How to choose color negative film?

Hi,

This question has been troubled me for a year now.

The choose for color slide is easy, you can look slides with projector or using a illuminated desk. So you know what kind of colors and contrast each film will give.

The color negative, it is completely different specie. As I started to practice use of color negative about year ago, I had only done my color work using color slides for previous 20+ years.
My indent was to scan negatives and then print them (I kept option for fully analog color work at darkroom).
So I was really clueless.

First I found that there was some suggestions like "take Reala if you're gonna shoot landscapes", "use pro400h for interiors", "Portra or Fuji Pro160c.."

I tested a lot of films and guess what? The main difference all perhaps ten different film was the grain. I could not get any remarkable differences in contrast or tonality.

Is this really the case when scanning negatives and doing all adjustments with computer?

How should I scan negatives that I could judge their charasteristics? How will the pro's choose their films?

And why I am bothering myself with all that? It's because I would like to see actual differences of different films and to ensure that if I some day will print my negatives at darkroom, I get a decent tones and contrasts.

I'm afraid what you are experiencing is the nature of scanning film. My experience with drum scanning film is largely the same -- that scanning largely equalizes out the differences between films. What you are left with is graininess, sharpness, and to some extent color palette.

So, pick the film that gives you the least graininess, best sharpness, and gives you color relationships that you like, if you have the luxury of several films to choose from.

Bruce Watson said:

So, pick the film that gives you the least graininess, best sharpness, and gives you color relationships that you like, if you have the luxury of several films to choose from.

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I guess that I should do a simple test, say take Ektar 100, Reala 100 and some consumer film at same ISO. Photograph some color targets, then same subjects and scan. Which looks best, it will be chosen.

Similar test for 400 class.

Usagi-san

Usagi said:

I guess that I should do a simple test, say take Ektar 100, Reala 100 and some consumer film at same ISO. Photograph some color targets, then same subjects and scan. Which looks best, it will be chosen.

Similar test for 400 class.

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with respect to how do pro's choose their film ... well there are professionals and there are pro's. Few that I have ever spoke to did anything like comprehensive testing. So mostly I feel that it is personal bias. Many are just dopes and use the mystical word "pro" to fool people into suspension of questioning their work.


Anyway, I did a similar test recently and I'm presently trying to undertake the same sort of test as you (published here). I added digital in the mix because that was one of the "research questions" I wanted answered too.

Generally I don't find THAT much difference between negative films (certainly nothing which I can't tweak out in editing). Generally I use Fuji 160Pro for landscape but I've had equally good results with Fuji Superia and Kodak films. I did try Portra on landscapes and found it ok too ... again once into the digital domain its all just a slider away.

I'm pretty sure we've communicated before, as I live in Kouvola and I recognise your name (but it may be someone else using その　日本語　名 を　思い出します) Feel free to PM me on this forum and I can give you my suomen phuelin.

however to take a quick stab at an answer I think that you can get evidence to support the use of negative over slide from the makers publications. The range of brightness that Slide will record is much shorter than that of negative. So if you capture with negative you will have more of what was there than if you used a slide

BUT (isn't there always one) slide has a "look" about how it responds to the scene, and being a positive we instantly comprehend that when we see it (unlike negative which requires interpretation).

So we tend to learn that look faster and lern to be able to apply it to a scene from our (trial and error) experience. Eventually an experienced slide shooter will look at a scene and go "nahh, won't work" and not photograph it.

but let me ask this does the slide look like the scene or does the slide have a look you like? I genuinely believe that slide does not look like the scene and is often more punchy and vivid. Lets keep this to sunny day photography as of course slide will need color correction with filters on overcast days.

Negative is rather a different story. The negative will allow you to capture far more than you can get onto a print (without resorting to masking, dodge and burn or other printing techniques). With negative you can look at something (scene) and see within that what you would like to represent. Something like pre-visualisation (but I'm not as structured over exposure as Adams was).

