Needs some quick assistance! Colour slide film for photographing concerts

Hello,

Its nearly 3pm here in Melbourne and I have two hours to sort out what I should buy.

I have to shoot in colour slide film as the semester I'm studying for final folio is colour slide. We usually use 100 ISO Fuji sensia, but tonight i'm going to a gig in a dark bar to take photos of a band and I'd like to know what I should purchase.

i can't get any film higher than 400ISO but I was thinking I could push it a stop to 800.

The ones I'm looking at are:

Fuji Sensia 400 or Kodak Elitechrome 400

The person at one shop I rang to check their closing times suggested spending extra on the Fuji Provia ($36.20) but I want to have at least two rolls and $70 is wayyyy too much, though she assured me provia would be best to push.

Has anyone gone any suggestions/preferences to help guide my purchasing? (i'm going to the shops in 2 hours hence the time for feedback from you lovely people!)

too late, but advice for next time

If you are shooting in a bar, there is a very good chance that the stage/performance area will be lit with tungsten stage lights. Some are HMI units that are whiter in their light output, but most are just big incandesant bulbs in cans.

There are ektachrome and fujichrome T designated E-6 films that are meant for just such situations. They are colour balanced to be shot under these lighting situations with no or minimal filtration to correct for colour mis-match.

Daylight balanced films will need a big stop loser clour correcting filter. Then the fast film speed will be lost to the filtration.

I have used an Ektachrome 320T in such a situation and was very pleased with the results.

Another tip- take a prime lens if you have one, and a mini tripod - you will want as fast a lens as you can get, and you can always brace a mini-tripod against your chest if there is nothing else around to put it against.

This might be getting to you much too late, though I am also posting for future reference for anyone else. I have many years doing low light and night imaging using transparency films, including lots of testing and comparing films.

I have used Kodak E200 (not Elite Chrome 200) for both night club and concert/band photography. The Kodak documents list one stop as ISO 320 to three stops at suggested ISO 800; basically non-linear push characteristic or you can consider push and extra exposure compensation. After shooting a ton of this, I have run it out to 4 2/3 stops push (with exposure compensation).

Kodak Ektachrome P1600 can go easily to be used at ISO 6400, and probably the only film I know of like this in colour transparency. Unfortunately expensive and slightly high grain.

I have also used Kodak Ektachrome 320T at four stops push. The benefit is not filtering (80A,82A,82B) the lens, so easier to use. Grain is noticable, though not bad for some subjects. Compared to E200, I stopped using this film, since E200 goes through a bluer colour shift beyond 3 stops push; in other words a strong blue 80A is too much and a weak blue 82A is quite enough).

One interesting film of the past was Fujichrome MS100/1000, which had great push performance. Unfortunately it was discontinued a few years ago. This I think gave much better results than Provia 400. Now we also have a newer Provia 400X, though I have not tested that yet (it looks promissing).

Kodak Elitechrome 400 is not a very good film, and contrast goes quite higher with any push. This is similar to Ektachrome 400X, which is also grainey. I am less suer how Sensia 400 would perform, though it is a differently cured version of the older Provia 400. In general, I have experienced inconsistant results with consumer transparency films, and I tend to now avoid them for paying gigs.

Anyway, hope your shoot went okay. At least it was for an assignment in school, so if something did not go so well, then you at least had an opportunity to learn something.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat
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