ECN-2 film

ECN-2 film is said to be a low(er) contrast film when developed in ECN-2 developer. My experience with it agrees with that.

This is what Kodak says about Vision3 5203 (50D):

Maybe my math is flawed, but I can't see that Portra 400 is significantly higher contrast:

Just by observing the exposed leader of the film I can see that ECN-2 Dmax never reaches that of a C-41 film. ECN-2 film in C-41 developer gives contrast and densities of a typical C-41 film (but there is a cross).

What am I missing?

I pretty much stopped using ECN-2 film after I set up my darkroom for RA-4 printing since prints from ECN-2 film were hit and miss. More often than not the good ones came from pushed ECN-2 film developed with C-41. The sample is to small but it seems that the higher the contrast of ECN-2 negative the better the print.

And that brings me back to the Kodak's Vision3 spec sheets. They suggest that properly developed ECN-2 should in fact not be lower in contrast than C-41 film. Maybe the spec sheets are just a copy/paste from some other material?

Opinions from other ECN-2 film users are greatly appreciated!

brbo said:

Maybe my math is flawed, but I can't see that Portra 400 is significantly higher contrast:

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Carefully read the horizontal axes. There's a rather massive difference in H/D response between those films.

Vision3 films are designed to be scanned and worked on as digital intermediaries. Cinema stocks must be low contrast for the color grading process they go through later on. Take a look at 'log' footage from digital cameras. This is what cinematographers expect basically.

There is a lot of interest at the moment in ECN-2 for still photographers, and that's all great. 50D, 250D/T, and 500T are all wonderful films in their own right. However, some of this interest IMHO is simply due to the exotic nature of cine films. Their reputation for being superior to Portra and Ektar is over stated. The fact is, in my experience, they aren't all that different. Ektar is probably as fine grained as 50D or close to. Portra 400 is just as versatile as 500T assuming you don't require a tungsten film. These films were developed with Vision3 technology and Kodak has not released a new generation since. What amazes me is that there is so little grain difference between all these films. In a moderate print size, Portra 400 isn't much grainer than 50D! Pretty amazing stuff.

For the RA4 darkroom I would certainly chose a C41 film. For scanning, pick what you wish! The lots of great choices. You really can't go wrong!

koraks said:

Carefully read the horizontal axes. There's a rather massive difference in H/D response between those films.

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As I said, maybe I need to refresh my math. When I convert the Portra X axis I get same 16 stops as on the 50D.

But let's say that I'm wrong (and I would really appreciate someone pointing out my error), can anyone of you people shooting ECN-2 produce a negative developed for 3min in ECN-2 developer with a density of 2.8 in blue channel?

NortheastPhotographic said:

Vision3 films are designed to be scanned and worked on as digital intermediaries. Cinema stocks must be low contrast for the color grading process they go through later on. Take a look at 'log' footage from digital cameras. This is what cinematographers expect basically.

There is a lot of interest at the moment in ECN-2 for still photographers, and that's all great. 50D, 250D/T, and 500T are all wonderful films in their own right. However, some of this interest IMHO is simply due to the exotic nature of cine films. Their reputation for being superior to Portra and Ektar is over stated. The fact is, in my experience, they aren't all that different. Ektar is probably as fine grained as 50D or close to. Portra 400 is just as versatile as 500T assuming you don't require a tungsten film. These films were developed with Vision3 technology and Kodak has not released a new generation since. What amazes me is that there is so little grain difference between all these films. In a moderate print size, Portra 400 isn't much grainer than 50D! Pretty amazing stuff.

For the RA4 darkroom I would certainly chose a C41 film. For scanning, pick what you wish! The lots of great choices. You really can't go wrong!

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I've found the ECN-2 film stock to be quite grainy compared to still stocks.

Cholentpot said:

I've found the ECN-2 film stock to be quite grainy compared to still stocks.

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Lots of factors effect grain, so hard to make a single determination. Given that they're meant to be projected 50' across or more in a theater I think they hold up pretty well.

NortheastPhotographic said:

Lots of factors effect grain, so hard to make a single determination. Given that they're meant to be projected 50' across or more in a theater I think they hold up pretty well.

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Probably yes, but keep in mind that there are two counter arguments:

• Viewing distance is quite long.
• Each frame is projected for 1/24 of a second, so grain is effectively reduced.

Anon Ymous said:

Probably yes, but keep in mind that there are two counter arguments:

• Viewing distance is quite long.
• Each frame is projected for 1/24 of a second, so grain is effectively reduced.

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Very true. However I stand by my statement. The Vision3 films are neither substantially finer grained nor grainer than C41. A comparison between 50D and Ektar has to be somewhere, but the point is mooted because Ektar just looks like Ektar and if you want that look that's why you shoot it.

NortheastPhotographic said:

Lots of factors effect grain, so hard to make a single determination. Given that they're meant to be projected 50' across or more in a theater I think they hold up pretty well.

