I miss Color EIR film

jbwpro · Sep 2, 2010

I have searched for a topic like this and couldn't find anything like it, I apologize if there is something already.

I truly miss color infrared film - I have one more 11 year old expired roll in the freezer and it is grain city. It makes complete sense from an economic standpoint why it was discontinued, but is there any snowball's chance it could ever come back in any form at all? Efke, Rollei and Illford all have come out with BW infrared solutions (some true, some not, but still fantastic and better than nothing). Why would kodak not license the emulsion technology to someone else to create in small batches, is that even possible? Why hasn't anyone else tried to develop anything like it?
I realize there is a lot of fiscal naivety involved in my questions here, but is there any chance?

AgX · Sep 2, 2010

There is nothing to licence, it's old technology.

Sirius Glass · Sep 2, 2010

In the long thread about HIE PE discussed the problems with making HIE. The problems are similar with EIR.

Steve

keithwms · Sep 2, 2010

What about making up your own colour separation images including a separation for IR by shooting a panchromatic/IR film with different filters? E.g. you could use r,g,b, and IR filters, shoot three or four separate frames, and then combine them as you wish to produce a colour neg or positive. It could be done in a purely analogue way. Since the IR films on the market are really edge-visible, I think I'd be tempted to shoot with g and b filters and use an IR filter for red + IR.

amuderick · Sep 2, 2010

Color EIR is still available...sort of...

Contact Dean Bennici

www.bennici.net

He buys Aerochrome rolls and cuts them down to 120 size.

E76 · Sep 2, 2010

The bad news is that the Aerochrome film he cuts down is also discontinued...

Toffle · Sep 2, 2010

I had the pleasure of shooting one roll of EIR a few years ago. In retrospect, I should have respooled it to three rolls so I could learn a little as I went. I discovered the film is not so great with inorganics, (concrete, steel, etc.) but wonderful with foliage, fabric and flesh. (the three "F"s?) I really should Pick up some of Dean's 120. This film is too good to be gone yet.

amuderick · Sep 2, 2010

Dean just got one of the last rolls and product is currently available from him.

Ektagraphic · Sep 3, 2010

I wish the Aerochrome wasn't discontinued!!

happyjam64 · Sep 4, 2010

Uh, just thinking out loud here, couldn't we replicate EIR with black and white films plus colour separation filters? For example, take a photo with infrared film, then b/w film with a red filter, then another b/w photo with a green filter. Then use the infrared photo as the red channel, the red photo as the green channel, and the green photo as the blue channel?

I was reading the wiki page on infrared photos and it said this about EIR:

Color infrared transparency films have three sensitized layers that, because of the way the dyes are coupled to these layers, reproduce infrared as red, red as green, and green as blue.

Any thoughts?

Edit: Someone beat me to it, I just read keithwms post. In theory, I think our ideas should work, but I don't know about in practice.

holmburgers · Sep 4, 2010

happyjam64 said:
Uh, just thinking out loud here, couldn't we replicate EIR with black and white films plus colour separation filters?...

Edit: Someone beat me to it, I just read keithwms post. In theory, I think our ideas should work, but I don't know about in practice.

This is brilliant!

Not to mention, this would allow one to make unique, customized, and funkier EIR-esque color combinations. I mean, the choice to make the IR appear red in EIR is arbitrary, as far as I know. I've always wondered what different color combinations would yield.

happyjam64 · Sep 5, 2010

Yeah, I think it would be something to explore. Hopefully I'll get some wratten filters soon, (perhaps 25, 58, 47, anyone have suggestions?) and do some colour separation work I've always wanted to do!

Nikanon · Sep 5, 2010

Color infrared is impossible with black and white film, there are no dye couplers in the emulsion to record individual colors, simply the silver halides (plus sensitizers) reacting with photons. Recording black and white film with different color filters will only give you different tonal relationships, but not record any color information.

mopar_guy · Sep 5, 2010

I never used any EIR. It was just too darned expensive.

happyjam64 · Sep 5, 2010

Nikanon said:
Recording black and white film with different color filters will only give you different tonal relationships, but not record any color information.

Yes, but that in itself is colour information!

Indeed there are no colour couplers in b/w film, but we can take those tonal relationships and use them as the elementary makeup of a colour photograph. For example, if I took a b/w picture with a red filter, the film (assuming it's pan film) would therefore only capture the intensities of the colour red in the given scene (that's why the sky comes out black, because the sky is almost cyan - the opposite of red). Therefore, this "red b/w" image can be used as the red channel in a typical RGB image.

Take a look at the dye transfer process. Having 3 different b/w pictures of the same scene separated by filters, they would be compiled to make a colour image. Technicolor was also based on this principle.

Thats why I think it might just be possible to replicate EIR with 3 separation negatives. I was also just looking at the general spectral sensitivity of infrared film and I noticed it still has sensitivity in the blue/green area. So, I think the infrared exposure would have to be behind a red filter to block the green/blue spectrum.

