Which colour negative film for artificial light?

[markus_ehrenfried]

Which film would you recommend for indoor use with artificial light

(normal electric bulbs)? I don't want to use flash, so I tried Fuji

Superia X-TRA 400 and 800, but then I get this ugly yellowish colour

cast in my pictures. (To avoid that I now usually use black and white

film indoors.)

 

Is there a fast colour negative film which is optimized for these

light conditions?

 

Is it possible to use some sort of filter which surpresses the yellow

light and allows the use of normal daylight material? -- That would

even be better!

[staticlag]

The yellow color is the actual color of the light, when our eyes percieve it, we get used to it and automatically adjust for it.

 

They make film that is balanced for this, it is called tungsten film.

 

Or you can just slap a 80A blue filter on your lens and any normal daylight film will come out great.

[James G. Dainis]

Use an 80A deep blue filter for tungsten lights, 3200K. You will lose two stops.

[markus_ehrenfried]

James and Daniel, thanks for the fast answers! I thought so that there must be some trick with a blue filter. Of course a two stop loss due to the filter is quite a problem, then my fast ISO 800 film becomes only ISO 200.

 

Daniel mentioned 'tungsten film'. Can someone recommend a brand / film type? ISO 400 would be the minimum, ISO 800 would be better.

 

Cheers, M.

[James G. Dainis]

Most of the tungsten films I am familiar with are tungsten slide films around 160 ISO. Using a filter allows you to use the same roll outdoors as well as in should the need arise.

[hans_beckert]

Kodak make a tungsten-balanced nagative film, Porta 100T, I believe.

 

http://www.kodak.com/global/en/professional/products/films/portra100t/portra100T.jhtml?id=0.1.18.14.11.14.22.11&lc=en

[elliot_n]

If you need 800ASA then the best bet is Fuji Superia Xtra 800, rated at 800ASA,

pushed 1 stop, and then printed on a Fuji Frontier by a good operator who's been

instructed to correct for tungsten.

[staticlag]

There is really no easy way around the speed issue.

 

Usually the only time photography with tungsten(regular filament) lights is utilized by professionals is in studio conditions(called "hotlights", because they stay on and get really really hot... daylight balanced studio lighting are called strobes, because they just flash, because it would be dangerous and impratical to emit the intensity of the flash light constantly), where you can easily control things.

 

Tungsten film/80A are good for building photography at night, indoor building adversisements where you have time to use a tripod and slow speeds, xmas lights, Or I like to use 80A with snow to get a nice dreamy blue effect, I hear its good with moonlight also.

 

The rate at 1600 suggestion sounds like it could work if you need 800 iso, but color balance might be off a bit, you may or may not notice it. My suggestion would be to buy Fujipress Superia 1600 and just try and shoot around the 400 asa you will inevitably get with some fast glass.

[EricM]

�Which film would you recommend for indoor use with artificial light (normal electric bulbs)?�

 

If you desire C41, the Fuji NPZ 800, pushes well to 1600. This is a four layer emulsion daylight film that can be corrected in printing or scanning, under tungsten or fluorescent. It behaves best at 500 with N development, or 1250 with a one stop push. I have to use it extensively for this work. Forget the filter and light loss associated with it. Examples, the interiors shots only, can be seen under my motion picture stills folder. �The Keeper� at www.ericmilner.com

[staticlag]

Oops, I made a mistake and you might get confused by this:

 

"The rate at 1600 suggestion sounds like it could work if you need 800 iso"

 

It should be "The push 1 stop in processing suggestion...."

[roger krueger]

I've found completely unfiltered tungsten to be hard to correct in printing or Photoshop--the blue channel shadows just ain't there. Using an 80A looks great, but loses too much speed. For me, the best compromise is the (now obsolete and hard to find) 80C filter, which loses you only 1 stop, and gets you about halfway corrected to neutral, which is MUCH easier to correct the rest of the way in printing.

 

Film choice? Pushed NPZ.

 

That is, unless you have access to a means of buying and processing short lengths of movie stock (which is almost, but not quite, C-41. It'll develop O.K. if not perfect at home in 1-shot C-41, but the backing will make an absolute mess in a machine) Then you have access to Kodak's Vision 800T, an 800-speed tungsten balanced film. Why they've never thought to produce a C-41 version of this has always puzzled/infuriated me immensely.

[scott_eaton]

Get the tungsten filter.

