Analog photography: the Kodak Portra film stocks compared

1. Intro: Hi everyone and welcome. My name is Martin Monk. I'm a filmmaker and photographer from Berlin, Germany. Ever wondered what Potter 160 correctly exposed, looks like in comparison to portrait 400, overexposed by one-stop. If you're that type of photographer, if you're as much as I am, then you've come to the right place. The potter family of films are real household name in the analog world, most professional photographers working with film will carry one of the three films or all three in their bag at all times. I was always looking for a course or information online that really shows me the differences between the three films. Does the red or the green or the blue on 160 look exactly like the one on 800. It was really difficult to find out because everyone has a different workflow. So in this test, in this course, I took all of my knowledge and my experience working with film, and I came up with a methodology to compare the three films, both in scanning workflow situations as well as in traditional analog see prints. I hope that you are as excited as I am to really dive into all of this information and to find out what Katara really is all about. 2. Shoot & Methodology: Alright guys, here we are. We're going to make a comparison tests today of the color portrait films. And I've already set up the first camera over here. And basically you're going to see all the steps of my process. Now. We will start with the 1 16th, and I have a color checker setup there. So let's go over there and take a look. So first of all, here on the camera I have a ND filter to stop. And D, we're obviously working with a cable release. And we will try to make each set of images as quickly as we can. There I have my color chart and color checker setup. I haven't opened it yet because the color patches are sensitive to light. So I want to give it a little light as possible so it doesn't fade. So while I'm still setting up all the rest, I haven't opened it yet. So I'm going to check my framing and do a few last things. And then we will start shooting our first set of images. So if I go here in the scene, I'm getting a shutter speed of 1 160th. But I would actually like to have my correct exposure for the normal exposure setting at 100s. So I'm going to tap here and set this to 100 and measure the f-stop instead. So here we are at f 11. This will be our, our setting for our normal exposure. Before we actually get started and look at the results of the shoot, let me tell you a little bit about my methodology for taking these images. Obviously, this test is not fully scientific. That's beyond my capacities to be honest. But I still was frustrated with other courses or other comparisons online that I found which weren't to my mind, at least even doing the basics, correct. And I tried in my methodology to get these things right. So the methodology obviously applies to pre shoot and planning, how I carried out the shoot. And then the post-production workflow, both development as well as scanning and later printing. Let me tell you a little bit about each of these stages. So the first thing obviously was that I used fresh film. I bought the three roles. They were not expired, they were freshly bought and then stored in my fridge until the day of shooting. So that was the first care I took. Then for the shoot day, I did the following. I took three camera bodies, all Minolta x D7 cameras, and loaded them with the three films. So I was able to swap out these bodies in-between shoots to really make sure that I use all three films as quickly as possible, one after the next. And having three millimeters was useful to achieve that. I used to 28 millimeter, 2.8 lens for the landscape, and 45 millimeter lens for the portrait. I had an ND filter on the lenses, which I had on all of the lenses. So it was consistent throughout. And I picked a day that had no cloud cover. We shot around 12 noon and there was not a single cloud on the sky. It was a clear blue sky with a son bright sunlight out that was consistent throughout the shooting. So even if it took me like a minute or two to swap out cameras between the shots. We still had the exact same light conditions. So I think that was crucial. I measured the light temperature on the day and it was 5,800 Kelvin. So a perfect daylight color and they're in neutral light. So I think that was a good choice. And the only way to improve on this would be to shoot in a studio with controlled lighting, which was unfortunately beyond my capabilities in this case. But again, no cloud cover, no changing of light. All of the films were shot in quick session because I had three camera bodies available. I mounted the camera bodies, obviously on a tripod and shot with a cable release. And I change the exposure mostly by using different shutter speeds. In some cases, I also had to close the aperture a little bit, open it in order to compensate when the shutter speeds were, so to speak, running out. So there is my methodology for the actual shoot. I actually also used the mid Role section for the exposure testing. So all of those shots that you see in the scans from mid role, they are not start or end Roll shots. So there should be no light leaks, there should be perfect film flatness guaranteed. In this case. We go again with the same settings. We have the book I have the book. Sticker. Stickers only at the beginning of the role. So you're going to see, alright, and if you can stay still as much as possible, that'll be great. Okay. Are you running? Alright, so here we have a new setup. Now we're shooting in portrait orientation. We have Melissa are beautiful model here and the color checker again, the settings are the same. We have now jump to the other angle of the sun, but the illumination, the brightness of the scene hasn't really changed. And we'll start again with the portrait 1 16th, again running the full sequence of images. So let's begin with the normal exposure, which on the bottom 160 is 100. And focus, I already said. Great. So normal. What did I do after shooting? Well, first of all, the terms went into development super promptly. So I dropped the films on the same day with my development lab. And they will develop a few days after they were developed using one-shot C41 chemicals in a controlled process with controlled temperatures and so on. So excellent, I would even say World-class development. So the negatives were in excellent shape. And let me tell you a little bit about the scanning workflow because that's super important. We used copystand, a Canon 5D as our camera, and a high CRI, high-quality LED light source. The scans were done with negative supply, 35-millimeter holder. Perfect flatness was ensured by measuring the parallel T of camera lens and negative strip using a laser and the mirror. And we use the lens, the 100 millimeter cannon macro lens. And it's sweet spot aperture of f eight. I also measured the exact color temperature of the LED light source, which was more or less exactly 5 thousand Kelvin, which we then also set In the five years are. So we had a match there. We also of course, use the camera in either 100 with fine detailed picture mode. So that's as far as the scanning concerned or yeah, let me just add we shot the camera in aperture priority mode. So there was a little bit of compensation from negative to negative because obviously the density's changed with under an overexposure. But I did want to give each negative the best digital starting point. So that's the workflow as far as the scanning goes. Then in post-production, in version on my computer, what I did was I white balanced off of the orange border in Camera Raw. And then I use that exact value that I got for that entire row so that it was consistent throughout the individual roles. I then did it again for each film because of course, you may know that each film won May 7200 have a slightly different orange mask. The base material color may vary from film to film, even from batch to batch. So it's important to always white balance off of that orange border and then apply that white balance setting through the entire row. And then you're good to go. I then inverted and set the black point on the film border because there we don't need information. I said the color temperature on the gray card that I had in the image. And I set the white point on the ninety-five percent white, which I have also in my color checker. So the color checker and gray card, we're really essential to ensure that the conversion is somewhat reliable. So that's how I obtained my scans. And yeah, that's pretty much it. When it comes to methodology. Again, I think that I did everything I could and I did everything that is reasonable in such a context. Because at the end of the day, there are always caveats, always variables you can't really control in such a test. Think about it. There's, for example, a variance in the production batches from codec portrait 400 from May 2020 look different from 2022. The gelatin may change, the chemicals are different, whatever. There are so many variables involved. So to be really, really, really scientific in such a test, I would say is almost impossible. So I hope you agree that I took the necessary steps to make these results valid and comparable? Let me now still, again, keeping in vain with the production variance in codex pipeline, give you some of the caveats and some of the weaknesses of the test that come along with my methodology. 