First Time Using 120 Gold 200, Portra 160, & Ektar 100

[Andrew O'Neill]

Yes, the colour film will be scanned and digital seps will be made. I certainly do not want "normal" colour, as that would bore me. But... I really do like making seps in-camera. I just made one using 8x10 CatLABS. Turned out better than I expected!

 

[braxus]

Andy- that sounds an awful lot like the old 3 strip movie cameras back in the day. I think Technicolor was similar to how Kodachrome was made, correct me if Im wrong.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Technicolor was a true RGB tricolor process which employed a special big camera which separated the image onto three different reels of registered film. These in turn were respectively dyed with Y,C,and M to produce an overlapping positive color image by sandwiching all three layers afterwards. The specific dyes could be tailored to the overall setting and color palette of the movie.

Kodachrome was unrelated. Only a single film was used in its case, which was a complex process in its own right.

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

Andy- that sounds an awful lot like the old 3 strip movie cameras back in the day. I think Technicolor was similar to how Kodachrome was made, correct me if Im wrong.

I'm talking about tri-colour gum bichromate printing...

 

[DREW WILEY]

There have been many fashions of tricolor printing invented over the years (or quad, if a separate black printer is involved). Those which progressively build up the image by superimposing layer upon layer are classified as "sandwich" processes. Gum printing is one of those, but often involves progressively building multiple layers of particular colors in order to increase their intensity. Andrew probably has some videos of this.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Technicolor was a true RGB tricolor process which employed a special big camera which separated the image onto three different reels of registered film. These in turn were respectively dyed with Y,C,and M to produce an overlapping positive color image by sandwiching all three layers afterwards. The specific dyes could be tailored to the overall setting and color palette of the movie.

Kodachrome was unrelated. Only a single film was used in its case, which was a complex process in its own right.

As a kid, I was always excited when I knew the film I was about to watch was in Technicolor. It was always splashed big in the ads and trailers. Big and bright , much like Kodachrome.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Well, I terribly oversimplified the workflow of Technicolor when I mentioned it, which was basically the moving image version of dye transfer printing. But anyone who wishes can look up the history of it on various dedicated websites. It certainly allowed purer image colors than modern methods, although they deliberately made a lot of faces look too orange, just like Kodak Gold film does (the warm lighting and makeup had a lot to do with that too).

The remaining Technicolor cameras, along with huge quantities of the remaining dyes, were allegedly sold to a Chinese entrepreneur, who thought there was a market for it in relation to the colorful big budget Bollywood films of India. But that would require rekindling an entire lost culture and industry of specialized craft at great expense, which proved unrealistic.

 

[braxus]

I think Kodachrome (yes it was one film instead of 3) used 3 separate dyes to make the color on the film. That is sort of the connection I was making in my last post.

 

[Romanko]

The scanned images do not look right. There is a problem somewhere with your scanning and conversion technique. If you have access to a film scanner or a good lab I would recommend re-scanning the negatives to get a better understanding of how each of the three films renders the scenes.

I don't have any experience with tri-colour gum but from your videos the technique looks fairly involved. If I were doing this I would try to get consistent results from scanning and conversion first to reduce the number of unknowns. Once again, this is just my approach and you might find that calibrating the process as a whole would give you better results quicker.

Thank you for sharing. I am looking forward for updates on the tri-colour gum process.

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

The scanned images do not look right. There is a problem somewhere with your scanning and conversion technique. If you have access to a film scanner or a good lab I would recommend re-scanning the negatives to get a better understanding of how each of the three films renders the scenes.

I don't have any experience with tri-colour gum but from your videos the technique looks fairly involved. If I were doing this I would try to get consistent results from scanning and conversion first to reduce the number of unknowns. Once again, this is just my approach and you might find that calibrating the process as a whole would give you better results quicker.

Thank you for sharing. I am looking forward for updates on the tri-colour gum process.

Yup. I'm working on it...and I do use a V750, but up until now my experience has only been with black and white films. The problem has been sorted. Combination of my weak colour scanning skills, and over exposed films. @koraks put together an excellent video on the topic that I viewed, of scanning colour negs. Hopefully he'll make it public.

 

[Romanko]

Hopefully he'll make it public.

@koraks please do!

 

[koraks]

@koraks please do!

OK, it's done; you can find it here.
Apologies for it being a tedious, long-winded and wordy video with all talk and little action - but if you want actually nice videos, watch @Andrew O'Neill's channel!

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

OK, it's done; you can find it here.
Apologies for it being a tedious, long-winded and wordy video with all talk and little action - but if you want actually nice videos, watch @Andrew O'Neill's channel!

Thanks for the plug, but most importantly, thank you for going through the trouble of putting together the video, koraks. It's been very helpful.

 

[koraks]

You're very welcome; thanks for the boot to the backside and getting that show on the road!

 

[warden]

OK, it's done; you can find it here.
Apologies for it being a tedious, long-winded and wordy video with all talk and little action - but if you want actually nice videos, watch @Andrew O'Neill's channel!

Great video, thanks! This is the first time I’ve been exposed to a workflow in Gimp and the software looks professional and capable. (As do you!)

Edit to add:
@koraks (I know we're OT a bit here) I'm interested in the curves tool you were using. The workflow you use is quite similar to what I do but I use a feature in Photoshop called "show clipping for black/white points" which works as a live view when sliding curves controls, pinpointing the first pixels that get clipped in each channel accurately. Not a big deal, just something I like for speeding the work. Does Gimp have something like this? I'm committed to Adobe products until I retire as I need to collaborate with other users but when the time comes to make a change Gimp looks good to me.

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

Gimp seems to have come a long way since I last looked at it... and that was many years ago.

