Pushing Portra 400 to 12800

[@apolotary]

Portra 12800 looks like those instagram filters people put on when the app just came out in 2010

[@gusatvoschiavon]

The 6400 roll looked the best to me, very silent hillesque, the last one would be nicer if you had a flash I think

[@atticdarkroom]

It never occurred to me to use a flash. That probably would've made things a lot easier. I might have to try that sometime.

[@adamszuszkiewicz1709]

Definitely useable with the right circumstances

[@sartori2226]

The 6400 photos are awesome, i live how underexposed everyting gets

[@5muli]

Wouldn’t using a flash either overexpose the shot (and making the point of pushing redundant) OR have the exact same results if metered correctly for the highlights provided by the flash?

[@gusatvoschiavon]

@@5muli its like some of the shots only have the sky exposed so if you got a flash you could get a better exposure overall, it would be just like using an fade ND filter

[@DerGeileEisbaer]

You, my dearest Sir, deliver the weird film content I have always been craving without even knowing it :D

[@Boswd]

The 4:50 Mark.. the street shit under the 6400 push. My favorite shot of all. Just gorgeous.

[@rumperdumper]

I spoke to an older photographer recently, and he talked about overexposing film by several stops (e.g. exposing 400 as 50 speed). Then he would use a different chemical makeup than usual to develop the film. The overexposure and underdevelopment greatly reduced noise and gave higher dynamic range. The altered chemistry corrected the white balance.

[@andrewbroekhuijsen6770]

There's always a sleeper image when you're out goofing around with film way outside of its intended use parameters. Today's is 4:50. That's a sick shot.

[@jordanlaine7412]

5:01 is pretty rad as well.

[@psajgal]

That shot at 4:50 looks soo good. I'd say 3200 still maybe useable, anything over that just seems scary.

[@shuddercount6278]

that may be thanks to the foggy atmosphere

[@Boswd]

Just said the same thing.... Absolutely love that photo

[@BillyMcBillface]

Me: I hope I get a 35mm roll of portra for Christmas, it looks cool! Attic darkroom: I’m gonna shoot 6 rolls of 120 portra 400 just to see what happens! I appreciate your mad scientist ideas

[@iNerdier]

Nice to see you sorted out the frame spacing problems you had.

[@atticdarkroom]

Frame spacing issues is like a herpes, gone for a while and then comes back at the worst time.

[@Brunovdvoorde]

@@atticdarkroom have the same issue, any advice on how to solve it?

[@atticdarkroom]

Send it in to get it serviced and hope it fixes the issue. Of the two backs I sent in one is working fine and the other is having issues again. It's just how it goes with 40+ year old gear.

[@iNerdier]

@@atticdarkroom I got into servicing cameras after mine was doing it and having the body looked at (expensively) did nothing. It’s usually lubricant in the tensioning mechanism that gets more viscous and it makes the frames just not quite far enough apart. Worst part about trying to fix it is when you’re done it looks exactly the same…

[@runinair12]

Towards the end the color shifts towards blue because the only thing in the film getting enough exposure to form a silver image and a respective dye image is the fast blue sensitive emulsion layer (grainy) that forms yellow dye. The rest even solarizes out, but is then held back by DIR couplers in the emulsion. The base probably looks so off, because the actual mask is becoming less mask and more filter layer, as masking dyes form even where imaging dyes have formed in the first place due to excessive overdevelopment.

[@jw48335]

And now for the real bank account pain: Portra 800.

[@q3dm17]

😂

[@q3dm17]

Let’s leave that to mr beast

[@thelemon5069]

Pull Porta 800 to iso 5

[@jw48335]

@@thelemon5069 and develop it in toilet bowl cleaner!

[@dylangergutierrez]

Last time I checked, Portra 800 was actually cheaper on B&H than 400, at least in 120. But it's been a couple months

[@titaniumtester6]

Am I nuts for liking the look of all of the pushes? It just looks so creepy and dream like that I think it looks great. Definetly not good if you're going for realism but as an effect even the 12800 looks awesome to me

[@joshuam7702]

This is such an awesome, underrated channel. Everytime I get a notification that there's a new attic darkroom video, I know it'll be an interesting watch. Also some of these shots are absolutely stunning, I love the vibes they give off, especially the one with the car and the stop lights!

[@LPSminecrafter]

"babe wake up, the Film man tortured more films again!"

