Kodak ektar 100 vs kodak portra nc

[prado333]

Dear all:
I usually use kodak nc in 8x10 , and sometimes vc , but now i have the opportunity to buy kodak ektar 100 in 8x10 at good price and my question is if it is how much different this film is from portra?
i like the look of nc but at 144 usd per box now i must buy ektar.
thanks in advance.

[EOTS]

Hi,

Ektar is more contrasty / saturated, has even finer grain.

Here are some side-by-side comparisons that I found useful:
http://www.onlandscape.co.uk/2010/12...lm-comparison/
http://www.onlandscape.co.uk/2011/02...arison-pt-two/
http://www.onlandscape.co.uk/2011/06...mparison-pt-3/

Best,
Martin

[timparkin]

Dear all:
I usually use kodak nc in 8x10 , and sometimes vc , but now i have the opportunity to buy kodak ektar 100 in 8x10 at good price and my question is if it is how much different this film is from portra?
i like the look of nc but at 144 usd per box now i must buy ektar.
thanks in advance.

I've made a few comparisons between these films in addition to those in the On Landscape articles above (thanks for the link!) and the two films are very, very different. Portra has an immense amount of dynamic range and when scanned produces very consistent colour. Ektar very quickly blocks up in the shadows (at about -2 stops compared to Portras -3 to -4 stops) and has various colour crossovers that sometimes look OK but in contrasty light can go really, really weird. Nothing wrong with Ektar per se but it's definitely not a substitute.

[amac212]

I agree with the above. Ektar is quite contrasty and I find it almost as sensitive as slide film. It can be absolutely beautiful and I do shoot it, but only in non-contrasty lighting conditions. Otherwise scanning becomes quite finicky.

[Drew Wiley]

Ektar is a remarkable product if you are looking for something to potentially replace the look of chrome film. There are no "crossover" problems if you understand it. This film is not
artifically warmed for skintones like a traditional color neg film. Mixed lighting with shadows
under an open blue sky will appear to have blue shadows because the shadows ARE blue!
Anyone who can correctly expose a chrome film should have no problem with Ektar whatsoever, though it can be important to balance for color temp. I ordinarily carry a pinkish SL filter, 81A, and 81C, and shoot it in several formats, including 8X10. This is one
of the finest films ever made, if you take time to understand it and ignore all the BS from
people who haven't bothered. Perhaps more suited to landscape work than portraiture,
with about a stop more latitude either side compared to a typical chrome, but distinctly
more contrast than Portra 160.

[Drew Wiley]

I should add: per your past experience with now-discontinued Portra NC and VC. The current Portra 160 is a lot more like Portra NC, while Ektar is like VC, but finer-grained,
even a bit cleaner and more saturated, and a little more contrasty. I shoot it at box speed
(100) with correction for filter factors. I only scan it for editing purposes when someone
wants to see a positive image in advance, but always print optically, with an enlarger,
so don't have to deal with secondary problems related to scanning itself. A lot of complaints about this film come from people using amateur scanners, who don't understand
color temperature imagine themselves capable of fixing anything afterwards in Photoshop.
It just doesn't work that way. Optimum results require correct exposure in the first place.
It's just that over time people got used to the idiosycasies of chromes and negs, and now
have a slightly different niche to learn.

[timparkin]

Ektar is a remarkable product if you are looking for something to potentially replace the look of chrome film. There are no "crossover" problems if you understand it. This film is not
artifically warmed for skintones like a traditional color neg film. Mixed lighting with shadows
under an open blue sky will appear to have blue shadows because the shadows ARE blue!
Anyone who can correctly expose a chrome film should have no problem with Ektar whatsoever, though it can be important to balance for color temp. I ordinarily carry a pinkish SL filter, 81A, and 81C, and shoot it in several formats, including 8X10. This is one
of the finest films ever made, if you take time to understand it and ignore all the BS from
people who haven't bothered. Perhaps more suited to landscape work than portraiture,
with about a stop more latitude either side compared to a typical chrome, but distinctly
more contrast than Portra 160.

Not sure if the comment about blue was aimed at me but regardless there blue tendency when Ektar blocks up is real and can be seen in the side by sides I've published. I also run a scanning service and nearly always have to apply a blue cut in the shadows if they are deep.

I'd also say that if you expose Ektar like Velvia 50 you'll be OK as long as your shadows aren't darker than -2 or -3. You'll also end up wasting most of the highlight latitude of the film.

The best way to think about Ektar is like a chrome film in reverse. Velvia 50 (like most chrome films) have about 8 stops of dynamic range (presuming your using a good drum scanner) with the spread being -6 in the shadows and +2 in the highlights (approx). Ektar has probably -2 or maybe -3 in the shadows and about +9 in the highlights (the deep shadows in the chrome and the bright highlights of the ektar will be noisy. The bright highlights of the chrome clip very quickly and the deep shadows of the ektar block up very quickly).

I've got a 15 stop bracket upstairs - I'll see if I can find it..

Tim

[timparkin]

I ordinarily carry a pinkish SL filter, 81A, and 81C.

At what point would you consider using these filters Drew? Our differences in opinion is probably because I've done more scanning than wet printing and you probably vice versa.

[Drew Wiley]

No, I wasn't specifically referring to your comment, Tim. But there is a lot of uninformed chatter out there about Ektar, mainly related to improper exposure and scanning technique. There probably is a functional point at which the extremes will cross over with
a scan, but that's true of chromes too. You have just so much functional exposure range,
after that, it's voodoo. But within the realistic range, it is very important to get full exp
of all three dye layers using color temp correction when applicable. I learned that the hard
way, but now know why sensitometrically. And you are right about shadows. You can retrieve more than with a chrome, but they'll land hard at a certain point. Fine with me.
I don't expect it to behave like Portra, and don't want it to. Retrieving info via masking isn't
really a lot different than in scanning (I've done both). But if the dye layers are improperly
balanced to begin with, you're stuck with what you've got. Overcast skies often need an
81A for ideal results, deep blue shade 81C, minor tweaks an SL (I use an old SingRay KN),
mixed lighting will be more of a challenge until the personality of the film is familiar. I switched to Ektar when the demise of Cibachrome became apparent, and find it to be an
extremely helpful film for optical printing onto Crystal Archive. The local labs love it too
because they find it so cooperative in scanning. But if you combine small format and a
cheap scanner, I can understand why there would be serious secondary misunderstood issues.

[Drew Wiley]

Sorry Tim ... I'm still at work and have to chat in segments ... but scanning WILL NOT change the need for light balancing filtrations in serious situations. That issue is inherent
to the way the film is engineered and the shape of the inherent dye curves. You can only
wing it so much. The same was true of chromes ... it's just that folks got used to being
creative with the errors. Remember when everyone screamed when Ektachrome 64 was no
longer available, and things weren't "blue enough"? But this is a new film, and how or how
not to break the rules isn't so apparent yet. Traditional color neg films have their own range of significant reproduction errors - things like Portra 160 optimize skintones but tend
to turns every related hue into a skintone too! People just accept that. For that crowd,
Ektar might not be the best choice. If you're mainly from a chrome background like me,
it is an extremely promising product.