Hi everybody,
welcome back to Episode 02 of Talking Grain, a new series about my personal film photography process. If you haven’t read the first episode you can do this here.
As already mentioned in the last one, Kodak Professional Europe was kind enough to provide me with a fine selection of some of their most favourite film stocks to create some reviews for your guys. These episodes won’t be very technical as I think photography has more to do with intuition and experience you get from shooting, rather than talking about figures and measurements taking under laboratory conditions. So yeah, if that is something you’re looking for I’m sorry, this is not the place where you’ll find it.
Luckily I was able to make it to Kefalonia before Europe went into another lockdown, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Kefalonia is a small Greek island in the Ionian Sea and compared to some of the famous ones, it’s definitely more relaxed and laid back.
With me a I had a couple 35mm rolls of Kodak Professional Portra 400 and my trusty old Leica M6. Portra 400 is one of my favourite film stocks ever as I found it to be very flexible in a great variety of shooting situations. So of course it was my preferred choice for shooting in sunny Greece. Furthermore, this time I didn’t do any planning at all. I just picked up a rental car at the airport and started exploring the island without any specific destinations in mind. This way I truly could loose myself in the moment and was able to take things as they come. So without further ado, let’s have a look at some the results.
Beach Vibes, Kefalonia, 2020 on 35mm Kodak Portra 400
Golden Wave, Kefalonia, 2020 on 35mm Kodak Portra 400
Of course, when talking about an island, what first comes to all our minds is the sea, long beaches and beautiful sunlight. And in fact these conditions seem to be perfect for Kodak Professional Porta film stocks in general. Every time I use this film I’m impressed by how well it handles the complexity of certain tonal ranges, all the way from the cold blues of the ocean to the warm golden sunlight during evening hours. The Portra film stock, which might be no surprise for most of you, tends to be on the warmer side. You’ll get rich and naturally looking colours paired with an impressive dynamic range, as you can see in the second image above. The dynamic range easily rivals that of modern digital sensors and personally I think that Portra renders the falloff in highlights and shadows much nicer than any digital sensor ever did. This makes it my first choice whenever I find myself in these Mediterranean environments.
Asos Old Town, Kefalonia, 2020 on 35mm Kodak Portra 400
Pineapple Van, Kefalonia, 2020 on 35mm Kodak Portra 400
I know, I know…taking beautiful photographs during perfect light conditions is as easy as it gets for any film stock (and even digital cameras), right?
That’s probably true, but Portra 400 also knows how to impress when being used in flat light scenarios. I tried to showcase this with the two images above. The first one was taken during an overcast day in a small fisher village, called Asos. As you can see the film rendered the deep greens as well as the colourful houses in such a nice way, digital camera users could only dream of. The second image was taken right before blue hour, when the sun was already set. I love how Portra 400 was able to capture these nice pastel colours, you usually see around that time of the day.
Kodak Professional offers three different Portra films, each with its own distinct characteristics but with a similar color palette throughout. There’s Portra 160, which I personally never used so far, followed by Portra 400 and Portra 800. The latter one is faster and tends to be more saturated as Portra 400 but a lot of people swear by it and often rate it at 400 to get that specific, slightly over-exposed look we all know way too well from Instagram these days. Of course, Portra 800 is more expensive than Portra 400 and for some people this might be significant. Personally, I shoot quite some of Portra 800 as well but my true go-to film always has been Portra 400. It think from all the Porta stocks available it’s the most well-rounded one. It is quite affordable while offering very natural looking colours and being very flexible at the same time. You can easily over expose by a couple of stops without loosing any details in the highlights and hell yeah, even underexposing to some degree will be forgiven by the film. I’ve already shot it in so many scenarios, including overcast days, rain, night time and so on and Portra 400 always delivers.
Below you’ll see a couple more images from my short trip to Kefalonia, Greece.
Into the Light, Kefalonia, 2020 on 35mm Kodak Portra 400
Old Man, Kefalonia, 2020 on 35mm Kodak Portra 400
I love old cars, Kefalonia, 2020 on 35mm Kodak Portra 400
Bus Graveyard, Kefalonia, 2020 on 35mm Kodak Portra 400
Aright guys, that’s about it for this post and I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did when writing this. I’ll try to keep these episodes nice and short, so that you’ll get the most out of it. Expect another one soon and stay safe y’all.
Meanwhile, feel free to check out my analog account on Instagram, called @chrismartinscholl35.
Talk soon,
Chris