First Roll of Portra 800

RattyMouse · Sep 5, 2016

Last night I bought my very first roll of Portra 800. I'm back in China now, the first time since leaving home there 1 year ago. I thought I'd try to take some color shots of some part of the city and since I'm at work during the day, I will need a higher speed film for the night time when I'm out with my camera. I'm shooting with my Fuji GA645, so I've only got an f/4 lens. Every bit of speed counts if the light is low.

I'm wondering how high I can rate this film and still have normal looking images, not ones blown by massive amounts of contrast. Maybe I'll be shooting in an area that has enough light for ISO800, but if not, I'd like to know if ISO1600 is an available option. I assume ISO3200 is going too far.

TIA

pentaxuser · Sep 5, 2016

I think there was a thread which included a post showing what may have been Portra 400 at various speeds. It might have been part of the very long thread on Digibase kits but this is a sheere guess as I cannot really recall the thread and searching APUG is a bit hit or miss for me but maybe someone else with a better memory will give the link

OK even if I am right, it wasn't Portra 800 but it shoud give you some idea of the leeway you get at higher speed.

Best of luck and show us the results if you will. Thanks

pentaxuser

Rudeofus · Sep 5, 2016

Portra 400 is a very recent film based on Vision 3 technology. AFAIK Portra 800 was never updated to this technology, so there may be significant differences between these two apart from their different ISO rating.

pentaxuser · Sep 5, 2016

Rudeofus said:
Portra 400 is a very recent film based on Vision 3 technology. AFAIK Portra 800 was never updated to this technology, so there may be significant differences between these two apart from their different ISO rating.

Thanks for that. I had not realised this. As long as it is not too far off subject it will be instructive for me and maybe others if we were able to see Rattymouse's stuff at say 800 and 1600 and Porta at 800 and 1600

pentaxuser

pentaxuser · Sep 5, 2016

I have just done a bit more research and my reference to the Digibase kits was wrong. It does include examples of photographs but these were about the range of developing temperatures and not film speed.

However PE appears to have stated that the safe "rule of thumb" for all colour C41 films is one stop under so 1600 and he has seen two stops under so 3200. In the post I looked at he didn't express an actual opinion about two stops under but my inference was that it might be acceptable if you had no choice

However you might find it interesting to look at a thread entitled "13 stops" posted by baachitraka on 30 march 2016 in which he links to a petapixel article which details an experiment with both Portra 400 and Fuji 400H. In that article he has pictures of the same scene at 5/6 stops over and 4 stops under

The difference between the two films' ability to handle underexposure appears remarkable. Portra wins hands-down and three stops under looked very acceptable to me so that Portra 400 acceptable at 3200 which is remarkable

Needless to say there was some controversy in the thread about Petapixel's evidence but when is there not controversy on APUG?

While Portra 800 may not be the same film as Portra 400 except for double speed, it might be safe to assume that 1600 is quite acceptable and 3200 might be passable.

Let us know your findings

pentaxuser

rpavich · Sep 5, 2016

How do you get 2 or 3 stops underexposed and get good negatives?
Pushing isnt possible with C41 or at least that's what I think, might not be true.

Ai Print · Sep 5, 2016

rpavich said:
How do you get 2 or 3 stops underexposed and get good negatives?
Pushing isnt possible with C41 or at least that's what I think, might not be true.

Before switching to digital, most newspapers pushed 800 speed color neg all the time, I regularly did one and two stop pushes to 3,200 with all the usual outcomes like increased grain, flatter color and more grain in the shadows. But we also knew exactly how we wanted it to reproduce so films like Fuji 800 Super G and Kodak press 800 were pretty much made for pushing.

To overcome the grainy shadows, we just increased contrast after scanning and then pulled in more black after the conversion to CMYK. Worked like a charm.

Richard Man · Sep 5, 2016

Ai Print said:
Before switching to digital, most newspapers pushed 800 speed color neg all the time, I regularly did one and two stop pushes to 3,200 with all the usual outcomes like increased grain, flatter color and more grain in the shadows. But we also knew exactly how we wanted it to reproduce so films like Fuji 800 Super G and Kodak press 800 were pretty much made for pushing.

Daniel, have you tried increasing developing time also? (e.g. 1 stop = 30% more time)

Rudeofus · Sep 6, 2016

This whole 'you can shoot it at EI XYZ' is an incomplete statement unless one also stated where exposure is measured. If you meter in shadow regions, you can expose at a much higher EI than if you measure highlights of the same scene.

Also note, that some of the 800 labeled films are actually ISO 640 material.

mnemosyne · Sep 6, 2016

RattyMouse said:
Last night I bought my very first roll of Portra 800. I'm back in China now, the first time since leaving home there 1 year ago. I thought I'd try to take some color shots of some part of the city and since I'm at work during the day, I will need a higher speed film for the night time when I'm out with my camera. I'm shooting with my Fuji GA645, so I've only got an f/4 lens. Every bit of speed counts if the light is low.