[@juxtaposedmultiplicity7372]

"this one could have been okay if.... everything wasn't bad" this is my new favorite sentence

[@RichardStroffolino]

The blues at 1600 look wild, flat and super punchy. Good stuff man.

[@ewbaite]

Really want to see cine films pushed next both in c41 and ecn2. I read that ecn2 pushes great as it has lower contrast

[@SamPrescott99]

I’ve pushed 500T in C41 3 stops. Looks a bit funky but still useable!

[@katarina7520]

not exactly the same but i accidentally shot cinestill 400d at 1600, pushed 2 stops in development, and it was surprisingly good

[@tylerhuttosmith]

I think the overcast shots on the ones pushed to 3200 and above look nicer because they're overall lower in contrast scenes. Any images that were take on sunny days past 3200 looks bad because the higher contrast from pushing goes even further. My understanding of it at least. Awesome to experiment though and why I love your channel! Keep up the experimentation!

[@atticdarkroom]

Yeah, any contrast and everything in the shadows gets crushed. Unfortunately even/flat lighting is harder to find.

[@lucasammelung6567]

Honestly this channel is just pure analog joy, you should collab with grainydays you somehow got a similar vibe

[@davidbelgrave1971]

I'm subscribed to a lot of channels and this is the only one that I have notifications on for. You do amazing work!

[@timo3798]

once again you showed us what we can but should not do

[@Slime_Head]

Your channel is an absolute gem. I just finished binge watching all of your videos and I'm still craving more

[@noahmacomber5970]

I would like to say that you are one of my favorite chanels on KZbin... I have now binged all your videos

[@Leotheepic43]

I recently pushed Fuji Superia 400 to 6400 and I feel a lot of your pains, but the shots that aren't underexposed make it worth it imo.

[@LENSDADDY]

And I thought I was crazy pushing pro image 100 to 1600. Nice work!

[@DarkWafflesOfDoom]

Love this! You make my favorite film videos on youtube!

[@ronen_khazin]

With most pushed colour, past 1 stop it's not quite linear, and you gotta push it more than you under exposed. So like for a 2 stop underexposed, you should push 2.5-3 stops, and so on

[@atticdarkroom]

Makes sense. I guess I could've bracketed some shots. That would've helped to rule out a few moving variables. I'll keep that in mind for the next time. Thanks!

[@FinalManaTrigger]

yeah, it's like reciprocity failure, but on the other end

[@runinair12]

@@atticdarkroom One stop of push approximately gives only one third of a stop in increased film speed. You get an image that is underexposed by 2/3rds of a stop. After about 2 stops of push you only really develop the faster emulsion layers to completion. But after that, the increase in film speed is effetively zero. The max real sensitometrically evident increase in film speed that is achievable therefore is 2/3rds of a stop. So if you'd shoot Portra 400 at 640 and pushed it two stops you`d end up with a more or less balanced exposure but with increased contrast and less sharpness.

[@nantxcel9005]

Looks like you have found a way into silent hills.... Portra 400 at 6400

[@c1m1w]

Those 6400 shots are absolutely great imo It’s a look and it’s hitting so well

[@spieler440]

I like to push mine to 800. Always thought it looked better. One big thing I did notice though is no matter how far you pushed it, the blues looked really good

[@gumasealinc]

The 12800 looks like this batch of portra 400 NC that's 20 years expired I have. Really intense blue cast on everything

[@dfiglide]

Just stumbled on to your site, thank you for all your work in posting these videos.

[@sambrumley_productions]

What if you combined push processing and bleach bypass with Portra 400? Maybe you might get usable density at 3200 or even beyond that if you leave the silver in. Maybe you could try exposing for 12800 and developing at 6400, then using a fixer that does not include the bleach

[@PrebleStreetRecords]

Have you ever tried pre-flashing film? I’ve done it for paper negatives, basically I’d flash them with my enlarger for some amount of time, just before a test strip would turn light gray with normal development. It’d lower contrast and help even out the highlights when I later exposed it in my camera. I’ve never tried it with real film, but it might be a way of making really aggressive pushing work. I’m no chemist (I got a D in orgo), but I guess it reduces the silver grains “most of the way”, so that they’ll “flip” to exposed with less light in the camera?

[@atticdarkroom]

I have not. But it definitely sounds interesting and I'll have to try it sometime. Thanks for the suggestion!

