Hello APUG from FILM Ferrania (PART 2)

Henning Serger said:

You can make absolutely outstanding prints from slides, too. Lots of prints you see in exhibitions are from slides. I often prefer prints from slides because of the finer grain, higher resolution, better sharpness und more brillant colours.
A print is physically limited to a contrast range of about 5 - 5,5 stops (that is significantly less than the max. contrast range of a slide). If your shot is in that DR range, you don't have any problems at all. You can directly print with full shadow and highlight detail.
If it is above that range, you can exploit up to ten stops with a drumscanner, getting all that detail on the print. The next step is using an excellent laser printer for RA-4: Excellent quality labs have it, e.g. the Agfa d-lab.2+ for prints up to 30x45cm, and the Lambda and LightJet printers for huge prints.
That is my current optimal way to go for excellent prints from slides.

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Yes, prints from slides certainly can look good but generally some manipulation must be done to do so. Masking, or entering digital into it as you do can be done, but many prefer to stick with analog means. The fact remains that with the higher contrast and saturation of slides, and lack of masking, getting consistently good prints with accurate color and contrast from current methods such as RA-4 Reversal and internegatives, and even with the older Ciba/Ilfochrome is much more difficult than negatives with RA-4, which can be done straight with higher quaility with no manipulation. With some of today's negative films brilliant colors can be achieved, and with accurate color. And the entire process from developing the film to making the prints is quite simple compared to working with slides.

RPC said:

Yes, prints from slides certainly can look good but generally some manipulation must be done to do so. Masking, or entering digital into it as you can be done, but many prefer to stick with analog means. The fact remains that with the higher contrast and saturation of slides, and lack of masking, getting consistently good prints with accurate color and contrast from current methods such as RA-4 Reversal and internegatives, and even with the older Ciba/Ilfochrome is much more difficult than negatives with RA-4, which can be done straight with higher quaility with no manipulation. With some of today's negative films brilliant colors can be achieved, and with accurate color. And the entire process from developing the film to making the prints is quite simple compared to working with slides.

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When Cibachrome-A burst on the scene in 1975/6, all the hype that was created made me think that the end of color neg film had arrived! After all, if Ciba could offer the best of both worlds, why shoot anything but slide film? Well, that illusion was soon shattered. While a well-executed Cibachrome print can indeed be a thing of startling beauty, it more often than not was a time-consuming, laborious and very expensive process. Producing a good Cibachrome truly became an art in itself. The truth remains that colour negative film is optimised for prints. Making a decent print from a slide means using it to create something it was not designed for.

Henning Serger said:

Instant film has the highest costs per shot. Significantly higher compared to both negative and reversal film.

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Compared to 35mm film, that is true. Compared to 120 film, the cost difference is negligible.

Provia 100F costs $8.99/roll in the US. Shooting 6x7 gives you 10 shots per roll or $0.89/shot.

Fujifilm Instax wide costs $19.93/20 shot box. That works out to $0.99/shot.

Hopefully these costs stay relatively the same when Fujifilm brings out their new square film and camera. That will become my primary color film.

railwayman3 said:

I have seen the occasional movie film where the original has been shot on Kodachrome (IIRC, some of the National Film Board of Canada work ?) which has really been not very good, with harsh colours and contrast compared with any good negative stock.

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for the longest time for work shot in 16mm, the prefered work flow was to use something called "Commercial Ektachrome" which was a special asa 25 or so LOW CONTRAST reversal film, and then make prints on a Kodachome based Print film. I have one 1930ish Travel movie which appers to have been done with this process, and the Kodachrome colours are still Brilliant, the sound does not play as well, and I suspect that that is because the Sound track seems to be pure dye with not re-added silver.

The early Eastmancolor Negative was too grainy to be happy as a 16mm stock, with the reversal as always providing finer grain.

railwayman3 said:

Bit OT - I have some sets of 35mm slides which my late Father took for educational use back in the 70's and 80's. He used Kodacolor (-X, I think then), slides printed by Kodak through the dealer service which they then offered. The quality is excellent, but I'm guessing that Kodak used Eastmancolor print film, as they are now starting to show the fading to pinky-magenta characteristic of movie film prints from that time.

