pushing portra 400

Wayne · Feb 26, 2020

So now that we've established that pushing Portra 400 increases its Wayne-likeability factor to some degree, what are your tips or advice for pushing it with various subjects/conditions? I will be printing in darkroom so keep that in mind. I don't anticipate pushing it past 800 but feel free to discuss it anyway if you feel like it... Having shot chromes most of my adult life and Ektar in recent years, I've rarely pushed color negative film

Sirius Glass · Feb 26, 2020

It is called Kodak Portra 800. Aren't you glad you asked?

halfaman · Feb 27, 2020

If you want to give a great boost in contrast and saturation do a complete "push". Underexpose and overdevelop (+30 seconds or 3:45 minutes of developing).

It gets really contrasty and shadows can be easily blocked so pay attention to contrast ratios, nothing new if you shot chromes. Saturation boost makes colors very vivid, something that may be not suitable for caucasic skin tones unless they are placed in highlights zone.

warden · Feb 27, 2020

Wayne said:
So now that we've established that pushing Portra 400 increases its Wayne-likeability factor to some degree, what are your tips or advice for pushing it with various subjects/conditions? I will be printing in darkroom so keep that in mind. I don't anticipate pushing it past 800 but feel free to discuss it anyway if you feel like it... Having shot chromes most of my adult life and Ektar in recent years, I've rarely pushed color negative film

Add me to the "rarely pushed color negative film", but I'm curious about it and what can be achieved.

I see you have a few images in the gallery. Will you be sharing images of your experiments?

Wayne · Feb 27, 2020

jawarden said:
Add me to the "rarely pushed color negative film", but I'm curious about it and what can be achieved.

I see you have a few images in the gallery. Will you be sharing images of your experiments?

Not likely any time soon. It could be a year before I get in the darkroom again.

Rudeofus · Feb 27, 2020

I have once exposed and developed an 120 format roll of Portra 400 with an EI of 3200, with a substantial part of the lighting provided by a weak incandescent light bulb. Scans looked very noisy, but were usable up to 5x7". Actual darkroom prints at that size looked quite good. Contrary to what has been written here, contrast did not go through the roof, instead the results looked quite low in contrast, which may be caused by the fact, that most of the subject matter ended up on the toe of the characteristic curve.

Conclusion: Portra 400 can be pushed quite well to very high EIs, especially if wet printed, as long as you don't try to enlarge by factors much beyond 3 or 4.

138S · Feb 27, 2020

The result you obtain with pushing depends on if you have deep shadows in the scene you want to recover.

IMO when pushing one has to check the scene with spot meter, basicly you loss latitude in the shadows, if originally your scene scene had shadows at (say) -1 then after doubling EI those shadows will look like regular -2 shadows, not much damage, but those shadows at -2.5 when spot metered at box speed will be well damaged when doubling EI.

Portra can be abused by overxposing it a lot becuase it has an insane latitude in the highlight side, but underexposing it's a risk that overdeveloping won't compensate much.

Wayne · Feb 27, 2020

Rudeofus said:
Conclusion: Portra 400 can be pushed quite well to very high EIs, especially if wet printed, as long as you don't try to enlarge by factors much beyond 3 or 4.

I'll be shooting strictly 120 6x6 and 6x7. I doubt I'll ever go near 3200 except for some rare purpose.

Rudeofus · Feb 28, 2020

There is no such thing as "I'll push it just a teeny weeny little". If you expose it at EI640 or EI800, you should develop it normally and expect some slightly weaker shadow detail. And to be honest: there are very very few practical situations, in which the difference between EI400 and EI800 can make or break a shot. In my experience, if it is too dark, it is too dark by a lot, and even EI3200 will be only borderline workable. In my opinion, you can see Portra 400 as two products: a very fine grained film for EI100-800 situations, or a coarse grained poor contrast film for EI3200 scenes. Within its limits, it will work for both.

Wayne · Feb 28, 2020

Rudeofus said:
There is no such thing as "I'll push it just a teeny weeny little". If you expose it at EI640 or EI800, you should develop it normally and expect some slightly weaker shadow detail. And to be honest: there are very very few practical situations, in which the difference between EI400 and EI800 can make or break a shot. In my experience, if it is too dark, it is too dark by a lot, and even EI3200 will be only borderline workable. In my opinion, you can see Portra 400 as two products: a very fine grained film for EI100-800 situations, or a coarse grained poor contrast film for EI3200 scenes. Within its limits, it will work for both.

