What is the most natural colour film ?

[cosmicexplosion]

I hAve just been corrected as to my thinking that portra was
The truest or most natural colour film
Apparently not so

My interest is landscape not portraits.

Cheersalot!
Andy Pandy

[Drew Wiley]

OK. I wasn't trying to spook you. There is no such thing as a perfect film, or even an ideal
film for every application. You need to experiment and come to your own conclusions,
based on your chosen subject matter and own method of printing. Ektar is very nice for landscape work, but a common complaint is with the blue in the shadows or during overcast days. This may cause issues with the three dye layers not being proportionately exposed. I recommend carrying a few corrective warming filters like pinkish 2B, and 81A, and maybe an 81C. This is the correct way to get adequate exposure across the board, rather than simply overexposing the film in general. Of course, you will need to apply the correct exposure factor to your ASA.

[bob carnie]

I use Fuji 160 nc for a lot of my colour work and it seems quite natural to me.

[Lachlan 717]

Morning, Andy.

If these are going to be scanned, it's pretty much a moot point for me. Given you can micro-correct so many things in PS, such as colour balance and saturation, perhaps you should look at the most forgiving in order to get the best neg as often as possible.

I generally use Velvia when I do shoot colour, but that's just out of habit and availability. I also tend to only shoot colour in the golden hours, so I'm chasing saturation then, or in the rainforests where Drew's advice of chucking on a warming filter is vital. For what it's worth, I find that Velvia needs something around 81C as a minimum in the rainforest shots.

I'm toying with trying some Ektar, but scanning a C41 scares me a bit!

[richardman]

Out of "necessity," for the first time in years, I am shooting color film. Since the camera is on a tripod, it doesn't matter that much whether it's ISO400 or ISO100 most of the time. I scan all my stuff (sorry). I am quite proficient with computers and post processing using PSD and LR.

Ektar is nice but it has a heavy magenta cast that's difficult to manage. I have been shooting Reala lately and while it still some some blue/magenta cast, it's not as severe as Ektar so for the time being, it's my film of choice. I tried Portra a couple times but have not extensively so no opinion yet.

For slide, I swear by Provia. Velvia is just amazing though.

In the end, computer post processing do equalize things A LOT.

[Drew Wiley]

With color neg, if you disproportionately expose one of the color layers you not only alter the color balance, but you alter the geometry of the respective curves relative to one
another (they're not either symmetrical or matched). So you can't post-correct just anything. It's a lot easier to exp and balance in the first place. I've never seen a magenta cast on Ektar, so assume this must just be some fluke of your particular digital workflow.

[richardman]

With color neg, if you disproportionately expose one of the color layers you not only alter the color balance, but you alter the geometry of the respective curves relative to one
another (they're not either symmetrical or matched). So you can't post-correct just anything. It's a lot easier to exp and balance in the first place. I've never seen a magenta cast on Ektar, so assume this must just be some fluke of your particular digital workflow.

Drew, looks like the web's experience is all over the place:
http://www.apug.org/forums/archive/i.../t-107815.html
http://www.flickr.com/groups/kodak_e...7608207797750/
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3049211

So looks like YMMV

p.s. I do some long exposure (2+ mins) so that could be a factor)

[David Lobato]

Speaking about transparency films, the discontinued Ektachrome films were fairly accurate. Kodak EPN 100 was the most accurate for matching textiles and fabrics. I used to love Ektachrome EPR 64 for its moderate to soft contrast in winter outdoor scenes. Warming filters handled some tendencies toward blue casts. Fujichrome Astia 100 is discontinued but it had moderate contrast and color compared to Velvia76.

As for now, seems all we have is Fujichrome Provia 100. Perhaps 1/3 stop overexposures will soften tendencies to over saturated colors.

[polyglot]

Your original guess of Portra (160) is still the right one, going by objective metrics like delta-E. Chromes cannot use a mask (who wants a slide with a heavy orange or cyan cast?) therefore they suffer the inherent shortcomings of their dyes whereas colour neg can work around the dye shortcomings (gaps in spectral response, etc) because the capture media is separate from the display media.

However, "most accurate" does not mean "best" and it's a rare landscape that I'd shoot on Portra. While chromes are less accurate in their colour, they generally look much better because their displayed dynamic range is greater... but that leads one naturally to the question of "do you have the facilities to project an LF chrome?". If the answer is no, then there is very little point to shooting chrome because you're either printing to RA4 (since Ciba is gone) or you're printing digitally. And if you're printing digitally, you can make a good colour-neg film like Portra behave just like any chrome emulsion you want through photoshopping.

A properly-scanned C41 neg will look just like a scan of a chrome; if it's all flat, pastel and milky and that wasn't your express intention then your scanning workflow is broken. Likewise anyone moaning about colour casts on scans from negs, particularly in shadows: they're not doing the scanning right. Ektar, Portra, Reala, 160S, whatever; when properly processed and scanned, the hue errors are generally too small to perceive though of course the films differ in contrast and saturation.

If you wet-print to RA4 and do landscapes, I would suggest Ektar as your best bet in LF.

(examples above are generally 6x7 not LF... but the emulsions are the same)

[richardman]

Yea, whatever. I get better colors with Reala than Ektar. Case closed for me.