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Kodak would never use a movie film to produce stills. There was a Vericolor slide film at one time with the standard Still negative process intended to make slides from still negatives. one of the many special films that has fallen b the wayside over the years.

The problem/trick as always is the movie stock is designed for lower Gamma to allow for the 4 generations in the older photochemical work flow. and so a still negative would print at VERY high contrast on 2383. (Dale labs used to do it, and the slides on ECP made from ECN looked FAR better than the ones from Kodacolor.)

Meyer Trioplan said:

In the midst of a lot of the rather fatiguing bits of negativity, I'd like to stop to give a heartfelt THANK YOU to Dave and all of the FF crew for all of their hard work in trying to pull all of this together. Working in a service business, I do realize how tough it can be to line all of one's ducks up to create a goal, but it appears that you guys are on the verge of doing just that. I have my initial 5 roll order in and look forward to giving it a try!

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Thank YOU. Most sincerely. And to everyone I see cheering us on. Many many thanks.

In software terms, if you started downloading us in, say, Nov 2014 - then your gray bar would be at about 15% today. We were at 10% a few weeks ago and at 5% for a few years before that.

In one sense, we're quite alarmed because we took a very sudden, very ungraceful lurch forward on the progress bar. And it was painful and quite exhausting. The factory team put on the brakes. Unfortunate, but fortunate, too.

Because of it, there is a clearer understanding of how fast we need to ramp up. We know what needs to be fixed in the shop. We have a whole new list of lots of things to do.

All things considered, we're quite happy to know these things now, as facts, instead of things we could only speculate about previously.

I can't wait to show off the sample images from the production batch! They're coming in now and over the next few days. We'll be posting a gallery on our site as soon as possible.

And processing data is being assembled now as well. We'll be publishing a "Best Practices" initially and expanding it into a proper data sheet by the time it's no longer ALPHA, but the final film.

--

To those who have written us off entirely after this launch, I totally understand that as well. As long as you're shooting film, that's all that really matters.

FILM Ferrania said:

I can't wait to show off the sample images from the production batch! They're coming in now and over the next few days. We'll be posting a gallery on our site as soon as possible.

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NICE!

Looking forward to shooting P30!

FILM Ferrania said:

Thank YOU. Most sincerely. And to everyone I see cheering us on. Many many thanks.

In software terms, if you started downloading us in, say, Nov 2014 - then your gray bar would be at about 15% today. We were at 10% a few weeks ago and at 5% for a few years before that.

In one sense, we're quite alarmed because we took a very sudden, very ungraceful lurch forward on the progress bar. And it was painful and quite exhausting. The factory team put on the brakes. Unfortunate, but fortunate, too.

Because of it, there is a clearer understanding of how fast we need to ramp up. We know what needs to be fixed in the shop. We have a whole new list of lots of things to do.

All things considered, we're quite happy to know these things now, as facts, instead of things we could only speculate about previously.

I can't wait to show off the sample images from the production batch! They're coming in now and over the next few days. We'll be posting a gallery on our site as soon as possible.

And processing data is being assembled now as well. We'll be publishing a "Best Practices" initially and expanding it into a proper data sheet by the time it's no longer ALPHA, but the final film.

--

To those who have written us off entirely after this launch, I totally understand that as well. As long as you're shooting film, that's all that really matters.

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That's all good news, as a backer, I am genuinely pleased for you. Or, should I say, at least for the technicians who have put so much genius, miracles and hard work so far.

But I have to say that we backers put our money in to support a project to produce E6 films and maintain the future use of slides and transparencies, at a time, nearly three years ago, when Kodak had withdrawn, and Fuji's future plans seem doubtful. In the meantime, and with a bit of good luck, it seems that we may now well have quality E6 film back from Kodak quite soon, and Fuji is so far still in the game, so the picture is changing....I hope for the better for E6 generally.

I just hope that you're not going off at a tangent with the unexpected success of P30 (is the selling-out just from an interest in being first in in experimenting with a new novelty, as we all like to do), and that this will prove more than a transitory success, given that they are still a choice of many high-quality B&W films from several established manufacturers.

