Film types? (yes... those old rolls you used to put in your camera)

YIA

Does anyone here have recommendations for film types?
Fuji?
Superia?
Press?
50-1600 iso?

Mainly for carrying around candid stuff... prob indoors as well.
All opinions appreciated.
Thanks

trishw78

I mostly use Ilford for B&W, I have a lots of Free film with I think is Fuji. But I generally like kodak. as for ISO anywhere in the 50-3200 range I like depends on the situation.

Sleepy

If you'll be doing indoors candids without a flash definitely go for an ISO of at least 400...

duffarama

Sleepy wrote: »

If you'll be doing indoors candids without a flash definitely go for an ISO of at least 400...

In colour I'd use Fuji pro800z and occasionally push it to 1600.

For black and white Fuji Neopan 1600

I do like Ilford b&w as well but have only used xp2 ISO 400.

YIA

Great stuff!
Thanks guys.
Where do you find is best to buy/ develop negatives?

trishw78

I develop all my own B&W, I usually bring the colour stuff into the local Sam MaCauley as I know they change they're chemicals regularly. I would like to try developing my own colour soon.

dazftw

Color:

Kodak Portra 160/400 VC/NC (i used this 90% of the time)
Fuji pro stuff is nice as well

B&W:

Ilford FP5/HP5
Fuji Neopan for B&W
&
Kodak Tmax?? I think thats what its called..

melekalikimaka

Try slide/transparency, nice colours

sineadw

melekalikimaka wrote: »

Try slide/transparency, nice colours

Very few places developing though..

@op - deffo go for 400+ iso. You might well need higher. Ilford HP5 I likey for B&W. Portra's lovely for colour.

dazftw

melekalikimaka wrote: »

Try slide/transparency, nice colours

Yeah Kodak E100VS, Fuji Velvia & Proiva 100F

Costs a crap load to get developed.. I got 2 rolls of 120 & 1 x 35 roll developed in Dublin.. 26 euro :eek:

I cant think of the name but its on abbey street in Dublin..

YIA

Is it PhotoCare on Abbey Street?
I went there to get some Velvia 50 processed.
Is there a film negative equivalent (closest thing) to Velvia?
I really like the look... but the digital scans I got from PhotoCare weren't great.

DaireQuinlan

YIA wrote: »

Is it PhotoCare on Abbey Street?
I went there to get some Velvia 50 processed.
Is there a film negative equivalent (closest thing) to Velvia?
I really like the look... but the digital scans I got from PhotoCare weren't great.

Closest C-41 equivalent I've found is probably Ektar, do a tag search on my stream for examples. It's quite contrasty and the saturation, particularly in the reds, is bumped a bit. That said, anywhere you get any film developed nowadays will scan them, I don't think any minilabs actually do anything other than digitally projected prints nowadays.

YIA

Cheers.
The problem was that the scans weren't very "hi-ress" as quoted.
Only about 500k per photo... and not of good enough quality for say an 8*12 print.
Any suggestions?
I'll look into the Ektar, thanks.

DaireQuinlan

YIA wrote: »

Cheers.
The problem was that the scans weren't very "hi-ress" as quoted.
Only about 500k per photo... and not of good enough quality for say an 8*12 print.
Any suggestions?
I'll look into the Ektar, thanks.

AFAIK those minilabs are capable of much higher resolution scans, so I guess you could ask. I develop and scan myself so I'm not really up on that stuff.

Effects

Just heard Fuji have stopped making black and white 120.

DaireQuinlan

Effects wrote: »

Just heard Fuji have stopped making black and white 120.

They plan to stop producing 'presto 400' in Japan, it's the local version of Neopan 400. Apparently that's it. Everything else is just some rumour that was kicked off.

Captain Flaps

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

AFAIK those minilabs are capable of much higher resolution scans, so I guess you could ask.

This is the truth, I work in a Fujilab and while we cannot specify a scan resolution there are a few scan options. Our machine defaults to the third highest and produces 1200x1600 frames if I'm not mistaken. We can go higher, but scan time increases almost exponentially and if a customer requests this I'll tell them it'll take an extra day. We're talking maybe 20 mins to scan the images and up to 30 mins to burn the disc(s).

Bear in mind that this only reltaes to scanning to digital files for burning, as far as i know there is no way to set the machine to scan the negs at a higher res while printing.

DaireQuinlan

Captain Flaps wrote: »

Bear in mind that this only reltaes to scanning to digital files for burning, as far as i know there is no way to set the machine to scan the negs at a higher res while printing.

I vaguely remember someone saying at some point that the scan res is dependent on whatever the print size is , so if you're printing 10x8s or something then the frontier will scan at an appropriately higher resolution ? Or something

Captain Flaps

That makes sense, the machine probably scales the resolution according to print output. I hadn't thought of that.

