Tales on Film

Another SLR from our collection is the Pentor Super TL, a pentor is basically a Praktica rebranded for the Netherlands. Prakticas were made by Pentacon in Germany, the super TL’s were made from 1968 till 1975. They are very heavy and robust, the TL is a slr with a m42 screw mount, so it can make use of all the Pentax lenses. Pentor or Praktica super TL cameras are SLR’s with a shutter ranging from 1s to 1/500s and B, has a iso setting from 5 till 1600.

The pentor super TL is a fine camera, expect for 2 little issues I have with this camera. The first being not so a big of a deal, the battery for the light meter in the Pentor is of the old mercury type. This means the new batteries are not very good because they don’t have a steady current, which means the light meter will not behave correctly. But because most of the cameras I use don’t even have a light meter, I mostly carry one anyway. The second problem is more inconvenient, the focus screen of the Pentor is not very good, which makes it very difficult to focus correctly. Unlike for example the focus screen of the Canons, there is no real way of telling if your subject is in focus or not.

Overall I like the camera a lot, because it is a very sturdy camera it can take all the abuse I put my cameras through when using them. It’s reliable, but sadly enough it’s also quite loud, so you’re not really stealthy when shooting with the Pentor super TL. It’s a good camera which I got for a very decent price.

I really wanted to try the new Kodak portra 400 film, but in Belgium I could not yet find it in the stores, because Kodak first wants to exhaust the Kodak portra 400NC stock. So I just called Kodak Benelux and asked where I could buy some. The rep of Kodak, that I got on the phone, was kind enough to send me a sample pakket, an unexpected but nice surprise. So a couple of days later DHL rang the doorbell and handed me a pakket with 2 rolls of 120 film and 1 roll of 135 film.

Because I already saw a lot of people review the film itself, I decided to find out how the 135 film behaved when pushed to its limits. So, I loaded the film in my Pentor Super TL and set out during the last day of carnival in Aalst to shoot at boxspeed of 400 asa and up to 3200 asa. Back home I developed the whole roll in Digibase C-41 and pushed it 3 stops in development, as if the film was rated at 3200 instead of 400. One thing I can tell you, I was very surprised by the results.

This was shot at asa 400 (correct exposure) and developed with 3 stops extra. As you can see it handles overexposure very well.

This was shot at 800 asa (underexposed 1 stop) and developed the same as above.

Shot at 1600 (underexposed 2 stops), same development as above

Shot at 3200 (underexposed 3 stops), same development as above

As you click on the images, on flickr you can look at them on a 2400 dpi scan, you’ll notice that not only is the grain very small. It is about the same as when you would develop a kodak portra 400NC at normal speed. The overexposure adds some more saturation and a bit more contrast, but I kind of like the look of it, so I will definitely shoot this film again at 3200

Not only does the portra 400 has a small grain even when pushed, it also has a high dynamic range. This picture is taken at sunset, which you can see on the building. The lights at the bottom of the photo were shining so bright, that it was hard looking at them directly. But even under those conditions you still see detail in the highlights and in the shadows.

Just a small disclaimer, I did do a bit of adjustment on these pictures, because my scanner did not handle the colors very well. Mainly because the Silverfast software that I’m using doesn’t has the appropriate profile to scan the new portra. I did not use any noise reduction tool or setting.