Color film for portrait photography?

[Eric_6227]

I have always shot in black and white, but since getting my first 4x5, I have begun to shoot some color as well. I've been using Fuji Velvia 100, which is great for natural scenes, but when I use it for people, their skin and features look reddish and uncomplimentary. Lip color is exaggerated red and skin just looks flushed and blotchy. Do others notice this as well? Can anyone recommend good transparency films for photographing people?

Thanks,

[Eric Leppanen]

Astia 100F.

[David R Munson]

Fuji NPS exposed at EI 100 is my favorite for any sort of color, portraits included. Don't pull-process it, just shoot it a little hot and you'll get great negs out of it.

[ronald moravec]

Best natural looking color color is Astia as above. And use a sheet on a landscape too. I`m not a fan of punched up color/contrast.

Portra NC or VC will give good NEGS. My pref is VC.

[Phong]

I like Astia 100F, Kodak E100 G and E100 GX.

[Frank Petronio]

Just wondering why you want to shoot chromes of people instead of color neg? It seems to me that the advantages of neg film outweigh those of chromes - most fashion photographers have switched to neg by now...

[Bob Fowler]

Fuji NPS is my first choice.

[Armin Seeholzer]

Kodak Portra NC is my first choice.

[Frank Petronio]

I like the Porta 400 NC color neg in 4x5. It is nice to have the speed as an option, especially for cloudy days or halogens instead of strobes.

[RDKirk]

Fuji has replaced NPS with 160S Pro. I've just gotten a box from Adorama that I haven't yet had a chance to try. Perhaps this weekend...

[paulr]

i've been using 160S pro for a while. it looks a lot like NPS to me. probably a side by side comparison would show the difference, but i'm not aware of it in day to day shooting.

also, i'm scanning the film, so my corrections might be neutralizing some of the differences.

[Craig Wactor]

NPS and Portra NC are great portrait print films, however he asked about transparency film. Eric, I second the Astia 100F.

[Eric_6227]

Thanks for the replies. Looks like I have some experimenting to do. I was using transparency since I can see the results on the film without printing or scanning. But considering the number of suggestions for negative film, it is definitely worth a try. I'll also follow the suggestion to try these on landscape as well. Thanks again.

[RDKirk]

>>i've been using 160S pro for a while. it looks a lot like NPS to me. probably a side by side comparison would show the difference, but i'm not aware of it in day to day shooting.
also, i'm scanning the film, so my corrections might be neutralizing some of the differences.
<<

Hmm. Fuji 160S Pro is supposedly optimized for scanning...but you're saying you haven't noticed a significant difference. I'd expect you're using the same settings...have you tried any additional tweaking?

[Capocheny]

Eric,

I agree with Frank... why transparency film?

Astia 100F... gives great skin tones!

Cheers

[Kirk Gittings]

">i've been using 160S pro for a while. it looks a lot like NPS to me. probably a side by side comparison would show the difference, but i'm not aware of it in day to day shooting. also, i'm scanning the film, so my corrections might be neutralizing some of the differences. <<"

Hmm. Fuji 160S Pro is supposedly optimized for scanning...but you're saying you haven't noticed a significant difference. I'd expect you're using the same settings...have you tried any additional tweaking?"

My tests in an earlier post suggest that the new 160sPro is a moderate advance in sharpness, grain and potentially scanning. I say potentially because as far as I know none of the scanner software companies have supplied profiles for the new film yet. IT8 targets only work on tranies. So we are stuck using NPS profiles. It may be better for scanning. The new film has a much thinner mask. For now the NPS profiles seem to work alright. I use them every day.

[RMiksell]

I agree with Frank on the Portra 400, fine grained, lots of exposure flexibility, and the skin tones are spot on.