Color images from B&W film...

[dourbalistar]

dourbalistar, these are really great. I hope you don't mind, but I think I'm going to have to give this a try.

Thank you, @PFGS I appreciate it. By all means, give it a try! I'm not the OP of this thread (just an enthusiastic contributor), and I enjoy seeing other people's results, too.

 

[PFGS]

Thank you, @PFGS I appreciate it. By all means, give it a try! I'm not the OP of this thread (just an enthusiastic contributor), and I enjoy seeing other people's results, too.

I know you are not the OP but you are killing it here. There's something about the, I guess technically inaccurate, but highly appealing "softness" of the color you are getting, for lack of a better word - it's not desaturation, exactly, and it's not an obvious cast, just an organic quality of some kind - it's like looking at 1930s National Geographics but without any hamfisted effort towards artificial nostalgia...

I wonder how much of a nightmare it would be to try and wet-print these with my b&w enlarger on RA-4 paper - I guess registration would be the first hurdle...

 

[PFGS]

Decided this would be a good science experiment with my kids & they are on board (never a given). I've got red and green but no blue filters, so we are starting with improvising a "gel" in the kitchen:

 

[dourbalistar]

I know you are not the OP but you are killing it here. There's something about the, I guess technically inaccurate, but highly appealing "softness" of the color you are getting, for lack of a better word - it's not desaturation, exactly, and it's not an obvious cast, just an organic quality of some kind - it's like looking at 1930s National Geographics but without any hamfisted effort towards artificial nostalgia...

I wonder how much of a nightmare it would be to try and wet-print these with my b&w enlarger on RA-4 paper - I guess registration would be the first hurdle...

@PFGS, thank you, that's much too kind, but I appreciate it and glad you enjoy the images! They are definitely not color accurate per se, and I'm not even getting shot-to-shot consistency, but I'm having a lot of fun. I wonder if some of the color softness might be a characteristic of the film I'm using. Ultrafine eXtreme 400 seems to have a weak (or maybe non-existent?) anti-halation backing, so highlights can have a mild halo effect.

 

[dourbalistar]

Decided this would be a good science experiment with my kids & they are on board (never a given). I've got red and green but no blue filters, so we are starting with improvising a "gel" in the kitchen:

View attachment 257033

Woah, are you making your own filter with gelatin and food coloring?! If so, that is very, very cool. What a fun experiment with your kids! Now I'm definitely intrigued to see your results...

 

[PFGS]

Woah, are you making your own filter with gelatin and food coloring?! If so, that is very, very cool. What a fun experiment with your kids! Now I'm definitely intrigued to see your results...

Well, the home-cooked filter ended up being rather more translucent than transparent, and with a filter factor of about 128. Plus they are kids and I'm only slightly more patient than they are. So we fudged things a bit and set my Fuji digital on monochrome and shot that through red, green and blue and into Gimp, and this is what we got:

I then showed them how digital cameras basically do this whole process at the Bayer filter level anyway, at which point my 11-going-on-15-year-old gave me his best eye-roll and a "so we shot color black and white to get black and white color, WTF" and science class was over for the day!

 

[dourbalistar]

Well, the home-cooked filter ended up being rather more translucent than transparent, and with a filter factor of about 128. Plus they are kids and I'm only slightly more patient than they are. So we fudged things a bit and set my Fuji digital on monochrome and shot that through red, green and blue and into Gimp, and this is what we got:
View attachment 257054

I then showed them how digital cameras basically do this whole process at the Bayer filter level anyway, at which point my 11-going-on-15-year-old gave me his best eye-roll and a "so we shot color black and white to get black and white color, WTF" and science class was over for the day!

Hilarious, that made my day. I'm sure with a filter factor of 128, there was some reciprocity failure involved. And by that I mean, they failed to reciprocate the same level of interest in your (literally) home-cooked science experiment. Maybe the next experiment should involve making Caffenol with that instant coffee on the shelf, to develop the individual trichrome B&W frames.

