Have You Been shooting With Ektachrome - Because You Can't Get Ahold Of Any Velvia?

[DREW WILEY]

The T. 812 is more like a sledgehammer approach - it will CONSPICUOUSLY warm the image, for better or worse, depending on what you actually want. It's specifically designed to completely null any blue in facial complexion shadows, or even in nature, and in that respect, does a good job of it. But you need to use this filter with caution. It's not a substitute for an 81A.

And I would only use an 81 series filter when actual color temp corrections are needed, like on a badly overcast day or for shade under deep blue open sunlight. A basic 1B skylight filter is traditionally a good thing to have for distance shots, particularly at high altitude; but I've found an even weaker barely yellow Hoya 0 "colorless" multicoated UV filter preferable for later Ektachromes, including the present product.

 

[armadsen]

I think like with so many things, you have to try things and figure out what you personally like. I like the results I get with an 812 filter. As I’ve said many times (including in this thread), I have zero interest in what is technically correct, only what produces results I find pleasing.

 

[adamlugi]

Thanks Guys - I will try it

 

[MultiFormat Shooter]

A basic 1B skylight filter is traditionally a good thing to have for distance shots, particularly at high altitude; but I've found an even weaker barely yellow Hoya 0 "colorless" multicoated UV filter preferable for later Ektachromes, including the present product.

What about a Skylight 1A filter, for the current Ektachrome? I know I should test it, myself, but is it a decent starting point?

 

[DREW WILEY]

Yeah, you can't go wrong with a 1A; but it does only a tiny bit more than a 0 (zero) "colorless". I've found the multi-coated Hoya 1B to be more versatile. I rarely used filters in relation to Ektachrome itself. A notable exception would be haze or UV reduction, along with its blueness, especially at high altitude.
Then there's the matter of deep blue overcast and wanting to warm up the image somewhat, which is a different kind of scenario potentially mandating an 81A or KR1.5 also in your kit.

 

[MultiFormat Shooter]

Yeah, you can't go wrong with a 1A; but it does only a tiny bit more than a 0 (zero) "colorless". I've found the multi-coated Hoya 1B to be more versatile. I rarely used filters in relation to Ektachrome itself. A notable exception would be haze or UV reduction, along with its blueness, especially at high altitude.
Then there's the matter of deep blue overcast and wanting to warm up the image somewhat, which is a different kind of scenario potentially mandating an 81A or KR1.5 also in your kit.

Thanks! I'm not trying make the image "super warm," just neutralize the blue in the shadows, and the blue tint from bright desert/mountain sunshine.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Depends on the intensity of the blue. I often had to keep my 4x5 kit rather minimalistic due to very long mtn and desert backpacking treks, so would take just a few filters along. But a 1B and 81A would cover most scenarios. (I still had to leave room for a few b&w contrast filters too.) Now I shoot Ektar color neg film instead of chrome; and it's more fussy about the blue, so I generally carry an 81C or KR3 as well, though don't actually use them that often. But they can really make a difference in deep blue early morning shadows under a clear high altitude sky.

You don't find those deep blue skies as much anymore unless after a clearing storm. But during the pandemic when trucking, container ships, and jetliner flights were reduced, it came back quite few places unexpectedly.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Some details I found on the B&H site: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/387082-REG/Cokin_CA039_A039_Warm_81Z_Resin.html

I don't understand how the Kelvin they listed works with other Kelvins other than by looking at the differences.

Cokin 039 Overview​

The 81 Series of filters control the bluish coloration that affects daylight film. They can also remove excessive blue from the effects of electronic flash. Good for general scenics when the photographer wishes to remove the bluish cast from open shade or just add warmth to the photograph, with an 81EF having the greatest effect.
Whereas the 81 Series of filters creates a feeling of warmth, the 82 Series creates a feeling of coolness.
81 SERIES CONVERSION FACTORS
81 decreases color temperature from 3300 - 3200 degrees Kelvin
81A decreases color temperature from 3400 - 3200 degrees Kelvin
81B decreases color temperature from 3500 - 3200 degrees Kelvin
81C decreases color temperature from 3600 - 3200 degrees Kelvin
81D decreases color temperature from 3700 - 3200 degrees Kelvin
81EF decreases color temperature from 3900 - 3200 degrees Kelvin
This filter measures 66 x 72mm and fits the Cokin A series holder.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Alan - 81A, for example, is just 200 deg lower K temp regardless of whatever scene temp you start with, and so forth. The daylight standard Kodak films are engineered for is 5500 K. So if you have a really excessive blue shadow or overcast situation of, say, 5900K, and use an 81A, it's going to help; but a 81C would be the more correct fit. But if you take those same filters and start of with a typical 5500 or 5200 situation, then the result is going to look distinctly artificially warmed, ala the Godfather Movie look.