[James G. Dainis]

Scott,

 

<B></B><BR>      How easy (or difficult) do you find it to correct for tungsten in your lab? How do the results look?

[bernhard]

if Scott doesn't read your post: I recall from some of his postings that he hates to correct daylight balanced film shot under tungsten without filtration or exposure adjustment, because one of the layers (I think the blue sensitive) is so underexposed/thin that you have no density/information in this channel to work with and end up with weird color cross over. So the least would be to give more exposure to gain some density in this layer to give the lab something to work with. His preferred way however is to 'slap on a filter' that gets the color balance closer (or all the way) where it should be.

 

Sorry for 'parrotting' Scott, just wanted to be helpful.

[EricM]

Unless you are forced to use slide, you do not need the archaic practice of filter use. NPZ, slightly over exposed, is a god send for this lighting.

[scott_eaton]

Eric's advice is incorrect because it's obvious he's never worked in a professional lab and had to manually correct thousand of rolls of tungsten shot print film.

 

Weddings are my main example, and how I learned in the trenches how to deal with this problem. My clients were $1,000-10,000 per event shooters that were meticulous about the quality of their prints regardless of lighting or their technique. They woulnd't pay for orange prints shot under tungsten light, green prints shot under florescent, or cyan prints shot 20 feet under the water.

 

One thing I learned real quick about print film was that over-exposure was a godsend in terms of being able to make massive filter corrections for available light. The more print film is exposed, the more you can dial in filter changes without getting the dreaded blue crossover in the shadows. I told all my clients that I would guarantee neutral prints shot under any lighting with any professional print film they could throw at me *IF* they *over-exposed* their film by a full stop and gave me some density to work with. Again, another reason I doubled our lab's business in a year.

 

The problem is that most mini-labs where you take your film don't have $100,000 video analyzers and hyper picky people like me running the print integrator. Some labs are smart enough to have a tungsten channel set-up, and some Frontier operators are smart enough to make the correction as well. Most won't. Personally, if I were doing a lot of tungsten shooting and having an amatuer lab print them, I'd get an 80A/B/C (decreasing levels of correction) and take at least some of the 'sting' out of the severe color shift so the lab operator has to think less. This puts more control back into the hands of the photographer and less reliance on the 17yr old running the mini-lab fixing your problems by pushing buttons his/her boss told them. Yes, most print films if given sufficient exposure can handle tungsten lighting and be corrected for it at the printing stage to yield good prints. The real truth is you have no guarantee the lab will do this, and it's obvious Markus is dealing with one of those labs.

 

Tungsten print films *suck*. They solve the problem by decreasing the sensitivity of the corresponding layer that is sensitive to tungsten light and are basically acting like filtered film in the first place. You'll have better luck using Press/Superia 800 or NPZ at rated speed and getting a 80A/B/C filter. Either way you are going to lose a stop or so of light, so at least choose the method that puts control into the photographers hands.

[EricM]

My advice is correct becasue I shoot for a living, rely on a pro labs, and please clients. Scott does not.

[EricM]

I just re-read your response Scott. First you say that I�m incorrect, then two thirds the way through your response, you agree with,

 

��Yes, most print films if given sufficient exposure can handle tungsten lighting and be corrected for it at the printing stage to yield good prints.�

 

I�m referring to one emulsion here, NPZ, not �thousands� of print films from weddings, hardly any of which I doubt were NPZ.

[scott_eaton]

<I>My advice is correct becasue I shoot for a living, rely on a pro labs, and please clients. Scott does not.</i><P>Your advice is <b>irrelevant </b>because the original poster is likely not using a pro lab or NPZ. Having run Q/C at one of the best pro labs in the midwest for 6 years I can honestly say that one of the reasons I moved on was because I was sick of so called professional photographers who relied on people like <b>me </b>to fix your laziness for you because you thought printing a color negative on photographic paper was a magical process. <P>The first rule to correct problems with color casts in labs prints, or erratic lab printing in general, is to take the stupid frikken monkey at the lab making decisions out of the loop, and a $25 dollar filter does this nicely AND efficiently. It also negates your need to use a dedicated pro lab, which is still not always a guarantee nor practical. I've had to correct this problem for a few hundred clients at a time - you haven't. <P>Before you say anything else I suggest you spend some time behind the scenes at your "pro lab" and see what a pain in the ass it is to make corrections like this. Much easier to filter the color cast out in the first place before it hits the film so the printer or digital integrator doesn't have to work so hard which produces the errors resulting in the bad prints.<P>For your additional information, I was the *FIRST* certified lab in the midwest in the early 90's to have written dedicated custom channels for Fuji NHG and Reala on the high end Kodak gear for my professional clients, and used to hand analyze about 300-400 frames of NHG a week. I was even arrogant enough to program one of my custom NHG channels on a PVAC overwriting their nasty VPH matrix inside Kodak's rochester plant and then lock the disk (for all I know it's still there). I know NHG/NPZ better than you ever well, have published work shot with 120 NPZ under *TUNGSTEN LIGHT*, and can say with confidence NPZ has no special ability to be color corrected under tungsten light than any other. NPZ is the superior film, but you can take up the crusade because I'm tired of fighting with Superia users who won't buy the more expensive emulsion anyways.

