Just Bought My First Color 8x10 Film

[Drew Wiley]

I frequently shoot Ektar in several formats, esp 8x10, and consider it a marvelous product
once you understand it. Don't mistake it for either a chrome or something like a traditional
color neg film. I've posted numerous times about it on a couple of forums. You need to
filter for significant color balance errors, esp cold overcast or blue shadows. And except for
filter factor corrections per se, I shoot at box speed. If you can routinely expose tranny
film correctly, Ektar is easy. But don't expect a whole lot of spare latitude like with a neg
portrait film. Maybe one extra stop each side compared to general chrome films, and way
more than Velvia, which is a bad comparison anyway. For general experimentation I like to
shoot 120 film because it scans way better than 35mm (at least at an economical level for
general previewing), or gives a little bigger contact print. Of course, there's nothing like
printing from actual 8X10's (I do it optically on Crystal Archive II), but you can only select
a limited number of images for big print work.

[cosmicexplosion]

It's fascinating how one film can have many correct ways of using it.

In the end it's all compensation.
More this less that.

But I a agree you should test out on 120 film

Being on a budget.

Every one seems to say err on over exposure.

So a spot meter is probly advisable to determine which areas you want detail

Etc

Any way it seems like a good film in that you have get saturated colours or push it and get more natural.

That would be my first experiment.

Five exposures of same scene

I am going to use portra as it has more natural tones.

[Drew Wiley]

Wholly incorrect. Portra does not have more "natural" tones. It has less contrast and saturation, so is more fogiving in terms of fleshtones and exposure error. "Pushing" the film will not necssarily improve things. Overexposure might, but only if you don't properly color balance in the first place, esp in the case of Ektar. In certain cases Ektar tends to have more accurate color. It just depends on the specifics of the subject matter. A spot meter
is helpful. Ektar is more forgiving than chrome film; but anything in 8x10 is too expensive to
be guessing.

[Ari]

I've been shooting Ektar for a year, and I think it's brilliant.
I, too, shoot it at 100 ISO; whatever colour corrections are needed can easily be done in PS.