First roll of Harman Phoenix photos up!

BrianShaw said:

defies the notion that subjective human response was ignored

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Yes, alright, but I can't help but noticing that the scope of your observation is entirely different from my remarks. My remarks were about the film 'tests' on YouTube etc. by mostly enthusiast photographers with little focus (at least in those videos/test reports) on objective parameters. Your observation refers to one very specific choice in the placement of a product by the manufacturer, in which (I assume) advice from internal R&D staff was balanced with other interests or purposes.

BrianShaw said:

it might have been a more realistic scenario had they said that “marketing” made then do it.

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One doesn't exclude the other. On a sidenote, one could wonder if Harman thought it advantageous to market a 200 speed film vs a 125 speed film. I guess they must have debated this issue, albeit briefly.

albireo said:

The world is full of absolutely useless film 'tests' done in the darkroom

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Oh, to be clear, my remarks didn't mean to imply that fully 'analog' tests would somehow be inherently better in this regard. The only thing I could say to their (analog test) advantage is that to a large extent, color balance is 'baked into' RA4 paper. People can still mess up processing and especially color balancing, but my experience is that the digital domain is very flexible, and this flexibility extends to getting things right, but also very many ways of getting things...interesting.

Not that this 'baked in' color balance of RA4 paper would help much in the context of Harman Phoenix 200 since that is very evidently not tailored to match RA4 paper curves in any way. I'm still going to enthusiastically trial the combination because the results will be interesting for sure.

Oy veh…

There seem to be two, largely incompatible, understandings of "testing film".

One is objective quantitative tests performed in a dark room and/or laboratory, obtaining graph plots and hard data.

The other is actually taking the film out with a camera, taking some photos and showing what the results were.

The second does, of course, rely on the eye and skills of the photographer, including their skills at taking photos and at printing or scanning/editing. And it relies on their tastes. I could take a photograph that I and perhaps 50% of Photrio members believe to be truly great. While naturally, some members would dislike something in my choice of subject, framing of subject, printing or scanning/editing choices and so on. It also will probably look different on your screen compared to mine.

That doesn't mean that the non-objective practical "out in the field" testing is invalid.

Meyer Trioplan said:

A couple of my own test shots developed in a home ECN-2 kit. Generally subdued sunlight or overcast, posted one at a time within the attachment size limit.

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Thanks for sharing, really nice results. What are the advantages of using an ECN-2 kit?

koraks said:

Not that this 'baked in' color balance of RA4 paper would help much in the context of Harman Phoenix 200 since that is very evidently not tailored to match RA4 paper curves in any way. I'm still going to enthusiastically trial the combination because the results will be interesting for sure.

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I will be enthusiastically watching for your results. I'm going to try to do the same. This film will challenge me to get out of comfort zone of Kodak color negative films. I'll try to let my creative juices flow.

BrianShaw said:

Interesting that in the interview with “Harman scientists”, liked earlier, the stated the measured ISO rating of 124.5 (or so) and then said 200 was chosen because testers suggested it was a better starting point. Seems to defy the objective implementation of the ISO standard and also defies the notion that subjective human response was ignored. It seems, though, that it might have been a more realistic scenario had they said that “marketing” made then do it.

(And, yes, I know that subjectivity has always been part of the underlying “data” in the ISO standard.)

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Just musing here, but it may be that the characteristics of the film mean that over-exposure penalizes the user more than moderate under-exposure - the reverse of what is apparently engineered into the more mainstream colour negative films.
That would be consistent with the observation that it appears to be fairly high contrast.

albireo said:

True, but the above has nothing specifically to do with the fact that such 'tests' are online or that they rely on digitalisation as one of the necessary steps.

The world is full of absolutely useless film 'tests' done in the darkroom, with the tester using decrepit equipment, old uncalibrated densitometers, unknown amounts of measurement and operator error and enlarger and paper-specific confounders of all sorts.

It's just that such darkroom 'tests' don't usually include a digitalisation step, so we get to see fewer of them online.

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There is a whole discussion to be had about whether there is a meaningful distinction between the meaning of the terms "test", "trial", "try out" and "demonstration".
IMHO, "demonstration" better describes most of what you will find on YouTube.

koraks said:

Not that this 'baked in' color balance of RA4 paper would help much in the context of Harman Phoenix 200 since that is very evidently not tailored to match RA4 paper curves in any way. I'm still going to enthusiastically trial the combination because the results will be interesting for sure.

