I need to lay off color

[Arthurwg]

I believe that Gary Winograd left many rolls unprocessed at his death. Not sure what happened to them.

 

[LJClark]

I've also been looking around for C-41 processing...

Here in Omaha Rockbrook Camera will soup and sleeve 120 (I think for $6), but they take a full week from the day you drop it off. I gave them one roll as a trial this past Monday, so we'll see next Monday. I'd love to find another (faster) lab in town.

Process One in Overland Park, KS, is full service and does develop-only for 35mm ($3.99/roll) and 120 ($4.99/roll) with one-day turnaround Monday-Saturday. I'm going to try them next. The elapsed time will be about the same, but I only have to drive to my regular supermarket to drop off in their USPS concession.

I was looking at thedarkroom.com, but they want $11.00 a roll, which includes a low-res scan. They charge the same amount if you specify develop-only -- which took them right off my list.

I have a 120 pinhole now, and an XPan and a pair of Mamiya Universals in storage, so I need to work out a good solution [pun intended]. With those immersion cooker things, temperature baths are within easy reach, so I might just need to start souping my own C-41. I'm already doing B&W 120 at home.

 

[thuggins]

Not to set off a firestorm, but I really can't imagine why anyone would shoot C-41 these days. For years I stuck with negative film because I thought the whole point was to get a "picture" (the print). Now I look at all those prints from Kodak Gold with their washed out colors and soft details and think "Wow, that would have been a really great slide.".

Given that "the print" is pretty much universally done d!&!+@lly now days, you can have the best of both worlds. In my experience slides make much better prints than negatives.

 

[Prest_400]

Not to set off a firestorm, but I really can't imagine why anyone would shoot C-41 these days. For years I stuck with negative film because I thought the whole point was to get a "picture" (the print). Now I look at all those prints from Kodak Gold with their washed out colors and soft details and think "Wow, that would have been a really great slide.".

Given that "the print" is pretty much universally done d!&!+@lly now days, you can have the best of both worlds. In my experience slides make much better prints than negatives.

That's interesting. Curiously that high key, absorb overexposed highlight C41 is the "film look" nowadays. And as the minilab scanners don't take E6 so nicely (or, not as manipulative in the same way) it's just not very popular.
I should get some more provia for Fall. 6x9 slides are to behold.

 

[RattyMouse]

Not to set off a firestorm, but I really can't imagine why anyone would shoot C-41 these days. For years I stuck with negative film because I thought the whole point was to get a "picture" (the print). Now I look at all those prints from Kodak Gold with their washed out colors and soft details and think "Wow, that would have been a really great slide.".

Given that "the print" is pretty much universally done d!&!+@lly now days, you can have the best of both worlds. In my experience slides make much better prints than negatives.

While I agree with you that Kodak Gold is a terrible looking film, I would not classify all C41 films the same way. Reala 100, NPS160, 400H, and C200 are all (or were in a few cases) excellent looking films that print beautifully.

 

[Lachlan Young]

Not to set off a firestorm, but I really can't imagine why anyone would shoot C-41 these days. For years I stuck with negative film because I thought the whole point was to get a "picture" (the print). Now I look at all those prints from Kodak Gold with their washed out colors and soft details and think "Wow, that would have been a really great slide.".

Given that "the print" is pretty much universally done d!&!+@lly now days, you can have the best of both worlds. In my experience slides make much better prints than negatives.

You've evidently never used professional negative films or had top quality optical prints (or for that matter high end CCD or PMT/ drum scans) made. The quality difference is not small. Compared to transparency film, professional C-41 films are vastly more colour accurate, & offer many qualitative advantages. They do however require basic competence in printing and/ or scanning.

 

[mshchem]

You've evidently never used professional negative films or had top quality optical prints (or for that matter high end CCD or PMT/ drum scans) made. The quality difference is not small. Compared to transparency film, professional C-41 films are vastly more colour accurate, & offer many qualitative advantages. They do however require basic competence in printing and/ or scanning.

Totally agree . Minilab prints can be horrible. Optical prints from Fuji or Kodak professional films are amazing. My inexpensive Canon inkjet looks better than some of the mass produced RA-4 snapshots. Scanning negatives, for me is much more of a headache than slides. But I am incompetent at scanning.
There's a good reason motion pictures have always been shot on negative film. Don't get me wrong I love slides, but mostly for projection or just as a little jewel to look at with a loupe.
Best Regards Mike .

