Kodak Portra and the Nude

I feel like it has been a little while since I’ve posted any work with color film. Even though the majority of my work is in black and white, I actually love working with color film. Color negative film in particular tends to be my jam because I feel like the results are a bit more muted and slightly more painterly than color slide film. Granted, I’m not picky and will happily work with any color stock I can get my hands on for a halfway decent price.

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Photographed with a Hasselblad 500c/m and Kodak Portra 400 120 film.

Both of the images in this post were made using Kodak Portra film stock. The top image was with Kodak Portra 400 and the bottom image with Kodak Portra 160. In practice I don’t find a huge amount of difference between the two. Yes, of course the ISO 400 film has more grain, but the warm color rendition with both film stocks just looks absolutely gorgeous. A little bit gets lost when I digitize the negatives, but I still think there is a different vibe here than one would get from a color image coming from a digital camera. It’s just a bit more organic in my opinion.

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Photographed with a Pentax 645n and Kodak Portra 160 medium format film.

This post also marks the debut of the first image I’ve posted with the Pentax 645n medium format camera. I’ll speak more about this camera at a later date, but I recently purchased it on whim after seeing one in a store for a very VERY attractive price. It’s been a fun new tool to play with and I’ve been pleased with the results.

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Nude with 4x5 Kodak Portra

Believe it or not, but I really like working with color negative film. Even better is working with color negative film in a large format such as 4x5. It’s one of those things where the beauty of it never really truly translates perfectly into a digital viewing experience such as this website, but I’m still happy to post this image all the same.

Anyone who has ever worked with large format film knows it is a slow process. A lot of long moments of silence as the model holds a pose and you, the photographer, fiddles about with every possible camera control. Composing on a ground glass and using a loupe to get that critical focus. Looking at every single corner of the frame knowing that infinite detail will show up in the final image.

It’s an almost meditative process to say the least.

It is also quite the expensive process and therefore I have to reserve the medium for times when I am working with someone I really trust and know has the patience to work together to get the results we both want.

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Devi with Kodak Portra Film

I really like the warm colors in this image. I swear every single time I scan color film I say to myself, “by golly, you need to work with color film more often!” Then I look at the current prices of color film out there in the real world and I remember why I don’t. My bank account probably would not survive very long.

Still, I am quite happy with this image of Devi. Despite the fact that there is a bit more grain in this image than I generally like with color work (I had to push the Kodak Portra 400 to 800 ISO as there wasn’t much light) the tonal quality is very nice and a pleasure to look at. Despite the low light I was still working with the Hasselblad 500cm hand held down to about 1/30th of a second and wide open at f/2.8. The resulting image is a tad soft, which I don’t think is a bad thing in this case. A little softness in an image lit with natural light of the human figure can be quite pleasing.

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Devi and Window Light on Color Film

Another photograph of the always fun to work with Devi. I had an itch on this particular day to photograph with a lot of color film and I’m really glad I did. The color tones turned out so warm and inviting which is something I really like about Kodak Portra.

I won’t deny a lot of aspects to this photograph were a bit of a challenge. The space we were in was pretty small and all I had with me was the 80mm lens for the Hasselblad. Not really ideal for working in small spaces so my options for angles and getting my dynamic with my compositions was limited. The lighting was a bit of a challenge too, especially given my…shall we say…lack of experience with color film. I wouldn’t say I don’t have any experience at all with color film, but anyone who looks at this blog even semi-regularly knows that the majority of my work is with black and white film.

I’m more than happy with the results here though and I hope anyone reading this enjoys as well!

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More Lens Flair with Kodak Portra

I finally got around to scanning some more color film that I picked up from the lab a number of weeks ago. This particular image was made with some slightly expired Kodak Portra 400 film and exposed with my trusty ol’ Mamiya C330 TLR.

I was using a wider angle 65mm lens with this image. My copy of the lens is the older “chrome” version which tends to not have very good lens coating to limit flair. The new black Mamiya lenses tend to be much better in this regard. Sometimes that isn’t such a terrible thing when I can use the flaws of a lens to my advantage. There was a ton of sun during this particular shoot and I figured I might as well run with it.

The final image has a bit more grain than I typically like with color film but I can easily attribute this to the fact that the film was a bit expired. About five years to be exact and I have no idea how it was stored before it came to my hands. Ultimately I can’t really complain. I’ve been watching a lot of lower budget 16mm motion pictures from the 1970’s and those are always pretty grainy too. There is a certain beauty to the grain structure of C-41 film.

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