 

[PFGS]

Hilarious, that made my day. I'm sure with a filter factor of 128, there was some reciprocity failure involved. And by that I mean, they failed to reciprocate the same level of interest in your (literally) home-cooked science experiment. Maybe the next experiment should involve making Caffenol with that instant coffee on the shelf, to develop the individual trichrome B&W frames.

At least dad is still interested in doing this "for real." As for caffenol, we've been there, done that - they couldn't stay in the same room as the smell.

Have you stuck with #25 red, #47 blue, and #58 green as your filter set?

 

[mshchem]

Well, the home-cooked filter ended up being rather more translucent than transparent, and with a filter factor of about 128. Plus they are kids and I'm only slightly more patient than they are. So we fudged things a bit and set my Fuji digital on monochrome and shot that through red, green and blue and into Gimp, and this is what we got:
View attachment 257054

I then showed them how digital cameras basically do this whole process at the Bayer filter level anyway, at which point my 11-going-on-15-year-old gave me his best eye-roll and a "so we shot color black and white to get black and white color, WTF" and science class was over for the day!

That's impressive. I have the same cans of Kirkland coffee, the color looks good.
If you look at some of the old Kodak color handbooks from late 40's early 50's there's a lot of information. Too bad we don't still have dye transfer and 3M Color key.

 

[dourbalistar]

At least dad is still interested in doing this "for real." As for caffenol, we've been there, done that - they couldn't stay in the same room as the smell.

Have you stuck with #25 red, #47 blue, and #58 green as your filter set?

Yes, still using the same Tiffen circular filters, as they were the cheapest and most easily sourced new. Here's all the details:

Nikon FM2n, AI Nikkor 50mm f/1.8S, Ultrafine eXtreme 400, developed in LegacyPro L110 at 1:31 for 5.5 minutes. Three individual black and white frames shot through Tiffen #25 Red, #58 Green, and #47 Blue filters, respectively, then combined using GIMP to create a trichrome color image.

 

[PFGS]

That's impressive. I have the same cans of Kirkland coffee, the color looks good.
If you look at some of the old Kodak color handbooks from late 40's early 50's there's a lot of information. Too bad we don't still have dye transfer and 3M Color key.

Thanks - I did give it a little of the old twist 'n' bludgeon in Gimp - we had to colorize our green layer closer to cyan to get those colors, and the yellows are weak. But it was fun, looking forward to more.

 

[PFGS]

Yes, still using the same Tiffen circular filters, as they were the cheapest and most easily sourced new. Here's all the details:

Nikon FM2n, AI Nikkor 50mm f/1.8S, Ultrafine eXtreme 400, developed in LegacyPro L110 at 1:31 for 5.5 minutes. Three individual black and white frames shot through Tiffen #25 Red, #58 Green, and #47 Blue filters, respectively, then combined using GIMP to create a trichrome color image.

Awesome, thanks - I've got the red, will order the others as soon as I figure out what size I want. I'll probably start with Delta 100 as I've got a bunch, but I wonder if the UFX 400 grain isn't part of the look...

 

[removed account4]

found a few more
some are in stereo so if you cross your eyes the 3D one will be in the middle
I don't really care about realism so the colors might be a little wonky because
I use coffee developer and ansco130 ( or dektol ) and I am not using the "official"
filters one is "supposed to use" for doing this sort of work.
all done with 4x5 film

 

[PFGS]

found a few more
some are in stereo so if you cross your eyes the 3D one will be in the middle
I don't really care about realism so the colors might be a little wonky because
I use coffee developer and ansco130 ( or dektol ) and I am not using the "official"
filters one is "supposed to use" for doing this sort of work.
all done with 4x5 film

These are pretty cool (I'm good at doing the crossed eyes thing, but I assume there is some utensil for those who aren't?) - the 3D is two exposures on on sheet? Any particular reason you combine 3D and tricolor?

 

[dourbalistar]

Awesome, thanks - I've got the red, will order the others as soon as I figure out what size I want. I'll probably start with Delta 100 as I've got a bunch, but I wonder if the UFX 400 grain isn't part of the look...

@DREW WILEY recommended TMY 100 upthread in Post #40, along with a slightly different set of filters. I quoted (in part) his recommendation here below. Like I said, I just went with the cheapest option that I could find readily available new from B&H. With some additional post-processing in Lightroom to correct some color casts, I'm happy with the results given my modest outlay for the Tiffen filters, combined with my rank amateur status.

