Portra 400 blah

Wayne · Feb 4, 2020

I've been doing some googling. I want to try a faster film for handheld natural light TLR photography than the Ektar I've been using. I primarily want the speed, but better skin tone rendition is not undesirable. Obviously this speed increase involves tradeoffs in contrast and saturation. However when I look at Portra 400 images online, they are mostly incredibly blahhhh. I don't see tradeoffs, I see someone who gave the farm away. Contrast too low, saturation too low, in short, I think they are great big piles of washed out suckiness.

Is that really what I can expect from Portra 400?

mshchem · Feb 4, 2020

Are you making darkroom prints?

cramej · Feb 4, 2020

If you're comparing it to Ektar, then yes, it has lower saturation and contrast - hence the name "Portra". But it's by no means blahh. It's considerably better than the old NC(really blech!) and VC films. As much as I like the Fuji Pro400h, I tend to like the newer Portra flavors over it.

When looking for Portra 400 images on flickr, just ignore most of the hipster crap that's probably from expired and underexposed film. I found that searching by color along the top actually shows some pretty nice results that are definitely not blah.

koraks · Feb 4, 2020

mshchem said:
Are you making darkroom prints?

Relevant question. Film choice has a significant impact on the final look of the prints if darkroom prints are made. If the film is scanned and further digitally processed, the sky is the limit in how you want to make it look.

Ogling pictures on the web only gets you so far. I think we all do it when considering buying some new material, but it's only in your own hands when you really get to know it. How much does a roll of Portra cost, in the end? Just give it a try, it's the only way to find out for real.

And yes, Portra 400 is probably the most subdued still film stock out there. If you welcome better skin tone rendition, then this is a large part of the 'magic' - controlled contrast and saturation. If you want punchy images, better let go of the smooth skin rendition desire, because those are pretty much at odds with each other.

MattKing · Feb 4, 2020

This is Portra 400 - but the appearance is really just related to the subject, the lighting and thr scan and the post processing.
The negative gives you lots to work with:

DREW WILEY · Feb 4, 2020

Depends what you need and want. If you need a fast portrait film, Portra 400 is a great choice. Similar to 160VC but faster, though I found 160VC to have cleaner color for landscape applications (I now use Ektar, and it's unique, so don't bother looking for a high-speed equivalent).

pentaxuser · Feb 4, 2020

Wayne said:
However when I look at Portra 400 images online, they are mostly incredibly blahhhh. I don't see tradeoffs, I see someone who gave the farm away. Contrast too low, saturation too low, in short, I think they are great big piles of washed out suckiness.

Is that really what I can expect from Portra 400?

If that is what you see and you appear to be unequivocal in your opinion then I wonder what you expect to hear from us that could ever change your mind? We can say that Portra is not blahhh until we are blue in the face but it isn't going to change your opinion, is it?

I respect your opinion and will not insult you by saying you might be wrong. You see what you see and that's the end of the matter surely.

pentaxuser

DREW WILEY · Feb 4, 2020

Nothing seriously objective can be determined by looking at web images. That's like trying to listen to a symphony with a lawnmower or chainsaw in the background.

Alan9940 · Feb 4, 2020

I've never looked at any examples of pics shot on Portra 400, but what I can tell you is that, for my eye and aesthetic, it's the perfect color and tonal palette for the images I shoot here in the desert southwest (USA.)

mshchem · Feb 4, 2020

I've got darkroom prints that I've made of red tulips, spring flowers, weathered wood etc, shot on Portra 400, RZ 67II 110mm lens that are stunning. Not great art, but absolutely beautiful color. The digital generation doesn't always fully appreciate that you need sunlight/daylight (of some sort) to produce vivid colors on film. My little new Fuji digital has a computer that can make lemonade out of horsepiss, but that's another story.

DREW WILEY · Feb 4, 2020

I find earthtones and complex neutrals distinctly more accurate (not perfect) on Ektar. With Portra 400, there's more artificial warmishness invading where it really doesn't belong, something predictable in most color neg films which have skintone reproduction as a high priority; every hue related to a skintone family of color kinda gets lumped the same direction with artificial bias. I won't go into how that happens due to how the dye curves interact. But things are way better balanced in Portra films than older color neg films. The problem with Ektar is that you might actually need to warm things up a bit with a supplementary filter to prevent the opposite - cyan crossover in the highlights or shadows. I have seen true turquoise skies sometimes in the Southwest after storms, or in Hawaii, that actually benefit from the cyan error in Ektar.

NortheastPhotographic · Feb 4, 2020

Push film if you want contrast. Don't expect that the results of others will be your own. There is also Portra 800 which is excellent at 640.

Cholentpot · Feb 4, 2020

I'm inclined to agree with the author of the thread somewhat.