[@KrispieKomrad]

6400 and up feels like something you would use to have fun with silhouettes and floating effects if you put someone in a dark suit

[@gaarakabuto1]

I use film for concerts if clients ask me to. I've used plenty of stocks, ironically enough the best one has to be lomo C800 when it comes to pushing. I have pushed it to 3200 and the results were pretty nice for a concert pic, lots of saturation, nicely rendered (and plentyful) grain and pretty warm. The details were blown out of the window, only things you could see were mussy faces with mics barely recognisable and whatever backlights you get. Cinestill has better detail but not a great colours and portra, well portra 800 isn't too far away from this shown in the video. I would suggest trying out the lomo, I know it's just vision film repacked but there's something into it.

[@Bonsees]

Whoah the shot at 4:50 is so good!

[@GeorgeK356]

This is how we learn, an experiment well worth doing.

[@maxrownes7914]

Just finished binging all your videos! I am absolutely hooked, I’m not sure if I’m just high on rodinal fumes or tri-chrome acid but keep whatever you’re doing up.

[@campfire2953]

honestly 1600 and 6400 looked pretty cool. they almost look like two completely different film stocks

[@SingleMaltZombie]

I am surprised how well it seems to hold up... Even though there is already quite a bit of color shifting before, I feel like only going above 3200 it starts to have really notable grain... I even like the slightly blown out colors of the 1600 and 3200 exposed ones

[@SamCyanide]

The foggy shots at 6400 looked neat. Were you exposing for each speed? I'm guessing yes otherwise you'd just have nothing

[@mishkamcivor409]

Pushing Portra 400 to 800 Portra 800: Am I a fucking joke to you

[@bobbleczar]

I have pulled Portra 400 two stops after accidentally exposing it at 100. It actually did a lot to bring up shadows, Now I kind of always pull -1 stop as a way to reduce grain and lift shadows.

[@jakewestbrook3214]

I will say I liked the dramatic look of the 6400 frames.

[@gunnarelgersma5215]

Not gonna Lie, the 4:50 shot is pretty sick!

[@miroslavmartinek522]

Very interesting. Could you please try to pull it to ISO 5 next time?

[@filmpjesman1]

What area do you live that there is so much junk to be found? That broken car, the mattress, the garbage? I like the vibe, but it also looks a little sad ... Or did you specifically look for the junk because the rolls were getting more junky?

[@atticdarkroom]

I wish I would've thought about making it junkier with each stop. I guess it kinda worked out that way but that was unintentional. Personally I find ephemeral crap more interesting. In that regard I guess I consider myself as a garbage photographer.

[@filmpjesman1]

@@atticdarkroom well that would be a thing for a next test video, pushing makes the subjects junkier and pulling makes them cleaner ;P I like the style, just as much as I like your videos!

[@DisturbedVette]

i would also like to see this sort of testing with cinestill 800t

[@DelayAndMentlegen]

dem shots @6400 iso are straight up fire

[@turismoavenue]

Man these look amazing!! so glad to see this i've pushed porta up to 3200 (my cam onlygoes this far) :) an they seeem just fine, but actually i really love fuji c200 pushed to 3200, the grain air still nice compared tto natura 1600 ( which grains are much bigger, and seem a bit congky). i always push film nowadays, its much easier to add a filter for daylight (if its to bright) rather than bringingg 2 cams with different asa's

[@jkerman5113]

Do you have any samples of C200 pushed to 3200? I often push to 400 but have never tried higher.

[@danieldevine]

I feel like i read / watched something on this topic before that said as you push you have to also account when metering for some weird quirk the films have - apparently on a data sheet? - that means 1 stop more isn't actually 1 stop you've gotta go like stop and a 1/8th or something and it gets worse the more you're pushing? could maybe explain why as it went on the shadows and mids were worse - obviously they'd be worse anyway but even more than expected.

[@Emariess]

I'd like to see what happens if you camera scan you negative film with more negative film, does it make a positive? are the colours any good?

[@gusatvoschiavon]

Yes

[@vicentemoller3540]

A noob question but, any tips on how to get color rolls with less contrast (by pushing or pulling idk). I find that no matter the film and film speed with color film I keep getting very contrasted shots in my opinion

[@atticdarkroom]

What film are you using? Portra is lower contrast compared to Ektar for example. Also how the film is scanned can dictate how much contrast is in the final shot.