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Movies are also shot on what is essentially half frame. Grain is not a major factor when shooting movies.

brbo said:

Maybe my math is flawed, but I can't see that Portra 400 is significantly higher contrast.

koraks said:

Carefully read the horizontal axes. There's a rather massive difference in H/D response between those films.

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Well, you both got it wrong...

The horizontal (exposure) axes are with an error of 1/3 stop at same scale.

The gross difference though is at the vertical (density) axes. Corrected for that, the ECN graphs would be much more shallow.

AgX said:

The horizontal (exposure) axes are with an error of 1/3 stop at same scale.

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The log exposure is conveniently included in the top part of the 50D graph, making them fairly easy to compare. Yes, the 50D is much more shallow.

koraks said:

The log exposure is conveniently included in the top part of the 50D graph, making them fairly easy to compare. Yes, the 50D is much more shallow.

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Sorry for being overly dense, but I'm still not seeing it. The scale is shifted aprox. 3 stops (a difference in film speeds iso50 vs iso400), so not longer/shorter in either of them.

This is 50D curves squashed to the scale of Portra graph:

brbo said:

This is 50D curves squashed to the scale of Portra graph:

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More or less, yeah. It's a bit finicky to merge them together; this is what I come up with:

Scaled the vertical axes to align on the same log density for both graphs. Then I tried to match them by overlaying the toe of each graph on top of each other. When doing so, it immediately becomes apparent that dmin is higher for Portra than for 50D, but that's of little concern. B & R channels (so Y & C dyes) show a significantly higher gamma for Portra, while interestingly the G (M dye) gammas are more or less the same. This illustrates the difference in color balance and linearity, and also explains why it's so damn hard (impossible) to get a good RA4 print from an ECN2 negative - crossover is guaranteed by the non-matching curves between 50D film and RA4 paper. Notice also how the 50D film already shows a distinct shoulder towards the right side of the graph, while the shoulder is not yet visible for Portra. Also notice the breakdown of tracking between the 3 color curves in the 50D graph at the shoulder, with red/cyan shift occurring at that point. Finally, notice the shorter toe of Portra, suggesting the layers track quite nicely if sufficient exposure is given, but with underexposure, the whole thing breaks down in a muddy mess, whereas with 50D there's some detail being preserved in the toe region although with poor color tracking.

Ok, we may have a different perception of "massively" different scales and "gross" difference in densities...

But, my point was not to compare the two graphs. More to compare graphs to reality. I want to know whether people that shoot and develop ECN-2 films reach that densities? More than 2.8 on B for Vision3 emulsions? The highest I found in my ECN-2 negatives was still less than 2.6 and that is with 4:30m of development (that is just shy of push2 for ECN-2). Regarding Portra, people get 3.0D+ and are not even close to the shoulder of the film? What sorcery do you use that will give you 3.5+D on C-41 film? I've never seen it with the film I developed or had it developed by labs that should be and most probably are very much within specs. Odd thing is that all those (obviously massively underdeveloped) negatives print beautifully.

Maybe I need to seriously reconsider every step in my developing procedure, but it would still seem prudent to wait and see if anybody can produce a C-41 with B>3.5D and G>3.0D. Because if that film only lives in Kodak's (and Fuji's) spec sheets I should probably not bother...

I only used 500T (Cinestill 800T) developed in C-41 and it is more or less ok with optical RA4 printing, even some times you get funny colors. I don't see the point for 50D when we have already excellent slow speed films in C-41 for a similar or less price.

brbo said:

But, my point was not to compare the two graphs. More to compare graphs to reality. I want to know whether people that shoot and develop ECN-2 films reach that densities? More than 2.8 on B for Vision3 emulsions? The highest I found in my ECN-2 negatives was still less than 2.6 and that is with 4:30m of development (that is just shy of push2 for ECN-2). Regarding Portra, people get 3.0D+ and are not even close to the shoulder of the film? What sorcery do you use that will give you 3.5+D on C-41 film? I've never seen it with the film I developed or had it developed by labs that should be and most probably are very much within specs. Odd thing is that all those (obviously massively underdeveloped) negatives print beautifully.

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I don't understand your question; can you reformulate it, please? From your first post, I distilled that your question was basically "ECN2 film behaves differently from C41 film when printing it onto RA4, but how come I don't see this in the datasheet curves?" I think we tackled that: you can see in the curves what you can also see in the darkroom when printing RA4 from ECN2 vs. C41 negatives, but it's a bit finicky to compare the curves. If you do, then the difference is visible in the curved and matches with reality (at least in my experience).
I'm not sure what your question about the high densities (3.0-3.5 etc.) is about?

The problem to me in this thread is the term "contrast.
One may compare gradients and one may compare Dmax.

In any case for ECN-2 in its own process at least the graphs show less of both compared to C-41 film.

Sorry for not being clear enough.

My questions for those who have measured the densities of C-41 and ECN-2 films:
- do you reach B>3.2D, G>2.7D, R>2.2 on C-41 film regularly (as implied by the spec sheets) and you still haven't hit the shoulder?
- do you reach B>2.8D, G>2.6D, R>1.7D on ECN-2 film with standard ECN-2 process (3:00min)?

