What is Portra look? My 6x7 scans look like they were shot on digital...

Elix said:

I have tried your action and here's my take with it. I used an additional LAB saturation channel.
And here's a comparison of Adrian's action with ColorPerfect. In ColorPerfect I made sure there is no clipping in the highlights or shadows, then applied levels layer to remove the cast. The process is described in this book, which is free if you have Kindle subscription. Then I used curves to give more contrast. I might've went overboard on this.
I really like your action. 15 Euros well spent, I say

Uh... Could you rephrase that? 4 is 2 stops, 8 is three stops more than 1? Then how can I calculate +1 stop if my base exposure is 2.5, for example?

As I remember the raw histogram was far to the left... I'll check tomorrow.

Thanks! I wouldn't estimate as optimistically as you. I'd say I still have 30% to go at least.

So many great insights! I will be doing more testing with the processing and scanning to see if I can close the gap to reference images. Above I've tried to process with contrasty curves, but I can't say I like the result or find it closer to reference images.


Thanks!

I encourage anyone to give your processing workflow a try with this image to see if it could be made to look more like film. You can download linear tiff file here.

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Hi Elix - in regard of my last post I have one example to cover out what is meant with " color look " and there might be 85% left we don´t talk about meanwhile :

This is the original scan of portra 400 E.I. ISO 200 in 120 ( Pentax 67 105mm F 2,8 ) - there is no Portra look ? Quite right - it is a shot at deep sunlight - look at the shadows.



This is the corected version ( simple color corection )

But what we may find out about the look of portra ? The film is sensibilized at daylight - with 5600 degree. And at deep sun it may come a bit to warm from colors. My personal feeling is that the reflecting strong light from the wall
around the szeene may have forced this tendency

Obviously it may be caused from general underexposure - look at the highlights. But I would not care about - perhaps the uncorected version is the better one ?

But we may notice the advantage of a 6x7 format in comparison of 35mm film/ full frame digital due to the depth of field characteristics with higher formats at open lens.

The next example is Ektachrome and it may emphasize the depht field characteristic of 6x7 at open lens more directly :



.......think about it.

with regards

PS : Color look of emulsions are often nice - but there might be 85% we should care about in addition.

Ted Baker said:

what you should consider doing is scan with Noritisu or frontier, then you could make a CLUT, to get the same/similar result...

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Can you give me more details? Why do I need to scan with Noritsu or Frontier? And I know what a CLUT is, but not in regards to film applications.

Ted Baker said:

So if your preview includes a section without film, you will find the RGB exposure is 1 or close to it, and you will see the orange mask in your scan. By the rebate I meant an area of unexposed film. If you do the preview on just that section it will adjust the exposure time of all three channels so that rebate is reasonable close to white.

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If I understood you correctly, the procedure is this. For each roll I select a transparent (orange) area of the roll, make a preview, lock exposure and scan the whole roll with this exposure. Then repeat with another roll. Correct?

nbagno said:

Here's a video I stumbled upon just a few days ago.

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I've seen it already but could be useful for others.

trendland said:

But what we may find out about the look of portra ? The film is sensibilized at daylight - with 5600 degree. And at deep sun it may come a bit to warm from colors.

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Thanks for the input. You've brought up a valid point. In order to get that 'portra' look you must also choose lighting conditions wisely. Daylight's color temperature can vary based on weather, time of day, geological location. This will reflect on film colors. That's part of the reason my photo is bluish unlike many other examples. I like your first photo a lot, btw). I'd just add a little bit more exposure on the face. And I like the uncorrected version better.

Elix said:

Can you give me more details? Why do I need to scan with Noritsu or Frontier? And I know what a CLUT is, but not in regards to film applications.

If I understood you correctly, the procedure is this. For each roll I select a transparent (orange) area of the roll, make a preview, lock exposure and scan the whole roll with this exposure. Then repeat with another roll. Correct?

I've seen it already but could be useful for others.

Thanks for the input. You've brought up a valid point. In order to get that 'portra' look you must also choose lighting conditions wisely. Daylight's color temperature can vary based on weather, time of day, geological location. This will reflect on film colors. That's part of the reason my photo is bluish unlike many other examples. I like your first photo a lot, btw). I'd just add a little bit more exposure on the face. And I like the uncorrected version better.

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So you got it Elix......
To create a photograph witch is different from the mass the big big key is allways first : "L I G H T"
I personaly can't imagine what is meant over years. But you allways have to learn a bit more and more.....
with regard
PS : Yes I agree - the first shot I gave (just as an example) is from bad colors (brownish warm toned) it is underexposed (too much contrast) and I have a feeling : nevertheless it has no need to be corrected.

Elix said:

Can you give me more details? Why do I need to scan with Noritsu or Frontier? And I know what a CLUT is, but not in regards to film applications.

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Earlier I mentioned that scanning the film is only half of the film process, in summary film has a gamma of around 0.6 and the paper has a gamma of around 3, they combine to give a gamma of about 1.8. Both the film and the paper have a toe and shoulder, both toes and shoulders combine to give shadow and highlight compression. The actual colours you see are only contained in the print, and they are subtractive though the negative is what controls the density of those dyes. i,e, you could have the most carefully calibrated scanner and monitor setup such that your scan of the negative would look identical to the actual negative but you would be no closer to be able to recreate the finished product, without a transform that changes the color values you obtained in your scan to the color values that a print would create, nor would you create the colours from a Noritsu or Frontier without such a transform, unless you you are planning on doing it all by yourself. I am not suggesting the results from a Noritsu or Frontier are exactly the same as an RA-4 print, but they have made some effort to come a little closer... than what I have seen vuescan achieve automatically. All the links you posted as examples were from Frontier or Noritsu unless I am mistaken?

Below is the same scan as I posted earlier but I processed with a CLUT as an attempt to more closely match the dyes in RA-4 print.



I am approaching this a bit differently, I spent many years printing RA-4 in a earlier life, In my spare time I hope to create a few helpful tools photographers could use that give results similar to the traditional photographic process.

Elix said:

If I understood you correctly, the procedure is this. For each roll I select a transparent (orange) area of the roll, make a preview, lock exposure and scan the whole roll with this exposure. Then repeat with another roll. Correct?

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Yes, in fact if you the are using the same film and processing you could remember the settings and skip the preview completely! Select graph raw, and you will also see the histogram. Even the most dense negatives should be well within the range of the CCD however because a negative has a gamma of around .6 the values are considerably compressed, and a good exposure should help to keep the exposure of the CCD, and A/D in the right place. Vuescan does this all automatically.

By the way - as here stated "tools" : if anybody is interested - a good friend is a great "fan" of Emily Soto a New York based photographer with an amazing biography : She comes from wedding
photography. Perhaps my friend is also a fan of her presets to lightroom :
Dead Link Removed
with regards

The image in the original post looks fine to me.

Out of 55 posts, I saw only two that mentioned RA-4. To me this is the formula for the "Portra" look. C-41 + RA-4 = Portra look. Everything else is something different.

I wonder what the postprocessing workflow is for Kodak's Instagram images. They post a large number of Portra 400 images, and so far I haven't noticed information included about postprocessing, or whether RA-4 was involved.