development flaws on 8x10 portra

[carleton]

Eric
Thank you very much for your insightful response to my query. Attached is a sky showing the effect (darkened to make it more visible).

[carleton]

Attached is an example:
Thanks for responding. This flaw is killing my work. Any subject that is primarily light neutrals (which is the character of a series of views overlooking an estuary in overcast light that I want to do) is doomed. It would be enough to make one shoot digital (I'd rather shoot myself).

[carleton]

Hi
Thanks for your helpful response. Please would you tell me which NYC lab does slower processing? If they'd tell me their process, I could ask a lab here (London) to try the same method.
Thanks,
Michael

[interneg]

Hi
Thanks for your helpful response. Please would you tell me which NYC lab does slower processing? If they'd tell me their process, I could ask a lab here (London) to try the same method.
Thanks,
Michael

Have you tried BDI - http://bdimages.co.uk/? They are one of the few remaining specialists in C-41/ RA4 custom optical printing (though they do scanning/ retouching/ C-print too) & are world class - I think they'd be the sort of place willing to try a few work-arounds to sort your problem - for example it was Brian Dowling who largely worked out the classic cross-processed look for Nick Knight & how to print it creatively.

[Chester McCheeserton]

LTI in new york does the slower processing. But you won't want to pay for very many sheets.. it's $$$, I think they just only use the top or bottom rack or something, try talking to them...

Darkening the sky is always going to show imperfections, it's like looking at a darkroom print to decide what to spot with those jewelers googles, at a certain point it's not helpful...you'll never be satisfied...

How was your scan made in the example you provided? for pictures like your example, you're gonna need a wet mounted drum scan and then some serious hours retouching out the imperfections...there will always be some there....whether it's surge marks from the clips or just overexposure or overdevelopment at the edges, the wet mounting helps with capturing the smoothness some.

I worked at lab many years ago who was drum scanning a very well known color landscape photographer's 8x10 negatives with lots of sky - he started returning the scans after darkening them with an adjustment layer, they did look bad when darkened but try it with any neg scan with sky – it will always look bad.

I suggest renting a medium format digital camera like the fuji rangfinder, and shooting the same scene with film + digital...I know that's not what you want to hear but...at a certain point hours spent scanning and fighting the process become...not worth it if the result isn't better.