The Kodak Scientific and general filter hand book gives graphs based on decamired filter values which show the color temp conversion involved in each case for their own Wratten series of filters.

Not many people go around with a color temperate meter outside of a studio; but with some experience shooting and viewing your slides atop a well balanced 5000K lightbox, one learns pretty fast which filters do the job that or not, if they choose to use filters with chrome film at all.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Alan - 81A, for example, is just 200 deg lower K temp regardless of whatever scene temp you start with, and so forth. The daylight standard Kodak films are engineered for is 5500 K. So if you have a really excessive blue shadow or overcast situation of, say, 5900K, and use an 81A, it's going to help; but a 81C would be the more correct fit. But if you take those same filters and start of with a typical 5500 or 5200 situation, then the result is going to look distinctly artificially warmed, ala the Godfather Movie look.

The Kodak Scientific and general filter hand book gives graphs based on decamired filter values which show the color temp conversion involved in each case for their own Wratten series of filters.

Not many people go around with a color temperate meter outside of a studio; but with some experience shooting and viewing your slides atop a well balanced 5000K lightbox, one learns pretty fast which filters do the job that or not, if they choose to use filters with chrome film at all.

Wratten Light Filters, Wiki reference info

Wratten number - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[DREW WILEY]

With my Minolta color temp meter, I just enter the color temp and balance I am trying to achieve, take the reading, and then punch another button, and the meter automatically assigns the CC and LB values relative to the task. CC refers to green versus magenta cc filter increments, LB to light balancing plus or minus using
81-series amber yellow warming filters versus 82 series blueish filters. All that is valuable when precisely calibrating film batches or artificially controllable lighting setups.

Out in the field, except for making standardized daylight master printing chromes or representative color negatives from a MacBeth chart under ideal conditions, all that fuss in a bit of overkill, and just a few filters will suffice for nearly all encountered conditions if a little post-tweaking is factored either in the colorhead settings or the computer program. But if you're too far off, then you risk curve crossover etc issues which are very difficult to post-correct either way. And it's a helluva lot easier just to screw on a reasonable filter to begin with.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

With my Minolta color temp meter, I just enter the color temp and balance I am trying to achieve, take the reading, and then punch another button, and the meter automatically assigns the CC and LB values relative to the task. CC refers to green versus magenta cc filter increments, LB to light balancing plus or minus using
81-series amber yellow warming filters versus 82 series blueish filters. All that is valuable when precisely calibrating film batches or artificially controllable lighting setups.

Out in the field, except for making standardized daylight master printing chromes or representative color negatives from a MacBeth chart under ideal conditions, all that fuss in a bit of overkill, and just a few filters will suffice for nearly all encountered conditions if a little post-tweaking is factored either in the colorhead settings or the computer program. But if you're too far off, then you risk curve crossover etc issues which are very difficult to post-correct either way. And it's a helluva lot easier just to screw on a reasonable filter to begin with.

Can you eliminate blues on Ektachrome digitally during the edit process using Lightroom or Photoshop?

 

[Taylor Nankervis]

Can you eliminate blues on Ektachrome digitally during the edit process using Lightroom or Photoshop?

Colour temp sliders.
Well, that's the Peter Lík way...

The proper way is to visualise how the film (E100) will respond to the prevailing light you are shooting in, and make the correction there and then, not in post.

 

[koraks]

The proper way

The proper way is whatever works for someone.

Can you eliminate blues on Ektachrome digitally during the edit process using Lightroom or Photoshop?

Yes, it's super flexible and also super easy to selectively adjust the color in part of the tonal scale, part of the image, etc.

 

[DREW WILEY]

There are all kinds of simple ways just to shift the overall color balance, even locally within an image. What's hard to do it un-mix concrete once it's already set up, i.e., trying to untangle and correct different individual dye curves once they're already in crossover stage. Color neg films suffer the most from that; with the higher contrast of chromes, things in the nether regions tend to simply sink into black or bleach out into white instead.

Yeah, I've heard the stories from some of the best. They'll spend a week slithering and dithering through a scanned image trying to clean up some kind of unwanted shift which would have involved just 30 seconds with the right kind of correction filter at the time of the shot. Ektachrome too OVERALL blue for you? - just leave a very mild warming filter on the lens. That's pretty darn simple.

But things can get obsessive. You can only fight any given type of film so far. It's better to shoot for what a particular film does best; and I think many of us have just instinctively learned how to do that through trial and error. But with the small selection of chrome films nowadays, yet high prices, you can't just jump around from one to another as casually as before.