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Masking for contrast & colour are entirely feasible to enact at the printing stage. As is CC'ing the neg at exposure - though nobody seems to have noticed that Ilford's stated spectral sensitivity is for a 2856K tungsten source on a nominally daylight balanced film.

Lachlan Young said:

Masking for contrast & colour are entirely feasible to enact at the printing stage. As is CC'ing the neg at exposure - though nobody seems to have noticed that Ilford's stated spectral sensitivity is for a 2856K tungsten source on a nominally daylight balanced film.

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There's a guy that pushed some rolls & cross processed some rolls in E6 chemicals & said that after white balancing & editing scans of the roll, it gave a Tungsten look similiar to Kodak Ektachrome 64T, and he says "that could Phoenix, at a technical level, be a tungsten balanced slide film cross processed in c41?" He talks aout it @5:12 mark

albireo said:

Thanks for sharing, really nice results. What are the advantages of using an ECN-2 kit?

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For me it was that I had some 1991 vintage Svema DS-5M shot on Summer Holiday also in my backlog that I wanted to develop, and for that I use a room temp development process in ECN-2 chemistry, so I mixed up this solution instead of C41.

Disconnekt said:

he says "that could Phoenix, at a technical level, be a tungsten balanced slide film cross processed in c41?"

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Short answer: no. It uses CD-4 couplers derived from XP2 Super - but because of the lack of the coloured couplers that make the masking on regular C-41 work, it will cross-process in CD-3 based E-6 giving a relatively 'normal' colour image - allowing for mismatched processes' effects on colour/ longer term durability of dye image etc. The relative spectral sensitivities of Phoenix are such that when the dyes are added to the relevant couplers to create the masking effect, the sensitivity will even out.

Drab, dreary weather and failing light. The latter is not so good, the former I imagine should be great for this film given its high gamma. Grey skies will also help here and there finding a sensible color balance (I hope).

Snipped a roll in half and shot & processed it today.

Smartphone snap of a few negatives that are currently drying:



Inverted & crude curves adjustment:


Can't say anything particularly useful yet, apart from that it evidently records color alright, the contrast is absolutely THROUGH THE ROOF and nothing like a regular C41 film. Most of the negatives basically won't print at all without applying some trickery; the density range looks more like grade 1.5 B&W negatives. Not to worry though; I'm sure something reasonable on RA4 paper can be coaxed from the negatives alright. It's just not going to be straight prints for the most part. And this means there's going to be additional challenges w.r.t. color balance and crossover apart from the inherent curve of the film itself.

Some processing observations:
* The pre-rinse is very bright yellow. Not surprising giving the similar bright yellow color of the emulsion itself on the unprocessed film. I assume this is mostly the blue filter layer.
* No dyes seem to wash out after the first wash (which would either be a pre-rinse or the developer). This is contrary to all regular color negative films (C41 and ECN2) I've worked with so far, which all release some magenta dyes into the wash water. The wash water of Phoenix is absolutely crystal clear right after the fix.
* The wet emulsion side seems unusually hard and slick. A bit like TMX, but even more so. It's barely sticky, in fact. It seems hardened to a much greater extent than other films. It makes me worried a bit about how it'll dry especially in warm and dry weather. There might be a risk of buckling.

koraks said:

an't say anything particularly useful yet, apart from that it evidently records color alright, the contrast is absolutely THROUGH THE ROOF and nothing like a regular C41 film. Most of the negatives basically won't print at all without applying some trickery; the density range looks more like grade 1.5 B&W negatives. Not to worry though; I'm sure something reasonable on RA4 paper can be coaxed from the negatives alright. It's just not going to be straight prints for the most part. And this means there's going to be additional challenges w.r.t. color balance and crossover apart from the inherent curve of the film itself.

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Harman seem to suggest that the material is lurking around a 1.0 average gradient (vs 0.62 or so for masked C-41 aimed at RA-4) - so a really intense contrast boost - not far off how far you'd need to shove a very flat lighting situation in B&W to get it to print at G2 on a diffusion enlarger. Maskable though.

koraks said:

* The pre-rinse is very bright yellow. Not surprising giving the similar bright yellow color of the emulsion itself on the unprocessed film. I assume this is mostly the blue filter layer.

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This is quite important - it means they aren't using CLS, but have (are likely making) a suitable yellow dye - which for Kodak at least, was an innovation that only seems to have happened with the advent of Portra (no idea if it was rolled out to the rest of their C-41 films) - the other waste dyes in masked films will be from the mask, antenna/ layered dyes etc.