But since I'm looking for an alternative to Ektar, the real speed comparison here is between 100 and 800 not 400 and 800. Developing normally if exposed at 800 is not likely to give me the results I want, I don't think. I don't understand why you are saying EI 800 can't be push developed too. That's the first I've heard of that, since many people seem to be doing it with success. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you.

Rudeofus · Feb 28, 2020

Kodak does not mention push processing in their Portra 400 instruction PDF, but they do state "No increase in development time is required for a 1-stop push." in their TMAX 400 instructions. This basically means, that an 1 stop push is handled by the latitude of film and adjustments during printing. Extended development would increase contrast and grain, and gain little to nothing in the shadows.

PS: Whether you can shoot this film at EI400 or at EI6400 depends to a great degree on scene brightness ratio and your metering technique. Are there deep shadows with necessary subject matter? Do you measure darker areas, average brightness or into highlights? Or do you just shoot at what the (more or less intelligent) metering system of your camera says. If you measure shadows, then a shot @EI3200 will look great, whereas if you measure highlights, even EI400 will give you underexposed negs.

Lachlan Young · Feb 28, 2020

Rudeofus said:
I have once exposed and developed an 120 format roll of Portra 400 with an EI of 3200, with a substantial part of the lighting provided by a weak incandescent light bulb. Scans looked very noisy, but were usable up to 5x7". Actual darkroom prints at that size looked quite good. Contrary to what has been written here, contrast did not go through the roof, instead the results looked quite low in contrast, which may be caused by the fact, that most of the subject matter ended up on the toe of the characteristic curve.

Conclusion: Portra 400 can be pushed quite well to very high EIs, especially if wet printed, as long as you don't try to enlarge by factors much beyond 3 or 4.

That's essentially not far off what I found with rating a roll at EI1600 and processing normally - a fairly noisy scan could be made, with a bit of rooting around in the toe; or a darkroom print and/ or a sensibly made scan with manual inversion gave a drastically less noisy but much flatter result with crushed shadows, essentially much as you describe relative to the toe. Obviously, the better scan could be helped along a bit & a bit of playing around with extended techniques might have improved the darkroom print. I'd be more inclined to rate 'normally' and extend development if i was looking for enhanced contrast/ saturation effects - and be prepared to have to deal with getting dense highlights back in range without colour casts.

Wayne · Feb 28, 2020

Rudeofus said:
Kodak does not mention push processing in their Portra 400 instruction PDF, but they do state "No increase in development time is required for a 1-stop push." in their TMAX 400 instructions. This basically means, that an 1 stop push is handled by the latitude of film and adjustments during printing. Extended development would increase contrast and grain, and gain little to nothing in the shadows.

PS: Whether you can shoot this film at EI400 or at EI6400 depends to a great degree on scene brightness ratio and your metering technique. Are there deep shadows with necessary subject matter? Do you measure darker areas, average brightness or into highlights? Or do you just shoot at what the (more or less intelligent) metering system of your camera says. If you measure shadows, then a shot @EI3200 will look great, whereas if you measure highlights, even EI400 will give you underexposed negs.

I want increased contrast so I'll be over developing my underexposed Portra. If speed was the only thing I wanted then I guess I'd agree with "If you expose it at EI640 or EI800, you should develop it normally", which is the statement that puzzled me.

halfaman · Mar 2, 2020

I attach bellow some samples of Portra 400 exposed to ISO 800 and pushed during development. Photos taken with an 6x6 Iskra in a cloudy day with very flat light.

I have pushed this film only a couple of times because the results, specially the saturation, are not for everyday photography.

Wayne · Jan 15, 2021

jawarden said:
Add me to the "rarely pushed color negative film", but I'm curious about it and what can be achieved.

I see you have a few images in the gallery. Will you be sharing images of your experiments?

Wayne said:
Not likely any time soon. It could be a year before I get in the darkroom again.

Eleven months, to be exact. I only shot one roll of Portra at 800 and told the lab push develop it one stop-which they said, based on their experience, would be an extra 15 seconds.

This is just an unaltered quick point and shoot snapshot of the first prints I made from that roll. Considering all the whining and griping I did here, https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/portra-400-blah.172917/
I'm pleased with the contrast and lack of white cow excretions. There is a lot of haze and dust in the upper right one.

I'm encouraged, especially considering the Ektachromes I got back at the same time turned out less favorably. I think with Portra being more forgiving I'm going to stick with it for the most part this year, or until its priced out of reach next year.

pushing portra 400

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