Thoughts on Superia 1600/Natura 1600/and Portra 800 @ 1600?

I am a big fan of fast color film and have been shooting it, especially in broad daylight, for many years. I like (reasonably) grainy color.

Anyhow, I recently bought a roll of Superia 1600 online as it had been a while since I've shot it. It was expired 10/14 and quite expensive for an expired film (> $12). I was promised by the seller that the film was stored properly. I shot a roll of it at a concert and the images came out horribly. The grain was unacceptably high and the film looked underexposed. Developed 38.8C, 3.5M, fresh C41.

I shot a roll of Natura 1600 in mixed light from daylight to dusk, developed 38.8C, 4M, also very grainy and the color was poor. This was not expired.

I've been shooting Portra 800 @ 1600 and souping 3.5M-4.5M in C41 chemistry for years. The output is fantastic- fine grain, smooth tones, great color.

I'm just trying to figure out if I'm missing something or I've hit such a sweet spot with Portra that nothing else can be compared to..

Thank you.

High ISO films deteriorate very quickly. I think that is your answer. Fresh is the way to go for high ISO. (jingle)


Typos made on a tiny phone...

It's been my experience that the Kodak Portra films out perform any of the Fuji C-41 films. If you like what you are getting with Portra 400 stick with it. If you like chunky, golf ball like grain, then stick with Fuji. Even the much beloved Pro400H isn't as "fast" and the porta.

D.

I also find Superia 1600 hard to master. Give Superia 800@1600 a shot. I really like the 800 shot at 800, and I would imagine that the one stop push doesn't do too much harm.

edit: Would love to use Superia 1600 in 120. I find it's pale palette in daylight appealing, but the grain can be a bit too much.

Cl3mens I agree w/r/t the daylight aspect. I used to shoot superia 1600 in full daylight and I loved it.

Coincidentally, I just packed two rolls of Superia 1600 (amongst some 200 & 400 ISO Kodak) for a day-trip to Put In Bay tomorrow. It expired 2014.07, and I had purchased it via Amazon, though forget the vendor. I used a roll two months ago, and it seemed fine to me, but I am inexperienced with high-speed film, and "grainy" can be a very subjective concept. My main interest was to see how it rendered colors indoors with no flash or filtering (I know, expensive experiment).

It was a bit grainy in shadows, but I did expect this - perhaps my expectations are low.

Viewing on my screen at about 10x14 some are fairly bad in shadows under artificial lighting - others are not. Zoomed out they are all very acceptable to me (I can't even notice on the 4x6 prints), and I imagine optical printing (or better scans) would reduce the appearance of grain quite a bit.

Many things seemed to contribute to some of the grain on my test roll, such as low-res drug store mini-lab scans. Artificial light gave the worse grain, and even then, it was not always bad. CFLs were worse than regular fluorescent tubes, which were worse than incandescent (color temps and such, though it handled skin tones better with fluorescents, as expected). I think distance to the subject and out-of-focus areas had something to do with extreme examples. It was also worse in areas that had slight motion-blur.

I threw a few examples on Picasaweb if you want to compare to your own, though our conditions may be too different. I have a few with more grain, but they contain (fully-clothed) people. I try to avoid uploading images with identifiable faces.
https://picasaweb.google.com/109674...authkey=Gv1sRgCMer7LvC4-TU7QE&feat=directlink

Basically, I am happy with it, and the majority of the photos are fine.

It is also possible that Portra has you spoiled I will have to try it pushed sometime.

fotoobscura said:

Anyhow, I recently bought a roll of Superia 1600 online as it had been a while since I've shot it. It was expired 10/14 and quite expensive for an expired film (> $12). I was promised by the seller that the film was stored properly. I shot a roll of it at a concert and the images came out horribly. The grain was unacceptably high and the film looked underexposed. Developed 38.8C, 3.5M, fresh C41.

I shot a roll of Natura 1600 in mixed light from daylight to dusk, developed 38.8C, 4M, also very grainy and the color was poor. This was not expired.

I've been shooting Portra 800 @ 1600 and souping 3.5M-4.5M in C41 chemistry for years. The output is fantastic- fine grain, smooth tones, great color.

I'm just trying to figure out if I'm missing something or I've hit such a sweet spot with Portra that nothing else can be compared to..

Thank you.

Click to expand...

Of course attempts to brighten underexposed film will exacerbate the grain.

I have only shot a handful of Fuji Natura 1600 and consider it's grain to be very manageable. Grain characteristics - like color, is personal preference so here are a couple of examples of what I consider manageable.


Very large file -> Fuji Natura 1600-02-19


Very large file -> Fuji Natura1600-03-31

I also consider the color palette of Natura to be neutral and latitude high.

I tend to favor Kodak's palette more so than Fuji's and really like Portra film - 160, 400 and 800. I have never pushed process 800 though. I wouldn't know what you consider a sweet spot as far as pushed process Portra 800 is concerned unless you have something to compare.

Here are a couple of examples I have from Kodak Portra 800 straight up.


