Portra 160 or Ektar 100 - latitude in highlights - interiors photography

[loccdor]

Let it also be said that with extreme highlight rendition in shots with high dynamic range your lens' propensity to flare and its coatings will also play a role.

In medium format, Kodak Gold 200 and Portra 800 have a pretty similar rendition to me on the colors. That makes sense because they are both based on older technology. Portra 800 has a little flatter contrast than gold by design, used at box speed. For absolute creaminess in natural-color photographs, there is nothing in Portra 160/400's league, in my opinion. Ektar is trying to emulate positive film so it makes sense that it would behave differently. I have found it requires a lot more finesse and understanding to get the best shots with it.

 

[DREW WILEY]

I've posted many times before on how to get the most out of Ektar in terms of proper filtration and correct exposure. But the "I can fix anything is Photoshop afterwards" crowd never seems to listen, and hence their complaints about Kodak and this particular film continue on, like a dripping faucet.

 

[BrianShaw]

I've posted many times before on how to get the most out of Ektar in terms of proper filtration and correct exposure. But the "I can fix anything is Photoshop afterwards" crowd never seems to listen, and hence their complaints about Kodak and this particular film continue on, like a dripping faucet.

Examples might help bolster your position, no matter how inaccurate the scanned and online presentation may be. Dripping faucets seems fairly common occurance...

 

[koraks]

their complaints about Kodak and this particular film continue on

I don't read many complaints about Ektar here, to be honest. Repeated warnings about highlight crossover, yes. But most of those are from your hand!

 

[DREW WILEY]

Do the real homework like I have. Tit for tat is meaningless when it comes to optimizing film performance. I have plenty of examples - way beyond the ambiguous quality expectations of the web. Serious enquirers view real prints. Some have flown across the country to see and discuss such things in person. Otherwise, I don't have a lot of sympathy for people stuck in their bad habits. Either take my advice or not. It makes no difference to me personally. I simply can't afford to waste expensive 8x10 film on unnecessary errors.

Most of what I learned about this I learned the hard way. The other half I learned as advice from a Hollywood cinematographer highly experienced with multiple film types. Those guys either bag a specified look spot on, or else might not get the next contract. I learned the importance of proper K temp balancing in relation to controlling color neg crossover - a very well known issue with such pros, who might deliberately abuse it for effect, or might mitigate it, depending; but they certainly recognize it.

Ektar presents a similar problem, but on steroids when it comes to blue/cyan schizophrenia, especially on the borderline of acceptable exposure levels. Properly handled, it has the cleanest hue palette of any color neg film ever. Pretend the problem doesn't exist, and then you have certain blatant repro issues characteristic of forums like this one. C'mon, folks, just how hard is it to screw a basic skylight or warming filter onto the lens to begin with?

If that five second chore is just too hopelessly difficult for you, then stick with an artificially warmed portrait-style color neg film instead, like the Portra series.

 

[DREW WILEY]

The idea is to truncate some of the green contamination in the blue. That's what the pinkishness or salmon effect of a skylight filter does, or the slight amber-red of a KR1.5. Ever wonder why blue shadows with Ektar are annoyingly tinged with cyan (though not as badly as the previous Ektar 25), or why it's so hard to get deep blue sky rendering without a cyan inflection? (or why, using that same flaw to your advantage, why Ektar provides such a stunning reproduction of turquoise tropical waters?)

Go ahead, protest, ridicule, whatever ... But do yourself a favor in the search engine, and recall the same thing explained by the late Ron Mowrey (PE), and why he simply left a skylight filter on his camera the whole time when shooting CN films, and his own estimate of the idiosyncrasies of Ektar, which happen to be identical to mine.

 

[BrianShaw]

Drew, I'm really confused. Who are you arguing with? You seem to be a bit agitated and discussing something with yourself. Personally, I'm not finding anything you espouse to be incorrect and, in fact, it's basically what I've done and do. Not sure about anyone else...

 

[DREW WILEY]

That's nice to know. I'm speaking in general, not necessarily to any one individual. The gist of it is, in this case, the further one gets from the bullseye of correct exposure, out in the nether regions, the bigger the crossover problem.
It's not just about density and saturation errors. In other words, don't bet on "latitude" to bail you out.

 

[Les Sarile]

The question of gambling with "latitude" is, what is the expense to the color quality? Realistically, Ektar has only about one stop more each direction than a typical chrome/slide film. Yeah, you might be able to retrieve something; but a certain amount of crossover will have set in, which can be difficult or impossible to post-correct.

