colour analyzer, can I use it?

Seems like the only fool proof way that I see so far is to do Mick's method; shoot an expodisc references for each lighting situation. So far for me, it's foolproof. If I could find some foolproof way to get the density without at least one test strip I'd be very happy.

rpavich said:

Seems like the only fool proof way that I see so far is to do Mick's method; shoot an expodisc references for each lighting situation. So far for me, it's foolproof. If I could find some foolproof way to get the density without at least one test strip I'd be very happy.

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Use a colorstar 2000 and forget about test strips to determine exposure. It works great for color balancing as well. You can either shoot the expo disc or a grey card and you get 100% perfect palance and exposure. I was just looking for a way to save film and not to shoot grey cards ( I use 120 film and 12 frames are very few to shoot a grey card at each light situation)

Berri said:

Use a colorstar 2000 and forget about test strips to determine exposure. It works great for color balancing as well. You can either shoot the expo disc or a grey card and you get 100% perfect palance and exposure. I was just looking for a way to save film and not to shoot grey cards ( I use 120 film and 12 frames are very few to shoot a grey card at each light situation)

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I haven't found that shooting the expodisc gets perfect exposure as it's aimed at the light source and while that gets a great even shot for color balancing, it doesn't work for exposure. Expodisc recommends that you shoot back from the subject to the camera's position to get an exposure and my experience is that shooting into the light source makes the resulting prints too dark by about 1 stop.

rpavich said:

I haven't found that shooting the expodisc gets perfect exposure as it's aimed at the light source and while that gets a great even shot for color balancing, it doesn't work for exposure. Expodisc recommends that you shoot back from the subject to the camera's position to get an exposure and my experience is that shooting into the light source makes the resulting prints too dark by about 1 stop.

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I know, for balancing you can either use expo disc or a grey card along with the colorstar analyzer. The colorstar analyzer also gives you the exposure time for your print. Easy and straightforward.

Ok Berri, let's back up a bit.

You can define a perfect situation, like a studio set with strobes, where the light is the perfect temperature in every shot.

In the wild you can't.

Front lit scenes have a different temp, than cross lit, than back lit, than shade, than mid-day, than evening, than.........

If you are shooting a portrait and the client wants the skin to look 'a nice normal warm color' you will have to correct the color balance in each of those situations. The back lit and mid day shots will be varying degrees of 'too blue' the evening shot might be too yellow........

The grey card gets you a reference point to 'peg' the corrections of the face tones against.

markbarendt said:

Ok Berri, let's back up a bit.

You can define a perfect situation, like a studio set with strobes, where the light is the perfect temperature in every shot.

In the wild you can't.

Front lit scenes have a different temp, than cross lit, than back lit, than shade, than mid-day, than evening, than.........

If you are shooting a portrait and the client wants the skin to look 'a nice normal warm color' you will have to correct the color balance in each of those situations. The back lit and mid day shots will be varying degrees of 'too blue' the evening shot might be too yellow........

The grey card gets you a reference point to 'peg' the corrections of the face tones against.

Click to expand...

that is ok and you can do that in the darkroom, but is always better to correct in while you are shooting. Today with digital cameras you can set the white balance on the go, in the old days of film you would have used a colorimeter and a set of filter if you were working under unpredictable light situation. But of course a grey card does help. Again, I'm talking of a different thing here!

This thread I started some time ago because I was wondering if I could use a colour analyzer without a colour head. I was told that I colud so I bought a colorstar 2000. eventually I bought a colour head because although it was working great with CC filters, it was slowing me down, now I'm expecting to recive a tabletop paper processor to make my process mor consistent.
I found the colorstar to be of great help and it saves you a lot of time and paper; no need to make any time consuming test strip to determin the exposure of the paper and the balance is always very close to perfect.
In my recent test I was trying to find a way to determine the white balance avoiding shooting a grey card, at least a white balance that would produce the exact complementary colours that are actually on the film. At this stage I don't care if the film was shot in weird light situation, because I don't want it to be correct (by the way, I am not working for clients) I just want it to be the complementary of what the film really is. I don't know if this is clear now, but Saying that I need shooting a grey card to balance the skin tones or whatever defeats my point, also I already know and do all of that. As I said before though colour correction should be done when you take the photo not after, whether you are working with film or digital