Film turning green or is it something else?

Ricardo pacheco · Jan 2, 2017

Hi everyone. I'm new to this amazing site.

After 20 years in a box, I re-discovered all my old film negatives. Most of them are color, some are B&W. I've never been a professional photographer, so back then I developed everywhere from Walmart to Kodak labs. Now I want to have all those photos (2000+) in digital files. I live in Mexico and the cheapest cost to scan PER PHOTO is around 1 USD. I've been trying different methods for the last month and the most effective seems to be to use a DSLR camera to shoot directly at the film negative while I backlit the negative. Well, turns out all the photographs have a green tone. Is it the film being damaged from 20 years in the box? Is it a mistake in my camera? I'm attaching the 2 pics for reference.

Thanks for you attention on this matter!

Ricardo

DWThomas · Jan 2, 2017

This question might be better addressed on DPUG, but I think your main problem is the need to do some color adjustment of your scans/photos to balance out the effects of the orange masking in the color negatives. A program like Vuescan that interfaces with many negative scanners has options built in to do that as part of the scan. The good news is your negative appears to be in decent condition.

MattKing · Jan 2, 2017

DWThomas said:
This question might be better addressed on DPUG

+1
First, welcome to APUG.
Second, you may have picked the wrong site!
At APUG, we discourage scanning and other digital discussions. Here we try to keep discussions to analog processes.
There is a sister site - DPUG.ORG which is much quieter, but welcomes scanning discussions.
Good luck with your efforts.

Ricardo pacheco · Jan 2, 2017

Thanks, guys. Since I felt the core problem was the film, I thought this forum was the right one. Thanks for you support.

Photo Engineer · Jan 2, 2017

The film is damaged. See the streak in the upper left.

PE

removed account4 · Jan 2, 2017

it might be the light you are using to illuminate the negative,
different light sources will give off a different color temperature
( like daylight film exposed with a tungston hot-light will be blue )
it might be as easy as using a color corrected light source ( like xeon / flash through milk glass )
if that won't help, you might find an easier fix is you can adjust the white balance in the camera to the light source maybe ..
or in camera you can adjust the hue / color balance to adjust the color of your negative.
beautiful renaisance baroque buildings you have in your neck of the woods !
i hope you can get your problem sorted out, 2000+ negatives is a beautiful library to dig into !

welcome to apug, and all the best for 2017.

john

added later:
a white sheet of thin xerox / copymachine paper taped on a window and the film infront of it
( if it is thin enough exposure wise that is ) might offer an easy "diffuse-daylight-lightbox" solution.

Molli · Jan 2, 2017

I'd be inclined to agree with John in that it's a problem of the light source you're photographing your negatives by, plus also not having software specifically designed to deal well with the orange mask. It's a shame you're so far away; I'd be happy to loan you a scanner that, while a long way from professional, would at least give you something to look at
You definitely have a nice memory encapsulated beneath all of that green goo...

Far from the best colour correction, but it was a terribly small file to play with! If all else fails, you can always keep doing as you have been and then convert them to black and white

LAG · Jan 2, 2017

Ricardo pacheco said:
Well, turns out all the photographs have a green tone. Is it the film being damaged from 20 years in the box? Is it a mistake in my camera?

I agree with DWThomas. The film is no damage. There is not a mistake in your camera and finally, this is not the best site for those questions.

However to help you with this a little bit, whatever the light you use in the film/file process, you must do a Colour correction (after/before) with the Colour negatives to get rid of the orange mask and achieve the right colour balance.

Buena suerte Ricardo!

pentaxuser · Jan 2, 2017

Ricardo pacheco said:
Thanks, guys. Since I felt the core problem was the film, I thought this forum was the right one. Thanks for you support.

I think you are right. The problem looks to be the same as I have on some old colour negative film from the early to mid 1980s, namely the negatives take on a magenta look. I have not bothered to try and reprint such negatives on RA4 but instead have printed them as B&W.

How you compensate, assuming you can compensate properly when transferring such negs to digital I have no idea

pentraxuser

MattKing · Jan 2, 2017

If you were printing these negatives in a darkroom (which would be on topic for APUG) you would find that:
1) different vintages and film types of negatives would require slightly different settings for the base colour filtration for prints; and
2) as colour negatives age, their colour balance may change, due to the way that the dyes in colour negatives degrade over time.

For the same reason, any process of digitization of those negatives will need to adjust for those changes and variations.

Try adding quite a bit of red to your light source.

Photo Engineer · Jan 2, 2017

Look at the mottle in the image in post #7. You can see clear damage of some sort.

Sorry to repeat this, but you seem to be ignoring the obvious.