For example, the frames Les provided, to whatever extent they might be accurate over the web, say the same thing. Only the EV 0 looks reasonably correct; everything else looks progressively off or downright miserable. You can do whatever you want just for fun. But if it were a commercial shoot for sake of reproduction, the other 11 frames would end up in the garbage. The crossover in most of them is appalling. Is the box orange or yellow? Is the lettering blue or violet? Is the background purple, gray, green, aquamarine, or pink? You've got a Kaleidoscope of crossover.

And rather than a box of crayons, next time try something more objective, like a MacBeth Color Checker Chart with its truly neutral gray scale, exposed at the correct color temp of 5500K.

Same goes for that "shadow correction" tool. It simply lightens up some contrast, but can't cure the hue errors in those sick shadows.

Gambling with latitude? I by no means am the first to point this out as I have read many Modern and Popular Photography reviews about film that have identified this characteristic many decades ago now. I would encourage others to do their own tests - including their post work, to understand the results they can achieve.

Having this knowledge helps me expand my shooting opportunities. For instance, I came upon this scene and my averaging in camera meter suggested 1/60. However, I wanted that silky water flow look and needed 1 second. Using Kodak Ektar 100, I had all the confidence I would get what I wanted going +6 over my camera's meter.

Kodak Ektar 100_14-08 by Les DMess, on Flickr

 

[Lachlan Young]

It would do many of the people taking hardline, doctrinal, and error ridden positions on professional colour negative materials' latitude (which is really for colour correction ability, not density as the DIR couplers will stop excessive density) a lot of good if they bothered to check the overexposure latitude literally DX coded on to the 35mm canisters... Ektar and Portra are both only +1 overexposure latitude (Pro Image and Gold are wider) - the lower contrast of the Portras can make it seem that they have a little more latitude than that, but your ability to colour correct within realistic (as opposed to someone's brute force LUT chopping off and jamming colours to where it demands they should go, sometimes with strange relationships to the source material) ranges does require respecting the underlying material. The fact they can be misused that much and be ok enough, says a lot about the design team and their expectations of the abilities of many end users...

And BTW, those crossover characteristics of Ektar are signifiers of it being overexposed outside of its latitude.

 

[BrianShaw]

Film latitude appears to be an amateur concept as it is overtly mentioned in the Kodak Gold 200 datasheet but not in the datasheets for Ektar100, Portra160 or Portra400. Hmmm.

Perhaps the difference is the tendency for amateur acceptance of a "usable/salvagable image" versus the professional quest for a "perfect/correct image"

 

[Les Sarile]

Film latitude appears to be an amateur concept as it is overtly mentioned in the Kodak Gold 200 datasheet but not in the datasheets for Ektar100, Portra160 or Portra400. Hmmm.

Perhaps the difference is the tendency for amateur acceptance of a "usable/salvagable image" versus the professional quest for a "perfect/correct image"

Clearly the most sensible marketing strategy ever. Sell the amateur stuff to the masses and withold the professional stuff to the few perfectionists. What could possibly go wrong . . .

 

[DREW WILEY]

Gold was designed for not only unmetered exposure errors, but for less than ideal storage prior to sale, often well out of date. It's all my mother used. The color always came out wrong, highlights were washed out, but as long as the snapshots arrived at the tiny country store the next week, and people or the dog could be recognized, that was about all one could hope for. And the frames were always crooked - she'd look down in the viewfinder, then look up and say, "smile", and twist the angle of the camera as she pressed the shutter - every time. The store always had a few boxes of Gold 200 on hand, plus some Kodachrome, on the same shelf as the rifle and shotgun shells.

Lachlan just well phrased my own estimate of Ektar. Approach its exposure with the same respect as you do a slide film, and you'll get along with it fine. Roll the "latitude" dice and you probably won't.

 

[pentaxuser]

To Lachlan or anyone else who knows about these things concerning over exposure and who care to reply, can I ask what are the problems in the 6 stops of over exposure in the picture that Les Sarile has shown us. It looks OK to me

I am assuming that Les means 6 stops of light more than was required at 1/60 so he left the aperture the same as it was for the 1/60 that the meter gave him and didn't alter the aperture to restrict it to the same amount of light as would have been the case at 1/60


Drew's quote
Gold was designed for not only unmetered exposure errors, but for less than ideal storage prior to sale, often well out of date. It's all my mother used. The color always came out wrong, highlights were washed out, but as long as the snapshots arrived at the tiny country store the next week, and people or the dog could be recognized, that was about all one could hope for. And the frames were always crooked - she'd look down in the viewfinder, then look up and say, "smile", and twist the angle of the camera as she pressed the shutter - every time. The store always had a few boxes of Gold 200 on hand, plus some Kodachrome, on the same shelf as the rifle and shotgun shells.