[hans_beckert]

Either use an 80A filter, or get the tungsten film.

[EricM]

If I remember correctly, one of the questions posted was �is there a film available for these light conditions?� Hmm�yep. NPZ. Choosing a fast film that can be corrected really well is not lazy, it�s common sense over using a filter in a situation were speed is needed in the first place. It has nothing to do with �fixing� anything, it has to do with using the attributes that this film was designed for. Get it? It was designed and marketed for this situation. It works beautifully.

 

You talk like you�re a god Scott. You don�t have to give me any info in regards to your certification, I�ve read your past threads with condescending attitude, you�re a tech nerd filled with info and profiles. You know your stuff, great, but big deal. I shoot the right stuff for the right situation. I�ve had friends and relatives follow my tungsten suggestions for NPZ, then processed at the local drug store chain. Yep, any monkey with a frontier can do this today, you�re nothing special I�m afraid.

[jerry_johanson1]

scott eaton is actually correct. i own a few labs under a chain i started decades ago. using a filter is more consistent than relying on the lab, even professional such as mine, to color correct the images.

[igsman]

Markus, I assume you want a high-speed film so you would avoid using flash. If that's your style, I understand. But if you want to use flash as fill, which might really help, under tungsten light, and you want consistent color balance, you could get one of those tungsten gels and cover your flash head with it. This way, when your photos are corrected with either a filter or at the printing stage, you won't get a blue cast from flash-illuminated parts of the image.

 

Here is an example of mixed, UNCORRECTED lighting (Portra 400UC):

 

http://www.photo.net/photo/1954795

[shutterbug1]

Umm, no offense to anyone here, but you guys read like complete jackasses. Bickering back and forth, getting your egos in a collective knot about who knows more. If anybody was looking at these boards, checking out a photographer to use, they'd go looking elsewhere. Eric, you've got a hot head and its easy to get your goat.

[EricM]

Thanks for chipping in Andrea, no offence taken. But seems odd that your label for me comes from my posts, posts without writing in caps lock, without shouting in bold, without going of topic�Anywayzzz, also this forum means repeat visits, which we�ve obviously flame thrown before. Maybe you should also get to know the contributors, and their relationships to one another, in threads before you take sides? I have a different opinion now of Mr. Eaton, after his hit and run troll in a recent Leica thread, �Back to Film?�. It was interesting to read the following posts and learn a little history from respectable photographers of Scott�s style and attitude. For interesting reads, type in �Scott Eaton Leica� into the google search within Photo.Net.

 

Jerry, that�s commendable. I hope the shooters in your city can rely on you for insight and education like our labs are relied on and offer. But we�re not talking about the best results possible, or consistency, under a chosen and controlled environment. Obviously, for best results and consistency under a controlled lighting situation, we wouldn�t even chose an 800 asa stock to begin with. It�s my understanding that speed, as in shutter speed, is an issue here, maybe the lab tech�s don�t understand this variable here. Granted, under tungsten, with all the time in the world to gel lights and mess with filters and tripods, and fluff the pillows anyway you want them, there are better stocks than NPZ, and I agree with you. Who wouldn�t? Furthermore, I�ve only recommended going unfiltered because of the need for speed. You wont find filters on any cameras on any shooters under ambient house lights at an NBA game or Opera, or anything else with low tungsten light. Which is what this thread is about, low light and speed� �Hmm, I�m going to push it a stop and half so I can use a filter?�

 

I�ll leave you to it, I�m getting sweaty in this flame retardant suit.