Portra 400 takes some getting used to. Reading what people think of it and you think it's some sort of magical film. I've found it to be quite grainy and flat looking. It lacks punch. I can work with it and get what I want though, it just has a learning curve.

Wayne · Feb 4, 2020

mshchem said:
Are you making darkroom prints?

How else would one print?

Wayne · Feb 4, 2020

koraks said:
Relevant question. Film choice has a significant impact on the final look of the prints if darkroom prints are made. If the film is scanned and further digitally processed, the sky is the limit in how you want to make it look.

Ogling pictures on the web only gets you so far. I think we all do it when considering buying some new material, but it's only in your own hands when you really get to know it. How much does a roll of Portra cost, in the end? Just give it a try, it's the only way to find out for real.

I've seen nothing to make me want to give it a try.

Wayne · Feb 4, 2020

pentaxuser said:
If that is what you see and you appear to be unequivocal in your opinion then I wonder what you expect to hear from us that could ever change your mind?

We can say that Portra is not blahhh until we are blue in the face but it isn't going to change your opinion, is it?

I respect your opinion and will not insult you by saying you might be wrong. You see what you see and that's the end of the matter surely.

pentaxuser

I want you to say I'm wrong and then show me.

Sirius Glass · Feb 4, 2020

See if you can find any Kodak UltraColor 400 film, it puts Ektar to shame.

cramej · Feb 4, 2020

Wayne said:
I've seen nothing to make me want to give it a try.

Except that it is one of two 400 speed color negative films available and you want more speed. I'd say that's reason enough to give it a try.

Wayne said:
I want you to say I'm wrong and then show me.

Show me that your monitor is perfectly calibrated, the scans on flickr are perfectly color corrected and accurately represent the scene. We can only show you so much unless someone wants to send you a nice print. Spend the few dollars for a pro-pack and find out for yourself. Try some Pro400H while you're at it to compare.

I might sound a bit harsh through the keyboard, but we're going around in circles here. If you try it and don't like, then you proved to yourself that you still don't like it and you're stuck with Ektar. No worse off than before.

DREW WILEY · Feb 4, 2020

No way, Sirius. It's all about being able to put hues in relation to one another balancing neutrals against purer hues - a bit of sophistication. Just getting certain colors vivid doesn't cut it. No, Ektar is not the holy grail, but the closest thing to it in a color neg film so far, especially if one is coming from a background of chrome films. Anybody can make loud noise with almost any film these days, especially if they nuke it with jam and jelly and honey atop sugar cubes in Fauxtoshop. Even modern amateur color neg films allow certain colors to pop out while still preserving skintones; but across-the-board accurate representation of a wide range of hues, especially neutrals, just isn't possible. But very few color photographers even understand what I'm stating. Most just want to make loud noise. Talk to a serious watercolorist; they'll understand. They can mix hues in mere minutes which no film or color printing method has ever been able to achieve. But I will also state that if someone can't make the most out of what Portra has to offer, they certainly can't out of Ektar either, because it is in fact the harder animal to tame; but once you learn how ....

pentaxuser · Feb 4, 2020

Wayne said:
I want you to say I'm wrong and then show me.

I'd like you to tell me how I can show you that you are wrong. You are convinced you are not wrong. This kind of conviction cannot be changed by anyone except yourself. Asking me to show you is the equivalent of taunting me in much the same way the toreador taunts the bull.

As long as the others enjoy this attempt to show you that's fine and I wish them luck in so doing - they will need it

pentaxuser

Lachlan Young · Feb 4, 2020

DREW WILEY said:
Anybody can make loud noise with almost any film these days, especially if they nuke it with jam and jelly and honey atop sugar cubes in Fauxtoshop.

No, they delude themselves they can. It looks awful & terribly obvious. And it's usually because they don't know how to understand and respect the inherent tonality/ colour response of a particular neg stock. There's a considerable difference between that and tightening things up in the manner of dye transfer etc. When things are done right, you'd be shocked at how closely a scan will track along with a really good darkroom print. That said, proper optical printing does have many advantages I feel, but I just wish that wanting to optically print on cotton rag papers didn't essentially involve resurrecting one or more challenging colour separation techniques...