Yes, I know that research has to be done, and that simpler B&W coatings are a way to prove and develop the equipment. (I've read the books, done the Ilford factory tour, got the polo shirt.) But are you now risking going down a me-too line of just becoming another maker of less complicated photo products, rather than the unique top producer of E6 ?

I'm hiding behind my desk for all the flack I'll be getting for this sacrilage, but "only sayin' ".

Henning Serger said:

And with reversal film you get significantly more for your money. Therefore a higher price is principally justified.
What do you get more:
1. The latest reversal film generation (Provia 100F, AgfaPhoto CT Precisa 100, Velvia 50, Velvia 100, Velvia 100F, Sensia III, Astia 100F, Provia 400X, Ektachrome E100G(X), Elitechrome 100) delivers better resolution, sharpness and finer grain compared to the latest colour negative film generation from Kodak and Fujifilm. I've done hundreds of differents tests over the last years in my optical test lab, tested all these films again and again in different test conditions, and always got the same results. I discussed my results with several other very experienced experts, and they have got also the same results.

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Hi Henning,

I love to shoot slides and i agree somewhat with the idea that the slides are more versatile in the digital world.

However, while i agree that slide films deliver finer grain (i believe this is a nice byproduct of the reversal itself), i am not so sure that the resolution is vastly superior to E6 films. Also, if Kodak MTF curves and Fuji MTF curves are to be believed, in general print films have higher sharpness (higher modulation transfer for finer details) than slide films. Which translates for better resolution of details. Slide films still may be able to resolve finer details (more cycles per mm), but overall, negative films give a sharper (better defined) recording of details.

You can take a look at this compilation of film characteristics, take a look at the "sharp" column.
https://asa400.wordpress.com/tag/resolution/

You can argue you can always apply sharpening on your scan from a slide, but digitally speaking, if you want to digitally increase the sharpness of an image (i.e. we have a scan from a slide film) by sharpening, you will increase the perceived grain (and noise) as well.

Photo Engineer already indicated that slide films cannot benefit from DIR couplers, like negative films do, and this prevents slide films from getting sharpness increases.

Negative films also have much better color purity, less color shifts with density and so on. Also, as you perhaps already know, there movie industry uses negative film almost exclusively, finding much better results with the neg->pos process than with reversal, due to color purity and contrast control.

Better color purity is in part because of masking, which E6 films cannot use (unless you want to tolerate an orange slide).

@Berri and other APUGgers are already shattering some myths claiming that printing from negative films using certain premium RA4 paper looks "as good as Cibachrome". And this without requiring the complex masking, and of course at lower cost.

Back in what i call the "golden days of film" where the workflow was hybrid, I recall that on the Frontier system, which in my opinion was a very very good hybrid workflow system with a really good scanner, the negative films as a whole seemed to scan better than the slide films. I saw many professionals bring slide films, but most of the ones who shoot portraits were bringing lots of negative films. I also got better scans from my negative films than from my slide films (mostly Fuji Astia 100 or Sensia II 100, which were lovely slide films with natural rendition.)

I would love to see some of your tests and comparisons. You should post some of these here, perhaps they will contribute to the E6 cause.

FILM Ferrania said:

I can't wait to show off the sample images from the production batch! They're coming in now and over the next few days. We'll be posting a gallery on our site as soon as possible.

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I cant wait to see the new samples!

Nzoomed said:

You are not paying attention to any of the Ferrania videos and kickstarter updates.
See this here:
Dead Link Removed

Ivano is their only person capable who is currently employed that can make the correct sensitizers and chemistry etc.

He is busy working away at making the components for the colour emulsion.
Some of these sensitizers take weeks to prepare, and the colour film uses several of them.

The P30 alpha program is putting the coater through its paces and will show up any faults, which is good because if a colour batch was made there may be lots of flaws that have not come to surface as we have already seen, so getting tons of people shooting the P30 as guinea pigs will only help speed up the testing phase of the coater as any problems will soon be reported and rectified when the colour emulsion is all prepared.

Im sure Dave Bias will be able to back me up here

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Dave Bias certainly WILL back you up here.

If I'm following the general thread so far, there's some concern being expressed about color reversal film, and about the intentions with the ALPHA batch of P30.

