Need a film with high DR - another what film thread

[stompyq]

First up my apolagies if this topic has been beaten to death. I have a specific problem and any advice is much appreciated. Her'es the background and the question

I've been hitting the local glens of late in anticipation of moving away from the rochester/fingerlakes region (my degrees nearly complete). I've covered this area farily thourghly but have run in to a recurirng problem of high DR forcing me to sacrifice either highlights or shadows. Now with digital i can do HDR (which i don't like) and have done semi HDR with my 4x5 gear. Basically taking 2 different exposures and labouriously blending them in PS. However i've been wondering if i'am going about this all wrong and should try to get a film with better DR. I've been shooting exclusivly with velvia 100F and have been toying with the idea of going b/w. Just so everybodys clear i get all my developing done via praus photo and their rate for b/w is higher than E6/C41. This and the fact that i won't have any color (obviously!!) and the problems associated with shooting two different types of film has discouraged me in going b/w. Theirs no way for me to do any of my own developing (not even a community darkroom). However i feel i can't neglect this any longer.

From my readings on the web it's also not clear to me if color negative emulsions have caught up with b/w in terms of DR. So i guess the question is what film (either b/w or color) would be best suited for my specific case. I would appreciate specific names.

PS: on average i've spot metered and figured that the DR of most of the pics that i'am trying to make far exceeds that of any film. But i'am just trying to erk out as much as i can without going in to the unnatural HDR look (which i personally hate)

Thanks in advance.

[bbjorkum]

You could try to make a pre exposure of your film. Have a look in Ansel Adam's bible The Negative. It applies to colour film as well, both neg and chromes, and should give you that extra lift of your shadows. Another solution would be to use the Ektachrome 64T. It can cope with more contrast than any other chrome film. Just use a blue filter to compensate for daylight. You can even give this film a pre exposure.

[Ron Marshall]

What subject brightness range do you anticipate for your project.

With a film having a long straight-line curve, TMY, and semi-stand development, you can record a SBR of 12 stops or more.

[Capocheny]

Hi Stompyq,

Personally speaking, I'm not so sure that I would be using a film like Velvia in contrasty situations in the first place. I would use Velvia on cloudy, overcast days where the contrast is fairly low.

Try Provia instead.

Just my $.02 worth. :)

Cheers

[Oren Grad]

In general, color negative films can record a substantially greater brightness range than color transparency films. I'd suggest trying a 10-sheet box of either Portra 160NC or Portra 400NC under the sorts of conditions that are giving you trouble before concluding that you have to give up on color.

[Bjorn Nilsson]

I just have to chime in with Oren. The easiest way to cope with color shots even a normal sunny day is to use negative films. While nothing really beats a nicely exposed chrome, there is a very small audience who enjoys leaning over a light table with a loupe. :) I really love Velvia, but it's very fuzzy about exposure (as most chrome film) and if your end product is some kind of print the workflow with negative film is more straight-forward.
Also, developing negative color film is easier and you can find more labs doing it.

//Björn

[David Luttmann]

For transparencies, Astia 100F

For color neg, Fuji Pro 160S.

Those two film have the highest DR of any color materials.

[sgelb]

In general, color negative films can record a substantially greater brightness range than color transparency films. I'd suggest trying a 10-sheet box of either Portra 160NC or Portra 400NC under the sorts of conditions that are giving you trouble before concluding that you have to give up on color.



I will second this reccomendation.. I have been shooting this more and more. make sure u get new film too.. expired doesnt hold up (even 1 yr old or so). I shot a box of 400NC recently and was amazed. no to very low grain. 160 is great stuff. its naturally very high dynamic range and very neutral color balance. VC is ok, but it has more contrast than I like and makes things a little more difficult in post.

I will also advise that you steer clear from fuji. it has a nasty red magenta/green crossover cast that is hard to fix in the post. kodak emulsions (both neg and chrome) are WAY better balanced. (i know there will be some haters on this) provia is total junk imo, the blues always have a magenta cast which u cannot fix. velvia is much better but then u run into a lot of issues with scanning and exposure. Portra not only has a super high DR but it also scans incredibly well.

portras only downfall is it does not hold up on long exposures.

[stompyq]

Thanks guys. This is all very helpful especially the recomendations on the color neg film. I forgot to mention that my workflow is scanning the film once i get it from the lab. Based on this i've often wondered why i would be still using velvia (old habit i guess but i love it on a lighttable).