 

[pentaxuser]

Apologies for it being a tedious, long-winded and wordy video with all talk and little action - but if you want actually nice videos, watch @Andrew O'Neill's channel!

No need for any apologies. Anything can only be long winded and tedious if it takes longer than is really needed to explain what needs to be done and is tiresome to watch. This video was neither. There was a lot to explain and the content did just that

Good videos are those that are targeted at the audience that needs the information and presented in a way that give them the information in a way that doesn't skip any steps. This video met that requirement

It was all new to me who has no post processing skills or even much knowledge of scanners other than the fact that they scan negs and prints but it was rightly not intended for me.

As far as little action is concerned, yes, I was disappointed that you made no attempt to do it while riding a motorbike around "The Wall of Death"

Seriously I hope we see more videos like this that address whatever a thread on Photrio identifies as a specific need for information and acts as an aid to knowledge

Thanks


pentaxuser

 

[koraks]

I was disappointed that you made no attempt to do it while riding a motorbike around "The Wall of Death"

You made me chuckle there! Thanks for the kind words, I appreciate it. You too, @warden!

a feature in Photoshop called "show clipping for black/white points"

I think there may be something like this in GIMP, but frankly, I've not looked for it. Good idea though, because it would be very helpful in this process. I'll have a look.
One thing that I know Photoshop has and GIMP doesn't, is the ability to take a couple of 'dynamic' samples that remain visible as you adjust the curves. You could for instance take a sample of a grey sky (or a grey card) so you can see at what point it goes neutral as you adjust the curves.

As to where GIMP is now - yes, it has come a long way. It's still very clear to me that Adobe has the edge (and then some!) - it's more feature rich (often in very meaningful ways) and still more user-friendly.

 

[Romanko]

OK, it's done; you can find it here.

Great video! You explained your method a few times in various posts but seeing it done step-by-step was very useful.

I use a digital camera for scanning and try to have my mask around 1/3 or 1/2 stop below clipping. I noticed that your mask is almost in the middle of the range. I understand that you do not have much control over exposure with a flatbed scanner but maybe blocking the holes in the negative holder (and masking around negatives) could give you brighter scans and better colour resolution.

Looking at Andy's negative I also suspect issues with processing. The colours of the clear film should not differ that much between the three film stocks. For negatives exposed at box speed (on an overcast day) they look too dense.

Thank you @koraks for the video.

 

[Romanko]

First of all, you were working with overcast light without any corrective color temp filtration (like an 81A) at the time of the shot.

So if you want to preserve (and maybe slightly exaggerate) the cool colours of an overcast day you suggest to still use a warming filter to expose the negative at the colour temperature for which the film is designed and then adjust the colours during printing (or scanning). This sounds counterintuitive at first but makes sense when you think about it. Is the idea to give more exposure to the red and green channels to shift them to a more linear part of the characteristic curve and avoid cross-overs in the shadows?

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

I am not going to get into colour correction filters, etc etc. Careful exposure, and development is first and foremost. After that, I just want to know how to effectively tweak the colours in PS, so that I can then go hybrid and make tri-colour gums. Koraks' video was exactly what I was looking for.

 

[Romanko]

Careful exposure, and development is first and foremost.

... and a proper choice of film stock. Ektar 100 is an excellent film, it is my favourite, but for your work you might prefer a film with more latitude.

 

[koraks]

maybe blocking the holes in the negative holder (and masking around negatives) could give you brighter scans and better colour resolution.

Thanks for your kind comment!
No, blocking holes on the holder won't make a difference, which is also a good thing. The way this scanner works in this quasi-RAW mode is that it basically captures the entire dynamic range it can. Which is essential; I don't want it to auto-adjust anything, because that would throw the hole consistency out of the window. This is also why I leave the only remaining auto-anything parameter locked at the same setting. This does indeed sacrifice a 1 to 2 bits of color resolution (depending on the color channel), but it's still plenty for the adjustments that need to be done provided I'm working with decently exposed and processed negatives.

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

... and a proper choice of film stock. Ektar 100 is an excellent film, it is my favourite, but for your work you might prefer a film with more latitude.

I do like the Ektar 100, but I'm also grooving Phoenix 200...and I might just stick with the latter, as it's much more affordable.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Hi Romanko - Yes, Ektar is especially prone to a blue-green crossover both in the shadows and in the highlights, which needs go be addressed through appropriate filtration at the time of the shot, which is far more straightforward and simpler than trying to post-correct it. I am using the expression "crossover" in terms of the visual outcome. The reason for it is somewhat different at the two opposite ends of the scale. Actual curve crossover poptentially occurs at the bottom of the scale, while up at the top, the blue curve shoulders off sooner than the other two (the published diagram on Kodak's spec sheet doesn't show this because it prematurely cuts off all three curves before the shouldering point).

Ektar is not artificially warmed like most color neg films, which in fact deliberately use a degree of crossover to create what I term "mud" - pleasing warm skintones at the expense of dumping other warm hues in the scene into the same bin. But the purpose of a milld warming filter in the case of Ektar is not to mimic those other films, but to cure certain inherent color repro problems of its own.

Andrew is working with the gum medium, which is pretty hard to tame with respect to realistic hues anyway, but quite malleable in terms of whimsical results, and the easiest of the sandwich processes. Highly realistic results have been attained using color neg film by those who mastered complex color carbro and pan matrix dye transfer printing. And of course, there are those who simply made in-camera separations directly onto pan b&w film, then proceeded from there.

Ektar is rather unique among CN films in being capable of something close to a chrome look, with its higher contrast and richer purer color saturation. But one has to be aware of its tighter boundaries too, compared to the wider latitude of other CN products.
I've chimed in on many past threads on how to best handle it, some posts going clear back to discussions with PE, who was quite familiar with both its evolution from Ektar 25 as well as its remaining idiosyncrasies.