While we are mostly talking about our first actual product right now, we have never indicated that color reversal was on hold or delayed or in danger or whatever. When we knew we could make P30, the team gave a window of June/July for the Kickstarter Batch of color reversal.

Yes, the fact that Team Member A is not, at this exact moment, helping Team Member B to make color emulsion, this is not necessarily a critical diversion of human resources. Nearly everything that Team Member A is doing for P30 film relates directly or in parallel with the same work needed for color production.

Continuing to make P30 does not interfere with using the coater for color research. It only requires scheduling. It's relatively quick and straightforward to switch "modes" between production and testing.

As planned since the beginning, we are finally at the point of adding to the team. We have a deep bench to draw from, and many people from the former operation have been helping us at various points, while waiting very very patiently to jump back in.

We announced a June/July time window for color reversal rewards. So far, no one is saying it can't be done.

Finally, I need to point out that we will not be selling P30 ALPHA to guinea pigs. (no offense - I totally understand your shorthand, Nzoomed!)

Don't get me wrong, guinea pigs are super cute, but with the lack of opposable thumbs, we don't see a big market for P30 among the guinea pig population.

We're shipping a very solid film along with a Best Practices document for handling and processing. This film is of course brand new, which allows ample opportunity for people to "break" it. As such, we will have a feedback form. It will be entirely voluntary - and mostly unnecessary for anyone who follows the Best Practices. Those who have bad results for some reason, and want to share with us in a productive way, will be rewarded in kind. Good data about bad results only helps us get past ALPHA faster and onto the final product.

FILM Ferrania said:

Dave Bias certainly WILL back you up here.

If I'm following the general thread so far, there's some concern being expressed about color reversal film, and about the intentions with the ALPHA batch of P30.

While we are mostly talking about our first actual product right now, we have never indicated that color reversal was on hold or delayed or in danger or whatever. When we knew we could make P30, the team gave a window of June/July for the Kickstarter Batch of color reversal.

Yes, the fact that Team Member A is not, at this exact moment, helping Team Member B to make color emulsion, this is not necessarily a critical diversion of human resources. Nearly everything that Team Member A is doing for P30 film relates directly or in parallel with the same work needed for color production.

Continuing to make P30 does not interfere with using the coater for color research. It only requires scheduling. It's relatively quick and straightforward to switch "modes" between production and testing.

As planned since the beginning, we are finally at the point of adding to the team. We have a deep bench to draw from, and many people from the former operation have been helping us at various points, while waiting very very patiently to jump back in.

We announced a June/July time window for color reversal rewards. So far, no one is saying it can't be done.

Finally, I need to point out that we will not be selling P30 ALPHA to guinea pigs. (no offense - I totally understand your shorthand, Nzoomed!)

Don't get me wrong, guinea pigs are super cute, but with the lack of opposable thumbs, we don't see a big market for P30 among the guinea pig population.

We're shipping a very solid film along with a Best Practices document for handling and processing. This film is of course brand new, which allows ample opportunity for people to "break" it. As such, we will have a feedback form. It will be entirely voluntary - and mostly unnecessary for anyone who follows the Best Practices. Those who have bad results for some reason, and want to share with us in a productive way, will be rewarded in kind. Good data about bad results only helps us get past ALPHA faster and onto the final product.

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Any time that you can get running the coating line just adds to the possibility of a high quality reversal film. The remarkable thing about the Wright Brothers flight in 1903 may not so much have been that they flew a powered aircraft, but they did it without Flying Lessons! Restarting a deserted film factory has got to be a unique experience.
As much time as you can get running the P30 and people having fun with this classic film just gives wider exposure to the project, and most importantly, brings in some CRITICALLY needed revenue to pay for the color work. I think Film Ferrania will succeed, they will have a line of very well respected film products. With the demise of Agfa and Ferrania E-6 it will be GREAT to have a nice little plant in beautiful Italy, making a great product.
Best Regards, Mike

I was going to buy some P30 after thinking about it again, but then came to the conclusion that I don't wanna test yet another film.

ericdan said:

I was going to buy some P30 after thinking about it again, but then came to the conclusion that I don't wanna test yet another film.

