Film Choices - Kodak!

The photo above of my son and grandchildren was taken with my new (to me) Pentax ZX-7 loaded with an expired (2009) roll of Kodak UltraMax 400 color film.

I have film shooting friends that swear by Fuji film, especially Velvia, because of the highly saturated colors. I have tried many of the films Fuji makes at one time or another, most of them over the last three years since I got bit by the film bug again and started this blog. I find that each film has its own unique advantages but I keep coming back to Kodak. I know I am probably prejudiced but I just like Kodak better. The film that has the “Look” I prefer is Kodak Portra.

Portra is available in two speeds, 160 and 400. To me either one produces better color photos than almost any other color film – ever! There are exceptions to everything of course and this is no exception. 

Last year for Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day I shot Portra 160 in my home-made 35mm pinhole camera and it rendered a very pleasing color photo with beautiful subdued blues and greens. This year I wanted to include some bright colors in my composition and I wanted a film that would really make the colors “pop.” I know Fuji Velvia will do that but slide films are generally not very tolerant of exposure deviations and my pinhole camera shutter is a hand operated piece of sliding cardboard. Needless to say, my shutter settings are not very precise and even though I do bracket each shot in this kind of situation a film with wide exposure latitude is a must.

Kodak Gold 100 or 200, like the 400 used for the photo above, is very forgiving, has excellent color saturation and is great for “snapshots.”  It is also usually very inexpensive too, but as a film developed in the “last century” it does not seem to scan as well as the newer 21^st century films and since no one does “wet lab work” anymore scanning is now an essential part of processing film. I recalled however, from my earlier experimentation that Ektar 100 produced some beautiful blue skies so I retried it hoping it would render the other colors just as bright and pleasing – it did! If you want to see the results check out my last two blog posts. Now I know that if I am looking for bright saturated colors choose Ektar 100.

Kodak Portra, my first choice for most pictures has great color saturation too, scans beautifully and renders a kind of subdued, moody kind of color that I really like. While the colors don’t “pop” like when using the Ektar the intensity of intermediate shades adds a kind of texture to the color and the tones are so much richer than any other film I have ever used. By way of analogy it’s like the difference between shooting outside at noon or at five or six in the evening. The noon light causes the colors to be much brighter but harsher while the evening light mellows everything out and makes the colors seem richer and more intense in a completely different way. 

It’s taken me three years to come to this decision but once I shoot up the stash of various kinds of film I have now I will be buying and using Portra almost exclusively for color photos. I am currently involved in a similar exploration of black & white films and hope to have a similar report and decision in that regard coming up soon.