BetterPhoto Q&A
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Film Best Suited for Enlargements

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June 06, 2002

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June 06, 2002

Better films for 8x10 are Royal Gold 100 and Fuji Reala 100. Among some pro films for general use are Kodak's Supra 160 and Fuji's NPC (also ISO 160). Careful shopping by mail in some quantity to spread shipping cost across a larger number of rolls can get some of the high end consumer and pro color negative films (36 exposure only) at the same, sometimes lower cost of low-end 24 exposure consumer films bought at the local drugstore. Check out the prices on color negative film and shipping cost from B&H Photo Video or Adorama in NYC.

Also important is having a good lab print the 8x10's for you. It doesn't require custom work from a pro lab (expensive). If you haven't done so already, take some time to find a local consumer lab with personnel who know what they're doing and who maintain their print machine. This *does* make a difference.

-- John

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June 10, 2002

Use ISO 100 films but not slower.
Slow speed can be deceiving in some cases. Only two color print films are rated at ISO 50: Agfacolor Ultra 50 Prof. and Konica Impresa 50 Prof. They respectively show an RMS granularity rating of 4.3 and 4 which is a little more or equal to Fuji Reala. The Agfa Ultra 50 has the highest color saturation of any color-negative film in the world, hardly what you want for family and friends pictures.

John mistakenly rated Kodak Supra at 160 when it is in fact a ISO 100 film. No offense to John whose answers helped me more often then I can recall. Both Supra 100 and Fuji Reala 100 are great. Try Kodak Portra NC160 and Fuji NPS160, they both give beautiful skintones.

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June 10, 2002

A couple of common questions about Portra NC/VC and Fuji NPS/NPC

Difference between Portra 160NC and 160VC: Both have the same pallete, but VC has slightly higher contrast and saturation than NC which is "restrained" compared to general purpose consumer films. As Gilbert mentions, both render excellent skin tones.

Difference between Fuji NPS and NPC (both 160): Similar to the difference between Portra NC and VC. NPC has slightly higher contrast and saturation compared to NPS.

-- John

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June 10, 2002

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June 11, 2002

First:
Your Vivitar 283 is a "strobe." It may be small, shoe mounted, and "AA" battery powered, but it works much like the big monolights do, albeit it may not be as powerful and may take a little longer to recover for the next shot. It ranks among the most powerful of shoe mounted flash strobes with internal batteries. You can use two to four of them and put out quite a bit of light . . . more than enough for portraiture if you watch the flash to subject distance, even with light modifiers (scrims, softboxes, umbrellas, etc.)!

The "mainstream" films for "classic" color portraiture, indoor and outdoor under daylight balanced lighting, are the pro color negative films already mentioned: Fuji NPS and Kodak Portra 160 NC. Agfa also makes Portrait 160. Some use Fuji NPC and Portra 160 VC, but it's not as common. One of the all-time classics for B/W portraiture is Kodak's Tri-X, including using it under other than daylight balanced lighting.

This does not make them the "correct" films though. I encourage you to experiment some with various films, both B/W and color. Film is a very personal choice that depends on what the photographer envisions for a specific photograph (with paying clients, what they expect too). I've used just about everything for "portraiture," indoors and out, including Kodachrome 64, Royal Gold 100, Ektachrome E100S, Tri-X, and Agfa Scala 200X (a B/W slide film). Just recently did environmental stage portraiture using TMax P3200 B/W negative shooting it at EI 1600 with no filters, and did some experiments using Agfa's Scala 200X with a B+W 470 filter (cyan; also called minus-red) in a studio with daylight balanced strobes. A cyan filter emulates the color response of very old orthochromatic B/W films in producing gray tones on modern panchromatic B/W films. Gave some stunningly different results!

-- John

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June 11, 2002

Anyway, thanks for the film tips.

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June 13, 2002

Surely this guy needs 400 or faster, unless he's going to use flash all the time. You can make great 8X10's with Royal Gold 800. Better grainy than blurry.

--Seymour Shotz

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February 28, 2003

My personal experience over some years using films in the ISO 25 to ISO 100 range runs completely counter to your advice . . . which I'm not certain was even meant seriously . . . but I will respond as if it were. The original question for this thread didn't state indoors or outdoors, day or night. "Spontaneous" is not the same as "existing" or "available" light without flash.

I've been using ISO 64 film for "spontaneous" photographs of family and friends for years; definitely over a thousand. It does require flash at night and most of the time during the day indoors. Outdoors though, I've never *needed* flash during daylight due to subject luminance being too low. I have deliberately used flash for fill at times though and ISO 64 lets me force fill flash much easier; impossible with ISO 400 and faster and nearly so with ISO 200. Even in deep shade under tree canopy, I've never encountered anything requiring an exposure less than EV 8 with ISO 64 film during the day (1/60th @ f/2 = EV 8), and exposures less than EV 10 with ISO 64 film are quite rare (1/60 @ f/4 or 1/125th @ f/2.8).

For indoor "home" photography where distances never exceed 15 feet, I've used all manner of light modifiers from softboxes to ceiling bounce and never had to open up beyond f/4. Properly done if the ceiling is white, bounce from it can look identical in quality to the softness of indoor (man-made) available light. I've also made available light shots using an 85mm f/2 lens indoors at mid-day with all the window curtains open and the lights on. All hand held with ISO 64 film.

Regarding Tony's question, I've been using a pair of low-powered monolights in the GN 120 range, similar to his Vivitar 283, with shoot-through umbrellas in a home studio for some time. The pair have more than enough power at shorter distances of 10 feet or so which is more than enough for single person portraits and table-top still-lifes. I've used just one often enough to know that Tony should have no problem using his single Vivitar 283, even with a light modifier, provided he doesn't try ranges with it in excess of about 12 feet. For high magnification macros using extension tubes or bellows have significant light falloff, and demand very narrow apertures to maintain decent depth of field, he would have to keep it much closer to the subject material, but it's still not an unworkable situation.

BTW, there is no such thing as Kodak Royal Gold 800. The film speeds in Kodak's Royal Gold line were 25, 100, 200, 400 and 1000. ISO 25 was discontinued a number of years ago (along with the pro version, Ektar 25). I'm uncertain about the availability of Royal Gold 100 and 1000. Kodak doesn't have any discontinuation notices on its site, but B&H doesn't show any ISO 1000, the USA ISO 100 shows "discontinued" and the imported ISO 100 shows "out of stock."

Bottom Line:
My advice for s-l-o-w film in the ISO 64 to ISO 160 range still stands unless he wants to try available light indoors without much daylight coming through the windows. It's the only situation in which I can imagine ISO 800 might be required (perhaps Fuji Press 800). Even then I'd recommend turning on all the lights possible and metering to see if ISO 400 would work instead.

-- John

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February 28, 2003

--Davian

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April 23, 2003