 

[koraks]

They'll spend a week slithering and dithering through a scanned image trying to clean up some kind of unwanted shift which would have involved just 30 seconds with the right kind of correction filter at the time of the shot.

In all brutal honesty, it's kind of obvious that you've not done a lot of this 'slithering and dithering'. A week...pah. Ridiculous.

 

[DREW WILEY]

I'm not exaggerating at all. I know such people, who average a week an image, and they're industry consultants at it, not amateurs - the best of the best, technique wise. Certain people who went from dye transfer careers then into Ciba and eventually over to inkjet can have very high expectations about color repro, and are willing to futz around an awful lot to get there.

If one has a prize image, they might spend a week or more even on a darkroom Cina or C-print with some complex masking or whatever. I only need a mask once in awhile for chromogenic prints; but I do have one image which involved a dozen of them, and it was well worth all that effort. And the result was a lot more seamless than one would typically get with digital workflow.

People who fall in love and finally master a particular print medium, and then have the rug pulled out from under them when their favorite film or printing method gets discontinued, can go to great lengths trying to make one thing look like another, successfully or not. And week is nothing for someone who formerly took a month per image using a much more difficult process.

The opacity and gamut deficiencies of inkjet inks make life pretty difficult if one wants "a transparency (chrome) on the wall" as the saying goes. If you just want a picture, sure. But that's not the same thing.

 

[koraks]

Of course there are plenty of people who will spend a week digitally printing an image. There's likewise a multitude of people who would spend (have spent) the same amount of time, or even considerably more, in the physical darkroom. It says something about the person - not the technique.

The question was whether it's possible to remove a blue cast from shadows in digital post. It is. Not only that, it's quite easy. No amount of "I knew a guy" changes that simple fact.

 

[DREW WILEY]

You're not entirely getting it. The problem is not just a "cast" somewhere in the scale, but when you get curve crossover as well and create some kind of complicated hue "mud"; hence my analogy to already "set up" concrete. That's more a problem in color neg work than with chromes; but it certainly occurred with particular chrome films too, and drove dye transfer printers in particular crazy when they had to contend with it. They had their methods, which certainly worked better for the shadows than the highlights; with inkjet, it's just the opposite, and the shadows always seem to look off in some manner or another.

With Ciba we could just let the deepest values crash into an abyss of pure black and not worry about an unwanted violet inflection down there, or way up there, or whatever. With inkjet, it's really hard to tame the squirrelish casts of the inks themselves, so nobody tends to even notice those secondary factors. Those who do, go to great lengths to try to correct them, but never entirely do.

The motion picture industry has some quite sophisticated (and expensive) methods for dealing with such issues should they feel the need. Just depends on how many hoops one has to jump through to achieve the endpoint. A lot of that has to do with remastering old color films.

But when one is shooting for themselves, a number of things are much more easily achieved by exposing the film right in the first place. Any many times simple filters are the best answer. That way you've got a corrected chrome or color-neg suitable for either light box viewing, direct optical printing, or scanning with digital output, right from the start.

I can even via filtration correct the shadows separately from the balance of the image, no matter how complex the shadow patterns are, if necessary, right when the shot is taken. That's a little more to explain in this particular thread than basic warming filter etc, but it's certainly doable if one knows how. And I'm not talking about any kind of tinted "grad" filter, which works only on a broad area premise, and rather crudely at best.

 

[koraks]

I'm not the one "not entirely getting it", Drew.

 

[DREW WILEY]

The proof is either in the pudding, or it isn't. I'm right here in the world epicenter of Tech innovation with digital imaging pros everywhere around, and tons of their visual output. No, I'm not one of them; but I do know what kinds of work they admire as art or refined craft because they themselves can't seem to achieve it despite all their fancy bells n' whistles.

Many times I've had even tech CEO's walk up to me and express the wish that they had the time to still do it the old home cooking way. Modern tech methods might be great for Hollywood blockbuster action flicks and commercial workflow efficiency purposes, going clear back to the invention of scanners themselves; but I rarely see any QUALITATIVE gain to it, if at all. Even offset printing has taken a qualitative downhill slide from the old slow highly experienced hand-tuning days.

And people mistake e-geekery with all its latest and greatest gadgetry for actual photographic ability. The truth is, any skilled watercolorist 200 years ago could mix up purer hues in a matter of minutes than anything color photography in any fashion is capable of today.

So what kind of advice should I be giving : go out and re-purchase thousands of dollars worth of computer hardware and software every few years (I've got two Macs right in front of me which are now using obsolete systems which can't be upgraded), or just take a $25 Hoya warming filter and screw it on the lens?