New Portra 400... overexposed 5 stops?? ISO 12.5??

Hmmm.

So on one of our photowalks in Melbourne city, I incident metered for the shade, as most of my subject as in the shade and wanted to optimise exposure for my subject, this is an extra +5 stops compared to a subject in the sunlit areas... yet it handled this mixed shade/sun combination beautifully, and flattened out the lighting contrast and did not get too dense, tones are reproduced beautifull for subjects both in shade and sun, it handles such a extreme harsh contrast condition wonderfully.. I have midtones for both!

The New Portra 400.. it has fine grain.. it is very sharp, it has wonderful saturation, and a ton of local contrast snap, very good skin tones.. it is high speed.. it is pushable.. it handles overexposure, it retains highlights, it can compensate high contrast with increased exposure without pull-processing.. if you had to have only 1 colour film, this would be it, forget Ektar, you can do everything with this.

If I was shooting for the sunlit area.. you would call this an EI of 12.5! This isn't a pull-process either, it is standard.

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Portra 400 pushed to 1600

New Portra 400 pushed to 1600.. that's 4 minutes 15 seconds in C-41 developer :)

This new film is beautiful and it handles excellent at 1600.. as long as you push it though!

Though there is invariably going to be a couple of times when a bit of underexposure will be introduced, so perhaps a push to 3200, but using an EI of 1600 for exposure would be best, or push to 1600 with an EI of 1250 or 1000 even better.

Portra 400 @ 1600

 

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Portra 400 pushed to 25600

Pushed 6 stops. 7 minutes and 30 seconds processing time in Flexicolor C-41 at 39 degrees celsius.

Density range is thin, image is poor, and lots of scanner noise present. It's at this point several things spring to mind:

1. Use a fast lens to begin with (well I just need the $ for that Mamiya 645 80mm f/1.9!)
2. It's at this point, the mercury vapour and hydrogen peroxide latensification looks attractive.
3. Perhaps a tiny pre-flash.
4. A "pre-developer" if you will for about 1 minute or so, phenidone-ascorbic acid speed enhancing developer, long enough to begin to have action, without making a visible image, just to amplify the silver image a bit, in case C-41 can't discern as low intensity sites as a speed enhancing b&w dev can. Which then can be then processed through C-41 after.
5. Rehal processing, after bleaching, instead of fixing, run it through C-41 again to increase dye gain.
6. Combine hydrogen peroxide with a colour developer or C-41 during development to gain more dye yield.
7. Combine points 2 through 6.

Anyway, here is one of the images, probably the best off the roll. I do not recommend this. A push to 6400 might be doable to a good quality, the 3200 results I've seen online are quite good, I think a push to 6400, but shot with an EI of 3200 might be best though.

First 10 peoplein Australia to click Like on my services page get free C-41 processing and web size scanning for any 35mm or 120, including cross-processing and/or push/pulling (still need to get your film to me and provide return postage if you're not local).
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C-41 Infrared Test #1

C-41 Infrared Test #1

I figured just like with digital cameras, in a consumer product you can't remove all susceptibility outside the visible spectrum, just have several stops of difference in sensitivity.

R72 Filter used, +14.5 stops of 'filter compensation' to get this effect, or EI 0.017 from a ISO 400 film (I should mention this included 2 stops of reciprocity correction, but its just guess work at this point).

Exposure was f/2.8, 15 seconds, correct unfiltered exposure was f/11, 1/400th.

I was considered lowering the pH level of the C-41 developer to effectively underdevelop the reds, but the reds dont seem that dense as I suspect they would be, they seem quite godo, but the green and blue channels have a thin density range.

Needs more exposure, with a green and blue filter, would probably help a bit.

Defniately seems to be an IR effect their to my eyes.

Film was ISO 400 35mm cheap unknown brand film, unknown age.

Scanned with levels set on each colour channel to not have any clipping at all, then auto-levelled to provide a 'balanced' image (regardless of false colour) to see the effect.

Test #2 will include the colour filters and increased exposure.

A high contrast film may be much better for this, less expansion of green and blue would be needed, hence less grain contrast, and less shitty scanner noise, perhaps Velvia etc.

Things to try

Been in Melb for 6 weeks now...


Got a few things to try... pull-processing C-41 film, which I've already done in Rodinal and re-developed to colour before.. though that was 14 stop pull... good for daytime long exposure with no filters.

Got some old ISO 400 film that seems a bit crap and foggy at 400... though I did accidentally overdevelop it. Anyway, expose it at EI 50 and develop for 2 min 45 sec is the plan to see how it comes out.

Some bigger pulls with shorter times or C-41 with a 1+1 or 1+2 dilution and EI 12 and slower just to have a play.

Need to find some HCl from a pool shop to finish my concentrated 2 part colour negative developer.


Also got a roll of Rollei Pan 25 to test out.. not sure what to actually use it on though is the problem.



I want to try some Ektar 100 in 35mm lab-developed, and developed 'normally' (EI 100) in my concentrated developer (1+1+50), and pulled to EI 25 (1+1+100), with 8000 dpi Flextight 848 scans - just to ascertain differences.


The unbranded 400 ISO C-41 film shot @ EI 400, developed 3 min 45 sec accidentally and not agitated much (2 stop accidental push, was very dense and crappy), developed in Kodak Flexicolor at home, colour corrected (since it's C-41, posting orange negatives would be kinda odd).