Lachlan Young said:

Harman seem to suggest that the material is lurking around a 1.0 average gradient

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I think it's a bit more, even. See #307. And yes, the negatives look like they'd print OK on grade 1.5-2 B&W.

Lachlan Young said:

Maskable though.

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I guess. I've not yet met a color printer in person who does this, let alone routinely. I'm not planning to in any case!

As to the yellow dye, it's a wild guess that it would be the blue filter layer. It might just as well be part of the limited anti-halation package they're using.
Any ideas why it took Kodak many decades to find a yellow dye suitable for this purpose? Or was there simply very little need to eliminate the small amount of silver from that filter layer?

This is a first glance at the negatives I did yesterday on this film:


Above is the negative as scanned. Note that my Epson scanner (like virtually all scanners) does a lot of auto-exposure magic that cannot be disabled in the Epson scan software. So there's no absolute benchmark here; we'll have to interpret everything relative to how the engineers at Epson some 20 years ago decided we should be scanning film.


Shown above is the raw scan of the strips (Epson 4990 film holder). Scanned flat as positive and then used the Curves dialog to approximate a neutral color balance. Starting points in this curve adjustment are:
1: No lopping off of data on the left side of the histogram; these are the dense areas on the negative, so the highlights of the positive.
2: Truncate the shadows just after the bump of the violet hue of the film base itself, which is visible as a little bump/peak in the tail-end of the histogram (see illustration above, shown for the red channel).

This gives at first glance a very decent starting point and no glaring/major issues, apart from a very muted color palette. This is to be expected given the exceedingly drab conditions under which these were shot.

Taking one frame from the set and applying some entirely subjective adjustments to approximate the scene as I experienced it when I photographed it:

* Steepened the blue curve a tiny bit. The datasheet of this film suggests especially a significant blue/yellow crossover, but the adjustment I did here was really less than what I'd expect on that basis, so I guess most of it has already been 'dealt with' by the scanner and its software. It's a black box and there's nothing I can do about it.
* Took out a tiny bit of green from the midtones only. Just a matter of taste/subjectivity. Or maybe it does match with the stronger green response that the characteristic curves show - but this seems pretty much constant, so I would have expected it to be filtered out at this stage already.
* Applied an inverse S-curve on all channels. This does match up very well with the datasheet of the film, which shows a very distinct toe and shoulder. Countering this with an inverse S-curve does indeed bring the image much closer to natural in my view.

If I apply the adjustment curve above on all images, they seem to work out as pretty neutral.

What I take away from the film at this point:
* Scanning the negatives gives a reasonable starting point to take the results in whatever direction you'd want.
* There's nothing inherently outlandish so far. I've evidently not shot any saturated colors yet and that's where things will likely change, but for muted, neutral scenes, it's perfectly feasible to get a realistic looking result when scanning the film.
* It's a grainy film, but this flatbed scanner doesn't really bring it out, so it's not very conspicuous here. However, viewing the negatives with a loupe shows a remarkably gritty appearance. Prints and scans with a proper film scanner (I might make one or two in a minute) will bring this out, I expect.
* It's very contrasty. This is the only firm thing I'd say so far. But in the digital domain, that's all relative, since scanners easily deal with slides, and it's not like we're looking at that sort of density ranges here.

What this mostly shows, of course, is that you can take this whatever direction you want. For instance, I've seen some examples so far that lean in this direction, but I find I need to twist the curves pretty dramatically to get this kind of result, suggesting it's more of a choice than a given:

This is a very dramatic overall S-curve and some pulling and twisting of the separate color channels. But it's certainly not the case that this film gives these sorts of images "out of the box". If I take the same image and give it the adjustment curve I used to make the landscape pic sort of true to life, I get this:

Which is pretty much as it looked in real life.

I might do some wet prints tomorrow; as scarce as daylight is this season, I'd rather not block out what little there is.

@koraks thanks for this, and the detailed info on what you're doing with the scans.

I've only shot 10 exposures of Phoenix so far and am not certain that I'll finish my first roll before Christmas. But I'll try, if a suitable opportunity presents itself.

koraks said:

This is a first glance at the negatives I did yesterday on this film:

View attachment 356414
Above is the negative as scanned. Note that my Epson scanner (like virtually all scanners) does a lot of auto-exposure magic that cannot be disabled in the Epson scan software. So there's no absolute benchmark here; we'll have to interpret everything relative to how the engineers at Epson some 20 years ago decided we should be scanning film.

