Is Ektar 100 Best Suited For Individual Darkroom Printing?

[DREW WILEY]

Kodak color films are balanced to 550K. If the lighting if colder than that, or if parts of the scene have a higher, bluer color temp, then the repo of blue and cyan tones, especially at the extremes of the film latitude, is going to be poorly replicated. Then, if you try to correct the overall color balance afterward, your readjustment will affect everything, not just the portion which is specifically off. This might sound like a minor issue, but it's the difference between a Jack In the Box hamburger and a good steak.

The advice which seems to be missing so far is that the spec sheets don't tell you everything unless you're really good at interpolating them. For decades Kodak published and frequently updated very useful handbooks on Color Photography, Wratten Filters, and other key topics. These included the relevant spec sheets; but those were just a small portion of the overall valuable information. Pro photo academies also routinely taught these things, including correct color balancing. It was essential to successful studio work. High quality color temp meters were routine in studios.

The need for these extra helps is not at all negated by today's own film selection. The only difference is that Kodak has no longer has surplus budget to keep that kind of publication going, especially now that digital is dominating both pro and amateur photography. But you can still find many of these publications at used bookstores and reference them for general information, even though the specific films have changed.

In other words, what was once routine and mandatory information for pros has now been forgotten, but at considerable loss to final image quality. Fortunately, you don't need a lot of filters to correct for the problem, and most can still be found.

Now... my own difficult learning curve. Before I learned the necessity of color temp balancing, I took what I surmised were some outstanding 8x10 shots under deep blue shade and assumed they would print just like my chromes had in Cibachrome days. They didn't. Blue and turquoise and even violet came out almost indistinguishable, the dead opposite of traditional color neg films, where it's very difficult to resolve different tones of yellow, orange, and warm tan - everything tries to jump into the same bin of "fleshtone" because those film are engineered to do exactly that. But once I adopted the specific procedures for Ektar I've been trying to describe, suddenly the prints sprang to life - extraordinarily clean, very well differentiated hue nuances in that same category of color which made me go nuts before. Frankly, some of the best color I've ever seen shy of dye transfer printing. Of course, the best match in terms of RA4 paper selection is important too; but that can always be changed, whereas the initial exposure cannot.

I certainly agree with Koraks. But he emphasized another important factor - don't push your luck to the limits of Ektar's contrast latitude, or you'll pay the crossover penalty regardless of the lighting. It doesn't have anywhere near the latitude as Portra films. Expose it as carefully as you would a slide film. But it does have at least a half stop more latitude both directions than typical chrome film before you start encountering issues. It's a great product, but by no means perfect.

 

[koraks]

What I find interesting that the word has not been used this way and feels like a recent phenomenon.

Perhaps. I see what you mean, though; crossover has a negative connotation to it. In a strict sense, I'd say that's correct - I don't see people deliberately striving for it very often. I'm not sure I agree that a film's color balance is necessarily the product of crossover. If you print two films and they happen to require different filter settings to get the exact same print, there's no sign of crossover, but the color balance is different. See what I mean? In reality, I think there will always be a little difference left between the prints, because both films will indeed cross over in different ways. In the end, crossover is the inescapable compromise of trying to hack three (actually more like a minimum of 8 not even counting the interlayers) different emulsions into tracking with each other. You might manage that somewhere along the curve, but at the extremes, things will get out of whack anyway.

Frankly, I wouldn't know why the term 'crossover' would be reserved only to processing issues. To me, it's just calling the phenomenon what it is. After all, we call 'grain' the same thing regardless if we're accepting it as an inherent property of a B&W film or if we're talking about emphasizing it by certain approaches to exposure and development. It's still grain. For me, crossover is the same kind of thing. Sometimes it's there and not problematically so, just as part of the reality of using film, and sometimes it's an actual problem.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

Thanks Drew for the reply It might be that the shots I have seen most of in Ektar were probably those of the Flyingcamera. They looked very good to me in terms of colours including the blue of the sky but of course I have no idea if he used a skylight filter similar to yours or other parts of your procedure

Does Kodak suggest that to avoid this cyan problem that a colour correction filter is needed? If it doesn't then it may mean that it considers it to be insignificant enough for Mr Average not to have to bother about it

Certainly Mr Average describes me

On the green effect produced by fluorescent lights, I have taken a picture in my kitchen that has one such light without the FLD and it looked fine This was at night so no daylight outside nor with any incandescent light in the scene

However what I am trying to establish is what is the effect of such a filter in a shot where there is either daylight or normal incandescent in the scene also It sounds as if there is no correction possible that doesn't adversely affect the other light in the scene be that daylight or incandescent?