Bjarte i'am a little confused about the pre-exposure you mentioned. I thought this was done in the darkroom and not unexposed film? I read the negative a while back and can't remember. Anychance you can elaborate? (a link would be very helpful)

[Drew Wiley]

It's not quite so simple. Color neg films, especially the ones with a longer scale,
have quite a different hue palette than chromes. Most of these films were engineered with fleshtones (portraiture) in mind, so may give relatively unnatural
colors of nature. I find the reproduction of greens and yellow especially disappointing. You will be able to correct some of these problems in Photoshop but
not all. Slightly higher contrast films like Porta 160VS are somewhat better, and
then you shift into the least contrast of the chrome films, Astia, which is realistically
only going to give you about 2/3 stop more range than Velvia. Nothing in color is
going to provide you with the range of certain black and white films, unless of course you have a three-shot color camera, which uses three sheets of black and white film behind color separation filters - not exactly a point-and-shoot that fits in your pocket however!

[Bruce Watson]

From my readings on the web it's also not clear to me if color negative emulsions have caught up with b/w in terms of DR. So I guess the question is what film (either b/w or color) would be best suited for my specific case. I would appreciate specific names.

Your readings then are incomplete. Modern color negative films are really quite good. They have a dynamic range nearly as good as B&W films for normally encountered subject brightness ranges (SBR), with color accuracy exceeding tranny films (that's what the orange mask is for). This according to a retired Kodak engineer who spent many years working with color emulsions and processes. That would be "Photo Engineer" on APUG if you want to look it up.

I like shooting in sunlight myself. I like the way it brings out textures and I like the play of shadows and the challenge of bringing out shadow detail while maintaining highlight detail. This is not a problem with modern color negative materials. 160PortraVC/NC can do it, as can Fuji 160 C/S, as can 400PortraNC. For example, I've taken 160PortraVC up to about 11 stops (textureless black and white with nine stops with textural information in between). This was a white flower in bright noon sun in June with full textural detail in the dark green leaves that were in heavy shadow. The film performed excellently, a straight linear response without any color shifting that I could detect.

I've drum scanned a fair amount of my color negative work. I find I get slightly better scans from the slower and less contrasty films like 160PortraNC and Fuji 160S. But all the films scan nicely so use the one you want.

For B&W I only use one film now. That would be 5x4 TMY-2. Considerably less graininess than Tri-X -- more comparable to TMX. Really nice tonality. Excellent reciprocity characteristics. Scans easily.

[Bruce Watson]

Something is going on with this forum. Normally very helpful people are being less than helpful. Maybe it's just... summer. :D

[Drew Wiley]

Bruce - you miss the point. Color neg films and tranny films handle color quite differently. I print both, so understand some of the idiosyncrasies involved. It doesn't
make a lot of difference what you read on the web, Photo Engineer or not (he's a nice
fellow). You get a different look along with a different tonality. Certain kinds of colors
are extremely hard to reproduce using neg film. You have to learn the limitations of
your medium. And in this respect there simply is no substitute for experimentation and experience, to see what kind of color pallete one has an affinity for. It's not about
about what's "best" in a one-shoe-fits-all mentality. And no color neg film is going to begin to give you the range of certain blackand white films. "Pull" processing and flashing rarely work with modern color films either. I often carry both types of film
with the 8x10 because different subjects, brightness ranges, and specific colors require
different film and printing options.

[Ken Lee]

Oops - Sorry to have been less than helpful. I deleted my message.

[Bruce Watson]

Oops - Sorry to have been less than helpful. I deleted my message.

*That* isn't what I wanted. Clearly my attempt at a return jest fell flat. Sorry. Clearly it is... summer.

[Ken Lee]

Oh good !

What I meant to say, is that I find b&w plenty hard enough to deal already. Color is even harder. And I rarely see fine art color photos (large format or otherwise) that I would want to hang in my home.

Cinematographers use all kinds of lighting and reflectors when shooting outdoors. For a simple 3-second scene, they might spend more effort and money than we get in a lifetime. I suspect much of that effort, is spent attempting to squeeze the dynamic range of the scene into the range of their color medium.

[Bruce Watson]

Bruce - you miss the point. Color neg films and tranny films handle color quite differently.

On the contrary, I think I have a good understanding of the issues. First, this thread is about various films' dynamic range. My testing shows me that modern color negative films are up to just about any SBR you want to shoot with them. That, is the point I was making.

