C41 or E6? 120 film for my travels.

[Frank Petronio]

The new Ektar 100 seems designed to appeal to all those frustrated Velvia shooters.

And the Portra would be for the photographers ;-)

[Ti29er]

Thanks.
Hope to start way down south in Tierra Del Fuego in January and then work my way north.
I have 3 weddings back here in the UK Aug / Sept so will pop back for 6-8 weeks.

I like my trekking and want to eeek out some travel articles and any other sort of article I can manage (mtn biking being one topic I can sell) - thus the Nikon will be used more than the Mamiya (?) as that's for my own personal projects.

As you say, C41 will be able to be processed along to way so running a test roll every now and again is a way of making sure it's working okay.

I am looking at the 50 and 150mm lenses for the M and a 28-70, 70-200 (both f2.8)and a couple of SB800 flash units, Pocket Wizards x2 and that should make up the main-stay of the gear.

In terms of sharpness how much of a difference with the Portra 160 and say Provia 100these day. I confess to not having considered the Ektar. I should shoot some and then decide. Likewise I wonder if the blues way down south may make the Ektar a wee bit too much?!

Cheers
Tim

[Ben Syverson]

For travel, you really can't beat negative film. I've traveled with Astia before, and I love those 6x7 slides, but honestly I wish they were all negatives instead. When you're traveling, you can't control the light temperatures you'll encounter, and you often are in extremely contrasty situations. Both are the kiss of death for E6. I have a lot of slides that are too orange, too green, too dark, or way too contrasty. And that's Astia, a low contrast film.

I'm a Portra NC fanatic (160 and 400), but for an upcoming trip to the Netherlands, I'm planning on taking digital and loading the point and shoot with Ektar 100. Ektar's higher resolution and lower grain means I can get cleaner shots than I can with the DSLR—and they're HDR with one shot. Pretty crazy when a thrift store camera can beat a $2500 digital.