The shots in this post are from a roll of Kodak Portra 160 very kindly donated by Kodak Alaris at the Beer and Cameras Birmingham photowalk. Colour film is a bit of an enigma to me, to be honest. I always wonder how you can get an accurate representation of colour from a scan and how much the digital part of the hybrid process interferes with what you’d actually get.
With film photography, I want as little input as possible other than shooting. My weapons of choice for scanning and conversion are Vuescan & colourperfect plugin. I tweak a little but try to just choose my film from the dropdown and go with that and a few curves/sharpening adjustments. Any tips are always well received.
This is a roll of firsts for me. It was my first roll of Kodak Portra 160, but it was also my first time shooting aperture priority on my Nikon F3. I’ve been flirting with film photography on and off for about 4 years now. I started off shooting an old Minolta XG-M that I lost, found, and then which died. Eighteen months later I rescued an Olympus OM1n from the Photography show which rekindled a little spark in me for film photography. I shot mainly black and white film through it and started developing at home as a way to keep the costs down. Then, for my 40th birthday I picked up a Nikon F3 and just fell in love…
These shots are a bit of a mix, my boy, who is too young to disagree; an exceptionally rare shot of my eldest, who as you may tell did disagree at the time; and a couple of shots from a friends wedding.
Here’s the technical: Portra 160 shot on a Nikon F3, 50mm f1.2 aperture priority set at +1 exposure compensation.
Thanks,
Stu 🙂
@StuM35mm on Twitter
Share this post:
Comments
Matthew on 5 Frames from my First Roll of Kodak Portra 160 – By Stu Myers
Comment posted: 29/08/2018
Comment posted: 29/08/2018
Nick Lyle on 5 Frames from my First Roll of Kodak Portra 160 – By Stu Myers
Comment posted: 29/08/2018
Comment posted: 29/08/2018
Dave on 5 Frames from my First Roll of Kodak Portra 160 – By Stu Myers
Comment posted: 29/08/2018
Comment posted: 29/08/2018
Peter Gardner on 5 Frames from my First Roll of Kodak Portra 160 – By Stu Myers
Comment posted: 30/08/2018
I'm also a Vuescan user, this is the method I've started using, and I've found it to be both much better for colour, but also a faster method over all.
1) Load the film up in the scanner and hit Preview. (You may have to purposely move the film so the pictures are not lined up in the holder for this part)
2) Drag a selection over a strip of film that is blank, in between two actual frames.
3) Preview again.
4) Check the box for “Lock Exposure”.
5) Preview again.
6) Check the box for “Lock Film Base Color”.
7) In the colour tab, set White Balance to "Auto Levels", make sure film stock is set to generic. Now you could if you wanted to, set a curve in these settings but I set me Low and High Curve points to .01 to get every bit of detail I can out of the scan, and then adjust curves in photoshop as needed.
8) Set it to save as a TIFF not RAW (obvs?) but you could do jpg too. Off you go! Scan away!
I do Multi Exposure, and full strength dust removal (though even that is pretty weak.) But after the scan I do some minor levels/curves adjustment and sharpen in Photoshop. But that doesnt take very long at all.
Also worth noting, I used to hate the look I was getting from Fuji stocks and kind of wrote them off using Colorperfect. Using this method, Fujifilm stocks actually look really nice!
Anyway, might be worth giving it a try. I've had really, really great success with it. Maybe you will too! Or maybe you'll think its awful, haha. But thought I'd pass it along :)
Comment posted: 30/08/2018
Comment posted: 30/08/2018
Comment posted: 30/08/2018
karenshootsfilm on 5 Frames from my First Roll of Kodak Portra 160 – By Stu Myers
Comment posted: 30/08/2018
Comment posted: 30/08/2018
Comment posted: 30/08/2018
Comment posted: 30/08/2018