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I was going to buy too, then I thought, why am I being asked to pay to test film that I don't actually need and will probably never buy or use again. Better put my money and time to getting out and try to take some good photos on films I know and trust. (Sorry, but we're always been told at APUG to get out and do some real photography ! )

I will await with bated breath the latest "half-promise" of a June/July time window for colour reversal film. ("So far, no one is saying it can't be done." sounds like an election promise made by one of our UK Politicians. ) Only 13 weeks to late June.

I would really love to shoot some Ferrania chromes this summer! But I don't think this will happen, sorry but I don't see how after such a short time you can go from an alpha bw film to a colour reversal final product. I really hope that I'm wrong

Hello Flavio,

flavio81 said:

Hi Henning,

I love to shoot slides and i agree somewhat with the idea that the slides are more versatile in the digital world.

However, while i agree that slide films deliver finer grain (i believe this is a nice byproduct of the reversal itself), i am not so sure that the resolution is vastly superior to E6 films. Also, if Kodak MTF curves and Fuji MTF curves are to be believed, in general print films have higher sharpness (higher modulation transfer for finer details) than slide films.

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1. You are partly misinterpreting MTF curves.
2. You are making a mistake lots of photographers do: Believing in data sheets as if they were "bible-like truth" or "sent by good" or "the absolute truth" .
They are not. Because partly the test methods used for them have (very) little relevance for normal, daily shooting situations (e.g. MTF for object contrast of 1000:1). And partly because - often dependent on the manufacturer / supplier - they are also a marketing instrument. For some companies they are more a marketing instrument than for others. After more than 25 years of scientific film tests I can tell you that some manufacturers are sometimes more on the "optimistc side" with their data (e.g. Kodak), some are partly very conservative (e.g. Fujifilm) so that you get even better results in real world tests than expected from the tech sheet. And there are also cases in which the given data is simply wrong, and intended to hide certain facts and improve sales (fortunately that case is rare, but it happens).

And you are referring to what you heard / read from others (on the internet) concerning resolution/sharpness of film types. But almost all of these "tests" are based on scanning. And therefore worthless. Because there is no scanner, including the best drum scanners on the market, which can completely record the full resolution of current films!! They all fail in this respect and record significant less of what is really on film. Concerning resolution scanning is the worst you can do with film. It is the weakest method. With optical printing with APO enlarging lenses and with slide projection with the best projection lenses you get much better resolution values compared to scanning. I've tested all these imaging chains: All types of scanners, optical enlarging with different lenses, slide projection with different lenses. And if you want to get the by far most precise method to see the full resolution of film you have to use a microscope. I am doing that, too.

Example: Resolution is dependent on object/detail contrast. In my resolution and sharpness tests I am using low to medium object contrasts, because they are really relevant in photography: Because most objects / details we photograph have object/detail contrasts of 1:1.3 to 1:32 (1/3 to five stops).
With Provia 100F, an object contrast of 1:4 (two stops), and my standard 50mm lenses from Nikon and Zeiss at f5,6, I get a system resolution (film+lens) of 125 - 140 lp/mm (125 clearly separated lp/mm, and at 140 lp/mm there is still a contrast difference visible). That is what you see under the microscope.
In projection with the best projection lenses you can transfer about 115-120 lp/mm onto the screen. An excellent result, a negligible loss.
But with the best drum scanners the resolution value is dropping below 100 lp/mm.
And with a Nikon Coolscan 5000 you get only about 60-65 lp/mm!

Now let's compare that with Ektar 100: Under identical test conditions Ektar has a resolution of 90 - 105 lp/mm. With optical enlarging (APO lens) you get about 85 lp/mm on paper. With a drum scanner about 80 lp/mm, and with the Coolscan 5000 about 55-60 lp/mm.
So if you compare on basis of the Coolscan scans, there is little difference. But the conclusion that both films have nearly identical resolution is completely wrong! It is just that the scanner is the limiting factor here. The scanner is destroying the full resolution of the films.

