I’ve been in a committed ménage à trois with Ilford HP5 and Kodak Portra 400 for the last few years. There have been dalliances with others but these were one or two roll stands. I’m a pretty lazy when it comes to film. Most of the time I shoot Portra and take advantage of its wide exposure latitude, (it covers for slapdash metering in cameras that have no meter). It also converts to black and white nicely, has an attractive grain structure and all in all, does everything I need it to do, hence the lazy.
Last summer Kodak Alaris announced that a film that had been widely available in the ‘rest of the world’ for ages would now be available in the UK. This means that while Pro Image 100 isn’t going to be a new film for a lot of you, I shot my first roll back in October. (I traded something for it, probably a roll of Portra).
I figured that I should try and establish a baseline for its performance and so ditched my usual testing technique of just bashing away and seeing what happened. In this case I dropped it into my Canon EOS 3 which is one of my few film cameras with a solid metering system. (I should therefore get ‘properly’ metered shots without sacrificing spontaneity).
The colour is great, saturated but not overly so with glamorous and filmic skin tones. It has a pleasing balance of grain and clarity and handles contrasty light and shadows, it scans nicely too.
I immediately bought a 5 pack and loaded the Leica, this time to use it like I’d use it. This tested the love affair. The nights were drawing in, and I was hiding indoors to escape the cold. The ISO 100 film languished partly exposed in the Leica, waiting for a combination of subject and light, during which time my son threw my 50mm across my studio, and I bought a 35mm f/2 which I haven’t focus adjusted. Lazy.
Being so used to shooting Portra, I’ve grown used to the associated expense. As a result I’ve found Pro Image 100 to be refreshingly cheap in comparison.
The results are glorious, with greater pathos and tone than I’d normally expect at this price point. I want very much to get cracking on some summer reportage and to see how much latitude I can take. Now that the light is coming back to the UK the ménage à trois has, for the moment, given way to polyamory.
Nice captures. Composition, interest, color : great !
I like this film. I shoot mostly with M3.
Thanks Eric 🙂
Thanks for sharing your experiences with this “new” film. Like most readers, I think the stunning image of “Little Miss Yellow Boots” will be enough to convince anyone to try this out. Cheers.
Cheers Martin 🙂
Really nice colorful pictures.
Regards Bernhard
I have one Pro 100 lying around for months, never quite got to use it, but i think you convinced me to load it into one of my Prakticas and see what come out ot it!! Thanks for the article!
I really like the Storytime image. But what makes it stand out? The light/time-of-day or the old-fashioned lens design that gives that soft, warm look?
I do too, I love the way the window light picks out the boys face reflected off the book, the confluence of angles, and the vague timelessness of the colour – it works, (it’s one of the few I nailed on roll number 2) –
Pro Image generally has a soft, warm look. It’s not that far from Portra’s look!
Thanks for the nice review? But what is ‘pathos’ in regard to film?
I’ve always considered film to have a connected and emotional look and feel, as opposed to the hyper-reality of digital photography. Colour film captures colour in way that is reminiscent, intertextual and that references other photographs, it has a ‘feel’ or ‘feeling’ – Perhaps I’ve used the term incorrectly here, but that’s what I was trying to convey –
Great – thanks again!
Great review, as someone who’s also been committed to certain rolls (hp5 and superia for me) this is something I’m definitely looking forward to try.
Nice! I’ll have to give it a go sometime. I’ve just bought a 100′ reel of Vision3 500T, So I need to burn through some of that before I get more color film.
Beautiful and engaging compositions – well done! Clearly you got on well with your new bit on the side:-)
Nice. Just as I was thinking Portra was my preferred colour film (once I’ve shot my current film stock) you show me this… hmmm guess I’ll have to try it out myself.
Need this film in North America now!
Pro Image now at the FPP on- store in the US.
It´s a lovely film, here in south america is the cheapest film you can get, and i have to reccommend to you, it pushes real nice even at 1600!
I’m going to have to try that 🙂 – Thanks –