Enjoy these tennis photographs taken with an old Praktica MTL 5 camera loaded with a Kodak Portra 160 NC film! Great colors, vivid, and well-balanced. It produces very fine grains, and very good prints!
I found a roll of this Kodak Portra 160NC 35mm film in Lausanne, Switzerland, last summer. This is a film difficult to find in my town, except if you make a special order. I found many Kodak Portra rolls in 120mm format, but I seldom find a 35mm roll. I used this film last August, during the ATP Challenge in Como and I developed the fresh film in a standard way, in the C41 mode. The scans were made with a professional scanner of a minilab. My first impression: vivid colors, but without excess, great tone renditions, great blue and great skin colors!
As a professional film, you must take care with the exposure, because professional films are generally less tolerant than general purpose film, so while some cheaper films allow three or four stop of overexposure and one stop of underexposure, this film requires more care, if you want these great colors!
Tones are neutral, very good both in sunny and cloudy days.
Pros:
- Great film
- Neutral tone
- Reasonable price
- Great colors rendition
- Great in sunlight and also in shadows conditions
- Very little grain
Cons:
- None!
Enjoy taking photos with this great color negative film, maybe the best one in the 100 – 200 ISO range!
4 comments
jurquidi
I love the optimism of the article, but there have to be some cons or warnings about using the film. You already mentioned that it was hard to find, right? Readers can learn from the cons as well as the pros...
sirio174
Yes, is hard to find in Italy, but I have easily found it outside Italy, for example in Switzerland
simon-hedge
Some great shots. How long was the lens?
sirio174
@simon-hedge I used a 105 and a 135mm telephoto lenses and a 58mm (an Helios), because the distance between public and players is very small (a small stadium for less than 500 peoples)