I've learned much in the last few weeks since finding this site and thought I'd show my learning level by asking what film, b+w and color, that members prefer for shooting weddings. I prefer to scan negs and then print them but would do traditional development if there is a huge difference in the b+w.. probably should try both? and will have to brush up on techniques I tried long ago.. at any rate I'm having a great time relearning and discovering how great this art is!! I reall appreciate this forum! Thanks for any help.

-- gary brown (drdad1111@yahoo.com), May 07, 2002

Answers

Problem: White gown, black tuxedos, varied skintones. Its a tall order for a film to keep the whites from blocking up, the blacks having detail, and keeping the skin tones pleasant.

IMHO the older VPSIII did it better than PortraNC. But.. we have Portra, and no longer have VPS.

I find that soft lighting helps considerably, by keeping the whites more diffuse, and reducing specular reflections from silky satiny material, and from keeping the glare down on shiny faces. To that end, I use a decent sized Chimera softbox on a Stroboframe (and old one), with (usually) a 283 in it. I probably will go for a Sunpack 120J, because it can go TTL with the Hasselblad. I can't justify a Quantum flash, but that would be ideal in my box setup.

The current trend is to "pre-sell the album", scan the negs, digitally print the album prints only. Some put together a CD of all the shots in low res as a bonus.

Its easy enough to pull the color out of a scanned neg, and I think the color negs scan better than BW ones, except for the Portra BW (chromogenic) which scans well.

-- Charles (cbarcellona@telocity.com), May 07, 2002.

For an all-round wedding film, Fuji NPH is very, very hard to beat unless you're going to make prints larger than 16x20 from 35mm negatives. Since I do this for a living, I complicate things a little by using Reala for formal shots and Fuji Press 800 for everything else. These films have moderate contrast and a very long scale, so you will have no trouble getting detail in both whites and blacks, especially if you overexpose 1/3 to 1/2 stop.

For B&W, I use Ilford XP-2 Super. It likewise has a very long scale and very little grain. One of my friends who is a long-time medium format wedding pro looked at one of my XP-2 16x20s and said, "If you can get that kind of results with 35mm, there's no reason you should ever use 2-1/4."

To be fair, though, many shooters also report excellent results with Kodak's T400CN.

-- Dave Jenkins (djphoto@vol.com), May 07, 2002.

The only problem I have with the fuji color negs is that they tend to have noticably shorter dark storage life than Kodak. I've noticed that negatives even 5 years old have considerable fade and color shift as compared to those on Kodak stocks... maybe its just my lab though.

-- Charles (cbarcellona@telocity.com), May 07, 2002.

I've never heard that before, Charles, nor have I observed it with my own negatives. I suspect that it is indeed your lab.

-- Dave Jenkins (djphoto@vol.com), May 07, 2002.

I've had my different ideas about that. One is that the C41 they run at Color Lab is in all likelyhood not Kodak or Fuji. I'm not sure if Hunt is still doing their thing with chemistry or what... The other is that some residual is in the Fuji which may need a slightly longer wash (even though its supposed to be the same), and/or the C41 process they use may be slightly modified as well.

If it was one example, I'd say they goofed someplace. But its about a 3 year stint of using Fuji (my whole experience with it). The older Kodak negs (10 years older than the Fuji negs) scan and print fine. The Fuji's are still printable, but you have to jump thru hoops to scan em and get the all the color casts out of em. They're all stored in the same sleeve material, all in the same notebooks, in the dark, in low humidity and temp (AC on 24/7 in the office). Its a shame, since as you noted, it was good stuff to shoot with.

-- Charles (cbarcellona@telocity.com), May 07, 2002.

Fuji NPH emulsion is exceptionally great for skin and wedding gown tonality

-- martin tai (martin.tai@capcanada.com), May 08, 2002.

Just shot 17 rolls of NPH400 & several P800 at a wedding--w/o exception, all spectacular shots using an M3 & M6TTL. That's it for me: no reason to ever use another film, though I second the comment above re XP-2 for B+W work.

-- Patrick (pg@patrickgarner.com), May 08, 2002.

B&W = Ilford FP4 and for really fast Fuji Neopan 400 all developed in Diafine. For consistantly great color,Fuji NPS, some NPH and you just gotta love that NPZ for churches and receptions. I don't think that any one of the 2,000 or so images on my site wasn't shot with one of the above films. All my film is scanned after processing, still hand print for albums and Fuji Frontier for regular reorders.

-- george weir (george@georgeweir.com), May 09, 2002.