Portra 800 latitide

[rwreich]

Does anyone happen to know from experience how far you can overexpose Portra 800 before it's toast?

 

[Photo Engineer]

It has the same latitude as Portra 160 and 400 do. I would stick with 1 under and 2 over, but I've seen 2 and 2. I use 1 and 1 which is quite good, but the 800 film starts out grainier than the 400 film and etc...

PE

 

[markbarendt]

PE's advice is good. In that range you can hardly go wrong.

Personally I would not be afraid of using it in full sun in a Holga, which would be roughly 4 stops extra.

 

[rwreich]

I'm pretty sure that I accidentally overexposed by four or five stops. Just a very simple meter-reading error on the Sekonic L-398a. I did not realize at the time that the high slide was in and set the camera at EV6 when it was probably closer to EV10 or EV11. Sigh.

 

[Mr Bill]

I can't verify that latitude is the same as Portra 160; I don't know.

But with Porta 160, our studio chain regularly had studios botch their settings and overexpose 100 ft rolls of film by 4 and 5 f-stops. They all printed ok, but it killed the productivity of the expensive printing machines - print exposures near 10 times longer. At 5 stops over, there was a difference in the "look" of the prints, but customers wouldn't notice anything. In our (extensive) testing, we found that UNDER-exposure of more than 1 stop was a problem - the areas that should have printed as "black" were slightly lighter and appeared grainy. Now, if we had dark complexion subjects, these had less leeway on the underexposed side, perhaps only a half stop.

These shots were with full tonal range studio portraits. If your subject has a more limited tonal range, then the exposure latitude is wider. Note that I'm only looking at color rendition, not sharpness, etc.

 

[rwreich]

It has the same latitude as Portra 160 and 400 do. I would stick with 1 under and 2 over, but I've seen 2 and 2. I use 1 and 1 which is quite good, but the 800 film starts out grainier than the 400 film and etc...

PE

PE's advice is good. In that range you can hardly go wrong.

Personally I would not be afraid of using it in full sun in a Holga, which would be roughly 4 stops extra.

By the way, thanks for responding. I really do appreciate the help.

 

[rwreich]

I can't verify that latitude is the same as Portra 160; I don't know.

But with Porta 160, our studio chain regularly had studios botch their settings and overexpose 100 ft rolls of film by 4 and 5 f-stops. They all printed ok, but it killed the productivity of the expensive printing machines - print exposures near 10 times longer. At 5 stops over, there was a difference in the "look" of the prints, but customers wouldn't notice anything. In our (extensive) testing, we found that UNDER-exposure of more than 1 stop was a problem - the areas that should have printed as "black" were slightly lighter and appeared grainy. Now, if we had dark complexion subjects, these had less leeway on the underexposed side, perhaps only a half stop.

These shots were with full tonal range studio portraits. If your subject has a more limited tonal range, then the exposure latitude is wider. Note that I'm only looking at color rendition, not sharpness, etc.

That is encouraging - thanks for reaponding. The scene was overcast with subjects outdoors between 6:00 and 7:30 in NC. I am guessing that there will be something to see, but it might not be what I'm used to seeing.

I should have realized that there was something funny about the settings since I was already at f/1.4 and 1/125 and it didn't seem so dark. Live and learn, I suppose.

 

[Photo Engineer]

The curve shapes of all of these films are the same and therefore the latitude of these films are the same.

PE