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Epson Scan is a really nice bit of software from what I remember - it's a shame we can't bypass its processing routines. One thing we can do, to bypass entirely how the Epson engineers decided we should by scanning film, is to stop using Epson scan, and go instead for one of the tools that allow us to extract a raw linear positive from the scanner. So zero scanner software interventions. We can decide to, then, apply consistent inversion routines to all our raw linear positives to greatly increase control over our workflow.

Here's a tutorial, amongst many, on how to extract a raw linear positive in Vuescan. In this case, the youtuber then inverts the positive in a tool called Colorperfect, whose inversion maths is well documented by the author, Christian Oldendorf (very responsive by email, he will share the white paper with the elementary maths when asked).

koraks said:

* Steepened the blue curve a tiny bit. The datasheet of this film suggests especially a significant blue/yellow crossover, but the adjustment I did here was really less than what I'd expect on that basis, so I guess most of it has already been 'dealt with' by the scanner and its software. It's a black box and there's nothing I can do about it.

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There is something you can do about it, see above. Vuescan Professional is - imho - excellent value for money. There might be other tools who allow the extraction of a linear raw positive.

koraks said:

What I take away from the film at this point:
* Scanning the negatives gives a reasonable starting point to take the results in whatever direction you'd want.
* There's nothing inherently outlandish so far. I've evidently not shot any saturated colors yet and that's where things will likely change, but for muted, neutral scenes, it's perfectly feasible to get a realistic looking result when scanning the film.
* It's a grainy film, but this flatbed scanner doesn't really bring it out, so it's not very conspicuous here. However, viewing the negatives with a loupe shows a remarkably gritty appearance. Prints and scans with a proper film scanner (I might make one or two in a minute) will bring this out, I expect.
* It's very contrasty. This is the only firm thing I'd say so far. But in the digital domain, that's all relative, since scanners easily deal with slides, and it's not like we're looking at that sort of density ranges here.

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Fantastic test! Thanks for sharing and I look forward to your final/edited scans of your favourite frames.

Yes, a tool like Vuescan may get you closer to something that resembles a raw scan. But there's always a limit to how close you can get to the real negative; some of the interpretation actually happens in the scanner hardware and firmware. There's no way around that part. You'll notice for instance in Vuescan (see video at around 1:50) that there are some controls that should be useful in getting a linear output. But which settings actually accomplish this? Interestingly, for instance the white point setting relies on the scanned image histogram, so it's already similar in this sense to what Epson scan does in that it performs an 'auto exposure' - speaking of which, there seems also no way in Vuescan to directly access gain settings and I wonder if these are actually under software control or under control of the scanner firmware (this may depend on the scanner model as well).
So I'm slightly weary (to put it mildly) of just assuming that Vuescan's scans are truly more linear than what we get from Epson scan (with its color corrections disabled as far as possible).

But let's not turn this into a scanning thread. I'm just a little weary of relying on just scans, and at the same time I realize that for most people who shoot film, scans are really their aim, so what can you do. As long as you can get from the film what you need, it's all good.

albireo said:

I look forward to your final/edited scans of your favourite frames.

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I'm afraid that's not really going to happen. My interest in scanning is limited. The sort of stuff I've shown above is about as far as I'm going to take it. My interest is in wet printing.

I did scan a few frames with the Minolta. I'll include two examples to illustrate two different points.

First, there's this scene:

I deliberately exposed this for the sky. I set my camera to ISO 200; let's just start by doing what the manufacturer suggests, which in my experience is usually a safe starting point. I was aware of the strong contrast, so I treated the exposures more like slide film, and since the sky was the subject here, I put it at something like +1 overexposure. The strip of foreground I expected to render as pretty much black, and it sure did. Having shot the same scene with other types of film, I know that those tend to better preserve some tone and differentiation in that part of the scene, especially under these low-contrast conditions.

So what I take from this is that there's really very little margin for underexposure. I've seen some mention of pushing this film, which based on the curves as well as this initial real-life shooting experience I find a totally ludicrous idea. This film is much closer to a 100 speed film than 200, and I understand this meshes well with Harman people saying that it's actually 125. I feel that's probably close to the truth.

Btw, I'm quite pleased with how the subtle differentiation in those clouds render in this scan. And as long as the image is kept small, it looks somewhat decent. The graininess of the film doesn't really work with this kind of scene if it needs to be viewed bigger; things start to literally crumble. So on to the next one, which actually is about the grain:


This is just to give context for the 100% pixl-peepers-'r'-us crop to get an impression of scanned grain:

This is unsharpened, and actually not all that bad. The appearance of graininess does depend a lot on density (it looks different in shadows, midtones and highlights), possible contrast adjustments and even the color of the image. Here's for instance a similar crop from the sky image above:


While I find this grain totally unproblematic in the mud image, it becomes a problem for me in the sky image, which I feel asks for a smooth rendition.