I've discussed my results over the years with lots of other experts in the industry, and we have all got very similar results.

flavio81 said:

You can take a look at this compilation of film characteristics, take a look at the "sharp" column.
https://asa400.wordpress.com/tag/resolution/

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Please forget that source. There is a lot of misunderstanding, misinterpretation, "blind believe" in data sheets, and mixing of some right and some wrong statements. They have never done scientific tests by themselves.

flavio81 said:

Photo Engineer already indicated that slide films cannot benefit from DIR couplers, like negative films do, and this prevents slide films from getting sharpness increases.

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Just put a slide and a negative under a microscope and you will immediately see what is really sharper. In most cases it is the slide. E.g. all Velvias can record about 80 lp/mm already at the very low contrast of 1.6:1. There is no negative film on the market which can do that. You need better sharpness capabilities to achieve such high resolutions at such low detail contrasts. Provia 100F also has superior sharpness at low contrasts.
Unfortunately it is quite often the case here that our dear friend Ron (PE) is misinterpreted. Ron retired at Kodak already in 1997. After that we've had real breakthroughs in reversal film technology: 1999: Provia 100F. Short after that Provia 400F. 2003: Astia 100F, Velvia 100F, Sensia III, Elite Chrome 100, Ektachrome E100G and GX. 2005: Velvia 100. 2007: Provia 400X. Ron has never done scientific (lab) tests of all these films. Others have (me included).

flavio81 said:

Negative films also have much better color purity, less color shifts with density and so on.

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Be careful with such general statements. Provia 100F is hard to beat with its very neutral, accurate colors. The Kodak CN films for example all have a bias towards yellow, warm colour rendition (Kodak policy, they want the films to have that look). That often leads to a cyan cast in the blues. Ron has explained that effect in detail here also some time ago.
It more depends on how the manufacturer wants a film to look, how they design it. And less whether it is a CN or CR film. Look at Velvia 50, Provia 100F, Astia 100F Ektachrome E100G, Rollei CR 200 etc. : Huge differents in colour rendition between these films! Even Velvia 50, Velvia 100 and Velvia 100F have very significant differences in their colour rendition.
And look at Ektar, Pro 400H, the Portras, Gold 200, the Superias etc.: Also huge differents in colour rendition between these films!
Each of these films has its strengths at certain colours, and is a bit weaker at other colours.
The very nice advantage for us film photographers: We always can immediately change the complete colour rendition of our 'sensor' .

And you may have a bit better 'colour purity' with CN film under lab conditions. But "theory versus practice": We photographers are living in a different world. Our field is not a photo test-lab, but the lab-infrastructure we use, or our own darkroom at home.
Example:
Send identical exposed reversal films to the best labs, and you will get identical results.
Send identical colour negative films to the best labs and order prints and / or scans, and you will get different results from all the different labs. Because the CN process is always a kind of an interpreting process: Filtration (with optical prints), Scanner which is used, scan software, preferences of the scan operator, used paper type. Lots of different influences. 'Color purity' is a quite theoretical idea in such an environment.
And in the end in most cases the decisive question is only: Do you like the colours you get, or not? Fit the colours the message of your photo?

flavio81 said:

Also, as you perhaps already know, there movie industry uses negative film almost exclusively, finding much better results with the neg->pos process than with reversal, due to color purity and contrast control.

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The movie industry is using negative film for decades. They started that at a time in which CN film was behind in technology to reversal film. "Color purity" therefore was not the reason to use negative film. The main reason was that hundreds or thousands of copies were needed for the movie theatres. Negative film printed / copied on negative film = positive film, which can be projected. And the copy process also adds the needed contrast for optimal projection.
In this industrial scale copy process negative is easier to handle and cheaper. That's it.

flavio81 said:

I would love to see some of your tests and comparisons. You should post some of these here, perhaps they will contribute to the E6 cause.

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I've done it several times here in the past.

Best regards,
Henning

Hello,

I want to just make a general statement concerning the progress of Film Ferrania:
I've visited the Ferrania factory in autumn 2013. At that time the decision had been made to re-start production. Nicola and Marco gave us a full tour at the LRF, and we've had an open minded, very honest and interesting discussion. They are very nice guys, and full of passion for their very hard work.
I have very great respect of what they have done since then. How they have managed and overcome so much problems and hurdles. The whole team is really extremely hard working! I've seen several film production factories from the inside. I know how difficult film production is. It is really "rocket-science".
I trust them. I am convinced that they will solve all remaining technical problems. I am looking forward to my colour reversal films as one of their first Kickstarter backers.

