Color neg film for landscapes

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I know some of you out there use color negative sheet film for landscapes. I was thinking it might be the ticket for high contrast situations or when I have to make each shot count (more lattitude than chromes) Fuji NPS seems to be popular, but what about the Kodak Portra VC 160? Or any other brands?

THe other thing I am concerned about is the reciprocity shifts during long exposures. I remember seeing the film data sheet for VPC and VHC and for multi-second exposures, it said NR, for Not Recommended. Can you shoot today's color neg films at 2-20 seconds and still get decent color?

THX

T

-- Todd Tiffan (newhope@4dv.net), February 20, 2000

Answers

Todd:

I used to shoot alot of VHC... then shot with Kodak Pro100. I think the higher contrast Portra film is pretty similar to Pro100, and it had better reciprocity characteristics than the old VPS and VHC. With all of these films, I got my best results when rating them at 2/3 stop slower than Kodak. Haven't used NPS in the field, but keep waiting for it in Quickload to try.

-- Glenn C. Kroeger (gkroeger@trinity.edu), February 21, 2000.


Todd: I do not own a large fomat camera, but I am looking at getting one before summer get's here. At that time I will be trying out differ'nt films. Anyway, the reason I wanted to give you a response was to tell you that I've used KODAK PORTRA 160 VC in many differ'nt enviorments. Even though last time I was up in the Pacific Northwest I shot mostly with FUJI PROVIA 100 & ASTIA 100, I did test out some PORTRA 160 VC, up to 10 seconds, with great results. It's 35mm film that I was using with a NIKON F5 system. I'm not sure how differ'nt the make up of 35mm vs 4 x 5, but the 160 VC in 35mm is pretty good stuff ***IF*** you need negative print film. GOOD LUCK!

-- David R. Williams (David.R.William2@JSC.NASA.GOV), February 21, 2000.

Try Agfa Optima 100. I find it very satisfactory, besides being cheaper. I haven't used the new Agfa Optima II yet, but it's supposed to be even better.

-- Dick Deimel (bbadger@aol.com), February 23, 2000.

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