[@prakticanova8228]

Pushing increases contrast by definition, since you lose one zone of density for each stop (in this example, 5 zones are lost out of a possible of 7, more or less. That's why there's not much image information left at the end). If you want a lower contrast, you need to pull your film. C41 films are not meant to be pushed/pulled because they're multilayered (10 layers or more in many cases) and each layer tend to live its own life when the c41 standard is not accurately followed. Pushing/pulling is a BW technique of contrast control, meant to optimize the image information being recorded on film in order to offer as much flexibility as possible at the printing stage.

[@uNpOpuLArOpInION69]

Thanks for making a tutorial on how to properly take pictures of bigfoot, now I’m prepared if i ever encounter it

[@DisturbedVette]

12800 looks like a cinematic horror movie

[@Tom5TomEntertainment]

Now we know to develop for 20 minutes for those expired t0n3z

[@atticdarkroom]

Expired film sellers HATE this one trick!

[@meebz0rp]

I’m surprised how cool looking the some of the underexposed shots are, in the right situation it could make for some really good shots

[@Supercon57]

In terms of the underexposure, did you take into account reciprocity failure as you pushed it to higher speeds?

[@jomy10-games]

But what if it stood for Pull? 🤔

[@SinaFarhat]

You maniac! Well at least now I know what not to do with porta 400! Keep up the good work!

[@VariTimo]

Portra 400 doesn't have the greatest underexposure latitude to begin with. It's not bad but I believe even Gold can handle underexposure better in relative terms. This test would probably have been better suited for Portra 800 since that is crazy light sensitive and can handle the worst underexposure without being pushed. Pushing C41 probably only makes sense up to two stops because the overdevelopment will do more harm than just pushing it lens and printing up/making the scan brighter.

[@mjfan653]

it seems like the exposure-development balance is off even more than it should be, as in the film was underexposed or underdeveloped. now it will certainly "collapse" at some point as the film cant be pushed past a certain point, but as the surviving shots show, there was actually potential to create images of some ""quality"" if exposed for iso6000 and developed for 6400 or exposed fro 11000 and developed for 12800 I think there might actually be some images there... highly shifted and freaky, but understandable recreations of the original scene

[@drdufault]

When pushing at each stop, for example from 400 to 800, did you do anything different in development, like longer process times? If so, what did you use as a guide to determine process times? ETA: Guess I should have finished the vid, as you do address this. However, what was the extra development from 400 to 800?

[@atticdarkroom]

Development times are in the description. I used Cinestill's notes to calculate up to 3200 and then winged it for 6400 and 12800.

[@drdufault]

@@atticdarkroom I need to read more, write less. 😊 Thanks!

[@dev9184]

hey, at every speed, you have some beautiful images!

[@dev9184]

the blown out highlights on the 12800 is interesting - it intensifies the sky gradients that are normally just lost. Would be interesting to exploit this idea shooting very bright things only

[@LaskyLabs]

Magic conch, will we ever get Ektachrome P1600 or P800 ever again?

[@ajkohkoh3921]

"this one could have been okay as well if everything wasn't bad" that's how I feel about my life

[@ZachACameraGuy]

6400 has a strong lomography metropolis vibe to my eyes... maybe you've discovered something

[@EbondsCarpon]

I am no sure if you know already know about Truth ND. I wonder if that will reduce some color shift? or just like you said the film back problem.

[@GregoryVeizades]

One of the issues yoh are running in to is Portra 400's limited underexposure latitude. Sure its pretty good. But 3 stops underexposed on Portra 400 and you've lost a lot of detail. This shows in the push as there is little to develop and it only gets worse from there. Portra 800 has better underexposure latitude and a 3 stop push os essentially no sweat. I haven't gone for the 4th stop yet.

[@frankmartinez2968]

I shoot mostly BW, but with these extremes wouldn't reciprocity departure come into play? Wouldn't you have to compensate by giving it more light?

[@danem2215]

"This could've been okay if everything wasn't bad" Story of my life

[@rastalukee]

hey! are you planning some experiments with vision500t filmstock? :)

[@bopmicrofunk]

that 4:50 shot tho 😍

[@wochenendedestodes9015]

Really a nice youtube channel. Did you ever thought to pull an adox cms 20 to its limits? Would be interesting.

[@arturors30]

What would happen with portra 800? 🧐🧐🧐

[@Al_Bx]

The 20 min dev time made me think : have you ever experimented stand dev for color negative ?

[@atticdarkroom]

It's on the list of things to try!