PE

LAG · Jan 2, 2017

pentaxuser said:
How you compensate, assuming you can compensate properly when transferring such negs to digital I have no idea

The Colour Theory does not change, it's the same you'll find yourself working in the Colour Darkroom

MattKing said:
...Try adding quite a bit of red ...

Magenta

Photo Engineer said:
Look at the mottle in the image in post #7. You can see clear damage of some sort.

OP has asked if the green tone had something to do with the film being damage, and it is not for that reason.

MattKing · Jan 2, 2017

MattKing said:
Try adding quite a bit of red to your light source.

LAG said:
Magenta

As the colour cast obtained by the OP is actually at least as much cyan as it is green, and as the mask built into c41 negatives is high in red, and as c41 negatives were originally optimized for printing using incandescent light sources (which are high in red), and as the OP is using a DSLR rather than a scanner, the former colour printer in me thinks the OP might find that an increase in red will help the most.

Ricardo pacheco · Jan 2, 2017

Photo Engineer said:
Look at the mottle in the image in post #7. You can see clear damage of some sort.

Sorry to repeat this, but you seem to be ignoring the obvious.

PE

I'm aware of the mottle, which is caused by a damaged gel I placed (only this time) in front of the light bulb I used to backlit the film. That being said, some of my films are physically damaged, but I'm not worried about that. It is what it is after 20+ years in a box. The green layer is what I'm worried about, but thanks for putting pressure on pointing us to what you thought the actual problem was.

Ricardo pacheco · Jan 2, 2017

Molli said:
I'd be inclined to agree with John in that it's a problem of the light source you're photographing your negatives by, plus also not having software specifically designed to deal well with the orange mask. It's a shame you're so far away; I'd be happy to loan you a scanner that, while a long way from professional, would at least give you something to look at
You definitely have a nice memory encapsulated beneath all of that green goo...
View attachment 170152

Far from the best colour correction, but it was a terribly small file to play with! If all else fails, you can always keep doing as you have been and then convert them to black and white

Thanks for putting such effort on this! I'm putting the pieces together with all your help.

LAG · Jan 2, 2017

MattKing said:
As the colour cast obtained by the OP is actually at least as much cyan as it is green, and as the mask built into c41 negatives is high in red, and as c41 negatives were originally optimized for printing using incandescent light sources (which are high in red), and as the OP is using a DSLR rather than a scanner, the former colour printer in me thinks the OP might find that an increase in red will help the most.

Matt

Do not trust your monitor (as I am not). If you correct green with red, good for you. As for the rest see your own points 1) 2) above.

I deeply respect your thought to help him.
Best

MattKing · Jan 2, 2017

LAG said:
If you correct green with red, good for you.

Nope, one corrects cyan with red.

Prof_Pixel · Jan 2, 2017

MattKing said:
the mask built into c41 negatives is high in red, and as c41 negatives were originally optimized for printing using incandescent light sources (which are high in red

Nope - as frequently discussed here on APUG, the mask is there to compensate for unwanted spectral absorption of the cyan and magenta dyes.

Photo Engineer · Jan 2, 2017

And, something is wrong as you cannot fix the image totally. It has begun to fade, was under exposed or was poorly processed in the first place. IDK. I have tried restoring the image and there is more wrong than stated. Sorry.

PE

MattKing · Jan 3, 2017

Prof_Pixel said:
Nope - as frequently discussed here on APUG, the mask is there to compensate for unwanted spectral absorption of the cyan and magenta dyes.

Understood.

But the OP wasn't using scanning software or anything else designed with the mask in mind. So the suggestion to add some red to his light source was made to try to bring things into a realm that would be easier to deal with.

LAG · Jan 3, 2017

MattKing said:
Nope, one corrects cyan with red.

I knew you knew

LAG · Jan 3, 2017

Prof_Pixel said:
the mask is there to compensate for unwanted spectral absorption of the cyan and magenta dyes.

Exactly!

MattKing said:
Understood.

But the OP wasn't using scanning software or anything else designed with the mask in mind...

I believe that OP needed another simple explanation, as he seems to know nothing about the green tone problem

LAG · Jan 3, 2017

Photo Engineer said:
And, something is wrong as you cannot fix the image totally. It has begun to fade, was under exposed or was poorly processed in the first place. IDK. I have tried restoring the image and there is more wrong than stated. Sorry.

PE

And again has nothing to do with green, in fact those things wrong seem to have another colour ...

Poorly processed in the first place, I bet on it too! (Under exposed, is hard today being a d.g.t.l step in the middle)

No need to say sorry

Edit: by the way, is not a good thing to try to restore the OP image to achieve good makers, due to the fact that it is not the best source, for many reasons

Film turning green or is it something else?

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