reduces saturation.
Click to expand...

Not generally. There are several CN films which react with a bit increased saturation by a moderate overexposure.
And sometimes - like with Fujifilm 400H - an overexposure indeed gives significantly higher saturation.
 
lamerko said:
Without a doubt, Vision3 are the films with the lowest color saturation.
Click to expand...

Without a doubt, that is not the case .
Compare Vision 3 films with Lomo Metropolis or Wolfen NC 500. And then you will see immediately that Metropolis and NC 500 have much much lower color saturation.
 
I’ve shot exactly one roll of Harman Phoenix 200 and found the warm colors (red, yellow) to be muted, while blues and greens are the opposite. Depending on what you are shooting, it could be an option. If you don’t mind excessive grain, lack of sharpness, massive halation, and a certain lack of predictability. Despite all this I actually really liked the film.

Two examples of the “same scene”, shot on different days and with different cameras. One was taken with Harman Phoenix, the other with Portra 800.

 
Angarian said:
Compare Vision 3 films with Lomo Metropolis or Wolfen NC 500.
Click to expand...

I suspect @lamerko was limiting the scope of options to regular/mature C41 films, and not experimental, prototype or otherwise niche products that deviate strongly from the way C41 negatives have looked since their inception. This would exclude products like Metropolis, Wolfen and Phoenix.

Whether that implicit limitation of scope is consistent with what @Arthurwg is looking for, we'd best leave up to him to decide.


cerber0s said:
I’ve shot exactly one roll of Harman Phoenix 200 and found the warm colors (red, yellow) to be muted, while blues and greens are the opposite.
Click to expand...

Depends on what you do with it. If wet printed in the same fashion I print regular color negative, Phoenix yields extremely super-saturated, excessively contrast prints. It's by no means muted in any way. It creates punchy colors in even the flattest, grey landscapes in overcast, dreary weather:


Of course, you can scan anything as flat as you want. I suspect that's what happened in your case.

cerber0s said:
the warm colors (red, yellow) to be muted
Click to expand...

I've not found this to be the case at all. All colors go to 11 on this film.
 

Metropolis is a long established film for years. Well known for its desaturated colors, but with certain color shifts. Yes, this a kind of "experimental" film. But if offers the desatured, muted colors it has been asked for here.

Wolfen NC 500 is also easily available, and not an experimental film, but with muted, desaturated colors in comparison to the normal Kodak and Fujifilm offerings. So if someone wants desaturated colors, he will definitely get it using that film.
 

You are most likely correct, I have zero experience wet printing color negatives, I’ve never had the necessary equipment. How much control do you have over color saturation when you’re printing them, and what part of the process controls saturation?

When scanning I always find it difficult knowing what the film actually should look like.

Nice photos!
 
cerber0s said:
How much control do you have over color saturation when you’re printing them
Click to expand...

Very little, really. You can do a bit with paper choice, but it doesn't make much of a difference. You could do bleach bypass on the paper, which does something as well, but you're already digging a hole at this point that has other drawbacks. Masking etc isn't easy and especially so for saturation control. For all intents and purposes, beyond paper choice you really can't do much in this regard. So what you see on paper really is what the film gives you!

Thanks for the compliment btw.
 
My limited experience is that I accidentally developed some Fuji Superia for 3 mins 45 secs and the negatives were much more saturated. In fact far too much saturatíon for my taste despite the prints still being just about acceptable

I have never tried it but I strongly suspect that shortening development to less than 3 mins 15 secs would not give the kind of desaturated look that the OP is looking for although I can't really be sure what it is he is looking for as he hasn't given us any examples or indicators against which we can judge his requirements

pentaxuser
 
pentaxuser said:
I have never tried it but I strongly suspect that shortening development to less than 3 mins 15 secs would not give the kind of desaturated look that the OP is looking for
Click to expand...

I have tried it, with Superia 200. I overexposed it by a stop or so in order to make up for the loss of density due to shorter development. I can't remember how long I developed, but I think around 2:40 or thereabouts. The results were certainly flatter color- and contrast-wise, so more muted overall. But more importantly, the whole image was soft and fuzzy and lacking sharp definition. Apparently underdevelopment quite strongly affects acutance. It might work for certain subject matter, but I found bleach bypass a more pleasing way to subdue saturation.
 
koraks said:
I found bleach bypass a more pleasing way to subdue saturation.
Click to expand...
It will be good if OP could post a few images to demonstrate the look we are trying to replicate. Are "soft, muted and delicate colors" are more like pastel or water color? Or we are trying to achieve a dark and moody look of a bleach bypass?
 

The second image has a look of Agfa CNS colour film from the 1970s. Very nice.
 
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