Is it me, or is it Ektar?

Alan Klein

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Were you thinking about Ektar 25? I used that about 25 years ago. Very fine film. No grain. Here's a scan. http://flic.kr/p/921HSF

and other Ektar 25 shots. http://www.flickr.com/photos/alanklein2000/tags/ektar/
 

StoneNYC

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Alan Klein said:
Were you thinking about Ektar 25? I used that about 25 years ago. Very fine film. No grain. Here's a scan. http://flic.kr/p/921HSF

and other Ektar 25 shots. http://www.flickr.com/photos/alanklein2000/tags/ektar/
Click to expand...

Alan that's from 25 years ago? Wow that IS a nice film, that's nicer than Ektar 100 I think.

Thanks for sharing.


~Stone

Mamiya: 7 II, RZ67 Pro II / Canon: 1V, AE-1, 5DmkII / Kodak: No 1 Pocket Autographic, No 1A Pocket Autographic | Sent w/ iPhone using Tapatalk
 

Andre Noble

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Ektar 100 truly and thoroughly sucks and Kodak knows it but their best film engineers have since retired and Kodak doesn't care anymore. Color negative film peaked about 12 years ago when Kodak, Fuji, and Agfa were all still fully in the game. A lot of beautiful color emulsions have since departed. The Fuji NPH 400 is probably the best still in existence circa April 2013.

Kodak Ektar 100 is for young kids who and old fools who do not know what quality color silver halide images look like.
 

polyglot

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My, my, we're bitter about something.
 

jgwetworth

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That's an fantastic image! And I personally find Ektar 100 to be a film favorite, its always easy to print.
 

Athiril

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Actually, you can use bleach exposed paper, in a very very dilute bleach, like you do with black and white printing.
 

Athiril

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Ektar is an excellent film, and records gentle subtleties very nicely. RA-4 papers of whats left are a bit heavy handed in the optical dark room, their contrast and saturation is high, so it's not a good combination with Ektar when you want gentle results, as there are no gentle papers left.

These RA-4 papers work well in lightjets and the such without needing a huge intensity range of the laser or LED etc to reach full black, and also because the printer is calibrate for WYSWIG from a calibrated monitor, so it can print any 'grade' it's fed.



Ektar 100

Waterfall by athiril, on Flickr


Sunset #2 on Ektar by athiril, on Flickr


Sunset #1 on Ektar by athiril, on Flickr

My example above is exposed for the coloured area of the sky (reflective metered) for 100. This is a scan and I had to clip out all the sand detail and make it dark, as it was too fully detailed and I didn't like that, as otherwise it was too bland and distracting, even at this level of exposure it can record huge shadow detail.

I expose my Portra at box speed for excellent results in portraits, incident metered towards the key light.

If you want to use Ektar and portraits, I would recommend EI 50, incident metered towards the key light, to give +1 to skin tones.

Otherwise I promote box speed usage with incident metering of the key light, or reflective metering of sunsets, etc.

Underexposure causes blue results, especially with very cold lighting, it just compounds the fact

Cape Woolami #7 by athiril, on Flickr


Cape Woolami #8 by athiril, on Flickr

I exposed as long as I could, the light was just fading fast, and basically night by this point, I had tripod nestled/wedged in the rocks up there, supporting with hands, as I had climbed up those two rocks (it's quite high up) and had to climb down before absolutely pitch black, and tide was coming in beneath me.





I would pick Ektar over Reala. The last time I used Reala, I was kind of bewildered by how it turned out, it turned into a HDR-tonemapped looking image, at long exposure at night. Ektar and Portra are ideal companions for any situation practically speaking. These are the two films I cannot do without.

wblynch said:
I can just imagine if Kodak were to release an Ektar on clear base, without the orange mask.

It would be perfect for reversal processing and easily scannable as a negative. A perfect modern film.
Click to expand...

And lose the masking? No thanks! You might be able to dissolve the mask out though with a solvent anyway.
 
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DREW WILEY

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Just the opposite, Athiril - it's easier to get deep blacks printing optically. Lightjet and similar exposure
devices are dependent upon computer tweaks to correct the overall curve, but are not especially strong
light sources, esp the green lasers. With enlarging such adjustments can be done by film masking, if needed at all. Paper grades are somewhat limited nowadays in the RA4 dept, but the quality of the paper is outstanding, and Ektar prints absolutely beautifully on all the Crystal Archive papers for example. Like anything else, you have to know what you are doing. If someone wants "soft" or bland results, they'd be better of with Portra 160, or could purchase some of the Type P paper that's still around. All this jabber that, because these newest paper are "digitially optimized" means they are
somehow less suitable with an ordinary colorhead, is absolute nonsense. They are better than ever
for the analog darkroom. Now maybe not everyone has fancy additive colorheads like I do, but even
with traditional subtractive colorheads these papers should equate to a general improvement in color
reproduction. But I'd be careful to tailor the subject matter to the most reasonable film first. Ektar
ain't Portra, and Portra ain't Ektar!
 

DREW WILEY

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Andre - guess I'm just an ole fool! And I must be especially stupid to have my freezer stuffed with
4x5 and 8x10 Ektar, and at the moment to be cutting down a thousand dollar roll of paper to print Ektar
images. Thanks for sending me off in the correct direction and informing me that I'm too senile to know how to print. Funny how beautiful those Ektar prints come out, however... must be by sheer chance!
 

pbromaghin

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Wow, Athiril. ++

What's not to like there?
 