Drew, some of what you say about Gold's problems are good things aren't they, such as coping with unmetered exposures and coping with less than ideal storage and others are operator error are they not?

Thanks

pentaxuser

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Gambling with latitude? I by no means am the first to point this out as I have read many Modern and Popular Photography reviews about film that have identified this characteristic many decades ago now. I would encourage others to do their own tests - including their post work, to understand the results they can achieve.

Having this knowledge helps me expand my shooting opportunities. For instance, I came upon this scene and my averaging in camera meter suggested 1/60. However, I wanted that silky water flow look and needed 1 second. Using Kodak Ektar 100, I had all the confidence I would get what I wanted going +6 over my camera's meter.

Kodak Ektar 100_14-08 by Les DMess, on Flickr

Les, Moving white water and a few rocks don't really show very much color representation and inaccuracies. Put a few people with flesh and other colors into the picture in order to provide more valuable information.

 

[BrianShaw]

To Lachlan or anyone else who knows about these things concerning over exposure and who care to reply, can I ask what are the problems in the 6 stops of over exposure in the picture that Les Sarile has shown us. It looks OK to me

To me that seems the crux of the disagreement... individual tolerance for "nonrealistic" exposure/color. Some folks are much more tolerant of that than others. The other crux is the aspect of postprocessing. Some folks have no tolerance at all for that.

To me, the Crayola examples help clarify personal tolerance levels.

Personally speaking, sometimes I'm with Drew's Mom and other times I'm with Drew; It depends.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Different films were targeted to different markets. Good ole Gold 200 was a home run for casual amateur snapshot needs. Or one might just like its look even under controlled shooting. CN Pro films themselves differed quite a bit, and came in sheet film sizes too, but were still rather muddied-up with pumpkinish warm neutrals due to an overt emphasis on Caucasian skintones. Fuji was understandably better with Asian skintones. Greens were poisoned with cyan (look at Stephen Shore's 70's work based on Vericolor L). Then films started to progressively improve. Today you've got a stellar products in Portra 160, which inherits the former commercial emphasis, yet also Ektar as a real competitor to chrome film performance, but certainly not ideal for careless use. And the lil' ole dinosaur species itself, Gold, is still around. So it's a good time for film, with the obvious exception of high prices and the fade-away of what Fuji did well. I wish Agfa were still around too.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Replying to Les - What can I say? I wrote technical articles and serious equipment reviews for professional trade journals, which paid quite well. But anything "Popular-this, Pop that" is apt to be a cornucopia of shoot-from-the-hip BS. Some of it was so absurd that friends would bring me particularly egregious examples in old magazines just for sake of laughs. Not a real article, but it almost could have been - Popular Mechanix : "How to Build Your Own Nuclear Submarine Using Old Washing Machine Parts". Now an actual ad in one of those: "How to drill your own water well using your home 1/4-inch drill". I could hardly begin to relate the sheer mass of BS in Consumer Reports; for example, they once rated Leica as the worst 35mm camera of all, because you didn't even get a free case or filter set. The web review site craze has made things even worse. Certainly not all of it is bad, but you sure have to be careful.

And yeah, tastes and tolerance levels differ. But it doesn't take much exposure error to turn a finely-tuned product like Ektar into a "We aren't in Kansas anymore" experience, but in some psychedelically colored Oz world.

 

[koraks]

what are the problems in the 6 stops of over exposure in the picture that Les Sarile has shown us. It looks OK to me

It's a one-stop SBR scene. If you photograph a normal scene that has let's say a 6 stop SBR and you overexpose by 6 stops, the highlights are pushed into oblivion. It's been said before, but I don't like to bash Les' test - it's nice and he actually took the effort to demonstrate something. But the risk is that one would conclude from it that it's OK to overexpose by 6 stops, which is a conclusion that's only supported if you're strictly talking about a scene that's extremely flat to begin with. In those cases, yes, you have more leeway depending on what you're after. But it's the polar opposite of what @sperera is doing (let's not forget he asked for some practical advice for his application...)

