Consistency question: Kodak vs. Fuji color neg film

Tony-S · Feb 14, 2011

It appears from my internet readings that Kodak color negative film will give better consistency than Fuji films. (If there are contrary opinions, I'd like to hear them!) Is this a function of the films, the labs, or a combination of both?

benjiboy · Feb 14, 2011

Don't believe everything you read on the internet Tony I've used both company's professional colour negative films for over twenty five years, and had them processed at the same lab and I have not noticed any consistency problems with either, the only inconsistency has been with me getting the exposure wrong.

hrst · Feb 14, 2011

Where had you hear something like that? This is probably just one urban myth again.

Both of them should be very consistent, beyond most expectations.

Bad processing can of course ruin the consistency, but it will do it regardless of whether it's Kodak or Fuji.

Photo Engineer · Feb 14, 2011

I would have to agree that both are quite consistent. Both are built to an exacting ANSI speed and curve shape requirement which was laid down in the 40s and 50s by Kodak, Fuji, Konica and Agfa. It continues to this day, mostly from Kodak and Fuji.

The only discontinuity was in the 70s when Fuji, Agfa and Konica changed from proprietary processes and unmasked films to C41 and E6. Even so, I have some old Agfa and Konica color negatives that still print just fine!

PE

2F/2F · Feb 14, 2011

I would not agree that any one of the two is more or less consistent than the other. Whatever slight inconsistencies there are with fresh film can be easily compensated for with your filter pack, with Kodak or Fuji. With film of different ages, you might have to compensate just a bit more. If the film is always kept frozen or refrigerated from the time it is purchased until the time it is shot and processed, then the effects of age will be less.

markbarendt · Feb 14, 2011

Tony-S said:
Is this a function of the films, the labs, or a combination of both?

Normally neither.

It is most likely a function of the user blaming it on someone/something else.

Ray Rogers · Feb 14, 2011

OFF TOPIC - SIDE TOPIC

Photo Engineer said:
The only discontinuity was in the 70s when Fuji, Agfa and Konica changed from proprietary processes and unmasked films to C41 and E6. Even so, I have some old Agfa and Konica color negatives that still print just fine!

PE

Never could grasp that masking concept!
and now, I confused.

Did you just say unmasked color negatives print just fine?

Is there a with/without comparison somewhere ?

Photo Engineer · Feb 14, 2011

They print just fine. The color is not equivalent.

I have not made direct comparisons, but I know they exist for patent purposes.

I am sorry that you do not understand one of the fundamental tenets of color photography.

PE

Ray Rogers · Feb 14, 2011

Photo Engineer said:
I have not made direct comparisons, but I know they exist for patent purposes.

I am sorry that you do not understand one of the fundamental tenets of color photography.

PE

:devil::eek:oliceman:

Euuu... thats cold!

Ok,
Why is such an important tenet not more well demonstrated? !!

I am equally sorry that for one so inudated in the science and thoery of it,
you have never chanced to make a direct comparison!

Tim Gray · Feb 14, 2011

There's a decent thread on APUG that explains the basics of it.

(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

Photo Engineer · Feb 14, 2011

Ray;

There are several text books on this subject including:

Mees
Mees and James
Evans Hanson and Brewer
Friedman

And, the Kodak color handbooks. So, that was not cold, it was SHOCK! Sorry, but this is something that I really thought you had digested as you were moving on to some quite advanced questions. Perhaps we should back up a few levels then.

Sorry, but this is a fact based on your "professed" level of expertise. I find now that it is otherwise. If this offends you, the actual facts seem to point in the other direction.

PE

Ray Rogers · Feb 14, 2011

Tim, Eugen:

Thank you. Your comments are appreciated.
I can use the German as aids to understanding, thank you.
I will reread the APUG thread...

Dispite the cool tone of one poster,
of course I have a certain "degree" of understanding the subject...
I think the issue that bothers me,
(to put the blame where it perhaps (?) belongs),
is that masking is to correct "inefficiencies" or what have you - in the dyes used.

Whose to blame for those inefficiencies?

The researchers who, instead of solving the problem, simply did a work around.

Yes, OK, I have yet to read the material recently,
but my next point is... why only masking for C-41?

Are the E6 dyes without similar inefficiencies?

There must be a simple explanation as to why we need them for C-41 but not E6.
... or does E6 use masking?

This is what I am hung up on.

Hexavalent · Feb 14, 2011

Ray Rogers said:
Tim, Eugen:

(to put the blame where it perhaps (?) belongs),
is that masking is to correct "inefficiencies" or what have you - in the dyes used.

Whose to blame for those inefficiencies?

The researchers who, instead of solving the problem, simply did a work around.

You might want to research colorspaces, gamut, dyes and pigments. Your monitor, your printer, just about every item of color printed material are all adjusted to compensate for the failings of pigments and dyes. Whether through material or software means, a form of 'masking' is needed.

If anything, the masking process is an extremely elegant solution to a very difficult problem.

Ray Rogers · Feb 14, 2011

Adjusted, fine tuned yes but...

What about positive color transparancies?
Where is the mask?

Photo Engineer · Feb 14, 2011

Ray;

All dyes have unwanted absorptions. ALL! Correction is only totally possible in negative systems unless you want orange slides!!!! This is not my deficiency, it is your lack of understanding. E6 tries to correct via interimage but falls short which is why I have maintained that color negative systems are more accurate.

Now, I will be the first to admit that not much is known on emulsion making, and so I post a lot there. But a LOT is known on color masking in several areas and so I leave it to the reader to self educate. I take a bit of offense if you blame this on ME. You must bring yourself up to a certain standard in a field of expertise if a large body of information exists in that area. It is not incumbent on me to teach you masking in the face of the many textbooks on masking. Thinly veiled comments notwithstanding, I have done my best in emulsion making, but I draw the line at fully published methodologies.

As for emulsion making, I am conducting a full off-line "conversation" on emulsion making that goes way beyond what I have posted here. I am glad to do it for you as well, if you bring yourself up to a given level with published texts. You have hedged on your knowledge, but it appears that you have done much more reading than you admit to. So, I'll leave it to that.

PE

Athiril · Feb 15, 2011

The biggest inconsistency is likely to be in exposure, processing and handling, and even the lens colour rendition from lens to lens.. I've had some total shockers come back from labs. Now everything I do is mostly DIY.

I've had some major issues with C-41 masks, including but not limited to an almost disappearing mask when reversal processed (slight appearance, not colour balanced for 3200K projection... balanced for daylight/~5600-6500K projection :/), green mask instead of orange, and the weird chameleon mask that changed after I finished processing, by an ascorbic acid solution, turning toward green, then yellow. These were all my own fault/doing though, standard processing is consistent and pretty resilient too.

Ray Rogers · Feb 15, 2011

Photo Engineer said:
Ray;

All dyes have unwanted absorptions. ALL! Correction is only totally possible in negative systems unless you want orange slides!!!! This is not my deficiency, it is your lack of understanding. E6 tries to correct via interimage but falls short which is why I have maintained that color negative systems are more accurate.

Now, I will be the first to admit that not much is known on emulsion making, and so I post a lot there. But a LOT is known on color masking in several areas and so I leave it to the reader to self educate. I take a bit of offense if you blame this on ME. You must bring yourself up to a certain standard in a field of expertise if a large body of information exists in that area. It is not incumbent on me to teach you masking in the face of the many textbooks on masking. Thinly veiled comments notwithstanding, I have done my best in emulsion making, but I draw the line at fully published methodologies.

As for emulsion making, I am conducting a full off-line "conversation" on emulsion making that goes way beyond what I have posted here. I am glad to do it for you as well, if you bring yourself up to a given level with published texts. You have hedged on your knowledge, but it appears that you have done much more reading than you admit to. So, I'll leave it to that.

PE

I am sure you (and the entire world!) enjoy the color reproduction potential
of the masked neg-pos system.

It's just that I think there is an area of overkill here and
people can get too caught up with numbers and measurments.

Are you aware of the absolute wonderous and beautiful color images
that a professional can deliver with the non-masked Pos-Pos system?

I think in music, it often happens that technical perfection might not always be the most desirable skill and I guess this probably applies to much if not all of the Arts.

Can you not understand me when I say to you that in the pos-pos system very beautiful images are produced without the use of masks, and that makes me wonder if masking really is a must in the neg-positive system or if it is just something we have come to accept, without question?

Athiril · Feb 15, 2011

Negs allow for flexibility of colour - you can colour correct/grade to your heart's content.

