Continuing 'I'm done with Velvia'

[Les Sarile]

This is my personal opinion on the photos (very beautiful subject by the way): Velvia looks just worlds better to me compared to Ektar. I really can´t stand those cyan skies of Ektar. It is the main reason why I do not use this film. On the other hand I have had my dose of troubles trying to get a decent exposure with 35mm Velvia at EI 40.

Cyan skies of Ektar are a product of the workflow and not the film itself.

 

[markbarendt]

Cyan skies of Ektar are a product of the workflow and not the film itself.

A missing UV filter very possibly.

 

[Les Sarile]

A missing UV filter very possibly.

You may be right and really the only way to tell is to compare it -> Kodak Ektar 100 compared

 

[lxdude]

DavidClapp, I think that maybe Velvia is just not for you. It's not for a lot of people. I can handle its finicky exposure and contrast, and I sometimes like its results. I often like it in dull light, but as an all-round film, no way. To me it's usually over-amped and loses subtle differences in color. I liken it to putting sugar on ice cream. It is pretty in its own way, but I'm not looking for "pretty". I want "real".
Maybe you should try Provia. It's closer to neutral and is more forgiving as well. I still miss Astia. That film rendered colors with fidelity, and that (with exceptions) was what I liked most.

 

[markbarendt]

You may be right and really the only way to tell is to compare it -> Kodak Ektar 100 compared

A comparison between any two shots is typically irrelevant unless all the variables have been controlled for. This is true whether digital or analog. The comparison provided in your post demonstrates only that the two scanners think differently, both shots are workable and settings could be designed to fix either. Same thing is true for Fuji versus Kodak paper.

 

[Roger Cole]

If you had actually read the thread, we are discussing transparencies. Baring someone waving a magic wand to re-invent Cibachrome, there is no other alternative.

Internegatives.

Printing onto RA4 paper by any of the MANY labs that use systems that scan the transparency and print onto RA4 via laser.

 

[Roger Cole]

A hard fall? The world has moved on. There are now much better, more efficient means of printing.

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Not at home from transparencies there aren't.

To have someone else do it, sure.

 

[Roger Cole]

DavidClapp, I think that maybe Velvia is just not for you. It's not for a lot of people. I can handle its finicky exposure and contrast, and I sometimes like its results. I often like it in dull light, but as an all-round film, no way. To me it's usually over-amped and loses subtle differences in color. I liken it to putting sugar on ice cream. It is pretty in its own way, but I'm not looking for "pretty". I want "real".
Maybe you should try Provia. It's closer to neutral and is more forgiving as well. I still miss Astia. That film rendered colors with fidelity, and that (with exceptions) was what I liked most.

Completely agreed on all points. Loved Astia.

 

[Les Sarile]

A comparison between any two shots is typically irrelevant unless all the variables have been controlled for. This is true whether digital or analog. The comparison provided in your post demonstrates only that the two scanners think differently, both shots are workable and settings could be designed to fix either. Same thing is true for Fuji versus Kodak paper.

They look so different in color that one can mistake them to be two different shots but in fact they are the same frame of film on two different scanners done in the typical automatic mode.

That is how most folks do it these days as some find it acceptable and others work it out. If you review most of the threads here that ask about the failure they are having, you will see that it is because of their workflow.

 

[Poisson Du Jour]

They look so different in color that one can mistake them to be two different shots but in fact they are the same frame of film on two different scanners done in the typical automatic mode.

That is how most folks do it these days as some find it acceptable and others work it out. If you review most of the threads here that ask about the failure they are having, you will see that it is because of their workflow.

Ah! So there is the problem. "typical automatic mode". No, that's not how the scanning is done, but with FULL CONTROL by you over colour, USM, initial profiling etc. The rest -- all of it, is done in post, not at the scanner. The scanner is just a tool, an initial step. You don't set out to achieve everything at the scanner alone.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Yes the world has moved on, Poisson. It's just that that the visual quality of the prints generally hasn't. Easier doesn't always equate to better.
I find it bizzare that more people aren't making the transition in the color darkroom itself. But this a punch buttons era. Become your own
Photomat or lousy one-hour lab. I've taken the time to learn color printing over using color neg film and Fuji Supergloss. It's only a little bit
easier than Cibachrome. But it looks like a photograph, not inkjet. There's fast food, and then there's good food, which is rarely fast, no matter whether the cuisine happens to be analog or digital.

 

[mrred]

Internegatives.

Printing onto RA4 paper by any of the MANY labs that use systems that scan the transparency and print onto RA4 via laser.

Of course. Anything digital was what he was pompous about.