Is this the case? On this part about fluorescent light problems which isn't directly addressed to Drew anyone with knowledge of this problem and experience of solving or mitigating its effect without PS is welcome to contribute

Thanks

pentaxuser

I have not used any filter when shooting ektar 100. Most of my Ektar 100 work has been done with a nearly 70 year old Rolleiflex 2.8E. I do my own scanning on an Epson V750, and my own processing at home in a Jobo CPP2. I have done some complex color corrections in Photoshop with masking to deal with the cyan shadows on a few troublesome images that I felt were worth the effort, but most images are pretty straightforward.

 

[pentaxuser]

Thanks for the reply FlyingCamera.

pentaxuser

 

[MattKing]

I'd suggest that the reason we associate "crossover" with development issues is that correct development tends to:
- eliminate meaningful amounts of crossover in the range of exposures closest to what the film is designed for;
- maximize that range; and
- minimize the amount of crossover outside of that range.
If development is within spec, it is often the case that the effects of crossover are almost invisible - partially because it occurs in parts of the image that are either very dark, or very light.
If the development is outside of spec, the results of crossover often become obvious, because the crossover occurs instead within the range where most of the image's useful information is.

 

[koraks]

Well put, Matt!

 

[DREW WILEY]

Matt - this is not so much an issue of development crossover, but of exposure crossover due to the inherent curve structures of Ektar dyes, concerning which point in overexposure or underexposure these curves not longer maintain parallelism to each to other. Being distinctly more contrasty than most color neg films, and with much sharper dyes peaks more reminiscent of chrome film, even minor errors once out of bounds, latitude-wise, inherently bring a more exaggerated hue shift.

How people strategize this is up to them. Some choose to overlook it. But my own aim is to optimize as much as possible the full potential of this film as well as any printing paper in relation to it. I regard it as a high-performance film which can in fact do a number of things well, in terms of hue reproduction, which other color neg films cannot. But that requires staying in bounds as much as possible, relative to both contrast latitude, and recognizing correct color temp parameters themselves. It's not an ideal "shoot from the hip" film like Kodacolor Gold. But color-gamut-wise, it can hit the bullseye far more often.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Kodak color films are balanced to 550K. If the lighting if colder than that, or if parts of the scene have a higher, bluer color temp, then the repo of blue and cyan tones, especially at the extremes of the film latitude, is going to be poorly replicated. Then, if you try to correct the overall color balance afterward, your readjustment will affect everything, not just the portion which is specifically off. This might sound like a minor issue, but it's the difference between a Jack In the Box hamburger and a good steak.

The advice which seems to be missing so far is that the spec sheets don't tell you everything unless you're really good at interpolating them. For decades Kodak published and frequently updated very useful handbooks on Color Photography, Wratten Filters, and other key topics. These included the relevant spec sheets; but those were just a small portion of the overall valuable information. Pro photo academies also routinely taught these things, including correct color balancing. It was essential to successful studio work. High quality color temp meters were routine in studios.

The need for these extra helps is not at all negated by today's own film selection. The only difference is that Kodak has no longer has surplus budget to keep that kind of publication going, especially now that digital is dominating both pro and amateur photography. But you can still find many of these publications at used bookstores and reference them for general information, even though the specific films have changed.

In other words, what was once routine and mandatory information for pros has now been forgotten, but at considerable loss to final image quality. Fortunately, you don't need a lot of filters to correct for the problem, and most can still be found.

Now... my own difficult learning curve. Before I learned the necessity of color temp balancing, I took what I surmised were some outstanding 8x10 shots under deep blue shade and assumed they would print just like my chromes had in Cibachrome days. They didn't. Blue and turquoise and even violet came out almost indistinguishable, the dead opposite of traditional color neg films, where it's very difficult to resolve different tones of yellow, orange, and warm tan - everything tries to jump into the same bin of "fleshtone" because those film are engineered to do exactly that. But once I adopted the specific procedures for Ektar I've been trying to describe, suddenly the prints sprang to life - extraordinarily clean, very well differentiated hue nuances in that same category of color which made me go nuts before. Frankly, some of the best color I've ever seen shy of dye transfer printing. Of course, the best match in terms of RA4 paper selection is important too; but that can always be changed, whereas the initial exposure cannot.

I certainly agree with Koraks. But he emphasized another important factor - don't push your luck to the limits of Ektar's contrast latitude, or you'll pay the crossover penalty regardless of the lighting. It doesn't have anywhere near the latitude as Portra films. Expose it as carefully as you would a slide film. But it does have at least a half stop more latitude both directions than typical chrome film before you start encountering issues. It's a great product, but by no means perfect.

I don't print but scan. I tried Ektar 100 and found it almost impossible to get the colors right probably because my exposures were off based on your explanation. I'd edit the colors here a little, and then others would move off. Then straighten those out, and other colors would shift. It was like playing "whack-a-mole". Bracketing doesn't necessarily help because how do you know which is the one with the right exposure?