Bit hard with positive, unless you do it digitally, and then that can be very difficult to balance, I've had some unbalanceable images simply due to the colour intensity.

Colour-corrected cross-proecessed E-6 film can be very nice.. and I've had some cross-processed Reala that had beautiful colour.

I started out liking E-6, now I like C-41. There is so much freedom in it

If you really wanted to get tricky with it, you can stick your E-6 in an enlarger, play with the colour balance, print it out to C-41 film at the right light temp, would need experimenting, then print that out.

Also, there is a big thread here on APUG on people reversing RA-4 people, so it prints a positive from a positive.

Ray Rogers · Feb 15, 2011

Yea, I guess it depends on where you're going.

In the Pre-digital Time, high end pros (at least one subset anyway) did it at the recording stage... for them the Transparency was God! Subsequent prints were... whatever. (ok, maybe the devil) but I focused on Cibachrome for my prints and was quite happy, uh, except for the cost.

markbarendt · Feb 15, 2011

Ray Rogers said:
It's just that I think there is an area of overkill here and people can get too caught up with numbers and measurments.

For me it has nothing to do with numbers.

C-41 and RA-4 are in practice for me; more forgiving & flexible in the camera, less expensive in general, and easier to work in the darkroom.

I also find the quality of the output is more consistent.

It is really tough for me to see a downside to the neg-pos system because it works so well.

Photo Engineer · Feb 15, 2011

I think that you will find that for color accuracy and excellent tone scale reproduction, the color neg-pos system excels. The pos-pos system can produce beautiful prints, but if unmasked, the process is less faithful and introduces many faults in the reproduction. A masked pos-pos system is creatable, but the transparencies are not viewable due to the orange mask.

Masking in the pos-pos systems, as is used for example by National Geographic, will produce stunning reproductions. However, one does see a loss of detail in reds in most reversal systems due to the efforts to correct color.

Cross processed C41 films in E6 may give a weaker mask due to the fog formed during the process. IDK for sure, but the samples I have seen look normal. Green color negatives indicate fog during processing or before processing.

PE

Ray Rogers · Feb 15, 2011

Forgiving, & inexpensive certainly.

Big downside for me was greater cost to get to first enjoyable image...
the greater need for contact sheets
more finicky filtration behaviour when printing
and less archival print materials...

Don't know what the experts round here think, but according to Wiki,
Michael Langford claims "Reversal films are the preferred film choice of professional photographers for images intended for reproduction in print media. This is because of the films' high contrast and high image resolution compared to negative (print) films."

Of course, that comment is now out-digitally-dated.

I mostly enjoyed the immediacy and simplicity of an E6/Ilfochrome match.

hrst · Feb 15, 2011

Ray;

Even if you can get "quite good" imaging without masking, why not to implement masking in negative films because it is possible, and probably quite easy to do so? I think this is all about development. Many inventions are not groundbreaking, but fine-tune the results. Nothing is a "must", but today we take the extraordinarily high quality for granted, while it's mostly thanks to dozens of small inventions during decades.

With slides, if you added a mask, you would need a compensating blue filter in the projector so that orange mask + dye impurities + blue filter together equal to neutral density, but you would have huge light losses and it wouldn't be practical.

But orange mask in negative material, which is not to be viewed directly anyway, is very practical and is very easy to compensate for in all workflows. For example, RA-4 papers have different sensitivities for R/G/B emulsions so that orange light will work directly. (In fact it's made even more red-orange with the filtration, so the "mask" helps with this. This is because of color separation without the need of yellow filter layer in paper.)

However, orange mask has started causing some (usually minor) problems in the 2000's because of some scanners that are built by idiots, and software written by idiots. Luckily, we don't need to discuss this at APUG in detail which is why I love this place.

PE and Ray, please try to keep calm... I don't know what's going on with you two or why, but I know it doesn't make anyone feel good.

Ray Rogers · Feb 15, 2011

I am not against masking, I just think we should strive to find better dyes,
or systems where the need for masks would be superflous, because less is simpler & cleaner.

Moopheus · Feb 15, 2011

Photo Engineer said:
E6 tries to correct via interimage but falls short which is why I have maintained that color negative systems are more accurate.

Then why do slides look normal when projected or viewed on a light table? Wouldn't the color deficiencies be obvious (even to someone with vision issues like me)?

Consistency question: Kodak vs. Fuji color neg film

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