None of the examples above have any sharpening applied to them. This would of course emphasize grain. E.g.:

To the left of the vertical magenta/white line is the sharpened area, to the right of it is as original. Note the 'tighter' appearance of grain.

And thus, also this film 'evaluation' turns into a reflection on choices in digital post processing. What little I can say about the film as such is that it has grain, and if I were to try and describe it, I'd call it 'significant' but not overly present, and maybe somewhat mushy in comparison with e.g. Superia 200, which tends to be sharper defined. But I'm already going out on a very shaky limb in saying that, I feel.

koraks said:

I think it's a bit more, even.

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Really depends on whether you're using average gradient or gamma - and people are unduly afraid of masking because certain individuals make it out to be much more complicated than it is.

koraks said:

As to the yellow dye, it's a wild guess that it would be the blue filter layer. It might just as well be part of the limited anti-halation package they're using.
Any ideas why it took Kodak many decades to find a yellow dye suitable for this purpose? Or was there simply very little need to eliminate the small amount of silver from that filter layer?

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It's highly likely the blue filter layer - I think what Ilford mean by 'limited anti-halation' is more to do with the layer between substrate and the bottom emulsion layer being more like a regular B&W film as opposed to the much more complex one in a regular C-41 film (possibly so they could minimise passes through M14 at this stage - the emulsions will have absorber dyes in them) - did you get any light-piping effects from loading/ unloading?

As for the CLS/ dye choice - I think it's simply that a suitable dye performs better than CLS within the imaging system, but was harder to make so that it performed exactly like CLS (i.e. particle size). One of Ilford's senior organic chemists seems to have a background that would suggest a lot of experience within the specific area of chemistry in question.

The graininess is likely due to it using XP2 emulsions each in a single layer rather than something more complicated in terms of multiple emulsions in multiple layers or more complex epitaxial solutions to the same problem (i.e. Delta emulsions) - from what I can tell, the reasoning for using XP2's emulsions was simply that it was already designed to work with colour couplers.

@Lachlan Young makes sense, thanks.
I think I'll manage getting some reasonable prints from these without masking. You're right, it sounds like a lot of work to me. I've done enlarged interpositives etc and it's a process I don't enjoy much. Since the workflow is fairly similar, it's a bit of a last resort for me. Maybe, one day.

Lachlan Young said:

did you get any light-piping effects from loading/ unloading?

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No; I actually suspect that whatever anti-halation they're referring to is actually just the tinted film base and nothing else. This cuts down light piping when loading etc. but it doesn't help all that much against the kind of halation I've seen in online examples. I've not yet shot anything that would the issue; in fact, I kept away from it for the first few shots. In a present test roll I'll include some halation-prone shots.

koraks said:

I actually suspect that whatever anti-halation they're referring to is actually just the tinted film base and nothing else.

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The film base isn't tinted (otherwise it could cause obvious problems) - C-41 substrates are clear (like Ilford's 120 film bases) - but there are usually other dyes (and particles - see Shanebrook) in the anti-hal later under the emulsion + absorber dyes in the emulsions to stop internal halation effects etc - it's also probable that the coloured couplers play a role here too. If it was only reliant on the tinted base, I suspect it would light-pipe like Kentmere can.

Yep, you're right. The coloration of the clear (unexposed) developed Phoenix 200 seems to be cyan at the bottom, then magenta. Given this order, I suspect it's just (deliberate) fog in the image-forming layers and not part of whatever auxiliary package at the bottom of the emulsion stack. Maybe the base density serves to influence toe behavior? It's difficult to tell, but it seems like there's no base density in the top yellow layer.

Coming back to the example images. I had a little time yesterday (but less than I had anticipated) to make one or two prints. Literally one or two, because it took me a massive number of test strips and prints to get...well, not even close to something natural.

Consider this scanned and color-balanced image:


This is a straight print of the same negative:

I kid you not. Same negative. Straight print.