3. Caveats: So here goes. First of all, we were capturing the images with three different camera bodies. So I can't rule out for sure that for example, perhaps one of the camera bodies had slightly different shutter speeds. Then the others. One body was recently CLAs, but the other two weren't. So I don't know if 1 125th of a second on the one body really perfectly equals 1 125th on another body. So there may be a little bit of variance when it comes to the shutter speeds of the three camera bodies. My results don't bear this out. The results look even and uniform. I can't fully rule it out. That's why I mentioned it here. The second major caveat that we have here is that I couldn't really compare Potter 160, just changing one stop of light because it is actually 1 third stop slower than 402 third stops. So then 800. So I had to make a little bit of tweaks there with the shutter speeds and the apertures. And for someone that's a little bit OCD like myself, that was kind of annoying. I would have preferred if portrait 1 sixth was actually pot or 100 or 200. But well, there it is. But let's wrap up by discussing the main caveat and this is applicable to the scans. At the end of the day, we are in the scanning evaluations comparing Canon 5D as our files to each other. We are not really comparing portrait 162400. We are comparing scans. And those scans will look like the camera that was used to take them. They will have the latitude of the camera used to take them. So a drum scan of portrait May 400 look different to a DSLR scan as we did here of portrait 400. Always keep this in mind. We are actually comparing digital representations, digital files, and with all their strengths and weaknesses attached. So in a way you could say this is a five TSR test. But I think that's a bit harsh because everyone has to have some kind of scanning pipeline when working in a hybrid way with them. But because I'm aware that it is really, strictly speaking, a weakness of this test. I also added the comparison of a purely analog see print, as well as purely analog contact sheets to this test. And I hope you will find this as fascinating as I did. And it was my attempt to really pay homage to the truly analog heritage of these films. And I realize most photographers work in a hybrid workflow, but I did really want to bring in that extra validation, that extra element of safety by doing a purely analog workflow. So the caveat that I mentioned that we are comparing digital files is somewhat reduced by the fact that we also have some print comparisons here. I hope you'll enjoy those lessons in particular. And last but not least, I think that's really all to mention. Again, bear in mind batch variances in the portrait batches are possible and I can't do anything about that. So maybe Potter 1 sixth that you have in your fridge since five years may look different to the one that I tested. That's just the nature of the beast. With this methodology discussion, as well as these weaknesses and caveats out of the way. Let's really jump into the video lessons. There's a lot of material and it's a lot of dense information where it will be mostly showing you my screen. I hope you don't get bored. I hope you're as much of a node as I am and will enjoy these individual lessons. If some of them are a bit too long or tedious for you, you can skip, of course, to those parts you find most fascinating. So without further ado, let's deep dive into the Kodak portrait family and really look at what these films are made off. 4. Box speed comparison: Portrait: So I've told you I've done a middle gray measurement at the face, at the color checker. And we can now maybe look at the individual images to understand them a little better. But from this view already you can see that they are all in the relatively same ballpark. You can already see that potter 160 here on the left is slightly less saturated. Then portrait 400 here in the middle. And put her phone and in the middle is again, perhaps slightly less saturated than portrait 800. And this is also consistent with what codec themselves state about these films. So let's look at port 160 here. First of all, in the color checker, you can see a really excellent separation of the individual colors. There is no general color cast over them. They are all really well defined and separated from one another. So a very neutral color palette, very good performance, relatively low saturation. But yeah, I would say this is really fantastic performance, especially if you're looking for neutrality. Neutrality in your images. The skin tone is accurate and correct, but it is perhaps slightly low on saturation. So that's something to keep in mind. The same could be said of the shirt, which is a little muted. Let's look at the shadow detail here in the background. You can see again that it's a high dynamic range seen with direct sunlight hitting the face and with deep shadows here in the background. And also even here in the shaded side of the face. The shadow detail is not really that apparent or visible. So yeah, portal 160 is not a film for shadow detail. It's a slower film than the other two. So if you would like to have these shadows open and with information, you have to overexpose the box speed setting at middle gray for the fates. Or you have to simply place your middle gray value into the shadow area, which would however, place the face at maybe plus three or plus four stops of exposure. And that's something that we can look at in more detail when we get to the individual film tests. And when we will see how Porter want 60 response to such overexposure. I mean, color negative film has a lot of latitude in the highlights. So yeah, if you would prefer a more open appearance in the shadow areas, you would have to expose differently and give the film more light. But for sake of comparison, I think the measurement here made the most sense. The highlights are well-timed on the face, which is as you would expect. So let's jump now to portrait 400. Immediately you can see that added saturation here in the shirt. The yellow just pops more and so does the skin tone. And you can actually see also here that the patches for yellow and orange in the color checker are more saturated. Here. On the left, we have port for 400. On the right we have 160. And you can really see in that yellow patch, the added saturation that port or 400 brings to the table. And depending on your subject, that may be something that's important to you. Let's again look at port or 400 and isolation. General appearance is of course very good. Also nice neutrality in the separation of these individual color patches. I would say it is slightly higher contrast than portrayal 1 sixth, which goes a little bit against the information that Kodak themselves gift. But it is my impression. You can see that the shaded face here of the, sorry, the shaded side of the face, even contain slightly less information than in 160. And you can see that we have really deep, punchy blacks. Really nice black performance, very clean, no color cast creeping into it. But yeah, a pretty contrasty look with relatively little shadow detail. Those pure blacks are definitely a feature of portrait 400. And that added saturation as well. Of course, if you would like to open up these shadows, you could do so in in Lightroom, for example, here, you can start opening shadow areas by increasing exposure. But you can see it doesn't respond that well to it either. They're simply not that much information in there that we can really bring up. Even if here I go to the shadow slider, you can see we start bringing out a lot of kind of ugly green. And there's just not that much information in these dark parts. So Potter 400, once again, requires care in how you expose it. I would also say that the greens are more saturated here. Clearly more saturated than they are with 160. Sorry, that was the wrong jump. Here, 160, you can see the green is a little bit more muted. It doesn't pop as much as 400. So that concludes our quick look at portrait format. Let's jump to eight hundred. Eight hundred is interesting. Straightaway, you can see it has better shadow detail. It does show some information here. It shows more information in the shaded side of the face. And perhaps it's not surprising because it is, after all, one-stop faster than 400 and yeah, two stops and a third faster than 160. So you would expect that type of film to have more shadow information because it's just more sensitive. And it really shows here in this example. So the highlight behavior in the phase stays consistent with 800. So we do not have the highlights clipping more than 400. Here you can see that the highlight behavior is very similar, but we have a market difference in these shadow areas here. So that's really great performance. Also, what you can see is that portrait 800 does not have as clean blacks as port or 400. So these sharp shadow areas which are displayed with more information have a slight red or brown cast to them. The hair also just appears more reddish in the image. And this is something consistent. In all of my tests with Potter 800, that added shadow detail comes with a slight color cast, which is biased towards red. So that's something for you to bear in mind if it matters to you. That dark parts and shaded areas, as well as blacks, are displayed with a little bit of warmth. And you can even see this here in the gray patches, which just pick that little bit of warmth up as well. Also, Potter 800 has more global saturation. Then the other two films, though, here it is quite close to be honest, to port 400. There's more of a difference when you compare two. Portal 160, where you can really see that the colors pop a little bit more. With portrait 800. It's not night and day. All the three films are close to one another, but it's still noticeable. Also, what is noticeable is that the blue saturation is different. The genes here is definitely appearing different in the portrait 800. Take a look here. It's a more actually neutral and accurate rendition of blue and the genes in the portrait. A 100 shot looks the best, in my opinion. Also, you have a nice neutrality here in these browns and this bench area where in Porto four hundred and one sixty. You could argue that the film doesn't differentiate the tones and color shades quite as well as Potter 800 does. So, while it may be the oldest of the three films, it really performs exceptionally well in my opinion. And it has wonderful blues, wonderful greens, just an all-around, excellent performance. So I'm obviously a little disclaimer here. You could make them all look even more similar to one another. You could go into the individual color channels and tweak those, you know, taking some of that blue saturation out or putting it back in and port for 400, etc. You really have a lot of flexibility with color negative film. But the idea here was to work a little bit on those parts that the films kind of impart into the image without any difference in editing. So I think that was the sensible approach to take for such a test. But yeah, just take it with a grain of salt. You can obviously tweak all of these colors to make them appear the same. Let's look one more time here at this blue performance that I've just hinted at. Because you can see that portrait, a 100, which is now on the left. You can always see the name here if the file also brings a little bit of blue into this middle gray. So the grace in portrait 800 here are clearly not as neutral as they are with 160. So that is a consistent performance that we can really see that added blue saturation, which we saw in this gene, which does have a lot of gray as well in it, is down to the fact that portrait 800 does deal with the neutrals, with the gray tones in a slightly different way. It's more colorful film, a more saturated film. So if total neutrality is what you're after, 160 would be the better choice. Alright, let's zoom out again. And let's look at the grace for portrait 400, which are here in the middle. So again, even from the zoomed out view, I think you can see that pot of 400 is extremely neutral in let me jump in in the gray separation. Here again, much like with portal 160, all the gray tones are differentiated super well. Let's zoom into 160. Now, Portofino on the left, one, on the right. Perhaps 160 years, ie ever so slightly more neutral in the grace, but Potter 400 is doing really well with these gray tones. And this is also a good moment to look at the grain, which is more pronounced here on the left. You can really see it in those color patches that they are Grenier then on the right, which is port 160, but that's to be expected. Now, let's briefly compare four hundred and eight hundred for the great performance. And again, you can see that blue cast that creeps into the neutrals on portrait 800. And you can also see another jump in graininess from portrait 800 here, which is what you would expect. Also take a look here in the shadows, where we do have that edit detail on 800, but we also get an added graininess in those shadows. So Portrait 400, while also grainy to an extent, has those clean, inky blacks, which are not grainy as they are on Potter 800. So there you have it. This is our first comparison of the three films. And the neutral, or rather the correct exposure comparison. I hope you could see that they are very much comparable in terms of their color palette. But they do change with speed in terms of how they deal with color. From least saturated with 162, most saturated with 800. And the shadow detail is the best on 800 as well. But yeah, I think really convincing, good results for all three films. You can use them interchangeably, but they are not completely the same either. So if that added saturation is something you like, you should pick 400 or 800. If absolute neutrality is what you're after, you should go with 1 16th. 5. Box speed comparison: Landscape: Okay, Here we have the second setup, which is the landscape shot. Again, normal exposure measured from middle gray at the color checker. You can straight away, see that the blues are handled differently. Top-left corner patrol 160, quite muted, and perhaps with a more magenta bias. Top right corner port for 400, already quite more saturated with much more cyan in the sky. And at the bottom, Potter 800 with even more saturation in that sky and perhaps even a little bit more cyan. I find here that as a general first comment, the differences are slightly more noticeable than they are with the portrait setup that we just discussed. But yeah, well, that is why we do two setups just to get really good comparison. So as you can see here, the slide, um, is kind of washed out in the portal 160. And that is actually correct. That's in fact what the scene looked like. The color was really muted. It was completely washed out by the sun, I think hitting it for decades. And you can straight away see that port for 400 is adding some warmth and saturation to that slide, to the orange and yellow. And the same I would expect with 800, which does it even more so. And to be honest, this 800 representation here is not really accurate. It's not that realistic. The scene, to my eye, as I remembered, looked more like does here on the left. So potter, 1 sixth. Once again, it's the most accurate film. Whether that's what you aesthetically look for is another discussion. But this could be argued is a case against Potter 800 for using it as a landscape film where perhaps you would want to have the colors appear more realistic, but that's super subjective. Also, you'll have to pardon my, my technique on taking the portal one to 60. I completely missed the focus. It's all the way at infinity rather than at the color checker. But yeah, it was quite stressful to be honest to shoot these. So sorry for that. I still think the result is is valid, to be honest. But yeah, let's again look at portrait 800 on its own. Let me jump over here. So once again, you see that it has more information in the shadow here on the slide. Also in these darker parts of the hedge. Here in the background, there's just more information there. So that added stop of speed really brings more shadow detail out of the scene. The shadows are, however, again, a little bit on the warm side. So the black is not really like a completely clean true black as it is with portrait 400, as you can see here, which has less shadow detail, but it also has these, again, deep inky blacks that are really quite accurate to what black basically looks like to the human eye. You can really see here quite a drastic difference in shadow detail, as well as in shadow color character, where again, 800 just has a slightly warm red cast in the shadows. But that is actually a nice look. So again, it's aesthetically pleasing image. You can just see also, once again that portfolio, it has a lot of contrast, bags of contrast. It has these keen blacks also appear in the window where patrol found on the right has a clean black and you have a little bit of grain already creeping into 800. Let's look briefly at the sky here. Where as you would expect, 800 on the left has more grain than 400 hairs on the right. Bear in mind with contrast is that there are so many variables and workflow considerations that affect contrast. The way you measure, the way you shoot, the way you develop and so on. So all of these contrasts, comparisons are to be taken with a grain of salt. But I think it's really apparent that 400 has a really, really punchy contrast to it. And that, that added stop of speed in the shadows is really noticeable with 800. Let's briefly look at the color checker between these two. And you can just most obviously see that portrait 800 has a different red. It's slightly more like a tomato red. And I find that quite pleasing, I have to say. So. Let's also bring in 160, again, as a point of comparison to compare with 400. So in terms of grain, you can see 160 again is smoother in the sky, and you would expect that. But it is by no means grain free. It is still a reasonably grainy film. And if you want really clean grain free skies for landscape photography, you probably have to look at something like actor 100. You can also see that that added saturation in portrait 400 also makes these greens appear somewhat cooler. Then on portable 1 sixth, which has more yellow in the greens. And that more cool green appearance is quite interesting to note with portrait 400 because sometimes part of that is considered a very warm firm. But I do think it's really dependent on how you scan and how you edit and so on. I never felt Potter 400 to be an overly warm film, to be honest. But I hope this showed you this test that there are some color differences between the three. They are interchangeable to an extent, but especially with landscape, I would recommend, depending on the types of scenes, you should to pick one of the three. Also note that 400 is considered to be the sharpest of the three films. And that may be important for you in your landscape photography. But as a general takeaway, patrol 160 is less saturated, has more muted colors that are slightly more neutral. And port four hundred and eight hundred, bring more of their own character to the table and certainly bring more saturation to the table as well. 6. Color comparison with digital: Okay, as a little bonus discussion, I want to compare the color charts that we shot with the three films to color calibrated and correctly profiled reference image that I took with the Canon R5. So here you see the color checker and the colors as they are supposed to look. This is a reliable digital reference in terms of color. We will now compare that briefly with our color charts from the portrait setup, just so we get an impression of the accuracy of the films. So here on the left you have again the digital reference, and on the right you have Potter 801st of all. So let me zoom out a bit too. Let me zoom in a bit to bring the sizes more in line. There we go. So obviously you can see here on the R5, I had the second color face as well installed, but well, for now I think it's still really good comparison. She let me slide that over. So you can straight away see that the green and blue performance of portrait 800 is super accurate. I see not a lot of difference to the digital reference, especially once you try to abstract the graininess of it. The same here for this flesh tones and these tones as well. They are really close to the digital reference. But the first big difference we see is in the red channel, which here with portrait 800 is distinctly less saturated and it has a kind of like tomato appearance. The same continuous here in these pink I'm hues which are also less saturated than the digital reference file. Also here in the orange, to an extent you could say the same. But the biggest difference really is in that red. The portrait 800 has a tomato red appearance, which I think looks nice, but it's definitely not as accurate. And as close to the digital reference. The blues, these tones here, the Aqua, the cyan and so on is, I would say reasonably close, perhaps slightly desaturated here with portrait 800, but not night and day. The biggest difference again that I see is the red tone. Let's see how 400 fairs in this regard. Again, let me bring the color checker into focus and align it here. So you can see, again, color accuracy is really good, especially in all of these patches. But once again, the red, it's slightly more tomato red. Then in the digital reference. However, these pinks are now better represented. I would say they are more accurate and more close to the digital reference. And the same applies to these blue tones. So I would say port or 400 is even closer in terms of color accuracy to a digital reference. And this is really outstanding performance if you think about it, because the R5 is a state-of-the-art sensor that was again here color profiles correctly. And it's quite amazing to see that portrait 400 is absolutely able to give you as good color representation. So really fantastic. And I think it's also noticeable that the saturation is super, super similar and super comparable to the digital reference. Okay, lastly, let's look at 160 and bring it again in alignment. So here I would say, you can see that portable 160 in general is less saturated. And it's quite apparent actually here if you compare it with the digital reference 160, just a more muted, more chilled out color palette. Super neutral, super good here in the skin tones. Very accurate, very accurate in the neutrals. And the grace. Again, slightly tomato tinted in the red. And again slightly less accurate and less saturated in these pinks. So I would say the color fidelity is perhaps slightly behind portrayal 400. So if you wonder why people love for portrait 400 and why it is often used also exclusively, is that yeah, it does actually look a little bit like digital reference. It's probably the most high-tech film of the three you could argue. But I hope you found this comparison of the color charts useful as an added bonus to our discussion here. 7. P160 exposure latitude: Now onto our first in-depth film comparison, lead to test for portrait 1 16th. Here you have the exposure said I made normal in the top-left corner, minus one and minus two in the top right. And then plus one to plus six down here. You can already see that with overexposure comes a lack of saturation or a decrease in saturation and washing out with underexposure. You can see that the color shift and also that the grain is quite heavily band. We will look at each file in details so you can see what I mean. Let's start by explaining the workflow I made in conversion, which was that I took the scans into Camera Raw. I white balanced off of the border. And with that new white balance and tin setting, I then also converted all the other files and then make black point setting onto the black border. While again color balancing the positive image of the gray card and setting the white point on this print white patch here, which is about ninety-five percent white. So all the files were treated the same. So I think they are comparable. The normal exposure you already know from the previous test. Let's quickly, oops, sorry. Let's quickly jump into underexposure minus 1. First thing you can see is you do get a bump in graininess. You also get color shifting already happening and a boost and saturation, which you can see compared to the normal. Quite well here in the out-of-focus patch that you remember from our previous test. So you can see already that the colors are quite a bit more saturated on the right-hand side. And that added brain is also really noticeable, especially here in the sky. But also in this window where you have a significant boost and grain with the minus one. So already quite a big difference at minus one and at minus two, this trend continues. We have extreme color shifts. Extreme grain, probably not worth discussing much more. Plus one is actually plus 1.3 because portrait 160 is not a full stop of light. So because of my camera settings, this is actually plus 1.3 stops. At first thing, you can already notice that the saturation is decreased. And what you can also see hopefully is that the grain is quite a bit smoother than in the normal exposure. That's quite noticeable here. Oops, sorry. Let's compare the normal exposure with the plus one. So normal on the right and plus 1.3, sorry, on the left. And you see that the grain in the sky is a fair bit smoother with the plus 1.3 stops of exposure. So if that's something you are keen on, then overexposing may be actually a good idea. You can also see this here in the window. Again, quite a bit smoother on the left with the overexposure. However, overexposure also brings some downsides, which are basically already some color shifts happening. Sorry for all this while clicking. I just got lost there for a sec. So here again, the plus 1.3. So the benefit again, as we said, was the smooth grain, but the colors are a bit washed out and you can obviously tweak this image by closing off these mid tones a bit and bringing in a bit of vibrancy to boost that saturation up again. And then if we compare with our normal on the left, we have a different look and quite pleasing look for some, maybe not as neutral. The colors are already, you know, I would say not quite as accurate with the overexposure, but it's definitely a choice that you may want to make. So again here, the plus 1.3 on the left, normal on the right. So if that smooth grain is appealing to you, that may be an option to overexpose. But be aware again, you can see the colors here are but shifted as a kind of yellow, green tint already in the image. So this would be honest, require a fair bit more work to get it looking as neutral as the normal exposure. And I fully expect this trend to continue with the plus tool, which we have here. Interestingly now I think the grain is not significantly smoother, so there's no added benefit and giving even more light when it comes to your grain structure. I can show you here briefly the 1.3 and plus two compared. Here you have plus two on the left plus 1.3 on the right. And I would say the graininess is now closer. Maybe there's still a slight advantage to the plus two, but I don't really think it's worth it. So yeah, I would not recommend just simply overexposing for the sake of it. Plus 1.3 here seems to me to be a kind of sort of limit that I would go, Let's see how it would respond if my white balance, that actually made it quite nice change. Look here. Here's the green turned five white balance then off the gray. Now we have quite a nice color palette. So if we compare again with neutral, correct exposure on the left plus 1.3 on the right. Yeah. It's it's a contender. I would say. You get those more open shadows which you see here in the hedge. And you just have a slightly more airy pastel look. And that kind of openness here is maybe something desirable. So the plus 1.3 here you can see holds up really well to tweaking. And yeah, let's briefly jumped through the other exposures again. Plus two, plus three, plus four plus 56, you do start to wash out these colors. You will just have to work harder to bring them back in. It's not impossible, but it's just more work. So again, here, you would have to reduce exposure in order to get this plus two looking yeah, as as it should. So I will not discuss these in any more extreme detail, but just suffice to say they all kind of hold up really well up until plus two or plus three. At which point, I would say those colors shifts you get in that saturation that comes in, that warmth into the greens and blues is really becoming an issue that is best avoided. Let's briefly look at the portrait setup as well. Again, our normal exposure, which we discussed previously, looking great. Here are minus one. And I would really say the minus one already suffers quite a lot here. You can see that the shadows get more grainy, but also they get very warm. They get a brownish sort of cast. And I think it doesn't work. You know that, that extra saturation and warmth creeping into the whole image already at minus one, minus two, as you can imagine. Hardly usable. Interestingly here, we now have, again smoother blacks with not as much grain, but we have so much grain here in the skin and all the other patches. And the add the image just sort of falls apart. Plus one. Again, no, sorry, plus 1.3, on the other hand, has that airy look again. If we just briefly compare m plus one and normal plus 1.3 on the left, normal on the right. You can see we just start from a different baseline. We have a reduced saturation now, but we have more open shadows. Look here at the hedge in the back, which is something I discussed in the previous test. So we also have a much more open shaded side of the face. That may be something that is really important to you, that you say you do want all of that detail here in the shaded side, that openness here and that shadow of the hair. So you see that that's achievable by giving more light to the film. And now we would have to again, however, work a little bit on the colors. Because that overexposure has shifted our colors slightly. So you would probably reduce saturation again, sorry, exposure a little bit. You may close the shadows a little bit, which is the irony because you overexposed to open them now you have to close them a little bit. But the truth is somewhere in the middle. Again here I would raise vibrancy a little bit. And there we have an interesting look. Let me white balance again. On the gray patch hasn't done that much this time. But now you can see that basically tweaking a little bit here on the left has given us a pleasing look, but it's definitely a different look to the normal exposure. So plus 1.3 with a few adjustments here on the left, normal on the right. And you see that the color palette has already shifted. So again, rule of thumb. If you don't mind putting the time in, in, in editing, then by all means, overexpose. Let me try and white balance here again. Oh yeah, that that responded well. By all means overexposed slightly. But if you really want color fidelity and accuracy, the normal exposure is superior. So let me reset that. There we are. So we go to plus two. Again, you can see that we have a color shift here, already, quite significant with plus two. So, yeah, you could, again close off those mid tones. Reduce such, reduce exposure slightly, but you still now have work to do on the colors. Let's see. White balancing doesn't really do a lot. So that general color cast you have in the image will require some work. And since you are working here, see again, didn't really respond well. Since you are working with skin tone where color fidelity is critical, this plus two, yeah, it's already maybe not your best starting point. And this trend continues with 34, sorry, 3456. Obviously. The film here plus six and plus five really picks up warmth. And plus 34 also. Maybe plus three. Here is a sort of limit that I would go that I think this image is quite salvageable if you tweak. But even here at plus three, you see it's starting to look a little bit off. Something's not quite right. Again, this is a very quick edit and doing here. This is by no means everything achievable with this file. But yeah, you already somewhat distanced from, from a good look that you would want to achieve. So here again, plus three on