Okay guys, let's get the dye-transfer process going again! (Or we could just use PS to compile the channels)

Edit: Does anyone know the spectral sensitivity of the infrared layer in EIR? Or what that layer actually captured?

Stephen Frizza · Sep 5, 2010

This image was done via the technique mentioned above. This portrait of me was made by APUG member Goldie.

Q.G. · Sep 5, 2010

happyjam64 said:
Indeed there are no colour couplers in b/w film, but we can take those tonal relationships and use them as the elementary makeup of a colour photograph. For example, if I took a b/w picture with a red filter, the film (assuming it's pan film) would therefore only capture the intensities of the colour red in the given scene (that's why the sky comes out black, because the sky is almost cyan - the opposite of red).

The sky is, as we all know, blue. Not (almost) cyan.
And blue is indeed at the other end of the spectrum, and not let through by a (good) red filter.

EdSawyer · Sep 5, 2010

To make the separation idea work, you'd need to shoot B&W IR film, of course. But otherwise it should be doable. Of course unless combined digitally you are probably looking at pin-registered neg carriers and easels to get prints to line up. And it would only work for static subjects.

-Ed

Stephen Frizza · Sep 5, 2010

when certain things in the photo arnt static the results get really interesting!

happyjam64 · Sep 5, 2010

Woah, cool portrait. Well, now we know it works, thanks Stephen!

Just another thought here, what if we bi-packed an ortho film with some infrared film and have a red filter in between (assuming the ortho film didn't have an anti-halation layer)? So light would hit the ortho film and capture the green and blue. Then the red filter would block the green and blue and let the infrared film capture the red and infrared.

Perhaps we could even apply the resulting negatives to this theory http://www.greatreality.com/Color2Color.htm

I wonder what would happen...

keithwms · Sep 5, 2010

Nikanon said:
Color infrared is impossible with black and white film, there are no dye couplers in the emulsion to record individual colors, simply the silver halides (plus sensitizers) reacting with photons. Recording black and white film with different color filters will only give you different tonal relationships, but not record any color information.

As mentioned: not only will it work, it'll work well. A lot of colour work was done with b&w film. The idea of colour sep goes waaay back. In my own research on the topic, I quickly ran into James Clerk Maxwell; yes, the Maxwell of del dot B equals zero fame. That was around the 1860!!! Apparently Maxwell was the first to propose colour sep for capturing and displaying colour images. Nobody was thinking of multilayer colour film at the time, much less colour roll film or c41 or e6 or whatever.

Doing IR colour sep will be easy. The interesting wrinkle is what colour channel you dump the IR info into; IR is, of course, invisible to us and doesn't have a colour. So it is a matter of choice. For spy photos you'd probably want the IR to be something other than red so that it stands out from that adjacent colour. But for more pleasing images I suspect that putting the IR image into the red or deep red channel of the final image will work. People can simply try and see for themselves... many creative possibilities here.

Of course, the individual b&w images could also be developed as positives, they don't have to be developed as negs.

Smart chemists like Ron could tell us how to make IR autochromes.

As certain film options go off the market, we'll simply rediscover all the ingenious things that people used to do. It'll be fun, it really will.

holmburgers · Sep 6, 2010

keithwms said:
As mentioned: not only will it work, it'll work well....

...As certain film options go off the market, we'll simply rediscover all the ingenious things that people used to do. It'll be fun, it really will.

Touche!!

Stephen Frizza's example there is an awesome one.

The comment about static subjects could be rememedied with a one-shot camera...
(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

Dye-transfer is definitely not the only way to do this and as has been discussed, is a difficult process to "jump into" due to the lack of supplies readily available. Tri-color carbon would probably be a better option, carbro, etc. Not to mention tri-color gum bichromate. Or, one could tone the separations individually with chemical and/or dye-toning to achieve loose seps that could be registered for the sake of display/scanning/printing.

(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

Lastly, I'd like to know more on the last comment about IR screen-plate (autochromes) photographs. I actually had this same idea but can't quite reason how it could be done. The screen would have to go thru a registration shift, since the encoding filter would have to be opaque and the viewing filer would have to be red....... [... another day i s'pose]

lxdude · Sep 6, 2010

Stephen Frizza said:
This image was done via the technique mentioned above. This portrait of me was made by APUG member Goldie.

Something definitely Christopher Walken-ish about those eyes...
hmmm...that explains a lot!

holmburgers · Sep 6, 2010

happyjam64 said:
Edit: Does anyone know the spectral sensitivity of the infrared layer in EIR? Or what that layer actually captured?

http://www.kodak.com/global/en/professional/support/techPubs/ti2323/ti2323.pdf

Page 7

happyjam64 · Sep 6, 2010

Ah-ha, thanks holmgurgers, that was exactly what I was looking for! Now, what infrared film is closest to the curve of the cyan layer...

I miss Color EIR film

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