We can help them!
Let's expand the reversal film market. Working for a sustainable reversal film revival is by far the best we all can do. The best for the photographic culture, the best for the next ("digital natives") generation that then also has the possibility to enjoy reversal film (together with negative and instant film), the best for our labs, the best for the E6 chemistry manufacturers, and the best for the brave and committed manufacturers who produce reversal film.
Let's shoot more reversal film, let's educate the young(er) generation about all the advantages and unique charactristics of reversal film, let's show that reversal film is a wonderful addition to negative and instant film.
The bigger the market, the higher the demand, the better for Film Ferrania.
We can do a lot supporting them this way. Just let's do it!

Best regards,
Henning

Berri said:

I would really love to shoot some Ferrania chromes this summer! But I don't think this will happen, sorry but I don't see how after such a short time you can go from an alpha bw film to a colour reversal final product. I really hope that I'm wrong

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And what do you know about industrial engineering?

Henning, everything you say is good or useful from one POV or another, but when it comes right down to it, no slide film can be used to project huge images such as we see in current I-Max or other large screen images. We are looking at perhaps 12th generation on a wide screen and it can outdo 1st gen slide film.

The proof is not in tests, it is in use!

Kodak tried to make a masked reversal camera and intermediate film set but nothing they did could match neg-pos.

PE

Berri said:

I would really love to shoot some Ferrania chromes this summer! But I don't think this will happen, sorry but I don't see how after such a short time you can go from an alpha bw film to a colour reversal final product. I really hope that I'm wrong

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I don't think they want to go from an alpha bw film to a colour reversal final product by summer. I think they want to go from a alpha bw film to an alpha reversal film. The step from alpha to final requires, for what I gather, months of "debugging" by Guinea pi... (cough) Alpha users so the final products will not be here by summer. Something to soup, maybe. But if it's Autumn instead of Summer for a good industrial reason, no problem IMO.

Henning,

In your discussion of color purity you failed to discuss the masking used in color negatives. The mask is one of the reasons color negatives print so much better than slides. This fact is often overlooked or unknown as I have seen here on APUG before.

All dyes used in color photography have different degrees of color impurities. In a color negative the orange mask effectively cancels these impurities.

In a slide, there is no mask. When viewing or projecting a slide the impurities are there, but slight enough that they aren't really noticible.

The problem comes when you print a slide onto any print material, which also has the impurities. The dye impurities are now seen twice, and the color degradation is very noticible.

The mask in a color negative cancels the impurities, and thus the impurities are only seen once, in the print only, and reasonably good color results. CN films also use dye couplers which provide some color correction.

Therefore the color quality in a print from a slide can never equal the color quality in a print from a negative. On the other hand, the color quality of a negative print can compare very closely to the color quality of a slide.

The higher contrast and saturation in a slide can look good in a print, with the right subject matter, but the fact remains the colors will never be as accurate as a print from a color negative, as they will always be distorted and exaggerated to some degree. Supplemental masking can be used to a degree to solve some of these problems but is difficult and time consuming. And as I said earlier, going hybrid is not acceptable to many.

I personally have used Ciba/Ilfochrome, RA-4 reversal, and CN onto RA-4 and have seen with my own eyes this difference.

This is an important reason the motion picture industry chose negative film over reversal film, along with the lower contrast and better dynamic range of CN. Prints have to be made, and color quality is maintained through several generations with the use of masking. Therefore, 'color purity' was an important reason.

I disagree that dynamic range is overrated. If anything is overrated, it is the grain/sharpness issue. All films today are very good in this regard. It is only an issue if you shoot small format and make big prints. On the other hand, dynamic range affects all formats. Lack of good dynamic range/exposure lattitude can ruin a photo much easier than a tiny difference in grain or sharpness.

Hi Henning,

Thank you very much for writing such a comprehensive reply. I think this is one of the characteristics of German people that I like so much -- attention to detail and striving for perfection. And, of course, the fact that they will only drink the highest-quality beer.