DREW WILEY

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The problem is, that if a specific dye layer is underexposed, you won't be able to post-correct it. Deep
blue shadows need something like an 81C filter. Now here again, the Fauxtoshop crowd will state that
by merely futzing around a few evenings, they can correct something like this. No. They might be able
to tweak the balance or contrast, but underexposed blues and blue-inflected tones will not differentiate
because the base of the dye curves are starting to overlap. This actually occurs with other color neg films too, but is more noticable with Ektar because of the greater contrast and saturation, and because
the shadows aren't artificially warmed. Correctly exposed, and the cast of shadows is actually more
accurate than in most other films. It's just so much easier to spend fifteen seconds in the first place
to screw on a filter than to futz around for hours afterwards just for the bragging rights of how good
you are with fix-a-flat-tire programs.
 

Roger Cole

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Ektar is a superb film. While I'm "just a practical tinkering amateur photographer" without the time, equipment or knowledge to verify Drew's technical points I completely agree with his conclusions - beautiful film but takes more care than, say, Portra. I concur that a bit of overexposure from box speed tends to help portraits. It's almost impossible to overexposed modern C41 in the sense of producing poor prints as a result.
 

DREW WILEY

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The nice thing about being old and senile is that I forgot about how, back in the good ole days of great
color neg films, how yellows always became pumpkin orange, and greens were always poisoned with cyan, and how lots of other things came out looking like the backdrop to the Mars scenes in Total Recall, or otherwise resembled the apocalyptic sludge of a Los Angeles sunrise. At least the skintones
were realistic, but that's about all. Everything else tried to become a skintone! (Hyperbole perhaps, but partially true sensitometrically - those dye curves did overlap a lot). But if one is used to printing those
kinds of film, the much steeper dye spikes of Ektar require a lot more care as one homes in. But when
you land, you really land! And with the reduced availability of E6 films, and no direct positive paper left
on the market, Ektar provides a much needed bridge between the ease of RA4 printing and a relatively clean unmuddified gamut.
 

DREW WILEY

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Ah yes.... gotta calibrate a new batch of paper to a second enlarger tonite, using an Ektar master
because it's the most precise one. Hmmm ... guess I could drive out of town and find a fresh cowpie to smear on the neg or over the lens to simulate that classic old Vericolor look. That's the hard thing about analog printing. You can't just click on the automated cowpie layer like in Fauxtoshop.
 

Athiril

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It's not a problem of colour temperature, it's a problem of global underexposure, a filter would make it worse and would have given me even less density and less of a picture. Correct exposure would end up the same with or without a filter, a warming filter would only reduce yellow density on the neg.

Drew, your attitude makes APUG a less pleasant place to visit overall.

I wouldn't say it's hyperbole perhaps, I would say the majority of your states are complete hyperbole, and an embarrassing.
 
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DREW WILEY

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Athiril - you need to do your homework before making a rebuttal like that. Simply globally adding to
exposure will improve part of the issue, but potentially introduce another. Under a blue cast it's a particular dye layer which is most affected, which needs to be addressed with the correct color temp
filter (and appropriate filter factor). Lots of pros know this - nothing new here. And contrary to color neg
stereotypes, there is not unlimited range at the top for overexposure. Ektar will blow out the highlights
at a certain point in real world circumstances. And the key to clean hue differentiation throughout the
whole range is to keep to dye spikes from overlapping - which is the risk if you significantly overexpose.
If you like the look of more cross-contaminated colors, fine. That's what traditonal color neg films do,
though with less contrast. Ektar is capable of something different if it's correctly balanced in the first
place.
 

DREW WILEY

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I just posted a postscript on the wrong adjacent thread per RA4 explaining my "cowpie" analogy. It
pertains to how most previous color neg films were deliberately muddied by creating complex neutrals,
and how Ektar partially differs.
 

Athiril

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Drew, I'd appreciate it if you would stop with passive aggressive assertions and assumptions, and tarring whole groups with the same brush. You consistently have something negative to say about someone.



An 81C is a 1/3rd of a stop difference. I don't know what situation you're advocating it's use. But in my situation, crossover becomes moot, as reciprocity failure wont be identical across all layers. It doesn't stop you from getting a neutral grey scale (Though a neutrally balanced grey scale may not necessarily be desirable) via balance. Delta E will change, but it's going to no matter what you do in the situation, you're not going to get the same Delta E you're used to in regular scenarios.

The most needed thing in my situation if I wanted a more 'normal' image is more exposure, not filtration. More exposure would do far more good then filtration, the amount of improvement would be a -lot- more then what filtration brings to the table, the improvement with filtration would be very minor in comparison, but still requires more exposure anyway, which could not be given at the time, so would only cause more damage, and a thinner image in my situation.

I sometimes use an 85 series filter in forests, once compensated for with exposure vs without filter (At normal non-compensated exposure), the same balance (as in neutral grey scale in each) gives more saturation for me.
 

polyglot

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Athiril said:
Drew, I'd appreciate it if you would stop with passive aggressive assertions and assumptions, and tarring whole groups with the same brush. You consistently have something negative to say about someone.
Click to expand...

Hear, hear. The "I'm smarter than everyone else here" attitude is really grating.
 

Lamar

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If you read the exposure recommendations in the Ektar spec sheet that used to live on the Kodak site they are for an ISO 50 film. They read the same as Velvia 50.


 

MattKing

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noacronym

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Personally, I'm not jumping on this Drew fellow's case. For the photographic knowledge value of what he's got to say seems more plentiful than my own. And it's always been my policy when I'm around people smarter than me; to be all ears.
 

Poisson Du Jour

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Lamar said:
If you read the exposure recommendations in the Ektar spec sheet that used to live on the Kodak site they are for an ISO 50 film. They read the same as Velvia 50.
Click to expand...


Ektar specs read as for RVP 50?
Come again?? :confused:
I don't see similarities.
 
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