I'm wondering how high I can rate this film and still have normal looking images, not ones blown by massive amounts of contrast. Maybe I'll be shooting in an area that has enough light for ISO800, but if not, I'd like to know if ISO1600 is an available option. I assume ISO3200 is going too far.

TIA

I don't see how changing the rating should result in "massive amounts of contrast". If you rate the film higher, you will mostly loose shadow detail, the contrast should not be affected very much. OTOH, if you intend to actually push the film (your post is not clear about that), the Kodak tech sheet shows some data for a 1 and 2 stop push with Portra 800, so could indicate that the film reacts in a relatively benign way to push processing or was even engineered with that possibility in mind.

rpavich · Sep 6, 2016

Ai Print said:
Before switching to digital, most newspapers pushed 800 speed color neg all the time, I regularly did one and two stop pushes to 3,200 with all the usual outcomes like increased grain, flatter color and more grain in the shadows. ...

What I meant was; given that the normal way to push film is to underexpose it and then overdevelop it, and seeing how color film is developed in the same temp/time no matter what the ISO rating is...how is that done? Is it done the same as B&W film where you increase time or temp to overdevelop?

Ai Print · Sep 6, 2016

Richard Man said:
Daniel, have you tried increasing developing time also? (e.g. 1 stop = 30% more time)

The last time I souped C41 like that was in 2001 so I can't really remember what the number was but we absolutely did increase development time. I do remember Fuji 800 Super G was at the time, the best film for that and did outstanding at 1,600 and was quite usable at 3,200. It took until about 2002 until digi started exceeding that image quality and now of course it is a whole other planet at 1,600 and above.

BrianShaw · Sep 6, 2016

Am I the only one left on the face of the earth that uses a flash when the light levels get low?

rpavich · Sep 6, 2016

BrianShaw said:
Am I the only one left on the face of the earth that uses a flash when the light levels get low?

Lol...no but it's not always practical or desirable. I can think of several situations where I'd not want to use flash. (especially on camera on-axis flash, in that instance, never)

Ai Print · Sep 6, 2016

BrianShaw said:
Am I the only one left on the face of the earth that uses a flash when the light levels get low?

Of course not, if used well or even in an unorthodox inventive fashion it can be very effective.

But since being utterly masterful at using either ambient coninuous light or short duration strobe is often fairly essential to the making of a truly great photograph, knowing what tool to use for what photograph is no doubt a gatekeeper in the equation of attaining that result.

MartinP · Sep 6, 2016

I recall a discussion on pre-flash for improving shadow quality on 135 colour-neg -- did anyone ever come up with a practical way to do that for 120? Of course, with 135 the sprocket holes allow sufficient framing precision and the film is easy to rewind, while with 120 this is less simple.

mehguy · Sep 6, 2016

Rudeofus said:
Portra 400 is a very recent film based on Vision 3 technology. AFAIK Portra 800 was never updated to this technology, so there may be significant differences between these two apart from their different ISO rating.

Is this why portra 800's box hasnt been updated?

Rudeofus · Sep 7, 2016

MartinP said:
I recall a discussion on pre-flash for improving shadow quality on 135 colour-neg -- did anyone ever come up with a practical way to do that for 120? Of course, with 135 the sprocket holes allow sufficient framing precision and the film is easy to rewind, while with 120 this is less simple.

My RZ67 can do multiple exposures on the same frame. Since preflash has to be done right before the shot anyway, there should be no issues with framing precision.

@mehguy: Manufacturers can and will change design of their packaging whenever they feel like it, but not changing the packaging is often a good indication that the product inside hasn't changed either.

mehguy · Sep 7, 2016

Rudeofus said:
My RZ67 can do multiple exposures on the same frame. Since preflash has to be done right before the shot anyway, there should be no issues with framing precision.

@mehguy: Manufacturers can and will change design of their packaging whenever they feel like it, but not changing the packaging is often a good indication that the product inside hasn't changed either.

Yes, but I was refering to portra's 800 box was the odd one out compared to 160 and 400, in terms of how the box looked.

MartinP · Sep 7, 2016

Rudeofus said:
My RZ67 can do multiple exposures on the same frame. Since preflash has to be done right before the shot anyway, there should be no issues with framing precision.

With 135 and sheet-film the pre-flash, once the value is worked out by testing, can be very simply applied in advance of shooting the roll or sheet. It is only 120 that makes things a bit tricky, so far as I can see requiring the procedure you describe of pre-flash/shoot/wind-on/repeat.

RattyMouse · Sep 8, 2016

BrianShaw said:
Am I the only one left on the face of the earth that uses a flash when the light levels get low?

I plan to shoot night life on Shanghai streets with my roll of Portra 800. Would you use flash in this situation?

First Roll of Portra 800

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