35mm colour Film
After reading a few blogs and articles online on how easy and forgiving it is to shoot with Kodak’s Portra 400, I decided to pack a couple of 35mm rolls along with my Nikon FA camera, a couple of prime lenses and a basic light meter for our second visit to Dubrovnik.
We were there for a 4-day break and photography wasn’t the main purpose for the trip so I knew I would only be able to grab a few shots here and there as we walked through the narrow streets and visited well-known places of interest of this beautiful walled city and surrounding areas.
Still being fairly new to film photography (I usually shoot digital), I did some research before the trip on how to meter for this film stock, as I didn’t want to return home with nothing, or at least a few badly exposed images.
How to meter..
After reading a couple of blog posts by Johnny Patience on his metering technique when using Portra 400, I was keen to try this out for myself and put it in to practice. Whilst this is not a tutorial (there are many blogs and articles out there which are worth a read if you’re interested in film photography), I will go through the process I used to get the images shown in this post.
With my meter set at ISO200 (half box speed) for 1 stop of overexposure, I was ready to head out and start experimenting with some exposures.
In Dubrovnik
The weather for May this year was the worst on record for 40 years in Dubrovnik according to hotel and restaurant staff but this gave us opportunity to do a bit more exploring than planned due to the cooler temperatures – plus we were extremely lucky with the small amount of rain we had – rather than what was forecast only days before we travelled.
Having been here before, we knew where to head – in and around the walled city at least. But we also wanted to explore new locations and we remembered a short walk the travel rep had told us about last year. So, this is where we decided to try out first.
A short walk along the road following the coastline of the Adriatic and down a number of steps tucked away off the roadside, which we spotted by chance, lead us to a picturesque rocky outcrop. The views from which were stunning. A large water cave within the nearby cliff face and Dubrovnik walled city bathed in sunlight in the distance, the scene was set to start trying the film and metering out.
In order to travel light, I decided not to bring my tripod or any filters, which made for a nice change to shoot more freely than normal, and a chance to shoot handheld. As it was a bright day, slow shutter speeds and camera shake was never really going to be an issue, although I would have liked the chance to experiment with slower speeds to smooth out the water and the crashing waves around the rocks. One for next time I think.
Using my Sekonic light meter (set at ISO200), I metered the scene using incident lighting and added a further stop as I had read that Portra can handle overexposure very well. I was also cautious not to underexpose as I knew this would potentially give me muddy results.
With a number of shots in the bag, and some on my iPhone and Fujifilm X100S for good luck, we headed into the city to wander the streets with no particular plan in mind.
During the rest of our stay, the weather remained dry and cool, which gave us further opportunities to discover more of the city and the fort, which we didn’t get to visit on our previous trip.
Travelling with film on flights
One concern I’ve read about is how to store / travel on flights with film. The X-Ray machines used for checking cabin baggage don’t affect film up to a certain speed. I understand that there could be issues if using a faster film such as a 3200 speed though. Don’t put any film in your hold luggage as the X-Ray machines are much stronger and can damage the film.
So for the flights, I stored the rolls of film in their canisters and kept them in my cabin bag. After receiving the scans back from Exposure Film Lab, there appears to be no obvious affects to the images.
Processing & Scanning
I use Exposure Film Lab for all my processing and scanning, so I filled in the online order form and sent the rolls off to them in the post.
For the development, I asked the lab to process the Portra 400 normally, even though I had underexposed both rolls by 1 stop. I also selected Enhanced Scans for large sized TIFF files which will give me more information during post processing in Lightrooom should I need to.
Below are a selection of images: The only editing I have done is straighten the horizons and slight cropping to help improve the composition. Lightroom didn’t show any clipped highlights on the images, confirming that this film stock can handle overexposure very well.