When it comes to how films handle color, I understand full well that they all handle it differently and as a result have different color pallets. Some because that's what the engineers wanted, some because that's all the engineers can do with what they have to work with.

Tranny film can't be as accurate as negative films, because the engineers can't build a mask into tranny films. It would destroy the WYSIWYG nature of the medium. But there's no point in arguing with me about it, I readily admit that I'm not a film design engineer. I defer to PE on these and most other film matters.

But just because the colors aren't perfectly accurate doesn't mean they can't be perfectly pleasing. They can be, and many people prefer the colors they get from various trannies. Just as many prefer the colors they get from negative films.

Personally I'm just amazed at how good modern films are, be they tranny, color negative, or B&W. It's a good time to be a photographer!

[Bruce Watson]

Oh good !

What I meant to say, is that I find b&w plenty hard enough to deal already. Color is even harder. And I rarely see fine art color photos (large format or otherwise) that I would want to hang in my home.

Cinematographers use all kinds of lighting and reflectors when shooting outdoors. For a simple 3-second scene, they might spend more effort and money than we get in a lifetime. I suspect much of that effort, is spent attempting to squeeze the dynamic range of the scene into the range of their color medium.

From what I can tell a lot of this effort is to make the scene they are filming look "natural" on screen. That means they need to bounce some light into the shadows (the human eye has that nasty variable pupil thing going where it can just open up to see into the shadows), plus they need to control the color temperature of their white point at least somewhat (something the human visual system is very good at) so they can splice all that film together and have it look "seamless" as it were. It seems almost like a huge portrait shoot, except everyone can be moving.

A lot of it too is to control light and dark so that they can direct your eye toward that which they deem important. Just like we do with B&W. At least some of the time. Maybe.

But I believe they are actually shooting on negative film. Something about the accuracy of making multi-generational copies IIRC. Makes a higher quality final print for distribution. I don't remember.

I've been thinking about taking some cinematography classes just to learn more about it. Maybe I will one of these days. Hmmm....

[Drew Wiley]

Bruce - the orange mask is both what makes the film "better" and what prevents it
from being better! With tranny film you can create all kinds of correction masks
and fine-tune the result, if you're willing to do the work. With negative films, however, you start out with low contrast to begin with, and there just isn't much
latitude for removing any more contrast with additional masking. Color correction masking inherently becomes a form of contrast masking too. Unfortunatety,
they don't make higher contrast papers for printing color negatives, only lower
contrast or "portrait" ones in realtion to ordinary commercial Type C. You folks that
scan and print digitally can boost things in Photoshop to some extent, but the orange
mask itself is a color, and you can only saturate in so many directlions with negative
film before you either run out of room or are fudging completely artificial colors
through Photoshop. But it is amazing how far color neg film has come in the last
decade or so! I'm in the process right now of framing a large installation of 30x40's
enlarged directly from 8X10 Portra 160VC film. The color is indeed a bit different than tranny films, but is pretty convincing anyway.

[Lynn Jones]

Alright Mr. unpronouncible name,

If by DR you mean density range, in continuous tone b/w it is controllably almost infinite. Email me and I'll give you full scientific (but relatively simple) data on quality control.

Normal DR in negative films is GBar .50 (give or take a smidgen), in digital it is 1:100, chrome 1:1.35.

When you want to cheat the system to give you what Kodak et al can't you can use pre-exposure, water bath, and certain other relatively no longer known among the modern photographers.

Lynn

[stompyq]

Alright Mr. unpronouncible name,

If by DR you mean density range, in continuous tone b/w it is controllably almost infinite. Email me and I'll give you full scientific (but relatively simple) data on quality control.

Normal DR in negative films is GBar .50 (give or take a smidgen), in digital it is 1:100, chrome 1:1.35.

When you want to cheat the system to give you what Kodak et al can't you can use pre-exposure, water bath, and certain other relatively no longer known among the modern photographers.

Lynn

Mr. unpronouncible name:D :D :D

I have three other names that i don't use which are far worse!!:D

Anyway by DR i meant Dynamic Range. Unfortunately i don't have any control over film development etc b/c i don't have a darkroom (and won't have one as like my wife reminds me i want a divorce!!). I just have the local lab do the work. So i'am only limited to film that has a fairly linear curve.

I kind of agree on the comments on color with respect to negative vs slide film (although my experiances are with 35mm). I have a hard time getting accurate color in a few situations with negative emulsions.