Fast Tungsten Balanced Film?

<p>i shoot indoors alot and don't like to, and honestly don't really know how to, use a flash. </p>

<p>everyone says that modern print films have soo much latitude that you can just use daylight balanced stuff indoors and adjust for colours in the print. which is all fine and great but usually when the colour accuracy is important, it's because i'm shooting for my company newspaper or magazine and i'm only handing them photoshopped scans of my negs. </p>

<p>after complaining of the orange shift i got with fuji 800 and 1600 indoors to one lab and not getting much better, i took my work to another lab who are doing a MUCH better job. but things still aren't dead on. </p>

<p>my coworkers have been happy with my images but i fear they are just used to point and shoot photos and are just too overjoyed to have depth of field and no flash shadows that the colour is being overlooked!</p>

<p>anyway, i am familiar with fuji t64 and believe i've seen some 200 tungsten films but am wondering if anyone's aware of something in the 800 range. or maybe pushing might be a solution?</p>

<p>I just looked at B&H--my old standby for this (Ektachrome 320 Tungsten) isn't available anymore. I shoot a lot of theatre dress rehearsals--I used to use Ektachrome 320 pushed 1 stop to ASA 640, but converted to digital a few years ago. I don't think there was ever a high speed tungsten balanced color negative film available in 35 mm. Digital (Pentax SLRs) has given me much better results than the pushed Ektachrome ever did, so you might think about going to a good digital SLR with fast lenses for your work. Incidentally, if it is being published on a company website or newsletter, the graphic designer will thank you for not having to scan film or prints.</p>

<p>Shooting film under tungsten light is a real challenge. As you have discovered, the available films are all rather slow. You could use a correction filter on a fast daylight film but that will cost you a couple of stops of light. If you need to keep the tungsten ambient light looking correct then any supplementary light should ideally be tungsten balanced too. This could mean putting an orange gel on a fill flash. Another option is to use a tripod or monopod and work with a slow shutter speed.</p>

<p>andrew, i'm pretty determined to find a film solution to this which is why i'm posting here. i imagine that before 10 years ago, folks shot plays and other indoor events with film and no flash so there's got to be some sort of solution besides buying a whole other camera. i think you are correct in terms of ease/effectiveness but i'm going to be stubborn on this point. as for the graphic designer, i think it's a given for any modern film shooter to have paid gigs scanned at as high or higher resolution than dslr's put out. i would never ask one of my designers to scan my negatives. that would be total loss of control over the look of my work for one thing and just another reason for someone to not want to deal with film.</p>

<p>gareth, all the correction filters i've looked into suck down more than a stop of light which defeats the higher speed of the film of course! it's been suggested i try a very thin orange gel. as stated i prefer not to use flash. i do use sticks when necessary/possible though. </p>

<p>i gne</p>

<p>Johnny--I feel your pain, and it took a long time for me to go digital. Unfortunately, many of the more exotic films that professionals used for the kind of assignments that you are describing have disappeared from the market, and I doubt that they will return, much to my personal displeasure. The best advice I can offer is to over expose high speed color negative and find a good lab that will color correct the results--in my experience, 1/2 to a full stop of over exposure made it much easier for a lab to correct the color.</p>

<p>You could always use a filter over the lens....</p>

<p>thanks for your condolence andrew. i wouldn't say that i haven't gone digital, i just prefer to try doing things on film when i can!</p>

<p>how does overexposing help? just curious.</p>

<p>patrick, see above.</p>

<p>My best indoor shots with tunsten lighting were with Portra 100T, but I don't think it's made anymore. Even with the heavy light loss of an 80A or 80B, or whatever the correct filter name is, using it with an ISO 800 film would give it an effective speed that is still greater than the Portra 100T or other slow tungsten balanced films. FWIW, even with fast tungsten film the results might not always be exact as the color temperature of tungsten lighting can vary due to the manufacter of the lamp, age of the lamp, and variations in line voltage.</p>

<p>I'm not sure of the technicalities, but I think it had to do with getting enough light to one of the layers of the emulsion so that correction would be possible. My experience with both tungsten and unfiltered fluorescent lighting was that a 1 stop overexposure with daylight color negative film got me a whole lot closer to decent color than normal exposure did.</p>

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<p>I think you have a couple options besides what you've tried:</p>

<p>- Kodak or Fuji 64T slide film </p>

<p>- high speed daylight film with full correction filter - gives up a lot of sensitivity </p>

<p>- high speed daylight film with a partial correction filter. I think an 80D or KB6 filter is the one to try. It will partially correct the color temp difference. You'd still have to do the rest in post, but it'd give you a head start with out throwing away so much light </p>

<p>- digital </p>

<p>- shoot Kodak 500T Vision 3 and find out how to process ECN-2 </p>

<p>I'm thinking the 80D/KB6 filter is the thing to try.</p>

</p>

<p>i think i'm just going to kill myself:<br>

http://www.photographyblog.com/news/fujifilm_to_discontinue_fujicolor_pro_800z/</p>