the right with some basic tweaking. Normal on the left. So yeah, up to you really what you want to do now you have super open shadows, you have all that information here in the background. But do you really need it? I'm not sure. So in this case, maybe a more mild overexposure would have done the trick. Maybe not even 1.3 stops as we have here, but rather just maybe a half stop or so of extra light would've been good. Um, but yeah, the film doesn't really handle overexposure super well. Once you get two plus two plus three, it becomes quite fiddly in terms of color. So I hope that helped you to decide whether you want to overexpose Potter 160. And let's now move on to portrait 400 and see if there are similarities or differences. Yeah, let's go. 8. P400 exposure latitude: Here we are with portrait 400, same principle, same conversion method. White balancing of the orange border and then inverting, putting black point onto the border, white balancing again of the gray, setting white point on the patch. So all of these files have had the same conversion treatment. Again, top-left normal, top-right minus 12, and then up all the way up to plus six. And I think you can immediately see that the film deals better with this. Then 160 does. Minus one and minus two are not as, not as extremely shifted. And the plus exposures also hold up really well, all the way up to plus three here. So the film, My first impression here, Potter 400 can take this exposure variances better. Let's look briefly into the normal just to remind you. And again, maybe compare grain first with minus one. You see that minus one is more, more grainy for sure. But again, I would not say that the difference is as extreme as it was with 1 16th. And the same applies really to the color shift. Here there is a color shift, of course there is a boost and saturation and warmth, but it's not as drastic to my eye as 1 16th. And this could be tweaked easily, the minus one exposure to more accurately resemble the normal. So if I open up the mid tones here and I bring up the exposure a little bit. Maybe I'd take a little saturation out in this case. Then. Yeah, you could say at a stretch, we have, sorry, let's compare here. We have a decent approximation of the normal exposure. So again, normal on the left minus one on the right and it doesn't look bad at all, I would say. Do you agree? I hope so. So, you know, 400 is better able to deal with this here you can see, well, to deal with this underexposure, yeah, you get that added graininess, but in terms of color, not a disaster minus two. Well, this is interesting because it's a look that you may enjoy, maybe for certain applications, for certain creative stylistic choices. This is an interesting look. I wouldn't rule out using port 400 at minus two if that is what you're going for. Again, minus one, I'm quite astonished how well it holds up. So, yeah, 400. Really versatile. Considering its color negative film minus one-stop is not a big issue. And here we are with plus one. Again, most noticeable, you will see that difference in, in green. So let's again shift around here. So there we are. Normal on the right plus one on the left. And again, just look at that graininess in the sky that is massively smoothed out with that extra stop of light or in the window. In fact. So same as with 160. If you want to smooth out that green. Overexposure is a solid choice with Paltrow 400, again, you would probably have to put in a little bit of work. Here. In the case of 400 plus one, maybe close off those shadows a little bit. That looks really decent. And already you have a nice-looking image. Color palette is slightly different. It's more airy, slightly more pastel, and less saturated. So that is unsurprisingly the reason why a lot of people love shooting 400 with some extra light because you're smoothing out that grain and your team a little bit that saturation that the film brings. I think this plus one here with a little bit of crushing the mid tones, looks pretty spectacular. And again, that's the reason why people enjoy doing that. Reduction of saturation, smoothening of grain. Seo benefits. So this trend would continue with plus two, even though we see that there is a color shift already now, I would reduce again exposure slightly. I would close the mid tones. I will try white balancing. That doesn't help us a lot. But again, not too bad. I could also tweak this further, bring more contrast in. There. We have it plus two. Looks very similar, still, two plus one. So yeah, you start to maybe bring these highlights here to be a little bit hot on the slide. And also the sand. Um, but they are not clipping, they are just a little bit brighter. So again, plus two works well. Some tweaks and you have a nice-looking image. Plus three. Again, Let's give this a quick try. Giving a bit of contrast. You now start to lose contrast actually with plus three. That's quite noticeable. So I have to crank up that contrast slider a fair bit to bring contrast back into the image. So plus three also perhaps is a breaking point where aesthetically speaking, you now have to do a lot of work to make the image look natural. Let's say whatever that exactly means. But I do think a certain amount of contrast in an image is important to make it a convincing image. So plus three, again, maybe as far as overexposure goals, a breaking point. So I won't go too much into 456. You can see the trend continuing. Let's instead jump to the portrait. Again, our normal exposure that you already know, minus one. Very decent results for me. Yeah, the shadows you can see hopefully here minus one. And normal. The shadows pickup Graeme. But the skin tone, I think looks lovely. It gets a bit more brown, bit more saturated, but it doesn't look bad at all. Again, minus one, really decent results. Not a major color shift. And again, all of this can be tweaked so I can make it brighter. I can bring up a little bit those mid tones. Yes, I will also work out the grain and bring it out, chisel it out of the image so to speak. So I would always prefer the normal exposure. The minus one is not a disaster by any means. So versatile film minus two. Here, this apocalyptic look that I discussed that may be suitable for certain applications and landscape I think doesn't work because the skin just, it's too saturated and this is not for portrait work, I think a viable option. Also again, grain just off the charts. Now plus one. Again. As we expect, shadows are more open, shaded side of the face, more open. Not as much as with Potter 1 sixth, but remember Paltrow and 61.3 stops extra 400. Gets that slightly open, airy look. Let's do a side-by-side on the skin. And on that shaded side, you can see quite well here the added detail. You can also see the smooth grain in the, in the color checker, which is more smooth but also has lost saturation. Again, you can see it quite well here. This is before tweaking. If I was going to tweak again, I can, of course bring in some contrast. I can close off those mid tones a little bit. I can again introduce some vibrancy to get that saturation back. Let's compare now. Normal on the left plus one on the right. Different look. But yeah, a good, good-looking image. So plus one, perfectly fine. Again, also common practice for many photographers. I wouldn't just say always port 400 should be exposed at 200. But if you want to for whatever reasons, which would mostly be slightly smoother grain and those more airy open shadows then yeah, by all means, go for it. Plus two. We see, Let's reverse to the, to the standard settings. We see a color shift here with plus two. And a further desaturation. I think there's a little like a green, yellow cast already on the image. And the trend continues. We would now have to work harder to bring this image back towards a neutral, correct? Look. Here, as you can see, it kind of worked. If I bumped the saturation up, looks alright. Not bad. More airy, more open. Completely an aesthetic choice that you may want to take. Plus two perfectly fine, plus three more of the same. I'm not gonna go through these. But I would again say plus three, maybe it's a breaking point. Let's just for the fun of it, tweak our plus six, see how much we can salvage. In this case, we have lost major contrast, so we have to really bump this contrast slider. We have to close those shadows and maybe bring in those slides of this highlights. But you can see my tweaks or no, not really working well at all. So I think plus six here. Not really workable. Plus five for the fun of it. Why not? Let's try contrast in exposure down. Close the mid tones, bring a bit of vibrancy. White balance of the gray checker. Yeah, No. Maybe plus five works sort of definitely works better than plus six. But again, I don't think that that's really something that you would want to do to be honest, unless again, you have some creative or aesthetic reason for it. So let's quickly sum up. Portrait 400 responds better to underexposure than 160, shows also reduction of saturation and reduction of graininess when overexposed. And perhaps holds up to this overexposure, also slightly better than 160, all the way to plus three plus four, even plus five at a, at an extreme. 