Pushing Kodak motion picture film for indoor portraits

Thanks to the Glasgow Photo Club, who earlier in June organised a shoot in the oldest house in Glasgow and the museum nearby, I had the chance to test the idea of using pushed Kodak motion picture film for indoor portraits.

The default film stock for indoor, low-light portraits would be Portra 800 but it is just too expensive to use these days. Given Porta 800 is based on an early version of Kodak's current motion picture film, the idea was to use 500T pushed two stops with an 85b colour filter to convert from daylight colour temperature and achieve the film speed needed for the small windows and limited lighting expected.

The locations didn't allow the use of a tripod which was a pity and a fair number of the frames suffered from movement blur - those will be used in some more abstract images at a later date.

Evie kindly sat for the indoor portraits. She is a specialist in the Victorian Era and her pre-Raphaelite style suited the locations. The images below have had some post-processing changes applied but the scans themselves needed minimal work.

The cinematic colours of the film suited both the location and the sitter and I was very impressed with the limited colour shifts and minor grain that the extra processing time caused.

So I think I've found my default setup for film indoors - and the film is fast enough to use continuous lights e.g., LEDs rather than using flash for future projects.

Thanks go to the Gulabi lab for the development and scanning services. Very happy to recommend them!