Street photography with film: first color roll with Kodak Portra 400

Here we go, as promised, with the first official color film roll. In reality, this is actually my very first film roll in street photography. I used a Kodak Portra 400 ISO, which was quite expensive, especially for the compact analog camera I used, a simple Yashica Minitec. As expected, the colors, although somewhat faded, are fantastic; the hues are soft and subtly pastel, but in such way similar to reality. The fine grain is definitely awesome. What can I say? The final result is magnificent, even better than I anticipated. As I said before film photography has a “different magic” compared to digital.

Below a selection of pictures taken with this first color roll. I didn’t use any post-production to show the final result after the development and scanning process.

But at the end of the day, what can I say? Should I prefer film or digital? There is no way, film has a “charm” (especially for street photography) that digital currently can’t replicate, as simple as that. In terms of cost-effectiveness, practicality, and simplicity, digital wins on all fronts: so it’s still my favorite one in the sense that is a practical choice. It reminds me of the comparison between vinyl and digital music. Uncompressed digital music offers a range of information and quality that vinyl can never achieve.

Vinyl, on the other hand, is expensive, requires some equipment, has limited tracks, and doesn’t allow us to skip from one to another. It demands a fluid and sequential listening experience, respecting the album’s structure, something almost lost in digital music, where we jump from one track to another, from one artist to the next. Yet the ritual of vinyl, the beauty of physical LPs, and especially the warm, enveloping sound with those background noises make the experience, at least for me, much more emotional and complete, it goes beyond mere sound. But in the everyday common life I listen 99% of times digital music. Same for digital photography vs film.

That’s all folks

 Stay well, have always light in your life

Best, F.S

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Street photography with film: first bw roll

I’m Francesco, a street photographer