My Kodak Portra 400 issue

First of all, the title might suggest that there is a generic problem with Kodak Portra 400. That is why I added the “My” in the title as I don’t think the film itself has an issue, it just happened to me in this specific circumstance which I want to share so I and maybe you can benefit from it.

How it started

With my family I spent my holiday in Calabria, South Italy. Before leaving I bought a box Kodak Portra 400 35 mm films to use with my Canon EOS 30 camera. It was my first time ever using this film on 35 mm, only used the 120 roll film before. I stored the films in plastic film containers and transported it with my hand luggage during the flight. On my destination I have put the films in the refrigerator before and after using it.

My camera did set the film speed at 400 ISO automatically by the DX code on the film. Exposure metering was done using Center-weighted averaging metering on all shots. Most shots were taken in Aperture-Priority (Av) mode, some in Shutter-Priority (Tv) mode and rarely in Manual Mode. I used the camera exposure reading all the time and did not under, or overexpose it.

After my holiday I brought the rolls to @hetfotovakhuishaarlem to let it develop. Home I scanned all negatives with my Epson Perfection V500 Photo scanner waiting to be suprissed…

Depressed, muddy and grey negatives

This time I was not so happily suprissed. There was a base fog on almost all images and a lot of grain in the shadows, even on the images I made in clear bright sunlight with plenty of light, like the first image in this blog. The negatives looks underexposed. They have little or no detail in the shadow areas. They are so called “thin”. The highlight areas are rich, transparent and full of detail but they look depressed, muddy, grey instead of bright in the highlights.

What could be the reason of this?

Did I do a bad scan job?
Is the film expired?
Did I underexposed by mistake?
Did something go wrong during development?
Did I read exposure using the wrong ISO setting?
Did my polarizer filter has effect on this?
Is something wrong with my lens?

Bad scan job?

Scanned so many negatives with this scanner using 35 mm and roll films from different brands and film speeds, never noticed any issue before. Sure, this is not the most advanced scanner and I know it can do a bad job in scanning underexposed negatives.

Expired film?

I bought the Kodak Portra 400 135/36 5-pack just before my holiday, assume it is not expired, but don’t know for sure as did not check the expire date on the package before throwing it away ;-(

Underexposed film?

Could all the camera exposure readings be wrong? I checked home and compared the reading with three other Canon SLR’s (analog and digital) and they read equaly so expect the exposure reading to be fine then.

Incorrect ISO setting?

The camera did set ISO on 400 automatically. There is a lot of debate online how to exposure this film. It’s being overexposed one or two stops often. I just used the boxspeed which I think should be safe during daytime with enough light.

Polarizer filter?

Used 99% of the time a polarizer filteron the lens. That should not impact the exposure reading as reading is done via the lens and so the loss of light by it should be compensated by the exposure reading.

Lens?

Could it be lens related? Used different lenses and the issues seems not related to one specific lens.

Let do some tests

Let’s try to reproduce it home. I bought from the same supplier one Kodak Portra 400 35 mm film. Loaded my Canon EOS 30 and used the lens I used before most, the Tamron 28-75 F2.8 AF XR Di LD. My subject was a simple vegetable plant with a flower in the garden on a sunny morning in September. First I did a test in Tv-mode with shutter speed 1/125 sec and correct exposure readings starting with ISO 400 which was set by the camera:

Shutter speed	Aperture	ISO Exposure
1/125	6.7	400

Then I manually selected a lower ISO speed and keeping the shutter speed at 1/125 sec:

Shutter speed	Aperture	ISO Exposure
1/125	5.6	320
1/125	4.5	250
1/125	4.0	200

Then I did some shots with shutter speed 1/90 sec (Sun got a bit stronger) and film speed at ISO 400 in Av mode.

Shutter speed	Aperture	ISO Exposure
1/90	6.7	400	correct exposure reading
1/90	5.6	400	exposure +1 stop
1/90	4.5	400	exposure +2 stop
1/90	4.0	400	exposure +3 stop
1/90	3.5	400	exposure +4 stop
1/90	2.8	400	exposure +5 stop

What to expect.. My feeling tells me to expect better results when overexposing, so I’m quite interested in that. But also what happens by “normal” exposure, are the results the same or not.