> I had forgotten already that Ektar 100 came out in 2008 and the final version
> of Portra 160 in 2011. They used the advancements of Portra 400 into the new
> formulation. It seems to get punchy like ektar with lots of light but skin
> tones often better. Seems too muted for landscapes w/o profiling. Perhaps
> the Portra 160 scans better than Ektar--defer to AG on that. A company took
> a nice Koduck movie film and made rolls out of it--may be finer grain than
> the 160. Has anyone tried Cinestill 50D?
Ektar 100 is one of the most difficult films to scan and get the
colors right. I'm pretty convinced that it's a film that needs to be
derated a full stop just to keep the shadows from blocking up, but
then the highlights skew. I think there may be another way of
processing the images to get the curves better, but man-alive, it's a
beast. I used to love the first-generation Ektar 25, and Ektar 1000.
Those were amazing films. But I'm not sure why the last iteration of
Ektar 100 is so mind-boggling difficult to work with.
Yes, Portra 160 and 400 scan exceptionally well. I do recommend
derating both by 1/3 of a stop (125, 320), but not any more than that
because the curves change. The straight-line section allows for 1/3
stop leeway before we start seeing compression of the scale. While
both films have a huge shoulder and toe, which gives the freedom to
exposure the film +/- 2 stops, it does make for a lot more work on the
editing process.
If I was to use just ONE film, it would be Portra 400. I do find that
its color response is just a bit on the conservative side, but gives a
lot of room to breathe in editing. The files are more Canon-Digital in
how the colors are applied. Portra 160 has slightly more color snap,
but in reality, both films are designed to be interchangeable. Oddly
enough, with the Nikon Coolscan V-ED, Portra 400 scans better than
Portra 160. I think the grain structure is such that it doesn't alias
like the finer-grained 160. Portra 800 is the sleeper in the bunch. My
last several weddings, I shot a number of rolls of it and 400. And
like 400, it scans very very well. I just don't care for the shorter
straight-line section. However, my sweet spot for indoor wedding
photography is ISO 800 for natural light, ISO 400 for flash assist, so
I will always make sure I have several rolls handy.
As an alternative, I'm still a huge fan of Fujicolor Pro 400H. It
doesn't scan quite as cleanly as Portra 400, and the skintones are
classic Fuji, vs., the peaches-and-cream Kodak, but the rest of the
colors really are better. And it handles mixed lighting extremely well
as it has the Reala 4-layer technology. I don't think there is a
better film for outdoor environmental portraits (people in their
environments) than 400H. Sadly, as impressive as 400H is, I cannot use
it in a situation where I'm shooting Film AND Digital, as it's
impossible to get the digital images to match what is going on with
the 4-layer technology. At least with the Portra films, I can get a
reasonably close color/tonality match with the digital images.
One of my last combo weddings was a low-cost affair that I used up
most of my remaining rolls of Fuji NPZ. I couldn't get the images to
match worth anything, so I let the experts at Miller's Lab take care
of it, and they did. The results were awesome. Frankly, for any prints
smaller than the typical 8x10 size, it really doesn't matter what
camera or film you use as the printing process levels out almost all
the grain/noise and they all look about the same. However, with inkjet
style prints, all bets are off as that technology tends to alias the
grain/noise a little bit.
AG Schnozz
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