I found scanning Portra that it was actually easy to adjust than Ektar even on the bracketed shots. However, you could see a substantial change in color renditions with the +1 and -1 and normal pictures. For example, just different shades of green. Other colors may have shifted, but I don't recall at this time. You could probably use all three shots individually, at least on a monitor even though the colors were slightly different. It's only when you looked at all three at the same time that the color differences were noticeable.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Luckily, once I realized that the handwriting was on the wall with respect to the final demise of Cibachrome, that's when Portra 160VC was available, and that was a very convenient bridge between older color neg films and the cleaner high saturation variety of Ektar, but without its blue/cyan schizophrenia. But Ektar is a lot more accurate in the yellow and orange tones than VC was, and much finer grained too. Violets all depend, because in nature like wildflowers, this film can respond quite differently than to artificial violet products like fabric or house paint. With true turquoises, Ektar is the silver bullet.

Like I hinted way back on some earlier post, for best results, Ektar requires a high quality scan. The Portra series of films are more
forgiving in this respect. But I avoid the whole problem by strictly darkroom printing.

 

[DF]

I gave up shooting Ektar. For some reason I just can't get the colors right either because I didn't expose the film right or that the editing process is just too difficult. Even when I look at other people who post shots that they say are great, the blue sky doesn't look realIistically blue to me and the colors just don't seem to hold together to look like something you would see in real life.

Yah - I guess my problem is not realizing that this is not some off-the-shelf film like Fuji Superia, 200, or Kodak Ultra Max, where I could be loose & liberal with exposures - overexposing by as much as 2 stops and still getting great results,
whereas Ektar must have a much narrower latitude, and needs to be treated as such.
I still have one more roll of Ektar, so I'll give it one more chance, sunny F16 instead of sunny F8.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Yep. Ektar is not a shoot-from-the-hip film. If you are going to a wild shootout at the OK Corral with Wyatt Earp, bring a shotgun instead of a sniper rifle with a scope.

 

[DF]

Yep. Ektar is not a shoot-from-the-hip film. If you are going to a wild shootout at the OK Corral with Wyatt Earp, bring a shotgun instead of a sniper rifle with a scope.

Do you think my problem might've been over-exposure, as much as 2 stops?
Should I go with Sunny F-16 ?
I've always been good with another 'narrow' exposure latitude film, but it's B&W >PanF+.

 

[koraks]

Do you think my problem might've been over-exposure, as much as 2 stops?
Should I go with Sunny F-16 ?

Nooo....you just ran into some digital troubles. There's a 99.99% chance that the entire trouble you're having with your digital images has nothing to do with the nature of the film, and everything with the way it was digitized. It's very common for people to encounter color issues with scanned C41 film. It's also very common that this is due to lack of awareness and proper control in the digital process.
If you want to verify this, see if you can get some of your Ektar negs printed by someone who does optical RA4 prints and is reasonably good at it. If those prints come out fine, you can safely assume your negatives are fine as well. Until that time, I wouldn't waste much time trying to chase ghosts.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Dang it! Forget all the Sunny 16 stuff. Buy a serious handheld meter and learn to do it right. Digitization just further complicates the learning curve, and won't cure anything unless the film is exposed properly to begin with.

Otherwise, with Ektar you are working with a contrast range analogous to what Pan F or color slide film can handle, but a little more generous.

 

[Sonynolta User]

Yes. Just get a meter. If you can't swing a fancy one, I'd think a smartphone meter would be much better than the Guesstimation of Sunny 16. Sunny 16 was made for Brownies and Verichrome.

 

[relistan]

I’ve found this conversation interesting. Ektar is my favorite color stock and I’ve never had problems with colors when scanning myself on an older Canoscan 8400 back in the day and an Epson V550 now. I have had crummy prints made by a lab, where the colors were all wrong. But I don’t associate that with the film. These are shot on a 1950s Balda Mess-Baldix on Ektar. Colors look very similar to the optical prints Blue Moon in Portland did for the beach shot.







The last shot has some magenta shadows that I chose not to correct but usually it takes very little work.

 

[DF]

Yes. Just get a meter. If you can't swing a fancy one, I'd think a smartphone meter would be much better than the Guesstimation of Sunny 16. Sunny 16 was made for Brownies and Verichrome.

Sunny F16 always worked perfectly with FP4 (B&W that is)
My SRT 101 has built-in meter.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Just depends on how much cyan crossover is acceptable. But it's going to be there unless the film was color balanced at the time of the shot through appropriate filtration. What most of you find OK is certainly not what I'd personally call OPTIMIZED color performance; and the difference can be seen. But each of us has our own standards. So keep having fun with this film, regardless. But don't blame scanning and digi printing idiosyncrasies on the film itself.