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FXW: What are the biggest music projects that you’ve been involved with? What are your most memorable musical moments? And what are you currently doing? In most cases, a well exposed photo taken in decent lighting conditions on Ultramax shouldn’t produce much grain visible to the naked eye. Where Portra 800 tends to disappoint is when it’s under-exposed. Under-exposed images take on the dreaded green shadows so familiar to color negative shooters. That said, experienced low-light shooters will have a ball with this film. Buy it here in 35mm, here in medium format.
Generally, the colors produced by Ultramax are perfectly suited to most subjects and lighting situations. Skin tones usually look quite accurate (this is where you usually want to shoot at box speed), and landscapes can also look great.
The Technical Bit
Kodak Portra 400 is a pretty new film; especially when you consider how long Kodak as a brand has been around. It was born in 1998 and changed to what it is today in 2010.
Kodak’s T-max films are downright modern compared with the historically powerful Tri-X. They have rich mid-tones and super fine grain, coupled with excellent exposure latitude. Portra films usually scan well. The ISO 160 version can yield teal colour shifts in overblown highlights and blue shifts in under-exposed shadows. The ISO 400 film does that less — but it does happen. Your scanner software may resolve that for you automatically. However, if you’re inverting your negatives by hand for maximum control, you may need to adjust the colour balance after the fact. I had to do this a few times for my “pastel” experiments. The film is grainier than Portra 400 and makes a slightly more stark and contrasty image, which makes it pretty much perfect for moody, dimly lit scenes in which grain and contrast are welcome. Images made with 800 look more like a traditional color negative film, which is welcome considering how close to digital perfection images from Portra 160 and 400 can be.Whether you’re new to film photography, or a seasoned skeptic who’s loyal to another type of film, we’ve come up with 10 reasons to try shooting Ultramax 400. Kodak Gold is available in 120 film so you now have the option to shoot this amazingly popular emulsion in either (or both) 35mm or 120! Ultramax is currently only available as a 35mm film. As someone who shoots film, doesn’t develop it myself, and likes to get good results, that’s more the kind of stuff I care about. Kodak can worry about how they make the film. I’m just very grateful that they do. If I wanted to give one of my point ‘n’ shoot cameras to a friend who doesn’t shoot film to try and see how they liked it, Portra would also be a likely choice. I think it’d give them results that’d make them want to shoot more film.
In addition to providing information about colour sensitivity, spectral sensitivity curves can also be used to determine the film's sensitivity to different light sources, such as tungsten or fluorescent lighting. This information is useful for colour correction and can help photographers achieve the desired look for their images. Aside from the music and podcast, Rob is also a photographer. It started out as a hobby—simply another creative outlet—but has turned into something much more. His photographs have been printed in media globally and he’s regularly commissioned to photograph musicians. He often uses a Fujifilm camera loaded with a Film Simulation Recipe. If you were to perhaps accidentally leave your film somewhere that was a little too warm, or on a sunny windowsill by mistake, the chances are that it will still be absolutely fine. You may get some slight fogging, a loss of contrast or some discolouring but you will definitely get an image. This leaves us with Kodak Portra 400 , the only* remaining freshly-made, non-rebranded colour negative film that isn’t UltraMax or NC 500. However, Portras do not fit in the “general-purpose” category since Kodak markets them as “professional” films. This means higher prices and fewer chances to find some at a local drugstore (though I would argue that the new ORWO film is also relatively rare).Finally for this section, there’s a Portra 400 datasheet right here that gives you more information than I care to parrot, although I will relay some impressive-sounding highlights. Sure, they can do just that, but Ultramax 400 is just as capable of creating vivid photos with vibrant colors and nice saturation. As with just about every other aspect of photography, the appeal of a certain type of film is completely subjective.
When you’re shooting your Portra 400, be aware that it’s one of the most forgiving films out there as far as exposure latitude goes. It’s supposed to deliver usable results at two stops over or two stops under, which means shooting anywhere between ISO 100 to 1600 without pulling or pushing. Our full review of Kodak’s newest film, Ektachrome E100, can be seen here. Here are some snippets from that piece. Once again, if you’re comparing a photo taken on Portra or Ektar, you might find a little more issue with the humble Ultramax shots; a lot of times, though, you’d be surprised how minor the differences are. Rob Morgan is a curious person—that’s actually the title of his acclaimed podcast series—but who is Rob Morgan? I listened to several of his podcasts in preparation for this article (which is the fourth installment of my interview series). There’s a lot of value for the artist, no matter your medium or genre, in those recordings, and I found them helpful well beyond the scope of this interview. Give one a listen, perhaps Becoming Five Stars, You’re Delusional Until You’re Not, Nobody Wants to Listen to Your Music, The Mistake of Avoiding Mistakes, or How to Fake Extreme Talent—you’re sure to be hooked! You might think a film designed for shooting portraits and weddings and the like would be a bit sterile for street photography. In my opinion, that would be a wrong assumption.
Rob Morgan is an internationally touring bass guitar player. He’s a super talented musician that’s often in-demand. He’s a creative director for live shows and world tours. Maybe you’ve even seen him play before in an arena, dive bar, or coffee shop—he’s even performed on The Today Show. Rob’s out on tour right now, so maybe you can catch him live if he’s coming to a city near you. With that said, I enjoyed shooting with the Ektar H35. I’ve already reloaded it, and armed with the lessons I learned from the first batch of 72 shots (get closer, for god’s sake), I’m confident I’ll continue to have a lot more fun with it.
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