Review: Pushing Kodak Portra 400 to 800 with examples (Medium Format)
Photography is about experimentation, but experimenting with film photograph can get expensive. When it comes to shooting digital, you can have as many shots as you want for close to free. Film, on the other hand, is a limited (but not limiting) format. A 35mm roll of film has between 12 and 36 frames. A 120mm roll has between 10 and 12 frames. Shooting film requires you to be patient and strategic in a way that digital doesn’t.
But this isn’t an essay on film versus digital. This is a review of my first time experimenting with pushing Kodak Portra 400 by one stop on a Yashica D TLR camera.
What does pushing film mean?
I always had a hard time understanding this terminology, even though it’s such an easy concept. It requires some basic math and an understanding of how exposure works. I’ll cover the concept as quickly as I can.
The number on a box or roll of film is known as the ISO or box-speed of the film. The ISO is a universally recognized number that tells photographers how sensitive to light a roll of film is. Film comes in a variety of “speeds” including 100, 200, 400, 800, or even some higher numbers like 1600 and 3200, which are more elusive. Some rolls, like Kodak Portra, come in 160 ISO varieties. You may have noticed that the numbers double (i.e. from 100 to 200, or 400 to 800). In a nutshell, this means that the next step of ISO represents film that is twice as sensitive to light, or a full stop more sensitive. For example, Kodak Portra 800 is a full stop more sensitive than Kodak Portra 400.
Pushing a roll of film means shooting it at a higher ISO than the box-speed and then processing it at that higher speed. Now, why would anyone do this? There are several reasons, but the most basic are:
Get more contrast out of your film
Shoot handheld in darker locations
Experiment with film
You can push the film one stop, two stops, three stops… the choice is yours. When you push film, you are telling the meter or camera that your film is more sensitive to light than it really is. The result is a certain effect similar to adding more contrast to the photo but is overall an underexposure of the film.
Example of pushing film
You can scroll down to see some sample shots, but here is a sample thought process when deciding to push a roll of film.
First, remember that you cannot just push one frame. If you push film, you are pushing the whole roll since the processing affects the entire roll. Simple, but some people starting out might forget.
Let’s say I have a roll of Kodak Portra 400, but the environment that I am in is too dark. The camera that I’m using has a maximum aperture of f/3.5 and the light meter tells me that I need to shoot at 1/30. If I shoot handheld, the shot is almost guaranteed to be blurry. And since I don’t have a tripod, I need to choose whether or not I want to push the film. I can tell the light meter that the film is actually ISO 800 instead of 400. This will add a full stop of light and the meter will spit out some more preferential numbers for shooting handheld in low light.
I will need to shoot the rest of the roll as if it is ISO 800 instead of ISO 400 and, when processing, I will tell my lab that I need to push it one stop, from 400 to 800.
That’s the long and short of it. The result will be a more contrasted look and sharper than if I had shot at ISO 400.
Samples of pushed Kodak Portra 400
I shot this roll on a trip to Washington DC last weekend. I knew that I would be in mixed lighting situations (on an Amtrak train and other indoor locations) and I wanted to make sure that I could shoot handheld the entire time. I metered for ISO 800 on a Yashica D TLR.
You can buy five rolls of 120mm Kodak Portra 400 here for only $45.