DREW WILEY · Feb 4, 2020

Well, of course, and that's why all the really good digital printmakers I know were excellent darkroom printers first, generally in dye transfer, but sometimes with chromogenic and Ciba experience too. But I have yet to see any of their own digital prints which really equal their own best work in either dye or Ciba, depending on what they were individually best at. But I have to admit that I'm having a great deal of difficulty finding sufficient blocks of time to master the DT technique myself. I have learned how to play the chords, make excellent separation negs, and retool the whole process to greater darkroom efficiency using current all-darkroom films and workflow. But between b&w printing and the significant traction I've gotten bending chromogenic printing onto a whole new lane of crisp expression, DT remains on the backburner; it's also very expensive in how much sheet film in consumes per image; and I have to wisely meter our my stash of 8x10 films, because I use them for other processes too. It's all fun and rewarding; but I can't do them all at the same time! Rag papers wouldn't be very friendly to DT because you need a certain kind of emulsion smoothness to evenly accept the mordants and dyes. But one thing I really like about the inherent limitations of particular films is their own signature. Getting attuned to this and learning how to best use it trains a person in reserve and nuance. Those who think they can simply "do anything" because they now have access to Photoshop rarely do anything well. Less is more.

Sirius Glass · Feb 4, 2020

DREW WILEY said:
No way, Sirius. It's all about being able to put hues in relation to one another balancing neutrals against purer hues - a bit of sophistication. Just getting certain colors vivid doesn't cut it. No, Ektar is not the holy grail, but the closest thing to it in a color neg film so far, especially if one is coming from a background of chrome films. Anybody can make loud noise with almost any film these days, especially if they nuke it with jam and jelly and honey atop sugar cubes in Fauxtoshop. Even modern amateur color neg films allow certain colors to pop out while still preserving skintones; but across-the-board accurate representation of a wide range of hues, especially neutrals, just isn't possible. But very few color photographers even understand what I'm stating. Most just want to make loud noise. Talk to a serious watercolorist; they'll understand. They can mix hues in mere minutes which no film or color printing method has ever been able to achieve. But I will also state that if someone can't make the most out of what Portra has to offer, they certainly can't out of Ektar either, because it is in fact the harder animal to tame; but once you learn how ....

I guess you missed the point that, except for in my freezer, one cannot find unexposed UltraColor in 135 and 120 film. Would you like met to use [sarcasm][/sarcasm] markers in the future.

DREW WILEY · Feb 4, 2020

Well, guess you did throw me a curve ball in that case! I have quite a selection of misc rolls of film in my freezer simply for sake of nostalgia : Kodachrome 120, Konica misc, maybe some old Agfachromes (loved 120 Agfa 1000) - none of it any good anymore. I do remember the old Ektar 25 version with its very serious crossover errors. The most color-neutral film I have ever found was Astia 100F; I used that in 8x10 for duplicate chrome work; it was even better than Fuji CDUIII, which was basically tungsten-balanced previous Astia, and
even better than Kodak EDupe. But I found it less versatile for general shooting than E100G, which the current E100 seems to be a minor improvement of, but still not as evenly balanced as Astia; in other words, it wouldn't pass the litmus test as a highly accurate duplicating film. But after a lot of time and money, with the color neg improvement in 160VC being a stepping stone, I'm figuring out how to get the most out of Ektar as a taking film worthy to replace many (not all) chrome film niches, as how to turn Portra 160 into an excellent interneg film for making my previous chrome work printable on current RA4 papers, but that involves either masking or using an already extant dupe with all the contrast correction variables already built-in. The only thing certain is that the era of Cibachrome has ended, and once I saw that writing on the wall, I knew I had to figure out how to get color neg film into territory well above its traditional stereotypical applications, and into niches where chrome films typically dominate. So far, so good, with a few intermittent bellyflops of course.

Wayne · Feb 5, 2020

cramej said:
Except that it is one of two 400 speed color negative films available and you want more speed. I'd say that's reason enough to give it a try.

Show me that your monitor is perfectly calibrated, the scans on flickr are perfectly color corrected and accurately represent the scene. We can only show you so much unless someone wants to send you a nice print. Spend the few dollars for a pro-pack and find out for yourself. Try some Pro400H while you're at it to compare.

I might sound a bit harsh through the keyboard, but we're going around in circles here. If you try it and don't like, then you proved to yourself that you still don't like it and you're stuck with Ektar. No worse off than before.

I know the web isn't the best way to judge images but If there's 2 things I know the other one is that people do not deliberately flatten and suck the life out of their images for web posting. They pump them up and hypersaturate them, if anything. So while what I see may not be faithful in fine subtle detail, the overall washed up faded out look I think must be real.

But its silly for me to try something that doesn't look at all appealing. Do people really look at things and say, "wow, that's ugly, I need to try that at least once?"

So I spent some time perusing 400H and didn't find it much better in these regards, but it did have the added feature of sickly looking greens.

NortheastPhotographic said:
Push film if you want contrast. Don't expect that the results of others will be your own. There is also Portra 800 which is excellent at 640.

Well back up the bus...I am finding Portra pushed to 800 a bit more to my liking, at least initially. This is worth looking at some more, and might even lead to buying and trying.

Portra 400 blah

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