As I said elsewhere, clean site and excellent photography!
Are the Kodachromes shot with 120/220 as well? Do you still shoot glamour with film, if so, with what?
I'm trying to find a good, clean 50-100 ISO color positive or negative film for portraits. I've shot some portraits with Provia with 6x6 (Mamiya C220), and the sharpness is ruthless to imperfections on skin, and skin tones are not optimal. I wouldn't mind the sharpness as I'd rather have too much information than a soft image - never was a fan of the stocking-over-the-lens -look. I'm aware Provia isn't meant for portraits, but I shoot landscapes with it and happened to have some in the freezer. Also considering some pushed negative film for grain.
Hi feppe
No, I never did get to use the 120 Kodachrome film - it came out after I had moved to Spain and by then, the problems with finding good local E6 facilities here for the Ektachrome 120 I used led me to get rid of my 'blads and concentrate totally on 35mm Kodachrome (64 ASA because the slower stuff produced more contrast than I could handle). I have heard from one guy in Australia who had identical subjects that the 120 Kodachrome was very unreliable - excellent when it went well but a nightmare when it didn't. There must have been real problems for Kodak to withdraw it after spending so much time and effort to bring it to market.
Do I still use film to shoot girls? I have a freezer full of it, including some Kodachrome that is now unprocessable but might become historically valuable for my grandchilden, but sadly, the girls have flown the coop. The clients drifted away from the genre and my stock supplies went with them. I did try floating an independent stock shoot but the cost of model fees etc. meant that the economics didn't work out; I did get my money back but only after two years - I'd have earned more, at no risk, on interest in those days.
I've used some old E100S 35mm on girls since then, non-professionally, and I did like the colours and it made good conversions to b/w too. I still have some in the freezer and also an almost unused Nikon F3 (not in the freezer ;-)) and if the opportunity arises again I'll use the two once more. However, the film porcessing costs are fairly high out here - around €8 per film - and without a client to foot the bill, I'd rather shoot digi! unless there is a very good reason.
If you want to shoot people on color transparency, I'd go for Ektachrome myself, probably based on the comfort value of past experience if nothing more. The one interesting advantage of transparencies for me is that they are instantly readable on a lightbox; I never did get to grips with colour negative/people on a lightbox - all that base dye made it virtually impossible to judge anything very well, expressions included!
Thanks again for your kind words.
Rob C