Already in June, July I’m looking forward to the fleeting weeks in autumn, when the summer rapidly transforms into winter. Golden sunlight through the whole day, colorful leaves and also grey, foggy landscapes – the autumn holds many virtues for us photographers. A couple of rolls later I decided I should give Portra 800 a run for its money in lower light. As an 800 speed film, it seemed only right… again loaded into the Konica Hexar with the 50mm f/1.2 mounted, I took a roll out on a night out. Unfortunately, I did get a little merry, so can’t remember exactly the exposure index at which I shot these, though they were at least 1 if not 2 stops underexposed, and more significantly I didn’t push process the film.

Oh, well! I can remember quite vividly the difficulties of this shot. For a nice separation, I opened up the lens to f/2. I wanted to set the focus on the Citroen’s left headlamp. However, daylight had already faded and I couldn’t recognize if I had achieved focus. So I had no choice but to stop the lens down to f/8 and set the focus by scale. Metering also proved problematic as the blinding street light and the concrete wall gave me very different readings. Therefore, I exposed by feel and hoped for the best. Lomography 800 did a great job here!The problem for me is that it’s become impossible to overlook the down sides. I could deal with the lousy roll tapes. I could adapt to special handling to prevent the edge fogging issue (that I still believe is a manufacturing tolerance issue). But I can’t deal with rolling the dice on whether the film performs properly across the entire length of the roll. After scanning these films the first time, I noticed that there were almost no differences in the images. Looking at the images side-by-side above, there are some minor differences. The grain really comes out when metering at box speed (aka the manufacturer’s recommendation, in this case, 800) and when shooting in low light – but is still manageable and not overbearing. Many photographers like to meter Lomo 800 1-2 stops overexposed at 640 or 400 as well, which reduces grain in images (just like Portra 800). All photos were shot in available light and from memory overexposed in camera perhaps 1-2 stops. This means I shot Lomo 800 film at ISO 400 or ISO 200. Why? The maximum shutter speed on the GF670 is 1/500 and I didn’t want to shoot all the photos at say f11. I know you can over expose colour film quite easily so I was not afraid to do so. When Cinestill 800T film hit the market a few years ago I used to shoot it at ISO 100-800 happily. I'm not big on overexposing color neg film. I'll usually shoot at 1/3 stop over the rated speed, unless recommended to shoot at box speed. Older film of course has to be overexposed more but that's because it's old.

I’m happy to see quirky colours or film quirks in general but some photos are just not inspiring. (I’m trying to stay polite). With all of that said I saw a few photos that gave me hope so I was keen to try some Lomo 800 film for myself. 120 Lomography 800 film That makes them way more difficult to scan, and prone to scratches overall. There may be a secret to drying these negatives flat, but I certainly haven’t found it yet. Kodak Portra 800 is quite possibly my favourite colour negative film. I say that as someone who’s just committed to shooting only P3200 and Ektachrome E100 for at least 6 months in a bid to learn these two returned-to-market films from Kodak properly. But when making that decision, the first concern I had was how I was going to cope without my quite-recently found love for this fast and very versatile colour emulsion.

Conclusions

Ilford may make Acros II only for Fujifilm, but in turn, Fuji produces Ilford’s chromogenic XP2 emulsion. Both of these manufacturers benefit from the specialization of the other, but Lomography doesn’t produce anything that Kodak couldn’t do themselves.

There are several industrial areas in Hannover I regularly return to. If you now say: “Wait a minute, I think I know this place from one of your previous posts!”, you are probably right.If you have a notepad ready for your off the cuff guesses, lets scroll down to begin… Film 1: Daytime gallery