dx codes on film canister

Thom’s Favorite Films

Here in the digital world, many films I used to use have died off off. What you see in the photo, above, is my Igloo container of “fresh” film, which gets restocked periodically. Fortunately, my favorite film remains available: Fujifilm Provia 100F. Ditto for Kodak Ektachrome 100, which is my second favorite.

Why Provia and not Velvia? That’s a tricky question, and trickier now that Fujifilm has messed with the Velvia formula a couple of times. Originally, though, it was two things that bothered me about Velvia:

  1. the quick drop to black in the shadows clipped dynamic range
  2. exaggerated colors.

Now some like that pure black and color twist that Velvia gives. It certainly makes for very contrasty originals. If you’re scanning or printing your work, though, that extra oomph starts to become a problem. That’s why at Backpacker magazine in the 1990’s we settled on Provia 100F: it had less contrast build-up, no goosed colors we might need to tame, and it had very close to the grain structure of Velvia. Plus, there was ISO 100 instead of ISO 64.

The Kodachromes are notorious for their color shifts, but they died off due to very environmentally unfriendly processing, so you don’t have to worry about them any more. The most recent Ektachrome is very close to Provia F; better still, it doesn’t have the magenta sky shift that I find sometimes with ProviaF.

Looking at the currently available slide films B&H still carries, I’d stick to this short list for most work (and in this order):

  • Provia 100F
  • Ektachrome E100
  • Velvia 50

In color negative films, I like:

  • Ektar 100
  • Portra 400

In B&W, Tri-X Pan is still a great choice, and I’ve always liked most of the Ilford choices.

If you’re a film fan and develop a favorite, I suggest you buy as much as you can afford and then store it in your refrigerator, as I do. Good film lasts for years when temperature controlled, and it seems like every year we’re seeing the passing or changing of some of our favorite film stocks. While film has had a bit of a resurrection, much like record LPs did, the days of a wide array of choices is certainly gone.