 

[DREW WILEY]

I doubt any pro lab is making internegs anymore. Very few did a good job of it to begin with. It can hypothetically be done on Portra 160, and I have made a few large RA4 prints from 8x10 chromes this way. But to get high-quality reproductions you also need to properly contrast mask the original, which is an advanced printing skills most keyboard types are inherently allergic to, just like any tactile craft that prevents one from being tethered full-time to a high-fructose corn syrup IV. Velvia is the hardest of all chromes to do properly. The dye sets don't match well. A backburner project for me, that I might or might not get back to. I have a lot of excellent 8x10 chromes that I'd still like to print; but I also have a quite a number of newer original color negs that I also want to print, and the latter category will obviously be a lot easier to do.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Every photographic step is lossy: the atmosphere, the lenses, the exposure of the film, development of the film, projecting a slide, scannning [optics and digital losses], digital printing, even chemical cleaning. So if one shoots and develops slides and then projects the slides the losses are less than shoots and develop slides, scans the slides [optical and digital losses], and digitally projects slides. Adding scanning before projecting adds losses that are not recoverable.

The same case can be made for optically and chemically printing slides [or negatives] versus scanning slides and printing either digital to chemistry or all digital printing.

 

[DREW WILEY]

When dupes, internegs, or color separation negs are generated by registered contact using modern films, the loss is extremely minor, esp where LF film is involved. I would be pretty damn hard to do a better job via scanning, though scanning and post-correction is sometimes easier. A master technician should be able to do an excellent job either way. But all those ole quickie slide dupe machines were all about
quickie, not quality. Anything good takes patience, both to learn the ropes, and to commit to the final quality of any given individual image.
But even projection duplication, optically, from small format originals, can be done very precisely if one has the right gear and techniques.

 

[markbarendt]

They look so different in color that one can mistake them to be two different shots but in fact they are the same frame of film on two different scanners done in the typical automatic mode.

That is how most folks do it these days as some find it acceptable and others work it out. If you review most of the threads here that ask about the failure they are having, you will see that it is because of their workflow.

I inappropriately used the word shot, print would have been better, still not perfect.

I agree that it's typically something that the photographer is doing that is the problem.

 

[Roger Cole]

Of course. Anything digital was what he was pompous about.

Maybe, but his premise is flawed in that case. I can accept that one doesn't like even the best ink jet prints (though I think the best ones can be superb) but the results available from the labs that scan and print via laser onto RA4 are entirely different. No way they are inferior to conventional optical prints onto RA4. One might find them inferior to Ilfo/Cibachrome but that's largely a matter of taste, and which RA4 material is used. I know Drew likes to print his C41 negatives on Fuji ... Supergloss? Ultragloss? Anyway, apparently it's pretty Ilfo/Cibachrome-like.

 

[Poisson Du Jour]

Maybe, but his premise is flawed in that case. I can accept that one doesn't like even the best ink jet prints (though I think the best ones can be superb) but the results available from the labs that scan and print via laser onto RA4 are entirely different. No way they are inferior to conventional optical prints onto RA4. One might find them inferior to Ilfo/Cibachrome but that's largely a matter of taste, and which RA4 material is used. I know Drew likes to print his C41 negatives on Fuji ... Supergloss? Ultragloss? Anyway, apparently it's pretty Ilfo/Cibachrome-like.

Roger,
The lab that handles my RA4 production uses a wet chemical machine with LED exposure. It is not a new development, nor even recent, but a process that has been around for 20-25 years at least. I do not know why you are mentioning "laser"; such things are not used unless by some full-digital means they are employed in pure digital printing (which is what I am definitely NOT involved in). I concur with your commentary about the quality of inkjet (giclée to us!); the range of media using this method has brought about quite breathtaking results for any sort of photography and the longevity is now upwards of one century in ideal conditions (e.g. framed). Ilfochrome Classic is not a patch on the modern RA4 methods where a lot of flexibility of control is afforded which never was (nor never would be) using the Ilfochrome Classic process. For what it's worth, Ilfochrome literally drove people (printers!) mad with its inherent inflexibility and quality problems. I know this from heavy, frustrating involvement with Ilfochrome. Frankly I'm quite happy it's gone, and that view is shared by many who have found how much better professionally- produced RA4 prints are. We are not talking "off the cuff", but from real world, brutal experience. There will always be the uber-purists who whistle Dixie until the cows come home about the so-called "superb viewing quality" of Ilfochrome Classic (only partially correct), and look upon giclée with smug disdain. We pay serious money for the best of this stuff (e.g. AUD$89 for a 20x20cm print on Canson Rag Photographique, with a maximum print width of 2.6 metres for those wedding shots where something must literally fill a wall...) and it sells well, alongside the RA4 products. Of the Ilfochrome Classic prints I have in my gallery, they still attract attention for the quality of photography, not the media! A print is a print is a print. Customers are not interested in pedantics about print technology, just quality imaging that is produced to last.