I have read your reply and it is very interesting, and I agree with you on many points but not all.

However, on a previous post you argue that slide film is like an "universal" film usable for all purposes:

Henning Serger said:

Dear Anton,
2. You get by far the best versatility with reversal film:
- you can just hold it against the light to enjoy it
- you can look at it through a slide viewer
- you can use a light-box and an excellent slide loupe (outstanding, unsurpassed quality, see my post above)
- you can project them (outstanding, unsurpassed quality at lowest costs for big enlargements)
- you can make optical enlargements on BW direct positive paper
- you can make optical enlargements on reversal-processd RA-4 paper
- you can make optical enlargements via internegatives on RA-4 paper
- you can scan them and make prints (inkjet or RA-4 silver-halide prints); the RA-4 prints from slides I have via good scanners (e.g. Noritsu HS-1800, and especially from drum scanners) are often significantly better than prints from negative film. For certain print applications I have therefore switched to reversal film.
(...)

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However, on this more recent post you mention that scanning even from a very good scanner like a Nikon Coolscan, a lot of resolution is lost:

Henning Serger said:

But almost all of these "tests" are based on scanning. And therefore worthless. Because there is no scanner, including the best drum scanners on the market, which can completely record the full resolution of current films!! They all fail in this respect and record significant less of what is really on film. Concerning resolution scanning is the worst you can do with film. It is the weakest method. With optical printing with APO enlarging lenses and with slide projection with the best projection lenses you get much better resolution values compared to scanning.

(...)
With Provia 100F,(...)
In projection with the best projection lenses you can transfer about 115-120 lp/mm onto the screen. An excellent result, a negligible loss.
But with the best drum scanners the resolution value is dropping below 100 lp/mm.
And with a Nikon Coolscan 5000 you get only about 60-65 lp/mm!
(...)

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So, using your very same logic, optical printing from a negative film to a RA4 paper using an enlarger would give superior results than scanning a reversal film and outputting the results using an inkjet printer or similar.

Or in any case, your point about the loss of resolution in scanning (and I think i will agree with you here, many scanners are not high-fidelity), act in favor to negative film as the best film for making prints.

Now, that's all talk about RESOLUTION. I shoot quite a bit of 6x4.5, 6x6 and 6x7 medium format, and to be honest resolution is simply excellent even with ISO 800 color negative film; in these applications i would be more concerned with the quality of the colors.

And so far, i have not seen better portrait/skin reproduction than the one in the good negative films like Portra. Astia came close. Provia 100F is a lovely film, but NO, i would never say it gives natural colors. It gives good-looking colors, but skin tones are still not as good as what I could get from a good negative film. I mean, you CAN easily get interesting, striking/intense portraits with slide films, but if you want real-looking, natural skin tones, it's much more difficult.
Velvia 50, good for shooting landscapes or monkeys for National Geographic.

What I mean is that negative film has its place. If i was going to look for the best color rendition i'd choose negative film. For the most fun experience, reversal film is hard to beat.

RPC has already reminded you about the advantages of color masking on negative films. I think this is a decisive advantage.

Even the cheapest consumer print films like good old (R.I.P.) Kodak Gold 100 6th or 7th generation, had excellent color rendition with pleasing skin tones. It's sibling, Kodak Profoto XL 100 or "ProImage 100" (RIP), had really really really really good skin tones. Both films were rather grainy for an ISO 100 film, but they were also really sharp, so enlargements looked good.

Great reasoning RPC and Flavio. Still, I love slide film and can understand why Henning is so excited about it when projected.

That's where it excels, its intended purpose.

RattyMouse said:

And what do you know about industrial engineering?

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If I may push in, I know little about industrial engineering, but common sense alone suggests that it's going to take some amazing work to get from an Alpha B&W film to an acceptable E6 reversal film by "June/July". It's only just over 13 weeks to the end of June ! Can Ferrania get the P30 orders and extra batches completed and despatched to customers, complete colour R&D, test coatings, make practical tests of the first coatings by the guinea pigs Dave speaks of, iron out bugs, then the final coating, slitting, and packing of the final product ? IDK ?