kodak portra – tim dobbs photography

Trying a new C-41 Developing/scanning service…..

After having fairly inconsistent results from processing my own C-41 at home I have been using AG Photographic to develop my negatives and then scan them on my Epson v500.

I have been pretty satisfied with what I have got and the cost has not been too high either but scanning colour negatives is pretty time consuming trying to get some sort of uniformity in appearance.

I recently came across a company online “Filmdev” who will develop and scan at various sizes depending on what I want, then let me download the images from the web before sending me a dvd with the hires tiff files and my negatives. All for the brilliant price of £5 for the 3600×2400 or £8 for the 4500×3000 scans. ( they also scan at 5400×3600 for £12 )

After posting off 2 films 1x Kodak Portra 400 & 1x Agfa Vista 200 expired I had a telephone call off David the owner telling me they have received my films and was there any particular things I required like push/pull, tiff scans or jpeg or a certain look to the scans all for no extra cost.

I decided on just straight process and corrections just to have some sort of reference next time I send more films.

I must say the results were excellent, great colours and very sharp clear scans with no dust/hairs etc, I was very impressed and suffice to say I will be sending all my films to them from now on.

The 1st gallery is the Agfa Vista 200 expired shot on my Olympus OM2n with the 35mm f2.8.

The 2nd gallery is the Kodak Portra 400 shot on my Nikon F100 with the 50mm f1.4.

Links to the company are here : http://www.filmdev.co.uk/

Thank you for looking any comment very welcome 🙂

Garw Carnival 2013 & Kodak Portra 400………..

I love my Nikon F4s but as I seem to have collected 50+ cameras over the last 12 months I don’t get to shoot with it very often.

This weekend I decided to load it up with some film and attempt to shoot with it but when I opened the back I realised I had a rewound roll of Kodak Portra 400 sitting in it.

As I have not developed any colour film for a while I was not sure if my C-41 chemistry was shot or not but I thought I would give it a try. (I didn’t even know what was on the film)

To my surprise when the film came out of the tank it was from last years Garw Carnival back in September if I remember correctly and the negs seemed to look ok albeit with a slight yellow cast but after scanning I liked the look so didn’t colour correct them.

Moral of this little story is make sure you remove completed film rolls from your camera and also make a note of what you actually shot on it 🙂

Thanks for looking

Click on an image to view Larger…….

Any comments greatly appreciated 🙂

Trying out some Kodak Ektar………….

I mainly shoot B&W film and process it myself but bought some Kodak Ektar recently and was waiting for a reasonably bright day to go out and give it a try.I have looked at images on the web shot on this film and read how sharp it was and I was not disappointed.

As it wasn’t a sunny day, it was pretty overcast I was shooting from f1.8 – f4 for the whole roll and the images really popped.I am not totally pleased with the colours but I am putting that down to my chemicals coming to the end of their life, I am sure if I change them the colours will be a bit more vibrant.