Enter digital and we have the ability to move that negative into the digital domain and instantly we have immense control over what we can do. But that is both the solution and the problem, as it requires much time to grasp and then apply this knowledge.

This is an advantage for slide ... less learning is needed to get that punchy look. But is that what you are always after? Its not so for me. Consider this image (one of my favourites)

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I don't think it would have been successful if I had tried slide with it. I can only get the tonal character I got because I used negative and then manipulated it to what you see.

This brings me to discuss a disadvantage in the digital domain. Most scanners you and I will consider buying are (in my opinion) optimised for the density range of slides and perhaps black and white negative. Colour negative is left out in the cold as makers have not considered it important (god knows why) and have limping automated versions of software to drive it and do not optimise the hardware for the fact that each colour channel will have a different density range (again consult the makers publications and observe the different density range for R G and B). This can be worked around as I've outlined on my blog here. Certainly that article discusses the use of a Nikon coolscan, but the same technique is applied well across all other scanners I've tried (Epson and HP s20).

So when dealing with colour, it leaves us with an imperfect world. Negative has many advantages in its favor as does slide.

Negative allows you to photograph a scene and then take from that what you saw.

Slide forces you to work within its more tight parameters, but much of the "processing" is done for your before you get to see it (in the design of its photo-chemical reaction optical properties).

Hi

after my long ramble (which may not have actually answered your question (wonders if I should delete it) I thought I'd try this:

Usagi said:

I tested a lot of films and guess what? The main difference all perhaps ten different film was the grain. I could not get any remarkable differences in contrast or tonality.

Is this really the case when scanning negatives and doing all adjustments with computer?

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I believe so ..

How should I scan negatives that I could judge their charasteristics?

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Ok, this is longer to state than it really is ... but here goes:

personally I find that my procedure of

1. scan as positive
2. manually select black and white points for each channel seperately and conservatively (meaning you should look at the histogram and leave a little space either side for the subtle hilight and shadow) It also helps to experiment with the film and get an idea of where the darkest regions and lightest regions are. With negative however I feel that the darkest parts of the scan (the hilights) are the most important to find this way.
3. invert in photo editor and assign appropriate color profile
4. adjust levels but use the curves tool instead of the levels tool

Its like the one I step through here.

Write things down (well, I screen snapshot my histograms and keep that) as doing this allows me to see what ranges I get with each film and with each exposure condition. I don't do this for EVERY exposure but I do it for enough to give me a feel of the film.

From this I then can build an understanding of how the film reacts to light with density and how much range of data I get with my scanners. Ohh ... and I do test strips of each film with my different scanners too.

This way I can then say that my approach is more standard and I can compare between films, rather than letting the automated stuff make adjustments before I start of which I have no idea on the outcome.

So far I've not done a scene for scene comparison with different negaitve films .. but that does sounds like a great idea for a test. I only have 2 35mm bodies and one roll film holder for my 4x5 so to keep costs down I'll have to use 35mm I suspect (not going to test 4 films by buying 4 boxes of 10 4x5 sheets

I'll state now that as a research premise that I believe that all will be within a small fraction of eachother.

Thank You Pellicle

Sorry that I have been absent.

You have point in there. I too have begun to think that scanner / scanning softwares are not quite optimized for color negatives. The scanning of color negatives is just so much difficult than scanning of the slides or b&w negatives.

I red your blog entry (and many other interesting blog writings too) and it seems to be good idea.

About the film test, I am pretty sure that I am going for it. Haven't yet decided whether I should do it with a roll film or 135. Roll film is easy, I have more than enough film backs and one roll is not too long so test is quickly done.
I could imagine that with a single test roll per film (say Ektar, Reala, Portra, perhaps 160S & C) one could get enough information of exposure latitude, contrast and differences in the color reproduction.

ps. I think we have met over the forums. I have used 此の日本語異名 for a long time.

Usagi said:

Thank You Pellicle

Sorry that I have been absent.

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glad I could help ... oliko hyvaa jouhannus?