If the answer to both is a "yes", then I obviously need to go back and learn how to develop my films properly. If the answer to both is a "no", then we're all good.

Maybe it's just my densitiometer...

halfaman said:

I only used 500T (Cinestill 800T) developed in C-41 and it is more or less ok with optical RA4 printing, even some times you get funny colors. I don't see the point for 50D when we have already excellent slow speed films in C-41 for a similar or less price.

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Where am I going to get 100 feet of anything in color for $50? With 50D 250D and 500T I can get short ends for that price or less.

brbo said:

Sorry for not being clear enough.

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No worries; I get it now. So you're basically concerned your processing may be off because you're not seeing the kind of dmax that the curves suggest. I can see how that could worry you, but I'd personally look at the more reasonable densities instead - i.e. the ones where the actual image information is. I can imagine odd things happening at the shoulder that wouldn't necessarily indicate a problem when printing.

Cholentpot said:

Where am I going to get 100 feet of anything in color for $50? With 50D 250D and 500T I can get short ends for that price or less.

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That is a good point, I was thinking in Cinestill in my comment but it is true that there are movie left overs from time to time that could be very attactive.

halfaman said:

That is a good point, I was thinking in Cinestill in my comment but it is true that there are movie left overs from time to time that could be very attactive.

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I just got nearly 250 feet of the stuff for a song. Sure, I have to deal with the REMJET and breaking down the rolls, but I've got 50, 250, and 500 speed color film now.

halfaman said:

I only used 500T (Cinestill 800T) developed in C-41 and it is more or less ok with optical RA4 printing, even some times you get funny colors.

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ECN-2 film in C-41 developer gives me a "nice" cross.

(this is expired 5219, but I don't think that is the reason for a cross)

I'm now thinking that ECN-2 at nominal speed and push2 processed might be the best shot at getting a printable ECN-2 negative.

Right at the moment, we are also working on this issue -> contrast picking for our ECN development.
We were processing ECN in CD3 ("original" but locally brewed by our chemist) developer and first used time of 3.05 and T=41. The contrast of the neg observed on the viewing box was lower than of C41 in CD4 for sure.

So by test and error, we tweaked it a little bit by going to lower T=38C and longer times (that allow using JOBO processor more convenient - ours CCP2 do not like to work stable on 41C and preheating developer in separate temp.bath slower process and tend to increase operator errors). Time / temp curve was provided to us by our chemist. We made tests that general contrast to be very like with 41C/3:05min and then little bit added time so that compensate for little less color output with lower temp. At the same time, it added contrast.

We stopped at some point that visually was appealing to us / our scanners still could digest it comfortable / we still could if needed print it optically if some client insisted to.
Of course, we had some opposite responses from clients that our way of processing was not like the ones they had from cine-labs clueing to end of cine-batch and that that was the best processing of ecn film they tried.

Everything was calm for us till this NewYear we got from the BH ecn-2 control strips ((outdated -> will post that in a separate post) = they clearly show us that we are over-burning film a lot.
ECN controls are different from C41s that we use all the time. So we need first to find the correct time to be exactly in their specs and then process the usual sensitometer strip to compare contrasts in some digits.
I Will post results here when finished.

But now I agree absolutely with the previous opinion that you should decide either you need to scan only (then there is (maybe) sense to process to original specs), or if you tend to use some hybrid.
Then our practice advises us that there is a need to boost contrast to some extent.

I also agree that C41 Ekrar / Portra gives generally better overall results.
But at least here in UA they are so much more expensive than even with free development that we do for c41 it is the same price or more expensive than rerolled factory FRESH date (not even tonnes of outdated that you could find now) ECN + 4usd ecn-development.

Also, I do not agree that there is no difference between ECN and the C41 picture look.
Our blind test shows that most people see better color output from ecn/cd3 development. Red colors are of the most noticeable difference.
I tend to think that maybe these differences are equally or more relevant to CD3 developing agent than ecn film formulation itself.

For this idea says the fact that we see better color rendition and lower fog processing outdated c41 films by our ECN procedure than doing it right by C41 procedure.
Maybe even not the only CD3 agent is doing that but the absence of any other than sulfite conservatives in ecn formulation (you pay for that with only a day-two real life of ecn mixed developer).

Another way -> processing ENC in CD4/c41 developer gives awful to mediocre results from all the examples I have seen.

......
Ok, sorry if went from the topic. Came to the forum to write about outdated ECN strips and saw your post, that resonated with our own experiments at the moment.
Hope that paid for that with some shared information.

Cholentpot said:

I just got nearly 250 feet of the stuff for a song. Sure, I have to deal with the REMJET and breaking down the rolls, but I've got 50, 250, and 500 speed color film now.

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And now UltrafineOnline has fresh 100ft reels of all 4 emulsions for just a bit under $100, or less than Ilford and Kodak BW at B&H.