[goatsNdonkey]

Around May I decided to begin testing my new-to-me m42 Sun Wide-Auto f/2.5 28mm lens with film -- and the full-frame format and angle of view -- after having finished with some very promising tests of the lens via m42-to-K adapter on Pentax dslr. What film to use, I wondered. I had a variety of expired film, as well as some expired but frozen. I wanted to use up some of the expired color, but I knew that some of the faster speed color would be kind of grainy, and I knew some of the color (I'm mainly thinking of UltraMax varieties) might be too innately garish to be a good test of the color rendering of the lens.

What about those one of the two rolls of Portra 160 I had recently glombed off of ebay? I didn't really know if they were expired or by how much, but the seller said they had been cold-stored since purchased new. Was I going to be taking portraits, no, maybe not any portraits at all -- mostly landscapes, buildings, objects. However, I had read forum postings here or on other photo-related forums and articles in photographers' blogs about using portra, or other portrait-balanced films for landscapes, car shows, architecture. A few photographers consider portra (or one it's cousins) their favorite film for those non-portrait subjects. Why not try it out. I forget if read about limitations they cited for this favorite film.

There are a few obvious limitations that might keep some people not from trying out Portra. It's known as a lower-contrast film and as one with lower (or a different kind of) color saturation compared to some other color films. It's not going to accentuate hard lines in faces. It's not going to leap toward the deepest, purest primary colors. I didn't consider those horrible characteristics. After all contrast can steal mid-tones, and I prefer natural color. On the other hand, Portra was known to have very fine grain, and not just in the literature about it, in the images. That would be good for a lens test I thought.

Anyway that was my initial thinking preceding these tests that would not be conducted in a lab or with laboratory analysis. I went out and took pictures. I dealt with the weather and lighting conditions of those days. I used my m42 mount Pentax ESII and a handheld light meter, because the ESII doesn't have a working internal light meter. I meant to send the film off for development and scanning soon after finishing the roll, but I wanted to send it off with another roll I was finishing in another camera.... Again, that was May. Finally I sent the film out not long ago and I got the scans back earlier this week.

Here I'll post a few results that seem to tell me the most about this film. There is slight digital tweaking of the scans to get to the versions I'm posting, mainly to preserve the best detail in the highlights, or the shadows, or both. Obviously, if the film didn't record them, those details wouldn't be in the scans. Many of these PPed versions look hardly different from the originals.


A) For the first half of my exposures, my shooting days were mostly plagued by cloudy days. The flat lighting challenged Portra 160's low contrast, but I think more than that Portra 160 tended to offer rather cool colors in that light. At best this yielded a kind of "antique" look, which depending on the subject matter might be very appropriate, as with the following picture of a farm house that has seen better days.


(cross-posted)


B) I suppose making skin look as delicate as flower petals might be a fitting goal for a portrait film, but how does such a film do with flowers? These pink weigela flowers, lit with sunlight, though with shady backgrounds might have benefited from either a bit more saturation (I remember them being a bit deeper in hue) or slightly stronger contrast. Or maybe they just needed to be framed more tightly, but we were at the nearest focus distance for the lens. Another shot of a blue iris blossom showed its delicate veining clearly, but this picture seems to show the film being challenged more, something worth knowing about. In the film's defense, the sunlit leaves exhibit a very natural green, not the cool green of the cloudy day Portra 160 shots.




