Five Film Stocks Comparison | Film Photography Education

Film Photography

Dec 11

Written By Sandra Coan

Sometimes I think that I missed my calling. I really should have been a scientist.

This thought usually comes to me late at night when I'm lying in bed mulling over things.

I run experiments in my head.

I come up with theories and imagine ways to test them.

And then when I finally do drift off to sleep, I dream about my obsessions.

For the last several years my obsession has been shooting film with strobes. I think about it all the time. I read about it. I Google it. I even dream about it. It's a little ridiculous.

A couple weeks ago I became curious about how different film stocks would look when shot with strobes.

I already know that I love the look of Portra 800 when shot with natural light and Fuji 400h is my go-to strobe film... but then I started wondering "how would Portra 800 look with strobe? Or Ektar!! Or.. or..." I'm sure you can see where this is going....

So I decided to run a little test.

Five film stocks all shot with the same light, same backdrop, and same subject.

Science!!

Here's a bit of what I got! (And yes, I know my doll is super creepy... sorry!)

Okay... this first set was shot with a Contax 645, a 7-foot OctoDome set at 45 degrees to my subject, a dark (Thunder Grey) backdrop and metered for the shadows.