9. P800 exposure latitude: Here we have portrait 800, same procedure, top-left normal to minus one and minus two exposures and plus one all the way to plus six. Again, I think from this overview you can see that the film in general does not deal with this, as well as 400 minus one, already, a completely different color palette to the normal n minus two extreme color shift. Interesting look, but very shifted. And the plus six plus one to plus six exposures, they do look quite washed out. I mean, they all do. Of course they have to. That's the whole idea of overexposing. And it would be weird if the exposure is looked similar, but you can see that the film here starts to really kind of wash out significantly. Let's start with normal, just to remind ourselves. Yeah, all good here, minus one. Besides the color shifting, just notice the grain. If it could be any more harsh with 800, then it is a big, big bump in graininess. And yet very shifted colors. So this image is not usable. Minus two. Again, I couldn't see many situations where you would want to do this. Let's look at plus one. Let's first find out whether the trend continues, that the grain smoothens out with that overexposure. For that, we will again look here at our sky. And yeah, I would say to an extent, you do get that benefit. But it is less than with the other films. So 800 just has its grain structure. And yeah, while you do smoothing it out a little bit here, with that edit stop of light, it's perhaps less of less of it. Cheat code. Let's just call it because with the other two films, you can really, really bumped them down and really achieve a different grain in the graininess appearance. And here I think it's a little less. So. Let's zoom out again and just look at the over-exposed image plus one. And let's just see how it responds for tweak. Slight reduction in exposure. Slide crushing of the mid tones. Slight bump in vibrancy. Looks great. You have to say, here at tweak the black a little bit, I reduced it. That looks really, really good. I think if we compare this now to normal, sorry, plus one here. And normal on the left. Wow, quite close to each other, first of all, but also actually a very pleasing look. The right one, I would say the plus one with some tweaks, you get that openness here in the hedges. Though. The 800s does have an advantage already because it's an 800 speed film. It does have more shadow detail which I showed also in the other tests. Remember here we looked below the slide. So 800 already has more open shadows. So just for the sake of opening the shadows, I don't know if that's really worth it. But you can really see here that the plus one with some tweaks on the right has a nice look. And it's very viable choice that you may want to take. But just remember, again, you do not smoothened out that green as much and you do not open up those shadows as much as with the other films. So really ask yourself, why would you want to do this? If you then have to tweak more, that's really a consideration you have to take. So we will see the same, I think in the portraits, but plus one, of course, perfectly fine, plus two, already quite washed out. So we would again have to tweak and boom. There we are. Few seconds of tweaking and it looks great. It does have again, a little bit of a different color. Now, look at the sky. The blue is a little bit muted and goes a bit more into a magenta. So those colors shifts will always happen when you vary your exposure. That's just the nature of the beast, but plus two still works well. Plus three, it's getting quite bright now. So I have to bring in a lot of that. But I can, again, you lose saturation. So we would have to bump it, which I just did here. And yeah, looks looks nice. But again, more work required. But plus three. Perfectly fine. Okay, plus four. Now it's getting a bit into clipping territory. So you can see that in the sand. But again, impressive response to some tweaking. You do have the option of bringing down that overexposed, almost clipping character. And let's again look at the grain. Here. It's slightly smoother from Stop to stop. But I don't know if that's really worth it. You still have that basic characteristic of an 800 speed film. So plus five. Again, let's try. Yeah. You again now start to really lose contrast in the image and you have a lot of color shifting now look at that blue. So plus five, I think is a breaking point here. Plus six, Let's not even look into it too much. So yeah, maybe plus four overexposure still usable. Plus five is the point for me where it breaks apart. Portrait. We remember our nice normal exposure minus one. Okay, that extra saturation you now get with underexposure is really not working. You get that red channel just going wild. You have so much retina in the skin even with minus one. That for a portrait underexposure here is not an option in my opinion. You also even again, bump the graininess. So do not if you want to have an accurate skin tone, underexposed portrait 800, you will have no joy bringing this back. Plus, minus two, excuse me. Of course more of the same. Now, it's all about that color shift of the entire image. It's no longer just a warm for that redness which gets boosted. It's now the entire image that has completely shifted in terms of color. I can show you minus one, maybe reducing saturation here. That works sort of. But you can see now that the color is just off. So do not underexposed. 800 is my recommendation. If you want to take decent portraits plus one, we have opened up those shadows. Let's briefly compare the graininess because that's always maybe a reason why you would want to overexpose a film as we've seen in these tests. So we have the plus one here on the right and normal on the left. And I would say again, as with the landscape, you have maybe a minor reduction of graininess, but I don't think it's worth it. The other two films for sure. But here, Potter 800 to just overexpose it to reduce graininess. I don't think it's a good idea. But of course, this image could now be easily tweaked to look fantastic. Look here, I just reduced a little bit the exposure and I crushed the mid tones a bit. And I think that's a fantastic looking image at plus one. For those reasons, by all means, go ahead and overexpose, but not for reasons of graininess. Plus two. I will not, I think now tweak these plus two plus 3456. I expect similar results, similar performance and reactions as with the other films. I will give you one example of plus six here. Just for the sake of it, let me reduce. Again. Exposure, crushed the mid tones it down, reduce black point, increase contrast, and bring some dynamic, dynamic adjustment in. Let's try a white balance helps us out. It doesn't really. So plus five here. Strong yellow, green cast over the image. So plus five, again, not usable. Plus four, we can give it a quick try. Just to see if this isn't it. Look, we may want to use if that's an option to us. Again, Let's white balance here, I would say plus four already also has this quite strong green casts. So we would have to now play around with this temperature slider. And then we could, as you can see, make the image look okay. So by no means unusable, but I don't know if it's worth the effort. You have to decide that. But plus four, I would say here, just giving these tweaks I just did is workable and can be made to work. But you can see it's a radically different look to the normal exposure on the left. So you have that option whether you want to take it or not, is up to you. And just a final disclaimer when I do all of these tweaks. It also depends heavily on your own workflow. So take these results with a pinch of salt. But I think it's still fascinating to see that all of the films have some flexibility here. 800 miles summary would be do not underexpose it and overexpose it up to three stops if you have to. But at the same time, just in terms of pure clipping, we don't have any here, these highlights and the face. Even at plus four, I'm not clipping. So the film is able to absorb all of that light, even a plus four stops. But you get color shifting and you have to work harder and post to get a neutral or correct color rendition. I hope that was helpful for you. Let's jump into a little bonus now, comparing between the films. And then we will look at some physical prints. 10. Cross comparisons at 200, 400 & 800 ISO: Alright, so here's a little extra comparison for you. This is portrait 160 shot abnormal exposure, box speed 160 on the left. And port for 400 shot at plus one. So at ISO 200 on the right. And I think this may be interesting to you because what's the point of using maybe three different films if you can use one film so flexibly that it replaces the others. That may be a consideration for you. Portrait 400 plus one on the right is two my eyes, not significantly Grenier. Then portrait 1, sixth shot at Box speed. Maybe, maybe if you look at this gray patch, you could say portrait 400 plus one is finer-grained than 160. Abnormal box speed. So you have a film here in Paltrow 400 that you can shoot at IC2 100, or even either 1 sixth, and you get arguably a better green performance out of it. Then from actually shooting the slower film in Portal 160, just look here at the windows. Again. The 400 and the windows exposed with one-stop extra light is cleaner than 160 at Box speed. Let's look at the slide. Same here again. I would say if you look at this orange surface, it is slightly Grenier in 160 exposed at Box speed. So I think that's fascinating in terms of color palette. They are very close and very similar. Perhaps you can see that the saturation that you get with overexposure on 400, pushing it in terms of its color palette, closer to 160. So it's really fascinating. Port 400 shot with one speed extra, starts to look quite like portal 160, shutter speed, both in terms of saturation and in terms of graininess. So I think that's fascinating little finding that I've had here. And it means that if you only have 400 in your pocket, doesn't mean you can't shoot in bright situations. You will actually get a look out of that film if overexposed that is not too far away and somewhat similar to 160th box speed. So I really wanted to show you that. And let me show you in the same vein, another little comparison. Let's look at portrait 400 at minus one here. Compared to portrait 800. Add walk speed here. Because again, you would have the same ISIL portrait 400 underexposed by one-stop equals an ISO rating of 800. So we can compare these two at 800. So let's look at grain first 800 on the right port for 400 underexposed on the left. Here, I would say that actually the Potter 400 unexposed by one-stop on the left is greater than 800. You see it again in this gray patch. So unfortunately in the other direction coming from overexposure, if you go towards underexposure, you don't quite have that same flexibility. It's not night and day different. I still think 800 here has a cleaner rendition, more pleasing because you also have significantly less green in blacks and in shadows, you have those deeper blacks. If you expose 800 correctly. And 400, again, you get those black dark parts super polluted here with green. So I would say, unfortunately, 400 at minus one doesn't replace 800 abnormal in the same way that 400 plus May 1 replace 1 sixth for you. So when it comes to underexposure, not quite the same flexibility. Yeah. I hope you found this little excursus, this little bonus episode, let's say, useful to consider whether you may want to replace one film with the another, and so on. Okay, Here's another little bonus comparison that I forgot to record in the previous video. And that is the comparison of portrait 400 at normal exposure on the left here with Potter 800 at plus