[@otherSmallCities]

I wonder if the 800 as baseline would fair better

[@drownedingold]

“This one could’ve been okay if everything wasn’t bad”

[@kennybroomfield8402]

Would be really cool to see you push and than pull the same film stock the same amount of stops. So here 400 up to 12,800 than do 400 down to 12 and see what you get. Or the 3200 that went 102,400 pull it down to 100 or even less.

[@NordicLab]

When you wanna push so high you need change concentration of the chemicals already to have more aggressive development for shorter time.

[@DixonLu]

1600 looks like Lomography Metropolis or bleach bypass.

[@retromograph3893]

Some of those "bad" shots look great and have a ton of vibe! .. i mean, if you're going for accuracy, just shoot digital, right?!

[@scottbrennan3262]

Portra 400 pushed one stop looks very similar to Portra 800 shot at box speed. Consequently I rarely need to buy Portra 800 anymore, or at least not that often. FYI.

[@lawrenceanderson2741]

Well you know what they say ''curiosity killed the cameraman"🙃

[@stephenfrizza]

There is a rule in photography, expose for shadows and develop for highlights because shadows develop in the first 30 seconds and the remainder of the time is adding density to highlights and lesser so to the mid tones. Increasing contrast and grain/dye cloud size. Pushing a film to try and get more details in shadows can't happen.

[@goldenfurniture123]

5:04 is so cool

[@w2.ill_]

Somehow I instantly noticed it’s in oregon @ 2:51 … Corvallis by any chance?

[@atticdarkroom]

PDX

[@caesar8955]

6400... kino af. Nice

[@FTropper]

I liked the first push. But I'm not a portra fan anyways.

[@jsdlr488]

Oh yeah, we're Pushin' P 😎

[@AB-rn8cy]

I was waiting for an epic trichrome at the end

[@user-le8ul4nr5t]

That's a good question though, can you push color film further if you also cross process it in b&w?

[@atticdarkroom]

That's a good idea. Hmm...

[@aguy4247]

Actually really like the shot at 4:50

[@churchyard]

you’re a real interesting fella guy

[@ursaproxima]

How do you scan and convert your negatives digitally? Any discussion about color casts is moot if you use Negative Lab Pro or anything else that does the color conversion automatically for you.

[@theren8311]

You do realize that it's humans who write the algorithms for Negative Lab, right, which is akin to just applying a preset? If you know what you're doing, Lab pro is no better than you creating your own preset and selling it. So to say someone applying their own thing is moot because to they didn't buy something is quite strange. The only argument is, is that Lab pro provides you and whoever else that cares, a base to assess from. It's not magic. But maybe I'm seeing that from my professional software development background.

[@psybard]

@@theren8311 Scanner softwares will usually try their best to give you an image with a "correct" white balance as a base. Most case you won't know what they did in order to do so, it's a black box (like most proprietary softwares). Proxima Centuri is correct, to judge color casts/shifts, you have to have a workflow where you manually invert and substract the anti-halation layer color... or know how your scanner work and what your're doing. While doable it's not easy and bias can be very quickly introduced in the tests.

[@ursaproxima]

@@theren8311 I never said anything about using presets. You can manually invert, set black point, white & color balance using the tools built in photoshop to give you much better control over the process. How are you to judge color casting accurately in this type of comparison if you let an automated software set all these parameters on who knows what basis? How are you to judge how it affects the density if the software adjusts brightness, exposure and contrast automatically without control over and feedback as to what settings are used at the conversion level? Just look at the examples in the 3200 iso comparison. All the photos have different black levels, white balance and color shifts in the shadow areas. These are all due to the software automatically trying to adjust for the differences in each frame. The presets in Negative Lab pro obviously automates WB, color and levels even on the same roll. If I were to compare two differently exposed rolls, I would use the same white balance and black point to see how it affects color and dynamic range. You can't do that if the software automatically adjusts these settings.

[@theren8311]

@@ursaproxima I actually completely misread your comment. I read initially that unless you used Negative Lab Pro all discussions are moot (you can see that by my comment). So I actually have been agreeing with you from the start. My bad. And I do agree with all the points you raised in your follow up.

[@ursaproxima]

@@theren8311 Oh, I was wondering if I misunderstood you as well. No worries of course!!

[@louislee0814]

so cool

[@koltinn]

3200-6400 asa was the sweet spot atleastto me and artsy? photos but the shot with the tree at 7:02 was cool. Then again I a bit of a sucker for grain and higher contrast.

[@Campake]

wow i love p ortra

[@The-KP]

Good photo tech series