 

[Sirius Glass]

Not to set off a firestorm, but I really can't imagine why anyone would shoot C-41 these days. For years I stuck with negative film because I thought the whole point was to get a "picture" (the print). Now I look at all those prints from Kodak Gold with their washed out colors and soft details and think "Wow, that would have been a really great slide.".

Given that "the print" is pretty much universally done d!&!+@lly now days, you can have the best of both worlds. In my experience slides make much better prints than negatives.

I shoot C-41 and black & white film. I have a number of 24"x36" and 30"x30" C-41 prints commercially framed in archival mounts behind UV glass and never in direct sunlight. Some of them are over twenty years old. None of them have any signs of fading. Nor have the large black & white prints mounted the same way. So I do not know which prints you are looking at, but they are not mine.

We could have a long discussion about archival mountings and UV glass, but that would be a long and boring discussion.

 

[Lachlan Young]

Totally agree . Minilab prints can be horrible. Optical prints from Fuji or Kodak professional films are amazing. My inexpensive Canon inkjet looks better than some of the mass produced RA-4 snapshots. Scanning negatives, for me is much more of a headache than slides. But I am incompetent at scanning.
There's a good reason motion pictures have always been shot on negative film. Don't get me wrong I love slides, but mostly for projection or just as a little jewel to look at with a loupe.
Best Regards Mike .

The scanning side is actually very easy - if you have a scanner that is halfway competent (unfortunately this really means high end CCD or PMT or possibly stitched DSLR) & understand what to do with the file to make it behave as if you were printing it in the darkroom. It's harder to explain than do!

 

[thuggins]

While I agree with you that Kodak Gold is a terrible looking film, I would not classify all C41 films the same way. Reala 100, NPS160, 400H, and C200 are all (or were in a few cases) excellent looking films that print beautifully.

I completely agree regarding the relative quality of Gold. At one point I had some Reala mixed in with Gold from the same trip, and the difference between the two was just amazing. But that was right when I was making the change to VS (beautiful, sublime VS...) so there was no reason to further explore Fuji's print offerings.

But now with E-6 you get the best of both worlds, a jewel like original plus a print with great contrast and color. Of course, with C-41 you don't have to be as careful with metering. So it is convenient for using with cameras that have no meter, cameras where the meter is broken, of with box type cameras with little or no control of the shutter speed and aperture.

 

[RPC]

Not to set off a firestorm, but I really can't imagine why anyone would shoot C-41 these days. For years I stuck with negative film because I thought the whole point was to get a "picture" (the print). Now I look at all those prints from Kodak Gold with their washed out colors and soft details and think "Wow, that would have been a really great slide.".

Given that "the print" is pretty much universally done d!&!+@lly now days, you can have the best of both worlds. In my experience slides make much better prints than negatives.

I am of the opposite view. I have no reason to shoot slides since I don't want to view tiny images and don't have a projector. I want big prints, and the optical prints I get in my darkroom from almost any color negative film on the market today are superior to anything scanned and printed, whether slides or negatives, or optical prints from slides. Therefore only C-41 makes sense.

It is too bad your negative prints disappointed you, they obviously weren't shot or processed and printed properly.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

I completely agree regarding the relative quality of Gold. At one point I had some Reala mixed in with Gold from the same trip, and the difference between the two was just amazing. But that was right when I was making the change to VS (beautiful, sublime VS...) so there was no reason to further explore Fuji's print offerings.

But now with E-6 you get the best of both worlds, a jewel like original plus a print with great contrast and color. Of course, with C-41 you don't have to be as careful with metering. So it is convenient for using with cameras that have no meter, cameras where the meter is broken, of with box type cameras with little or no control of the shutter speed and aperture.

The challenge with printing from transparencies is that they are generally wickedly contrasty and as such, very hard to print from. I learned this from personal experience trying to print some 2 1/4 transparencies - I burned through an entire $150 box of polyester-based Cibachrome paper with nary a print to show for it. I would have had to have contrast masks made, or else have internegatives made (defeating the purpose). Plus, I can hold detail in highlights with a negative much longer than I can with a transparency.

