From: bjs@uts.amdahl.com (Barry Sherman)
Newsgroups: rec.photo
Subject: film for 35mm portraiture?
Date: 9 Oct 92 19:21:54 GMT
Reply-To: bjs@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com (Barry Sherman)
Followup-To: rec.photo
Organization: Amdahl Corporation, Sunnyvale CA

The story is that several weeks ago some friends of my SO's daughter got 
married.  They didn't have the money for a photographer and asked if
my SO and I would be the photographers.  Well, mainly me, but we both
participated.  

The bottom line was that everyone agreed that my/our results were significantly
better than my SO's daughter had gotten from a $600 hack about a year ago,
despite the fact that it's been long enough since I've used anything but my 
view camera that I'm getting rusty on how to operate my 35mm wunderkamera.

I used two films.  I got a couple of rolls of Agfa Portrait for the posed 
pictures and Kodak Gold Plus 100 for candids.  The posed pictures were done
in the late evening with my Canon 430EZ off-camera a couple of feet away
and raised slightly with a Lumiquest Pocket bounce attached.  The posed
pictures look quite nice, as to most of the candids.  I even paid out a bunch
of money to have 8x10's and 5x7's made for my own album in the event that
I want to do this again, for money.  (I'm not feeling all that secure in
my current profession vis-a-vis the economy, etc. at the moment.)

The only fly in the ointment was that I was not at all happy with the posed
pictures for which I used Agfa Portrait.  I very much like the contrast
and skin tones of the film, but, even in an 8x10, grain was noticible and
gave them a harsh, less than perfectly sharp look. In most respects I prefered
the pictures taken with the new Kodak Gold Plus 100, despite its being a 
little more contrasty than I'd prefer.

From this I deduced that the Agfa film is probably really intended for medium
and large format portraiture, not 35mm.  So my question is aimed at those
of you who do serious portraiture and/or weddings and use 35mm (Alix North?
Mark Goldberg?):  what film do you like for pleasing contrast, skin tones and 
grain?

BTW - I was amused.  For the candids I let my SO use my 430EZ with the 
Lumiquest bouncer while I made do with her non-dedicated Vivitar 3500
with the thyristor exposure controll and a white card rubber-banded on
for bounce.  I think that, if anything, I prefer the exposures I got with
her cheapy Vivitar to those she got with my dedicated Canon!

Thanks for any advice,

Barry



-- 


|----------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Barry Sherman, Amdahl Corp.       | "Any fool can face a crisis - it's     | 
| bjs@ruts.ccc.amdahl.com           |  this day-to-day living that wears you |
|                                   |  out." - Anton Chekhov                 |
|----------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Amdahl, being a corporation, is a legal fiction.  Therefore it is incapable|
| of holding, let alone expressing, opinions.  Unfortunately, this has been  |
| said of me as well.                                                        |
|----------------------------------------------------------------------------|
Newsgroups: rec.photo