A lot of questions come to me about various film types. The truth is that if you read my answers to questions, you already know that I recommend having as few types of film as you can. We generally use Kodak Portra 160NC for all studio work that involves people. The Portra 160VC is used for mostly commercial work or anything that needs a little more contrast and color saturation. My choice for outdoor portraits is Kodak Portra 400VC because at the end of the day when I work outdoors, the lighting is very soft and fairly low in contrast. The 400VC increases the contrast and color a bit.

The more you know about each one that you use the more consistent your results will be. Below, you can click to visit a special area dedicated to a small number of films by Kodak and Fuji. It provides general info from the factories about each film and will hopefully be a good source of info for you when it comes to film selection. I have deliberately left out a lot of specialty films and high speed films. The effort is to focus on films that are good for 99 percent of the work you will do as a working professional. I felt that we didn't need to confuse the reader by including every film type made.

Visit the film pages

   
Back to Top

Back to Equipment We Use - Main Page

For more on equipment visit the info library