 

[pentaxuser]

Thanks koraks. I appreciate the point of your last sentence that the scene may be inapplicable to the OP but clearly it would appear that there are outdoor scenes where 6 stop over does produce OK prints. In the case of most of the U.K and probably N Europe for much of the year such overexposure where required may be successful or so it seems to me based on my examination of Les' print on Ektar

What we do rather better on Photrio than sometimes we should is to get to a position where we end up at "opposite corners" when it is not necessary.

If something I see seems to demonstrate the opposite of what is being stated then I want to point that out

pentaxuser

 

[Les Sarile]

To Lachlan or anyone else who knows about these things concerning over exposure and who care to reply, can I ask what are the problems in the 6 stops of over exposure in the picture that Les Sarile has shown us. It looks OK to me

I am assuming that Les means 6 stops of light more than was required at 1/60 so he left the aperture the same as it was for the 1/60 that the meter gave him and didn't alter the aperture to restrict it to the same amount of light as would have been the case at 1/60


Drew's quote
Gold was designed for not only unmetered exposure errors, but for less than ideal storage prior to sale, often well out of date. It's all my mother used. The color always came out wrong, highlights were washed out, but as long as the snapshots arrived at the tiny country store the next week, and people or the dog could be recognized, that was about all one could hope for. And the frames were always crooked - she'd look down in the viewfinder, then look up and say, "smile", and twist the angle of the camera as she pressed the shutter - every time. The store always had a few boxes of Gold 200 on hand, plus some Kodachrome, on the same shelf as the rifle and shotgun shells.

Drew, some of what you say about Gold's problems are good things aren't they, such as coping with unmetered exposures and coping with less than ideal storage and others are operator error are they not?

Thanks

pentaxuser

Your assumption is correct, I kept the aperture and just varied the shutter speed.

I grew up using Instamatic and plastic disposables but I don't ever recall getting really aberrant results not since minilabs turned to scanning. A perfectly bad example of this is from Kodak Gold 100 below with the scan provided by a Noritsu minilab vs my own.

Kodak Gold 100-7_30-36 Coolscan-Noritsu by Les DMess, on Flickr

Most of the time they just over sharpen, blowout highlights and loose detail when I know that most all color negative film retains this info as in this case taken on Fuji 100.

Fuji 100_01-13 scanned with Noritsu-Coolscan by Les DMess, on Flickr

There is no doubt minilabs cutting costs and time is the main reason for this. Unfortunately, people who don't have the resources may not even know the bad results they are seeing is not their fault.

 

[Les Sarile]

Les, Moving white water and a few rocks don't really show very much color representation and inaccuracies. Put a few people with flesh and other colors into the picture in order to provide more valuable information.

If a controlled color product shot with many colors of the Crayola box doesn't work for you, how about my response with example of me in it in page 2 #48 . . .

 

[DREW WILEY]

There are just so many variables that you haven't firmly pinned down yet, Les, that it's hard to know what to think.
Those Crayola examples were downright abominable, that much we can be sure of : "Latitude" via Torquemada and a Spanish Inquisition torture chamber - even El Greco couldn't come up with more ghoulish hue shifts in some of those examples (he no doubt went to a Minilab). The only reasonably balanced examples were the ones at correct box speed exposure. Kodak got it right.

But there's nothing wrong with fooling around and seeing what you can get away with, or what you might apply in some nonstandard creative manner. That's part of the photographic experience too.

 

[Les Sarile]

There are just so many variables that you haven't firmly pinned down yet, Les, that it's hard to know what to think.
Those Crayola examples were downright abominable, that much we can be sure of : "Latitude" via Torquemada and a Spanish Inquisition torture chamber - even El Greco couldn't come up with more ghoulish hue shifts in some of those examples (he no doubt went to a Minilab). The only reasonably balanced examples were the ones at correct box speed exposure. Kodak got it right.

But there's nothing wrong with fooling around and seeing what you can get away with, or what you might apply in some nonstandard creative manner. That's part of the photographic experience too.

Just to be sure, I am in no position to pin down even a fraction of all the variables nor am I interested in doing so.

That last statement is all I am suggesting. Your mileage may vary . . .

 

[pentaxuser]

If a controlled color product shot with many colors of the Crayola box doesn't work for you, how about my response with example of me in it in page 2 #48 . . .

Les, I had missed this one. Looks good as well. I am not looking to start an argument and I am no expert in estimating how many stops there are in a scene from a photo but this one with you and the same waterfall certainly looks to be more than a one stop SBR

Now that I know you scan and do not optically enlarge my only remaining question is this:

What if anything has been done with limited post processing that would be impossible with optical enlarging which is all I have any experience of doing

Thanks

pentaxuser