 

[RPC]

The challenge with printing from transparencies is that they are generally wickedly contrasty and as such, very hard to print from. I learned this from personal experience trying to print some 2 1/4 transparencies - I burned through an entire $150 box of polyester-based Cibachrome paper with nary a print to show for it. I would have had to have contrast masks made, or else have internegatives made (defeating the purpose). Plus, I can hold detail in highlights with a negative much longer than I can with a transparency.

I had the same problem. Some Cibachrome prints could look okay, but prints from negatives were consistently better than prints from slides. Slides are designed for projection, and have high contrast for this purpose that does not print well, at least optically.

 

[Sirius Glass]

The challenge with printing from transparencies is that they are generally wickedly contrasty and as such, very hard to print from. I learned this from personal experience trying to print some 2 1/4 transparencies - I burned through an entire $150 box of polyester-based Cibachrome paper with nary a print to show for it. I would have had to have contrast masks made, or else have internegatives made (defeating the purpose). Plus, I can hold detail in highlights with a negative much longer than I can with a transparency.

One of the reasons that I stopped shooting slides is that it was hard to get good prints made from slides.

 

[Poisson Du Jour]

One of the reasons that I stopped shooting slides is that it was hard to get good prints made from slides.

Sirius, it is not difficult to get good prints. It never was. Looking in the right place and for the right method is all that is required.
Sadly, old urban myths abound about the sole and only use of slides being for projection. Hello!? New Flash to these foks: bullshit. Slides have been printed since 1963 (one of my aunties had Cibas printed of Trooping the Colour in London, dated 1967, and they are still beautiful to look at), and likely before that. No great difficulty in printing to Ilfochrome Classic from slides, so long as you are properly qualified and knew the process. Hybrid methods do away with the stench and mess of Ilfochrome (and the now-legendary failures of their quality control) with modern materials definitely getting a leg up on the old bastion.

My experience has been that the difficulty is with exposure of the slides, and by direct association, the photographer, not the printing process. A poorly exposed slide will not print well to either Ilfochrome Classic or RA-4 (wet/hybrid of darkroom). A well exposed slide is a cinch to print, but those at the margin of contrast (common with 35mm) or simply shot in illumination for which slide film has never been known to cope well are major and recurring themes, right to this day where we, as printers, reject work based on the poor quality of exposure and unrealistic expectations of (seemingly) experienced photographers. People just are not learning.

 

[RPC]

It is not bullshit. Slides are NOT designed for printing, but projection. They are high contrast and unmasked and that does NOT allow them to print as well as negatives do no matter how they are exposed. You CAN print from slides, but the quality will never equal the quality of prints from negatives without extra work. People often confuse popping colors in a slide print with accurate colors. Slides look superb, however, when projected. Negatives ARE designed for printing with their low contrast and masking and print very well. It has been stated many times in this forum that Hollywood chose negative film over reversal film for those very reasons. Portrait and wedding photographers have also routinely used negative film, not reversal film.

 

[Ste_S]

Not to set off a firestorm, but I really can't imagine why anyone would shoot C-41 these days. For years I stuck with negative film because I thought the whole point was to get a "picture" (the print). Now I look at all those prints from Kodak Gold with their washed out colors and soft details and think "Wow, that would have been a really great slide.".

Given that "the print" is pretty much universally done d!&!+@lly now days, you can have the best of both worlds. In my experience slides make much better prints than negatives.

I've not tried Gold, but have shot a lot of Colorplus and Ultramax recently and like them both. Certainly don't have washed out colours or soft details in my scans or ink jet prints- darkroom printing I guess may be different. Unless I start looking closely at grain patterns I sometimes have difficulty telling them apart from Ektar, which I've also been shooting a lot of recently.

My sole experience with shooting E6 is with Velvia 100, which is a terrible film. Not sure why anyone would shoot that... I'll try again with Provia I guess.

 

[Sirius Glass]

One of the reasons that I stopped shooting slides is that it was hard to get good prints made from slides.

Sirius, it is not difficult to get good prints. It never was. Looking in the right place and for the right method is all that is required.
Sadly, old urban myths abound about the sole and only use of slides being for projection. Hello!? New Flash to these foks: bullshit. Slides have been printed since 1963 (one of my aunties had Cibas printed of Trooping the Colour in London, dated 1967, and they are still beautiful to look at), and likely before that. No great difficulty in printing to Ilfochrome Classic from slides, so long as you are properly qualified and knew the process. Hybrid methods do away with the stench and mess of Ilfochrome (and the now-legendary failures of their quality control) with modern materials definitely getting a leg up on the old bastion.