RA4 machine first introduced into service in 1990.

RA4 print output 29x27" KEP-M-B

 

[Roger Cole]

Roger,
The lab that handles my RA4 production uses a wet chemical machine with LED exposure. It is not a new development, nor even recent, but a process that has been around for 20-25 years at least. I do not know why you are mentioning "laser"; such things are not used unless by some full-digital means they are employed in pure digital printing (which is what I am definitely NOT involved in).

Because that was my (apparently incorrect) understanding based on the modern RA4 papers being optimized for such exposure and having read that they were optimized for "laser" exposure. It makes no real difference though. Our points are the same - these machines make excellent prints onto RA4 material from transparencies.

But you can't do it all yourself at home and that's my personal sticking point.

 

[Poisson Du Jour]

Too many other dramas at home and in the studio without moving in a 2,000kg RA4 machine.

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[Roger Cole]

Well of course.

But I have my black and white darkroom, I've printed plenty of RA4 prints from color negs that I found quite satisfactory therein (in the old days - mid 90s, haven't taken up home color printing again since my return to photography but I plan to) - so having to send out transparencies still grates somewhat. I'd be far more likely to get a scanner and a nice ink jet printer. But I find myself unenthused about that, not about the results (which I think can be really excellent as I said) but because I just don't enjoy the process. This is also what keeps me from shooting black and white 8x10. I don't want to be limited to contact prints that are smaller than excellent prints I can easily make my 4x5 and medium format negatives, I don't have a way to optically enlarge it, and I just can't get excited about scanning it.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Ciba was idiosyncratic. No doubt about it. But one learned to optimize its inherent personality. No medium is perfect or ever will be. So it is
easier to work with RA4 materials, though I am deeply appreciative or having the background and equipment of beating those old chromes into submission for exceptional Ciba results, because analogous techniques are often necessary to get the best results with optical RA4 printing. Scanning and digital output onto RA4 papers does not eliminate this challenge, but just channels it down a different pathway of fine
tuning. Very high quality results can be obtained several ways. I just like working with my hands, and am currently training my day job
replacement so I can get away from these damn keyboards forever! But black and white printing will continue to compete with my color work in terms of my remaining time above ground. I don't even have any objection to color inkjet per se - I love the way it can reproduce
the odd effects of older color films, for example. I just don't like it for my own shots.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Too many other dramas at home and in the studio without moving in a 2,000kg RA4 machine. 

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Amen brother!

 

[DREW WILEY]

RA4 can easily be done in drums too.

 

[Jon Buffington]

I know I am going back a couple of pages but I wanted to respond to this quote.

I am trying to conquer this with an Epson v850 scanner. I am realising its limits, mainly in its ability to pull out dark shadows, but for now its perfectly adequate at this stage in my film adventure. I think the biggest problem I am suffering from is colour casts. If it wasn't for the Camera RAW filter in Photoshop CC I would be having a very tough time of things, that and the Selective Colour adjustment layer.

Flatbed scanners (consumer scanners for that matter) are a laborious exercise into madness (for me). The problem, which was illustrated later, are that home scanners read this film a certain way but not the way the manufacturer wanted it to be (no product profiles baked in). I gave up flatbed scanning on my Epson and almost gave up on film until moving to a proper minilab scanner that has color negative profiles in there. Of course there is some variation between minilab scanners (noritsu, Kodak, etc). I happen to use a Kodak pakon f135+ and finally I am seeing the colors I expected and wanted. Sure, color correction is needed at times but that is due to lighting and sloppy non use of appropriate filter (warm/cool) and/or sloppy home processing (temps off, expired chems, etc). Anyways, here is an example of Kodak ektar in 35mm taken with a Minolta srt201 and rokkor 50/1.7. Slight adjustments were made in LR, mostly adding a graduated ND to darken the sky, levels and sharpening.



Granted I found ektar to be the one film that scanned reasonably well on flatbeds but for Fuji or Kodak c-41, color casts were bad.


I look forward to the day that I can build a proper dark room for enlarging.

edit to add: couple examples of Portra 160 Next 5 taken with a low contrast lens (canon 50/1.8 serenar on leica cl)





and 3 more ektar






I know quite a few folks use colorneg plugin for PS to get *correct colors from scanners without profiles and their results appear very nice and correct.