Colour Negative Film and Filters

brian steinberger · Sep 3, 2011

I'd like to add too that for the last 5 years I've shot nothing but black and white and developed and printed myself. When it comes to black and white printing yes most of those photographers are printing optically in the darkroom. And there are many great printers in this forum with much knowledge. But I've recently begun shooting color. I would never dream of printing my own color. For me scanning makes sense. I would like to learn more about the hybrid process and I just hope APUG starts to let more and more of this discussion slide.

Sirius Glass · Sep 3, 2011

brian steinberger said:
I agree greatly that APUG should be more loose about discussing "Hybrid" work-flows. And yes there are probably alot of us scanning that are members of APUG but are too scared to share our knowledge on scanning because we're afraid we'll get scolded. I'm sure I could take my questions to DPUG, and I have, but the truth is that there just isn't as much help or folks on the site as there are here. So if the people are here, and the knowledge on the topic is here, then why can't we share it and talk about it?! After all, we're all still shooting film!

There are DPUG.org and Hybridphoto.com. That ship sailed years ago and the horse has been thoroughly beating, as if you did not know.

Athiril · Sep 3, 2011

There isn't DPUG and Hybridphoto. DPUG isn't for analogue photography, it is for digital photography, plain and simple. Digital Photographers don't know anything about film. Why would you want advice from them for any kind of workflow involving film?

It is also yet another drop in the ocean of digital photography forums. There are another 100 much better digital photography forums to join out there, DPUG in that sense is useless and a waste of space.

You may as well send any new film users just getting some of their first cameras to a forum that will actually be friendly and helpful towards them instead. Though they will probably all stay there and not ever come back here, plus less likely to get interested in any other analogue workflow besides film there too.

Who knows how long optical printing is going to last, it's only a fractional proportion of film users. Nope, don't need to make people feel welcome and nurture their interests. Just make them uncomfortable and feel small for not measuring up to elitist standards.

Sirius Glass · Sep 3, 2011

Maybe one day I will get a digital Nikon body and post there, but I am having too much fun with film in three and a half formats.

Steve

brian steinberger · Sep 3, 2011

Athiril said:
There isn't DPUG and Hybridphoto. DPUG isn't for analogue photography, it is for digital photography, plain and simple. Digital Photographers don't know anything about film. Why would you want advice from them for any kind of workflow involving film?

It is also yet another drop in the ocean of digital photography forums. There are another 100 much better digital photography forums to join out there, DPUG in that sense is useless and a waste of space.

You may as well send any new film users just getting some of their first cameras to a forum that will actually be friendly and helpful towards them instead. Though they will probably all stay there and not ever come back here.

Exactly! So why can't we have some discussion on here from film users who have knowledge on scanning?? This would be the perfect site for hybrid talk.

TareqPhoto · Sep 3, 2011

The problem with DPUG that they don't keep the boat for film scanning world, and allowing digital [non film] loads to be there then you will not see much about scan topics.
I wish to have scan things here, but if it will never happen no problem, i can gather information from here and there and try my best, i can't do prints at all now because i don't have any enlarger or tools to print, no chemicals for printing and no papers for printing, if i go this route then i have to pay a lot which i did already for digital and scanner and something else.

Athiril · Sep 3, 2011

I don't even think it needs to go that far, just none of this high and mighty attitude that turns people off. Telling people to go elsewhere, and taking an elitist snobby approach to everything. It's very judgemental.

Like the thread a while back about digital photography not being real photography.

I see so many people very eager to share sour grapes.

All of that is discouraging participation, and not encouraging participation. I'm fairly sure a lot of people have been turned off from optical printing for good from the current approach, some who would pick up the interest given time - even if it takes a few years for them to get into it.

DREW WILEY · Sep 3, 2011

Back to the film itself - the fact that the three dye curves are neither matched nor symmetirical in themselves means that if one is underexposed in relation to the other two, the film will not perform
as engineered. With Ektar the problem is like power steering - because it is more contrasty and more
saturated than Portra etc means that problems in this respect will multiply at a faster pace. One does
not need to undertand this in order to make excellent prints, and more than one has to own a light
meter to get good images. But it certainly can make life easier. The reference to those who scan is
purely objective; if they can't clean up this kind of error with all their fancy PS options, it's not likely
to happen in a darkroom either, even by those of use who know how to do advanced masking. Sometimes the culture of those who have shot old-school color negs like Vericolor is fairly loose:
just shoot it and balance afterwards for the skintones, and let other hues fall away wheverever, preferably in some "creative" manner. Ektar doesn't give you that kind of latitude, though for those of
us long accustomed to the narrow constraints of chrome film, isn't all that difficult either.