one. So exposing portrait and a plus one means you are effectively exposing it at 400. So we're comparing these two films here at 400 ISO. And just as before, we want to see if there may be a benefit in using one over the other. And maybe that's a worthwhile thing to try out. Because that would mean that you could use Potter 800 in situations where maybe you would traditionally want to use 400. So let's look at it. The first impression is that the color palette is slightly different. The colors, obviously a little bit more washed out here in the plus one exposure. And the shadows are more open. So there are no really deep inky blacks in the 800 plus one, as there are with 400 at Box speed. Let's briefly compare the grain. Because this is obviously one of the reasons why maybe you would want to do such practice of using 800 plus one rather than using 400. But yeah, to my I must say that 800, even with the one-stop extra light, still, the grainy film. You can see it in those blacks here and the shadows are on the pavement here in those parts where the 800 grain is just more apparent. And similarly, I would say in these color patches where the 800 is just a little grainy, It's most apparent in the shadows and the dark parts. I would say if we compare the skin, that the difference is not night and day in terms of graininess, again, we are talking here, but I still don't think that the grain aspect is necessarily an argument for using 800 over 400. And that's not surprising if we think of the results we had previously. Let's briefly try to just tweak the exposure here, the plus one exposure to match perhaps a little bit more with 400 in terms of getting that color palette a little bit more neutral. Now, that hasn't really worked the white balancing here. Let's try a few more times. I think actually that is not doing the image too much good. But we can maybe cool it down a bit. And now compare again. So again, on the left we have 400, and on the right we have 800 plus one, slightly tweaked. But you can see it's not a similar or identical color palette. You simply have that more warm shadow area, that more warmth in the blacks and in the dark parts. And also the skin tone. You just don't quite get it, right. I mean, I could fiddle obviously a much longer time with these, but this just to show you that, again, when it comes to overexposure this time, 800 plus one doesn't replace four hundred four hundred AD box speed is still a very neutral, clean look that I think is preferable to 800 plus one. So that just to add to the previous little discussion we had in this bonus episode, I hope it's useful for you in deciding which film to use in which situation. Of course, if you only have 800 and it's quite bright, yeah, well, you can still make it work, but it's always preferable to have the correct tool for the job. So with that out of the way, let's now move to comparing some physical prints. 11. C-Prints comparison: Let's conclude our film comparison by looking at some analog see prints. So here on the left we have portable 160. Here on the right we have 400. These were printed traditionally in a darkroom using only analog techniques. So there is no scanning, no digital intermediate risk involved. These prints, these are C type prints made an amazing lab here in Berlin. And these are printed to the taste and the experience of the person who printed them. A very experienced printer who has been doing these types of prints for decades. So when you print analog film, you're obviously working with various filters and so on that you have to put into your in larger to achieve the desired result. And this printer is well-versed in making those decisions. So she printed them to look correct and to look according to her experience with the film. But there is no real method which you could use simply using the exact same filters for all three films to completely even out the processing or the printing workflow involved in making the prints. So you are comparing the films, but you are also helping each film to shine in its best possible light. And I think you can see immediately that the differences here, even less than an hour scanning analysis. Here we have portrait 400. I can try make you appreciate the grain here by bringing the print, sorry, by bringing the print closer to the, to the lens. Perhaps you can see the grain structure, perhaps not. But you can trust me that it is very difficult to tell apart the differences. Here's the 160. These prints are virtually indistinguishable. If you look closely with a magnifying glass, you can see the slightly finer appearance of patrol 1 16th. But yeah, it's really negligible. I think you can see in the print hopefully the slight difference in saturation. You can see it well in the shirt which is more saturated, we have Paltrow 400. And you can also see here that there's a little bit more shadow detail going on with 400 compared to 160, which is what you would expect. But that was not completely borne out in my scanning tests. So that may be to do two variances in the exposure of the scanning camera, et cetera. There's various factors involved. But here in these prints, I would say I do see this extra stop of speed that 400 has, giving a little bit more information here in these dark parts. Then what I saw from my scanning impressions, and you can see again, slightly more muted color. Palette. On 160. You can see it hopefully on the shirt, on the face, where 160 is just a little bit more muted. And, um, yeah, you could argue perhaps the skin looks slightly less healthy on the 1 16th and has a little bit more pop on 1400. And likewise here in the top corners you can see some differences in the blue, where again, that extra saturation that you get with 400 is apparent. Let's throw in 800 to the mix, which is here. And now we have 800 on the right and 400 on the left. Same principle. And once again, you do see that slight jump, slight bump in saturation in the yellow shirt. You again also have a little jump from 400 to 800 in shadow detail, just as we saw in the scanning. So this print results are consistent with the scan results. Mostly to an extent. And they showed that all three films can be made to look extremely, extremely similar. Once you go the printing route. I think other factors such as development quality and the way you print your paper, the filtration and so on, start to become more relevant than actually the film choice. So again, you can see a slightly grainy appearance even in this print. By the way, these are about 60 by 40 enlargements. So they are parts of the vertical negative that I took. And they would amount to a 60 by 40 centimeter print. Just for reference, you can see all the highlights are super well controlled in the face, as you would expect. The color palettes are extremely close together. You really have to say, let me throw in 160 next to. 800. Just as a little bit of a comparison. Here. Again, you see that slight difference in saturation. You see that added extra bit of information in the shadows. But the appearance of the prints are extremely close together. And I think they look absolutely wonderful. Very happy with the results here. The frame is getting a bit too tight to display them all three at the same time. Here again, you have 800. I will also make them more zoomed in. Shock of this of each sprint in a second. Four hundred and one sixty? Yeah. Hard to tell the difference, I would say. So. Let's quickly jump closer onto the print and just confirm our findings. Maybe we can look a little bit better at grain. Just bear with me a sec. And then we will also look at some contact sheets. Alright, now we are looking a little bit closer at the prince. Here you see portrait 800. And yeah, maybe this will help you appreciate the differences in grain a little better. Again, 800 is in front of you, and now we get to 400. Perhaps you would have noticed that slight difference in graininess, especially in the gray patch. But at this point, you would actually be doing the equivalent of pixel peeping by going very close to the print to actually see that added green color palette, again, is very, very close. Graininess is little different. Again, here we have 400. You can see how neutral and beautiful the color palette is. Let me just bring in 160. There you go. Also, I think in terms of color, very, very close to the others. And perhaps slightly less grain here in that, in that gray card in there. Great checker. So I'll remove them again one by one. Here we have 160. Here we have four hundred and four hundred to 800. So I hope you agree. They are very close. Let me try and squeeze them all in. You have it? One sixty four hundred eight hundred. I think you can see also that neutrality we talked about, that is just wonderful. We're 400. Let's quickly tried to look at the color charts. This will be difficult to achieve. Again because of the width. I feel like doing a cart trick here. So again, this is one sixty and four hundred compared. And I would say, no, sorry, see, I am like, it is like a card trick. This is actually eight hundred and four hundred. Beg your pardon. You have, you can perhaps see again that the red tone is slightly brighter, slightly more magenta. And you see that really incredible neutrality of portrait 400 at work. And if I bring in 1 16th, again, you see the difference in the red, which is deeper, darker and more magenta. Let's tomato then here in 800. And I think this in general really confirms what we already saw in the scans. Let's just put one sixty and four hundred next to each other. 160 here, 400 here. And you can see how close their color palettes really are. You can also see that little bit of extra speed advantage in 400, which of course also then affects the appearance of colors. But yeah, I think we are splitting hairs at this point and they really look very, very close. And I think they look fantastic. 