Very large file -> Kodak Portra 800_01-30


Very large file -> Kodak Portra 800_01-35

I tried Superia 1600 a couple of times and found it to be too grainy for my taste. I like Rodinal pre-treated or pushed Portra 400 or even just underexposed Portra 400 better than the Superia 1600. Superia 800 isn't too bad. I just tried some Cinestill 800T and found that Portra 400 looks better to me at the same EI 800 in mixed light or daylight. Cinestill 800T looks pretty good in pure tungsten lighting though, but I haven't shot it enough to be sure I like it as well or better. There are plenty of examples posted on my Flickr account linked in my signature.

I absolutely LOVED Superia 1600.

The problem is that you are using Superia 1600 for applications which don't favor it -- applications with call for bright color and high contrast film.

When using Superia 1600 for indoor, too-high-contrast-situations, with artificial/mixed lighting, Superia 1600 is King, and much better than Superia 800 (i tried both back, circa 2003). This because it's a lower-contrast, more "muted" film. In this applications speed is a real ISO 1600, no tricks here.
Grain is also reasonable (think HP5 grain) in 8x10 and 8x11" prints, if you do proper optical prints, not film-scan-and-print. If you scan it with anything that is not a really high-end scanner, the effect of "grain aliasing" will make the grain explode into big, very big size.

For the application you want, which is having a fast film that performs just like your regular "bright sun" film, try Superia 800.

Umm..Rodinal pre-treated CN film? Am I missing something?

My point with the Superia 1600 is that either a) the film lost speed due to age or improper storage or b) the film really isn't EI 1600. I get more speed out of Porta 800 @1600. I shoot 95% of my fast film in low light these summer daze- end of day- say 6pm to 8:30pm here in NYC. As an example below is a shot coming out of a Contax T2 f2/8 ~1/125 in twilight. This is fresh, properly stored Portra 800 @ 1600. This is hand held and I chose this shot because it's out of focus. It shows the grain characteristics better I think. Souped C41 chemistry "hot"- around 42c for 4m. Scanned raw in a LS4000, no post. Your monitor may vary but on my expensive "art" monitor it looks pretty good from a grain perspective.

Les Sarile said:

Of course attempts to brighten underexposed film will exacerbate the grain.

I have only shot a handful of Fuji Natura 1600 and consider it's grain to be very manageable. Grain characteristics - like color, is personal preference so here are a couple of examples of what I consider manageable.

Very large file -> Fuji Natura 1600-02-19

Very large file -> Fuji Natura1600-03-31

I also consider the color palette of Natura to be neutral and latitude high.

I tend to favor Kodak's palette more so than Fuji's and really like Portra film - 160, 400 and 800. I have never pushed process 800 though. I wouldn't know what you consider a sweet spot as far as pushed process Portra 800 is concerned unless you have something to compare.

Here are a couple of examples I have from Kodak Portra 800 straight up.

Very large file -> Kodak Portra 800_01-30

Very large file -> Kodak Portra 800_01-35

Click to expand...

I am now pre-treating my EI 1600 Portra 400 with 10 minutes of 1:100 Rodinal. I then process as C41 normaly. I had asked if something like this could work after reading some related posts online and Athiril came up with some recommended times for 1:100 at 10 minutes. It was right on the mark. It works to improve the appearance of the grain. There seems to be a slight shift in color toward green but not bad and I'm always in mixed lighting anyway. It may add a tiny bit of shadow detail in some cases as well. Here is a link to some examples on my Flickr account. https://www.flickr.com/photos/lamarlamb/sets/72157649126917440

I have two rolls of Portra 800 in the freezer to try at EI 3200 when football season kicks in.

fotoobscura said:

Umm..Rodinal pre-treated CN film? Am I missing something?

Click to expand...

Lamar said:

I tried Superia 1600 a couple of times and found it to be too grainy for my taste. I like Rodinal pre-treated or pushed Portra 400 or even just underexposed Portra 400 better than the Superia 1600. Superia 800 isn't too bad. I just tried some Cinestill 800T and found that Portra 400 looks better to me at the same EI 800 in mixed light or daylight. Cinestill 800T looks pretty good in pure tungsten lighting though, but I haven't shot it enough to be sure I like it as well or better. There are plenty of examples posted on my Flickr account linked in my signature.

Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing the Cinestill 800T full res images. Well done and very compelling results as I will have to try some.

That does look like smoother grain....

Lamar said:

I am now pre-treating my EI 1600 Portra with 10 minutes of 1:100 Rodinal. I then process as C41 normaly. I had asked if something like this could work after reading some related posts online and Athiril came up with some recommended times for 1:100 at 10 minutes. It was right on the mark. It works to improve the appearance of the grain. There seems to be a slight shift in color toward green but not bad and I'm always in mixed lighting anyway. It may add a tiny bit of shadow detail in some cases as well. Here is a link to some examples on my Flickr account. https://www.flickr.com/photos/lamarlamb/sets/72157649126917440

I have two rolls of Portra 800 in the freezer to try at EI 3200 when football season kicks in.

Click to expand...

fotoobscura said:

My point with the Superia 1600 is that either a) the film lost speed due to age or improper storage or b) the film really isn't EI 1600.

Click to expand...

For what is worth, my experience was that it was really ISO 1600. This because i sometimes intentionally underexposed it (to ISO 3200) and still got usable images from it.

Of course, your mileage may vary; people have different ways to judge exposure and thus set the exposure value accordingly.