I am disappointed by the results when using 35mm colour film stock for portraiture. The conventional wisdom around the Interweb is that Kodak Portra 35mm film delivers spectacular skin tones with exceptional colour saturation over a wide range of lighting conditions. However, when photographing darker skin tones, my experience with Kodak Porta 160 and Kodak Portra 400 falls short of my expectations. From what I read, the later update that improved the rendering of dark skin tones from Kodak's colour films wasn't necessarily a consideration for properly photographing darker skin tones but rather the by-product of solving an advertising problem - the proper colour rendering of dark wood and milk chocolate.
While looking at and adjusting the tone curve of scans from the roll of Kosmo Foto Agent Shadow that I exposed in September on the streets of Sandusky, I realised that for 35mm film portraiture. I prefer the results from black-and-white films. I've captured Bhavna's portrait on Ilford HP5 Plus 400, Eastman Kodak Double-X 5222 400 and Kosmo Foto Agent Shadow. The results have been to my liking due to the forgiving exposure latitude of these 35mm film stocks.