12. Contact sheets comparison: Let's quickly, quickly dive into some contact sheets, which unfortunately for color negative, has become extremely rare sight in analog photography. Which is a shame. And these are interesting, mostly because these are not corrected for aesthetic quality or for sort of based on the experience of the printer. These are simply run through a machine with a one fits all setting, which is why they are contact sheets. So there's no adjustment between each negative. And they are just printed as is. I will bring them a little bit closer to the lens. So you can get an impression. And of course here in these contact sheets, you can really see that overexposure, especially coming into play. Especially here at the plus six level plus five plus four, which are really burned out. So in an analog workflow, you could basically also say that plus three, plus two and plus one here are still okay, even though plus three is also reaching a critical level. While correct, minus one, minus two are also what we saw in our previous lesson. So here we have, for example, let me bring this very close. We have the plus two exposure on portrait 160 we are. And here over here, we have plus one and correct. Plus one, correct. So you can see actually that the correct exposure here in this range is a little on the dark side. And yeah, I think we shouldn't discuss them in too much more detail because they won't bring us any real new information. Suffice to say, you can see that the overexposure here is very apparent and the underexposure here at minus two is hardly visible. There's basically nothing you can see. Portal 160 port for 400 holds up better. So that's fascinating. Just as in our scanning comparison. Sorry I made a mistake. This is actually portrait 800. But yeah, it does hold a better it does not clip or burnout quite as aggressively as 160 did. Let me fold this in just so you have a comparison. There, you can see that 160 burns out more aggressively quicker than eight hundred. Eight hundred has that little bit more of latitude in the overexposure as well as in the under exposure if you look at these. So, yeah, interesting again, here to see that even with an analog contact sheet, we do get some consistency of results. Finally, let's move to 400. Same thing again. Even though I would say that these also clip quite aggressively. Maybe again, slightly better than portrait 1 16th. But yeah, I think this is interesting and it's a nice supplement to all the other testing that I've done, which was mostly on the computer. Let me go closer one more time. Show you a correctly exposed image. Oh no, this is actually a plus two example. That's what I can see. So here we have a correct exposure for portrait 400 on the contact sheet. So again, this just shows you that the correct exposure on the contact sheet would actually require different settings, different filtration, different times when you make a print. Okay, everyone. So what I've done here is I've cut up the contact sheets. We have Potter 160 at the top, 400 in the middle, 800 at the bottom. This is useful just to see the differences, how the films respond to this overexposure. We are at my plus two, excuse me, on the left. And you can straight away see that 1 sixth in the top left corner shows this overexposure more than four hundred and eight hundred below the highlights, the sand and so on, get hotter quicker. Four hundred and eight hundred, deal with this better as you move to the right plus three, all the way to plus six, this trend continues. 1 16th simply can't deal with this overexposure as well as the other two films. You can see it in the plus five here, where 160 is already completely losing information in detail, completely clipped. Even in plus for the sand is super hot while foreign and then 800 still managed to hold some information there. So this is really excellent to see because it confirms what we also saw in our scanning comparisons. And it also shows that the color shifting in 160 there with overexposure has a different character to four hundred and eight hundred, which look somehow more similar in their overexposure character. So colors between four hundred and eight hundred here are more consistent with plus two. Then n plus three. Things are less uniform and patois and 60 is maybe still acceptably hot. But again, you can see the trend of four hundred and eight hundred dealing better with overexposure in general, I would say 400 deals the best even here at plus four. It looks okay. While 800 here at the bottom, starting to look a bit funky, colors are really weird and there's some stuff happening at the edge of the perforation, like kind of like a light leak. I'm not sure if that's entirely down to the overexposure, but it's definitely noticeable. So all the way up to plus three, all films are acceptable. But 400 is, I think, the winner when it comes to this overexposure latitude. If we shift everything over and just briefly note that here minus one for four hundred and eight hundred are pretty similar, so hardly usable. Minus two, you can't even see anything. But they are actually there in the middle there. And this part is the minus two exposures, so no luck there. So, you know, a contact sheet, obviously it's always a compromise between the different exposures on the road. That's why the minus two and the plus six can't all be displayed at the same time. You could sell which many of the negatives here with appropriate filtration later in printing. But I think it's a fascinating addition and conclusion of our test to just see that the contact sheets prove what we saw in scanning. 13. Conclusion: Okay guys, you've made it well done 1.5 hours of material. I hope you watched all of it. I hope you are richer for the experience and I hope you learn some things. Here. I just want to give a really brief recap and wrap up of these findings because I did conclude and I did try to integrate those takeaways into the lessons themselves. Let's just for a second, stop to think. So. We had some, or I had some assumptions before doing the test and some expectations. Were they born out by the tests? I think in general they were. The first assumption I had was obviously the differences in grain. And yes, you do get a jump in graininess. That's just physically the reality of what we're doing here. But I did find one conclusion really fascinating. And that was that if you overexposed Paltrow 400, you get a graininess that approaches Potter 160 in normal exposure. So that's my first conclusion. You could use 400 instead of 160 exclusively because Potter 400 overexposed is really fine-grained. Remember, Kodak also claims that portrait 400 is the sharpest of the three films. So it's even sharper than the slower 160 film. And that may be relevant and important to you. So that's my first conclusion. My second conclusion is that portrait 800 is sometimes belittled a little bit because it's the older film, but it does bring you through 800 bucks speed just as the other to really bring you that Brock speed? I would not say that you have to overexpose 800. As a rule of thumb, are that it doesn't really managed to bring you that 800 speed. I can't agree with that. So my second general conclusion is that all three films reach their books speed. They do not have to be overexposed. That's something you may want to do. And I showed in detail what the benefits and downsides of that are. But I think that general trend of people saying, Oh yeah, you should always overexpose your film by two stops. I really can't agree with that. I think all three films perform super well at Box speed if you measure correctly, if you measure well. So that's my second conclusion. Lastly, I would say in terms of color, yes, we have a color palette that is interchangeable in a way that the three films, to give you a sort of generally similar look. But at the same time, if you are really getting into detailed work, you can see that portal won 60 is less saturated than four hundred and eight hundred. You can see that potter 800 has a different red representation than the other two films. It's more tomato. So there are some subtle and slight differences in the way that the films handle color. The same applies to the skin tone. The skin tone on patrol 160 has perhaps slightly less flattering quality because it doesn't have that saturation of 400. So in my tests, the 1 sixth the portrait makes the skin, the person look not as healthy, not as vibrant as the 400. But here, I have to also admit the limits of these claims because you could make any of these sharps and any of these frames look like one another. If you just tweak enough in Lightroom, you can bring that saturation into 160. You can change that red channel in portrait 800. So if you have an excessive, extensive digital post-production workflow, you can really match the three films. You can really make them look completely alike. Tweaking all the color channels, tweaking saturation to really match with one another. So then the only differences would indeed be the grain performance. But also remember portrait 160 in terms of latitude, is not on the same level as the other two films. So potter 1 16th needs to be exposed with the most care out of the three films. So there you have some general conclusions. I hope that that is useful to you. You can see here we have three extremely, extremely professional and great films that you can use and adapt them, adapt them to your particular workflow. When it comes to printing, we saw that the differences were even less visible. So I really have a hard time picking the three prints apart unless I go very close, in which case I can see the differences in grain. But in the printing workflow, I think the differences are even further reduced. So with all of that information now in your hands, what will you make of it? I can't really say for myself, I will continue using all three films. I think it's great to have three options with a similar color palette that I can use in my professional work. And I'm really glad that I got to know the films more intimately throughout this test. 14. Outro: So there you have it. That's the end of the course. I hope you found it exciting. I hope the nerd within you was really happy to see all this detail that I offered you. That's the type of photographer than I am. And I was always looking out for this type, of course. So I'm really, really hopeful that you got that out of it as well. If you want to follow my work a little bit or find out more about what I do. You are very welcome to do so. You can visit my website at Martin monk.com or follow me on Instagram at Martin, martin net. And I'd be glad to see you in another course in the future. I have some plans of doing more film testing here on Skillshare. So I'd be delighted if you join me for that as well. And, um, yeah, that's really all there is to say, thank you for putting your time into this course and for coming on this journey with me until the next time. This has been a deep dive into the codec portrait family, your films with me, Martin monk, take care and see you around.