DREW WILEY · Sep 3, 2011

I hope my last post is not misunderstood. I am shooting Ektar because it is capable of a very high
degree of color reproduction, though no film is perfect. And when I contrasted dkrm vs PS corrections, I am referring to correction, not alteration. Those folks can spend weeks dithering and
pasting to alter individual hues - but that not the same thing as balancing. I'm doing the job faster
and better in the darkroom, and using the same paper as many of the large-format laser printers.
And I'm getting very clean hues under a variety of lighting conditions, and I don't just mean saturated
hues ala a more saturated neg film. I mean cleaner, less contaminated by the adjacent layer. This came from several small but significant changes in workflow, beginning with the shot itself. The latest
prints don't even look like typical color neg prints - they look like they were taken with chromes,
except the shadows are a little more open, and the highlights a little more detailed due to the greater
film latitude. I won't go into the advanced techniques here, since this thread is about filtration, which
is the first step in getting a properly balanced neg under certain conditions.

L Gebhardt · Sep 3, 2011

Drew is correct that if the color balance is far from optimal then it is possible to get one of the channels that is underexposed. Since all the color channels have a toe, you will get color crossover if the color balance isn't correct when the image was taken. It may not be noticeable in many shots, but it's there. This can be fixed with a digital workflow better than in the darkroom since you can alter the curve shape of the individual channels.

If you don't want to deal with filters, or you have mixed lighting, the best thing you can do (in my opinion) is to over expose by a stop or more. This will put more exposure above the toe of each channel and make printing easier.

One final selling point for in camera color balance is your contact prints will look correct, and your starting filtration will hardly ever change.

pukalo · Sep 4, 2011

One fact is undeniable - unique among all negative films, Ektar has the peculiar defect of "going blue" or producing an overall blue cast to a scene, or any parts of a scene in shade or overcast skies. No other negative film Kodak makes or has ever made since the late 90's has this trait. Nor for that matter, do amy of their slide films. When this film first came out, I shot some pictures of my kids in a pumpkin patch on a heavily overcast Fall day. Trying to scan without a horrible blue cast with my Minolta 5400 scanner was impossible. Photoshopping helped, but I was stunned and dismayed that Kodak would release such a difficult to scan and color balance film in this day and age, when any new film should be optimized for home scanning. Luckily, scans from my local labs Noritsu came out with perfect color balance. Apparently it has a film profile for Ektar of some sort, or very advanced color balancing software.
However, this flaw is balanced by the films ability to magnify the reds in sunset scenes to produce spectacular results for this application.

iranzi · Sep 4, 2011

brian steinberger said:
But I've recently begun shooting color. I would never dream of printing my own color. For me scanning makes sense.

I was thinking the same. But after printing colour for some time I really dread going back to B&W. Ra4 processing feels less creative than b&w, but then you dont need to set up any trays and you don't even need a darkroom for it.

I guess the printing method just depends on your preference. I won't say one is more difficult than the other.

That's just in passing.

Regarding filtration for colour neg, I guess i'll just test it myself. So far we had (when it was relevant) some purely theoretical expositions based on film datasheet information (or even on your own experience, there just wasnt any evidence). I find it very interesting and informative. There might even be a lot of truth in it. Still

Regarding my earlier post, i just cant stand when someone start talking "that's better for the majority", "that's scares the poor newbies" - presumptions of this sort. Nazis and social services do that. Perhaps australians as well.
I'm sorry i'm even responding to this here. I promised myself to disregard any internet BS. Not always possible, somehow

TareqPhoto · Sep 4, 2011

Can you show me examples of what you are saying? I never see problems with Ektar so far, not sure if i don't see or i don't know what the issues you are talking about or i am lucky, so i would like to see examples of what you did with this film and have issues, i will check in all Ektar rolls i've did already [i didn't shoot many at all, only 3 rolls maybe].

iranzi · Sep 4, 2011

DREW WILEY said:
..So when one underexposes the yellow dye layer of a film, it is not just the reproduction of pure blue which is affected, but of every other hue which need any yellow dye whatsoever. The colors get off, muddied to some extent; and even if this is slight, it fails to achieve the full potential of the film to reproduce
the chroma in the scene.

thats a good reason to start doing my own filtration testing, thank you! It's good to know that there might be some scope in improving/affecting/controlling the image through these means

Athiril · Sep 4, 2011

DREW; again look at your exposure or processing, one or both are off aim.

As for the toe, Portra has a longer toe than Ektar. They have about the same length of straight line response. Ektar is merely higher in contrast. This does not mean in any way shape or form that one colour channel will end up on the toe, especially since the toe is so damn short. It means you are underexposing, ESPECIALLY at the difference of half a stop of filtration in a 5600K situation which is what the film is balanced for in the first place. If you're having that kind of problem unfiltered, the problem is with you or your process not with the film.

The higher contrast curve of Ektar means that you will have a higher contrast image on X fixed contrast paper etc. And certainly not that it will not balance.

It isn't a valid argument. All you are doing is stating an opposing case (contradiction) with no evidence. You tell people to look at the data sheets, but everything in the data sheets say the opposite of what you are saying. Analogies are not evidence.

Athiril · Sep 4, 2011

iranzi said:
Regarding my earlier post, i just cant stand when someone start talking "that's better for the majority", "that's scares the poor newbies" - presumptions of this sort. Nazis and social services do that. Perhaps australians as well.