First of all, TMY100 was specifically engineered for this particular application in the first place (among numerous other features intended to replace several previous films). It has a very long straight line, correctly balanced spectral sensitivity, and is the only film I am aware of where, if one calibrates the 3 exposures correctly, is capable of having all three attain the same contrast gamma when developed together for the same length of time. A LOT of testing work and densitometer plotting has to go up front to learn to properly balance a set of negatives. Of course, on forums like this you're going to encounter plenty of fun stuff that isn't fussy in that regard, or else has been twisted and bludgeoned half to death via software to make the different separations sorta get along. But it is possible to do it well via totally darkroom workflow, just like it was routinely done countless thousands of times in the past when this was the routine mode of color reproduction. HP5 has none of the characteristics I described above...[...]... Typical color separation filter sets would include 25 red, 47 blue, and 58 green. A more precise but slower exposing set of even deeper filters would be 29 red, 47B blue, and 61 green.

 

[removed account4]

These are pretty cool (I'm good at doing the crossed eyes thing, but I assume there is some utensil for those who aren't?) - the 3D is two exposures on on sheet? Any particular reason you combine 3D and tricolor?

originally for stereo views there was a stereopticon .. a viewer and you put the cards in it..hard to do that on the inter web
each of those negatives has 6 frames on it... 3 for the L and 3 for the R.. nope no particular reason other than its fun, and I have a camera with 6 shutters that takes 4x5 sheet film, and I've always got sheet film on hand . I plan one of these days to have the shutter so it trips the flash and make 3D trichrome portraits but .. that's not for a while...

 

[ProfessorC1983]

OK, I might officially need professional help... or maybe just more Fiestaware?

 

[PFGS]

OK, I might officially need professional help... or maybe just more Fiestaware?

View attachment 257515 View attachment 257516 View attachment 257517

Nice! The olives have a bit of that 50s food look, but the tomatoes are just little bit lurid in the best possible way.

 

[PFGS]

From my first roll with real filters, Delta 100 in Xtol-R, obligatory fruit study:

 

[PFGS]

And my favorite from this round

 

[dourbalistar]

From my first roll with real filters, Delta 100 in Xtol-R, obligatory fruit study:
View attachment 257919

Wow, those are excellent first results! The reds and greens on the pears are spot on. Almost nothing that gives away that it's a trichrome, except maybe a hint of purple cast in the shadows.

 

[dourbalistar]

And my favorite from this round

View attachment 257928

This one is excellent, too. Looks like a painting.

 

[PFGS]

Wow, those are excellent first results! The reds and greens on the pears are spot on. Almost nothing that gives away that it's a trichrome, except maybe a hint of purple cast in the shadows.

This one is excellent, too. Looks like a painting.

@dourbalistar - thanks! I had a great time making these and look forward to doing more. Color-wise, I think the pears image was pretty forgiving - the hues in the subject almost don't need the blue layer, which is the layer I had the most trouble with in other shots. And overall, I didn't hesitate to massage these digitally to "season to taste." I did note that there is color crossover in all three channels, which I was able to address somewhat by editing curves individually, but I suspect that's why lower-contrast, short scale images come out more accurately. I don't know if the Delta 100 I used shares any of the linear quality of Tmax 100. Not that color accuracy was my main goal - I can get that all day long with my Fuji digital - but it's interesting to observe that part of the process. And yeah, I really like the way the second one looks like a drawing or painting, some of that may be that it's relatively soft (the camera got moved for one layer so the registration isn't quite perfect) and it was also underexposed, so there's more grain & noise...

 

[dourbalistar]

I think there's bit of color cast (or crossover?) in this one. Couldn't quite get it as neutral looking as I'd like, but oh well. This is all for fun anyway.


2020.09.21 Roll #258-05272-positive-trichrome.jpg by dourbalistar, on Flickr

 

[dourbalistar]

2020.09.21 Roll #258-05294-positive-trichrome.jpg by dourbalistar, on Flickr