At 22:47 12/14/01, Mark Lloyd wrote:
One thing, do you think that a slide film might be
able to capture skintones better? Next time I am at
the store I'm going to pick up a roll of either
Kodachrome or Elitechrome and try it out.
Mark Lloyd
Both Kodachrome and Elitechrome render good skin tones. DO NOT use
Elitechrome 100 _Extra_Color_ for photographs of humans! Its ultra-high
saturation easily (nearly always) wreaks havoc with skin tones. Ensure you
are using daylight or are very well corrected for it. Absolutely avoid
mixed lighting with fluorescent. Turning up ambient tungsten lights
(incandescent) can warm the photograph, but it is difficult to control how
much. I have no problem using Kodachrome for environmental
portraiture. For classic, posed portraiture I prefer the much wider
latitude and lower saturation of a professional color negative portrait
film, my first choice being Kodak's Portra 160NC. Another good film is
Fuji NPS.
Observations about Kodachrome and Elitechrome:
Both are "general purpose" films with moderate saturation. Kodachrome has
a slightly tighter latitude, and plain Elitechrome is not as color
accurate, but still handles skin tones well. The usual problem is not skin
tones, but too much contrast, and this applies to using any slide film for it.
If you want to use slide films, you might start with Fuji's Astia. It has
restrained saturation and will be more forgiving than others I've
used. Some have used Kodachrome for classic and informal portraiture
(including me) and it's very easy to have too much contrast. If you try
Kodachrome, keep lighting very diffused (soft), overall contrast low, and
consider an off-camera "butterfly" or "loop" style with two lights (main
and fill), or one light and a reflector for fill. I would have
reservations about using "Rembrandt" lighting (potentially too much
contrast) unless I wanted something very bold (still risky).
Much depends on what you _desire_ for the portraiture.
-- John
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