C) The WOW of bright sun shots with Portra 160! Getting way out in the sun Portra 160 is a different film. When the light is very bright and contrasty, it tones it down a bit and lets the detail show. You don't have to squint against the brightness looking at its depiction of this old grain elevator complex, and so you see more. And can it do primary colors? Well, yes, it can, at least in the following picture of a piece of playground equipment. There is another kind of thing in the coloring I notice, though. The sky color in the Portra 160 pictures seems more related to "robin's egg" than to the "royal" blue I see in some other color film pictures and in Pentax dslr skies. Two examples:






D) Unexpected color or not? There was a colorful dusk in the later part of the roll, and I instinctively closed the aperture on the lens a couple of stops or so from the meter reading, just to keep the picture from trying to look like it was daytime. Despite the clouds that participated, despite the lack of direct sun, the Portra 160 rendering is surprisingly rich, not overly saturated, not fluorescent, but rich:



= = =

So what to do with my other roll of Portra 160? Part of me says be sure there will be bright shiny sun right away, the next time I load a roll. Part of me says, well how about shooting some portraits with it? (Why don't I have more portrait project ideas....?) Part of me says, just load it and see what happens. Part of me says, well at least remember that the film might have what might be called a limited "white balance latitude" leading to those cooler colors in the light below clouds. But even on the cloudy days sometimes there can be enough light streaming in from somewhere for the Portra 160 to play with, keeping it from getting too hot (next example), or if the color really seems off, convert the scan to monochrome and just enjoy the Portra 160 fine grain (last example):

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Last edited by goatsNdonkey; 09-28-2017 at 07:33 PM.

[LesDMess]

We have to be aware that scanning introduces a considerable amount of variables.
And because I have control of this aspect, I really enjoy starting with a flat image and adjusting to my taste.
The other thing I really enjoy about the series of Kodak Portra films is their exceedingly wide latitude.

Nice job and writeup.

[Jellygeist]

I use Portra 400 almost exclusively as my colour film of choice. I quite like the dreamy look the Portra line gives things, especially blue skies as the OP mentioned. Almost like the sky of some other planet.

I quite like it for flowers, too, as in this picture Good amount of saturation, I think, and I never have to tweak colours in post.

Overexposing Portra a little bit is a pretty good trick to ramp up the dreaminess. Very flattering for portraits, not everyone's cup of tea.

[goatsNdonkey]

We have to be aware that scanning introduces a considerable amount of variables.
And because I have control of this aspect, I really enjoy starting with a flat image and adjusting to my taste.
The other thing I really enjoy about the series of Kodak Portra films is their exceedingly wide latitude.

Nice job and writeup.

Good point about scanning, unfortunately it is a variable I personally have no control over...beyond choosing send the film to a different processor and scanner firm.

If you'd care to comment about your own comparisons between the different Portra offerings, it might give more context for people who haven't tried any of them yet. My own observations based on trying only one roll obviously have a lot of limitations.

[wombat2go]

Here is on taken in Sydney with the 2x3 Graflex using Portra 160
https://app.box.com/s/guawvk0g2ods4g0xlms00t42pvyrpovl
It can have tend to have pronounced brownish tone when white balanced I find.
Maybe I don't quite have it right, but I think I can see accentuated browns in your images too.
Thanks for the report

[goatsNdonkey]

Jellygeist -- Do you find the Portra 400 more contrasty than the 160? The red saturation certainly is strong in you linked flower picture, too.

wombat2go -- For some reason I can't get the image to load all the way and display when I go to the page you linked, perhaps an issue with my connection. I hadn't thought about the browns in my pictures, but you could be right. The range of browns, from the lightest tan to the deepest and darkest brown, is potentially as rich as the range of grays, from the lightest off-white to the darkest near-black; consequently, to the degree that accentuating browns is properly distinguishing them from grays or other nearby colors, can be a good thing. Of course, if that accentuating goes too far we are verging into the realm of sepia toning, which might or might not be good for the image.

[Jellygeist]

Jellygeist -- Do you find the Portra 400 more contrasty than the 160? The red saturation certainly is strong in you linked flower picture, too.

wombat2go -- For some reason I can't get the image to load all the way and display when I go to the page you linked, perhaps an issue with my connection. I hadn't thought about the browns in my pictures, but you could be right. The range of browns, from the lightest tan to the deepest and darkest brown, is potentially as rich as the range of grays, from the lightest off-white to the darkest near-black; consequently, to the degree that accentuating browns is properly distinguishing them from grays or other nearby colors, can be a good thing. Of course, if that accentuating goes too far we are verging into the realm of sepia toning, which might or might not be good for the image.

