Kodak Portra 400VC for night photography?

athanasius80 · Dec 1, 2008

Has anybody used Portra 400VC for night photography? Any thoughts? Suggestions on EI? Warnings?

Thanks a lot!
Chris

Pinholemaster · Dec 1, 2008

Due to extreme contrast ranges at night, the VC version of this film might be overkill. But what the hell, give it a try. If you like the results, who am I to say you shouldn't use it. Best to test the same night scene with all the Portra 400 film to get a side by side comparison. Then you can be the authority to tell us what works.

nickandre · Dec 3, 2008

Any film looks cool at night. The human eye sees in black and white at night, so the true colors look weird and interesting. With a negative film open up the shutter and close it when you feel like it. For EI 200 digital, 30 seconds at F4ish works quite well. I'll let you do the math. Overexpose to get more shadow detail, decrease contrast, and compensate for reciprocity failure.

EDIT: I guess I should mention that I was photographing the light cast from street lights of boston reflecting off the clouds. It looked cool but is considerably dimmer than, say, a street scene.

mtjade2007 · Dec 4, 2008

400VC loves sunny days. You could use it for night photography. But to get the best out of this film you need sunny days and shoot it outdoors.

Sirius Glass · Dec 5, 2008

mtjade2007 said:
400VC loves sunny days. You could use it for night photography. But to get the best out of this film you need sunny days and shoot it outdoors.

Yes, and Kodak UC 400 is great for red rock in Utah and Arizona on a sunny day.

Steve

aparat · Dec 5, 2008

I am assuming you will be using a tripod and long exposures. If that is the case, I would recommend a slower film, such as Portra 160 NC to minimize grain, which otherwise shows up in shadow areas. Also, the NC version will undoubtedly handle high contrast better than the VC. I personally have had good luck with Fujifilm Superia 100 for night exposures. It's probably one of the cheapest color films, it has moderate contrast, and fine grain.

nworth · Dec 5, 2008

I tried it a last September with disappointing results. Although this film has good reciprocity characteristics down to one second, it seemed to give up on me for really long exposures. That may be me or my equipment, however, and I need to give it another try.

Thanasis · Dec 5, 2008

nworth said:
I tried it a last September with disappointing results. Although this film has good reciprocity characteristics down to one second, it seemed to give up on me for really long exposures. That may be me or my equipment, however, and I need to give it another try.

Hmm...not sure that i would consider 1 sec without any compensation as "good reciprocity characteristics". When you say that it gave up on you, do you mean that there was an unattractive colour shift or perhaps too dark?

2F/2F · Dec 5, 2008

It will work, but in my experience, for night shooting, it helps to have something that can be pulled quite a bit. This usually means using a transparency film instead of a negative film. You can pull transparencies significantly without horribly affecting color (which will be a bit wonky anyhow), but C-41 is very touchy with underdevelopment due to the short normal development time of 3:15. You also have much better reciprocity maintenance with the transparency films available now. I would try the 400VC, but also try a roll of Provia 400X alongside it. Place your highlights and pull the Provia as many as 2.5 stops. Since the color is going to be haywire anyhow, you can probably go to a full one-stop pull with the C-41 film and not ruin the negs. To maintain "perfectly" correctable color, I would not pull C-41 any more than 1/2 stop.

nworth · Dec 6, 2008

Thanasis said:
Hmm...not sure that i would consider 1 sec without any compensation as "good reciprocity characteristics". When you say that it gave up on you, do you mean that there was an unattractive colour shift or perhaps too dark?

With night exposures of 20 minutes to an hour, there was very little image.

Kodak Portra 400VC for night photography?

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