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Response to Best film for portrait photography

from Struan Gray (struan.gray@sljus.lu.se)
If you can find a compentent digital printer the choice of slide or negative film is almost irrelvant, which give you the freedom to pick the colour reproduction you like best. I like the ease of proofing with transparencies (I used to use a lot of Astia), but the flexibility and long tonal range of negative films gives me more options.

I am a Portra fan too, and use the NC versions as my general carry-around films, as well as for posed portraits. I like Fuji's NPH, but I dislike the other speed offerings from Fuji, and for me, one of the best things about the Portra series is that it gives me a range of emulsion speeds with a matched look. The Portra dyes are nominally more stable in the long term, if that matters to you.

When Portra first appeared I had terrible trouble finding labs that could print it well. Something about the dyes brings out the worst in cheap RA4 papers - and low-end scanners too. These days it's much easier to get good looking prints and proofs, and when I print myself I'm happy with the results on Kodak and Agfa portrait papers (Fuji papers are invisible on the Swedish market, for home darkrooms, so I haven't tried them).

A lot of people say Kodak flims don't print well on the Fuji Frontier machines, but some of the very best prints I have had done came from a Frontier. As always, it's the operator that counts. If you have a trusted local lab, ask them, not us.

(posted 8309 days ago)

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