My experience has been that the difficulty is with exposure of the slides, and by direct association, the photographer, not the printing process. A poorly exposed slide will not print well to either Ilfochrome Classic or RA-4 (wet/hybrid of darkroom). A well exposed slide is a cinch to print, but those at the margin of contrast (common with 35mm) or simply shot in illumination for which slide film has never been known to cope well are major and recurring themes, right to this day where we, as printers, reject work based on the poor quality of exposure and unrealistic expectations of (seemingly) experienced photographers. People just are not learning.

The problem was not color, it was the contrast which would at times increase too much.

 

[btaylor]

Weird— there is no path at this time to a straight optical print from a slide. All those materials are gone with the possible exception of someone who hoarded the old material. Many years ago my preferred material for color were slides which I printed on reversal print materials from Kodak and Ciba. I still love the prints. 30-40 years ago the prints I made from c41 lacked contrast and had comparatively muted color. Things are different now. I get great prints from c41 color and slides would be for scanning or projection, but I just don’t anymore (especially since my preferred slide film was Kodachrome).
Hollywood used negative film because everything they did required printing which adds contrast for each generation. There was a beautiful low contrast reversal film called ECO that was made for duplication in 16mm format because the grain in color neg looked awful at the time. Unfortunately it was ASA 25.

 

[RPC]

Weird— there is no path at this time to a straight optical print from a slide.

Don't know if there is anything commercially produced but a technique known as RA-4 Reversal can produce prints from slides optically with available materials with fair quality if done right.

 

[btaylor]

Don't know if there is anything commercially produced but a technique known as RA-4 Reversal can produce prints from slides optically with available materials with fair quality if done right.

Right, I saw a thread about that. But I was referring to a commercially available product to create reversal prints. I was kinda shocked when I returned to making color prints after a long time away and found that there were no longer any off-the-shelf reversal materials for making prints. Color neg wasn't much to write home about -especially in 35mm- in the '80's. I loved the extremely fine grain of Kodachrome. One look at Galen Rowell's work before he switched to Velvia confirms that. I made beautiful 16x20 reversal pints from 35mm. Cut to 4-5 years ago when I got back into it and there is beautiful, fine grain Kodak Portra and Ektar in 35mm, 120 and 4x5. I enjoy the ease, quality and price(!) of C41 and RA4 materials.

 

[Jon Buffington]

Gold 200 washed out and colorless, lacking detail? Nonsense. With a canon rebel 2k and cheap 28-80 kit lens. Late morning harsh, terrible light.

and the same scene with ektar 100 a little later in the morning, for reference

 

[Jon Buffington]

Tom, c41 is so easy to do at home, easier than B&W. But, here is a little story to share.

Last year an old friend who is a fairly famous photog let it be known that he had a big stash of undeveloped film that he has been carrying around the country, freezer to freezer, for 10-15 years (and more), yet to be developed. I offered to do this for him, and since I have a Kodak lab scanner (pakon f135+), digitize them as well. Lots of never before, great images of many famous individuals. The problem though is that most of the film was Fuji 800 press (the c41) or other high iso B&W and despite freezing, was roached out. Even the lower iso stuff was sub par. Probably the freezing and thawing, refreezing etc cycle further ruined a lot of it. Fortunately, there were some great images that survived. The point though, don't let that c41 die an unfavorable death after the images were captured. I unfortunately did this with some rolls from 2006 I just got around to developing. Degradation had taken hold (not cold stored, iso 800 film, blaaah!). Anyways, happy shooting and developing!

 

[LJClark]

The problem though is that most of the film was Fuji 800 press (the c41)

Sigh. I loved that film. When I was traveling more, I would have two RFs (eventually a pair of M6s) -- one loaded with ISO 100, and the other with Fuji 800 press.

 

[Ste_S]

Gold 200 washed out and colorless, lacking detail? Nonsense. With a canon rebel 2k and cheap 28-80 kit lens. Late morning harsh, terrible light.

and the same scene with ektar 100 a little later in the morning, for reference

Nice, also my experience comparing Kodak's consumer to Ektar. I am tending to prefer consumer films now in this unusual UK summer, love the grain pattern in clear blue skies.