Nisio

Cpt Flaps do you know if those fugi machines can print off a contact sheet when they're scanning negatives?

Captain Flaps

Short answer? No.

When printing negs, the Frontier scans them to a temporary file and digitally projects and exposes the paper. When it's finished printing the roll, it prints a 6x4 index card which is basically a tiny contact sheet. It'll do the same thing when burning the negs to a disc, part of that job is the automatic creation of an index card.

However, when I think of a contact sheet, I think of a proper darkroom film contact or a Lightroom contact sheet of 1" thumbnails. The index cards you get from a Frontier are really only so people will know what number each frame is if they're getting reprints, they're way too small to be any use for comparing similar frames, so I guess the answer to your question lies in what use you aim to put your contacts to.

Nisio

ah just looking for something to stick in with the CD of scanned pics to see what's on the disk really. Sounds like that'd do the trick

Captain Flaps

In that case, yeah, they're perfect.

katiemaloe

I think Kodak Portra 400VC is a gorgeous colour film. Fuji neopan is fantastic for black and whites. Though I have been using lots of the free fuji film thats floating around. I work in a fuji photo lab too, and you can print regular print film with really punchy colours so it looks similiar to the vividness you'd get from slide fim. I do that quite a lot. Fuji Reala is a nice smooth good quality film but probably not great for indoor shots as its only ISO100
I agree with Captain about the massive amount of time it takes to do really high res scans- quite frustrating! its worth doing for special photos that you want to print up large though.

Sleepy

Forgive me if this is a stupid question but google only returned articles on creating HDR's with photoshop etc.

What films (color & B&W) have the highest dynamic range?

Or am I completely wrong in thinking that different films would have different ranges?

charybdis

Sleepy wrote: »

Forgive me if this is a stupid question but google only returned articles on creating HDR's with photoshop etc.

What films (color & B&W) have the highest dynamic range?

Or am I completely wrong in thinking that different films would have different ranges?

Not at all.

Slow-medium speed (ISO 50 - 400) B&W negative film typically offers the largest dynamic range followed by colour negative and C41 B&W film, although the dynamic range of both decreases as the ISO increases. Slide film has a very small dynamic range and needs to be exposed very carefully.

DaireQuinlan

Sleepy wrote: »

Forgive me if this is a stupid question but google only returned articles on creating HDR's with photoshop etc.

What films (color & B&W) have the highest dynamic range?

Or am I completely wrong in thinking that different films would have different ranges?

typically it goes B&W -> colour negative -> transparency.
Mid speed B&W and colour negs have better DR than low or high speed films. With B&W it also depends to a large extent what you use to develop them. With a compensating developer like Diafine and an appropriate film (Tri-x for example) you'll get enormous range.

Typically digital used to be described as being very like slide film in terms of DR, but its definitely becoming more like colour negative. Film still handles the extremes better than digital, better seperation in the shadows, and no ugly blown highlights (well you CAN blow your highlights, but film degrades far more nicely than digital in this case)

It also depends a lot on the individual film. Kodaks Ektar for example is more like slide film than negative film in its response. Very contrasty with deep blacks and saturated colour.

charybdis

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

Typically digital used to be described as being very like slide film in terms of DR, but its definitely becoming more like colour negative. Film still handles the extremes better than digital, better seperation in the shadows, and no ugly blown highlights (well you CAN blow your highlights, but film degrades far more nicely than digital in this case)

This is a very good point. It's important to understand that the increased dynamic range of negative film or of digital RAW files wont necessarily prevent you from blowing highlights but the shoulder or rolloff offered by the increased dynamic range can make the blown highlights look far more organic as opposed to the nasty posterized or abrupt transitions endemic to very many poorly exposed JPEGs.

DaireQuinlan

Effects wrote: »

Just heard Fuji have stopped making black and white 120.

Apropos of nothing, here's the full Fuji announcement ...

FUJIFILM wrote:

* Neopan Presto 400 120 size is discontinued with immediate effect (does not affect availability in 135 format
* 12 and 24 exposure rolls for 35mm film will be gradually phased out
* Acros 100 in 11×14 size (special order) discontinued
* Provia 100 F 11×14 (special order) discontinued
* Pro 160 NC 120 discontinued
* T64 reversal 4×5 sheet film, T64 reversal 4×5 Quickload and T64 reversal 8×10 sheet film discontinued

There will be some gradual changes in the packaged quantities of some films, for example single packs will become 3 packs or 5 packs; in the case of 120 format the 20-packs will be withdrawn and only 5-packs remain. We will reflect these changes in our web shop over time as appropriate and where applicable.