For starters that's incorrect, get off your high horse. Secondly you automatically forfeit any argument and all points for invoking Godwin's law.

iranzi · Sep 4, 2011

i dont know why you're talking of horses and some godwin idiot. Metaphors? If I'm incorrect, do pm me and explain, i'd love to know and discuss it.
On second thought, perhaps we shouldn't. No need to get all intimate. I don't really care about this.
Let's just talk about photography. Forgive my earlier incontinence

markbarendt · Sep 4, 2011

Athiril said:
I don't even think it needs to go that far, just none of this high and mighty attitude that turns people off. Telling people to go elsewhere, and taking an elitist snobby approach to everything. It's very judgemental.

Like the thread a while back about digital photography not being real photography.

I see so many people very eager to share sour grapes.

All of that is discouraging participation, and not encouraging participation. I'm fairly sure a lot of people have been turned off from optical printing for good from the current approach, some who would pick up the interest given time - even if it takes a few years for them to get into it.

Athiril it isn't about being snobby, although I have come to believe that the off to DPUG answer isn't the best choice.

It is about good business though.

IMO NAPP and Lynda.com are much better resources for digital work than DPUG (or APUG) will/could ever be.

Taz Tally has a 4+ hour video tutorial on scanning on lynda.com. Sign up for a month and learn scanning from a guy that really, really, really knows how.

Actually went to one of Taz's seminars a few years back, this is a guy that can get up in front of a thousand people that are actually good at and make a living at digital processing, keep them interested for an entire day and have them all walk out having learned something really important.

The resources NAPP & Lynda.com bring to the table are so deep and cheap that I find it almost absurd to think that APUG or DPUG could compete with or add anything to the conversation other than moral support.

APUGers though talk about and discuss things that NAPP & Lynda.com don't/won't talk about, like chemical formulas.

iranzi · Sep 4, 2011

Just found this in "Colour Photography" by Eric de Marie (1968), p.110.

"Except for the polarising filter, the effects of a filter on a film are not those you would see if placed the same filter over the viewer. The filter would not modify the highlights on the film but would only begin to show results, and with increasing strength, as the tones darken. In a snow scene photographed with a pale yellow filter, for example, the highlights of the snow would remain white on the film, but the middle tones might look slightly yellow. A filter always has more effect, therefore, on an under-exposed shot than on a correctly exposed or over-exposed shot".

It's clear that he's talking about slide film, although it's not specified (later on p.115 he recommends filters for negative films to bring the color temp back to daylight and reduce amount of adjustment while printing)
So, on a negative film, the filter would have more effect on highlights and midtones, and virtually no effect on shadows, more effect on overexposed film and less on underexposed.

If that's correct, it's quite a big difference between the effects of filters on slide and negative films, and the difference in applications.
For example "correcting" bluish shadows with the same number warming filter will have more effect on slide film than on neg film.

Does this sound right to any of the filter users here?

markbarendt · Sep 4, 2011

I'd say the midtones are what are effected the most on either type of film. For me the mid tones make or break a photo so...

iranzi · Sep 4, 2011

I have another question. Does anyone know about the filters for correcting reciprocity failure in long exposures? I heard they are Color Compensating filters, but correction varies from film to film. Do Kodak and Fuji have any of that information (Kodak used to supplied that info in the past, apparently) ?

iranzi · Sep 4, 2011

markbarendt said:
I'd say the midtones are what are effected the most on either type of film. For me the mid tones make or break a photo so...

that's really interesting. So filters don't have a uniform effect but affect only part of the range

DREW WILEY · Sep 4, 2011

Iranzi - sometimes the old photo books contain some very useful information. But color neg films are
very different than when that book was written. That's why it's so important to keep testing as new products arrive. Everything is affected when a color neg film is not exposed at the correct color temp
it was engineered for; but how significant this will be for your personal work depends on a lot of variables and just how far off the lighting is. But if you want the optimum differentiation of subtle hues in these films, some filtration and exposure compensation is necessary in order to adequately
fill out all three dye curves. Recip failure for long exposures complicates all this, and you might have
to do some experimentation with cc filters as well.

iranzi · Sep 4, 2011

This seems to be the verdict then. The good thing these filters don't cost a fortune - not a big loss if they turn out to be of not much use.
It's a shame though that a 5-page thread hasn't really shed any new light on the matter yet.

MattKing · Sep 4, 2011

iranzi said:
that's really interesting. So filters don't have a uniform effect but affect only part of the range

More accurately, the effect of the filters is more apparent in the shadows and mid-tones than in the highlights.

As an illustration, I would refer to a colour printing tip I use(d) when optically printing. To check for colour casts, observe an area where the illumination is transitioning from highlight to mid-tone to shadow. Something like the curve of a person's jaw where it goes from a highlighted cheek to a shadowed area under the jaw. It is in that transition of tones from light to dark that colour casts will most easily reveal themselves, most likely because the densities of all three colour emulsion layers are transitioning there as well.

My rule of thumb is to filter at camera when I can, because the result is much more likely to end up in the linear parts of the curve for all three of the colour emulsion layers.

Colour Negative Film and Filters

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