Here's what I get if I get creative with some burning in and a post flash:


In the above prints, I was puzzled by what seems like a gross fogging problem since the color balance on the left 1/3 of the image is so different from the upper right corner. I suspected some massive problem in the optical path or light source of my enlarger. But the 'anomaly' is there in the negative alright. It's just the film that does this. It might have something to do with the slightly brighter part of the sky resulting in a little crossover (probably it's just cyan dye formation in the bottom layer due to the absent anti-halation measures), that combined with the high gamma of the film ends up as pretty massive on the paper.

The filter range on my DIY enlarger was insufficient esp. on the yellow/blue channel to get close to a decent color balance, so I ended up switching over to raw mode where I get full control over the R, G and B intensity scale. However, that's about the point I ran out of time. I might revisit that later, and I might also insert a piece of blank color film somewhere to get the filter settings in a more usual zone, although that's evidently not going to really help much, apart from mentally maybe.

The contrast is formidable. So is the crossover. The grain seems formidable but this is mostly because the gamma is so ridiculously high for a color negative film. This film isn't intended to be optically printed as color negative film, at least not with straight photography in mind. Of course, this can be exploited creatively, and very well at that. This is more lomo than Lomo.

Unleash it on very (extremely) low contrast scenes with an SBR of maybe 2 stops, and you get some pretty gritty stuff. Here's that frame with the yellow triangle I posted before. Turns out it prints even more extreme than I envisioned based on the scan...


Or some mud:


Trying to print this film to get realistic/true to life results feels a bit like going downhill at 100mph on a landslide on a bicycle powered by a rocket engine. The margin of error is kind of small. It also seems to defy the purpose to try and print this for a natural look. The merit of this film is really in the whacky stuff it does and the only sensible approach is to accept (cherish?) it for what it is.

koraks said:

Coming back to the example images. I had a little time yesterday (but less than I had anticipated) to make one or two prints. Literally one or two, because it took me a massive number of test strips and prints to get...well, not even close to something natural.

Consider this scanned and color-balanced image:


This is a straight print of the same negative:
View attachment 356641
I kid you not. Same negative. Straight print.

Here's what I get if I get creative with some burning in and a post flash:
View attachment 356642

In the above prints, I was puzzled by what seems like a gross fogging problem since the color balance on the left 1/3 of the image is so different from the upper right corner. I suspected some massive problem in the optical path or light source of my enlarger. But the 'anomaly' is there in the negative alright. It's just the film that does this. It might have something to do with the slightly brighter part of the sky resulting in a little crossover (probably it's just cyan dye formation in the bottom layer due to the absent anti-halation measures), that combined with the high gamma of the film ends up as pretty massive on the paper.

The filter range on my DIY enlarger was insufficient esp. on the yellow/blue channel to get close to a decent color balance, so I ended up switching over to raw mode where I get full control over the R, G and B intensity scale. However, that's about the point I ran out of time. I might revisit that later, and I might also insert a piece of blank color film somewhere to get the filter settings in a more usual zone, although that's evidently not going to really help much, apart from mentally maybe.

The contrast is formidable. So is the crossover. The grain seems formidable but this is mostly because the gamma is so ridiculously high for a color negative film. This film isn't intended to be optically printed as color negative film, at least not with straight photography in mind. Of course, this can be exploited creatively, and very well at that. This is more lomo than Lomo.

Unleash it on very (extremely) low contrast scenes with an SBR of maybe 2 stops, and you get some pretty gritty stuff. Here's that frame with the yellow triangle I posted before. Turns out it prints even more extreme than I envisioned based on the scan...
View attachment 356643

Or some mud:
View attachment 356644

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Love these results! I see nothing wacky in any of the above! Keep them coming!

And.. As I anticipated.. As the really creative people come out and mould this stuff to their vision, we're really going to see some creatively interesting results.

koraks said:

Trying to print this film to get realistic/true to life results feels a bit like going downhill at 100mph on a landslide on a bicycle powered by a rocket engine. The margin of error is kind of small. It also seems to defy the purpose to try and print this for a natural look.

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I really like what you did with it. I don't know anyone in my 'bubble' who would use C41 film to achieve photorealism. Again, in my bubble. If I wanted a 'realistic' photo I'd whip out my iphone, take that boring realistic photo, and print it on my Canon sublimation printer. A boring, realistic, true to life image that I will forget about within 10 minutes.

Please post more prints, this is exciting. I placed an order for a few rolls.

Kyle McDougall has a new video out - not much new for the first 10 minutes of the video (some twaddle about DSLR scanning giving better results - nonsense).

But by the 10 minute mark it gets quite interesting - first attempt I've seen at shooting a colour target and comparing colour & grain rendition when varying set speed: