At 19:50 2/9/02, Roger wrote:
Caveat, though, is that I've never used the Portra - others might know more
about its specific behaviour.
Portra has a latitude rivaling that of Tri-X (wide enough to *park* a
tractor-trailer rig in sideways). The bane of negatives is
under-exposure. Your description leads me to believe they're well
over-exposed. As you're undoubtedly aware, this requires "boring a hole"
through the dense negatives with the print enlarger.
I suggest having the film developed normally, but annotating an advice for
the printer it was over-exposed and they will have to let the enlarger
"burn" the prints a little longer than normal. You might want a test of
the first frame or to in printing so they can adjust to a "ball-park"
setting for the rest of the over-exposures. Uncertain about granularity
which could make enormous prints from it problematic, but should do OK at
least for smaller ones. Since it's an over-exposure, it still wouldn't be
as bad as for under-exposure (which *will* be grainy).
If it's of any comfort, many Portra users shoot it "pulled" a fraction of a
stop and have it developed normally. This produces denser negatives,
increases saturation slightly, and ensures detail in shadow and very dark
colors are not lost.
The alternative is "pull" processing which costs a premium and you can only
estimate how much you pulled the film. It's not done nearly as often as
"push" processing and is usually limited to no more than one stop
"pull." It *will* affect saturation (more). How much I don't know. It
depends on how much pull processing is requested. Push processing
typically leaves the film grainier.
-- John
< This message was delivered via the Olympus Mailing List >
< For questions, mailto:owner-olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx >
< Web Page: http://Zuiko.sls.bc.ca/swright/olympuslist.html >
|