I have never shot 160 so I can't really tell you the differences, but based on your pictures I'd say 400 is possibly more contrasty. Certainly has more grain, which I don't particularly mind (grain makes it look like film).

As for the browns, I wouldn't worry about accentuating them too much. I mean, if you take pictures of lots of brown stuff, it's gonna look brown. Portra actually makes browns look really nice, as seen here

[goatsNdonkey]

I have never shot 160 so I can't really tell you the differences, but based on your pictures I'd say 400 is possibly more contrasty. Certainly has more grain, which I don't particularly mind (grain makes it look like film).

As for the browns, I wouldn't worry about accentuating them too much. I mean, if you take pictures of lots of brown stuff, it's gonna look brown. Portra actually makes browns look really nice, as seen here

Were you shooting Portra back when it had the NC (Natural Color) and VC (Vivid Color) versions? I just remembered I have a roll of the "NC" 160 that came along with a few rolls of B&W film a while back, not just the other roll of the later Portra 160 (with no color designation) like the one shot for these pictures I posted. I don't know if the NC will be different in any way.

[goatsNdonkey]

While in the first post of this thread I showed an example of a B&W conversion of one of the cloudy-day Portra 160 shots as a way of improving a shot with too-cool or muted colors, I also made a few B&W conversions of sunny-day bright-Portra-color shots, including the playground equipment photo above. Here's a link to the post in the Monochrome thread where I offered four examples of those: https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/26-mini-challenges-games-photo-stories/8...ml#post4102085



.

[leekil]

Were you shooting Portra back when it had the NC (Natural Color) and VC (Vivid Color) versions? I just remembered I have a roll of the "NC" 160 that came along with a few rolls of B&W film a while back, not just the other roll of the later Portra 160 (with no color designation) like the one shot for these pictures I posted. I don't know if the NC will be different in any way.

The NC Portra is probably a little less contrasty than the modern Portra, and less saturated. I believe it is also (therefore?) less red/brown.

[Jellygeist]

Were you shooting Portra back when it had the NC (Natural Color) and VC (Vivid Color) versions? I just remembered I have a roll of the "NC" 160 that came along with a few rolls of B&W film a while back, not just the other roll of the later Portra 160 (with no color designation) like the one shot for these pictures I posted. I don't know if the NC will be different in any way.

I've only ever shot post-reformulated Portra. It's kind of a combination of the best aspects of the previous two versions, natural but nice saturation. If you want more saturation, try Ektar. For less...well, I'm not sure.

[leekil]

I really liked the Portra 160 NC. Intended for weddings and other portraiture, it must have been somewhat formulated to work with pastel bridesmaids' dresses, because faded blue jeans looked really good with it.

[goatsNdonkey]

I really liked the Portra 160 NC. Intended for weddings and other portraiture, it must have been somewhat formulated to work with pastel bridesmaids' dresses, because faded blue jeans looked really good with it.

In considering my results with the later Portra 160, particularly the truer colors in the sunnier shots, it occurred to me that the film would probably work nicely with electronic flash, as well, the presumed kind of lighting for most indoor portraits, such as those at most weddings. When I use the NC roll, perhaps I could use some fill flash in cloudier conditions, if the main subject isn't too far away.

[Davep]

I still have 3 rolls of 160NC in the fridge, but I haven't shot any in over a year. Time to get back out there and have some fun.

[goatsNdonkey]

I still have 3 rolls of 160NC in the fridge, but I haven't shot any in over a year. Time to get back out there and have some fun.

Davep, feel free to post any of your results in this thread, if you wish. I would like it just fine if the thread gathered much, much more than my experience with these Portra films. Obviously, the more Portra users participate, including posting examples, the more helpful the thread would become to other forum readers considering using these films.