Making Prints from Positive Chrome Color FIlm

[Alan Edward Klein]

I shoot these types, like Velvia 50, Ektachrome 100, and Provia 100. How do you make final prints? Do you use digital or analog printing? What's your process? What are the pros and cons of different methods?

 

[xkaes]

I'm not familiar with any slide-to-print enlarging systems today -- like Cibachrome -- but you can choose digital or film. It depends on what gear you currently have and your preferences. You'll need some kind of copying setup for either. The only difference is whether the camera has film in it or is a digital camera. Do you have a 1:1 copy set-up already? If not, there are a million ways to go, and some can be very simple and inexpensive. If you have a color enlarger you might not need to buy anything.

 

[koraks]

Back when I still shot slide film, I scanned it and printed it digitally. I mostly sent it out to labs in that period, so I would receive the prints back. The labs in those days exclusively used digitally-exposed RA4 paper. Today if I were to do the same, I'd inkjet print at home because it's quicker and more convenient, and I've got the printer anyway.

There's not all that much that can be printed analog from a slide. You could muck about a bit with RA4 reversal, but the process is iffy and the results vary from 'remarkably good, given what it is' (which already says enough) to 'hmmm....let's go back to that inkjet thingy for a bit'. Alternatively, you'd have to do some kind of internegative and then print to RA4, but I'm not aware of anyone actually doing that today. Materials for the internegative are also extinct.

 

[MattKing]

Moderator note: I moved this from Digital Negatives to Misc. Hybrid. The Digital Negatives sub-forum is more for those who use them to make contact prints using traditional and historical processes like Van Dyke Brown.
On the subject of the thread:
As I understand it, while internegative specific materials are no longer made, Portra 160 is usable.
For me, when I used to do this more, I had labs print on RA4 from scans.
I could still do that, but the less expensive labs are out of that business now around here.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Thanks for the input. Thirty years ago I;d have a lab print 16x20"s of my medium format chromes using 4x5 internegatives. I still have a couple of them hanging on my walls, faded a little. Like you said, that;s pretty much dead now. I guess digital print is the best way to go now but I don;t have a printer so I;d use a lab again. I scan my chromes myself with a flatbed. But I wonder if I should rescan using the better facilities of lab printers? I could try it both ways.

Is anyone printing from chromes here lately?

 

[koraks]

But I wonder if I should rescan using the better facilities of lab printers?

It depends:
* Whether the lab you select actually uses scanning technology that exceeds what your flatbed can do.
* What size you'll need your prints to be, and what the viewing distance will be.
* Whether you need new prints and are willing to pay for them.

Is anyone printing from chromes here lately?

Not me, that much is clear. If I still were to shoot chromes, I'd probably print some of them and they'd be digital prints evidently. But the main reason I don't shoot chromes anymore is because they can't easily be printed, let alone particularly well, in the darkroom. At that point, my interest wanes very rapidly. If an image can practically only be printed digitally, I prefer to record it digitally in the first place. It's a lot less fussy, a lot more flexible and usually the net result is of higher quality.

 

[Carnie Bob]

I have done both optical printing and digital printing of positive film, I prefer scanning and printing from the edited digital files these days.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

I have done both optical printing and digital printing of positive film, I prefer scanning and printing from the edited digital files these days.

Do you have to do any of the editing to get the colors etc right? Or are digital edits from the photographer good enough?

 

[Taylor Nankervis]

@Alan Edward Klein

I am cheered by learning there are other practitioners who enjoy producing work on chromes and printing from them.

Velvia 50 is a rav-fav!
Provia 100, occasionally used for pinholing, is better in mixed or bright light, with better shadow nuancing and requires minimal photometric work. When I am bushwalking I pack both pinholes: one with RVP50 and the other with RDPIII; by and by, it is RDPIII that gets most used as summer light Downunder, especially in forests, is very harsh and does Velvia no favours.

E100 is more challenging to scan well; we apply ColorMatch RGB to get the palette just-so, even then, it is mostly the crisp, clear whites that are the defining quality of E100. Otherwise...meh...

Of scanning, Imacon wet scans at 300dpi (MF), de-specking pass and contrast/brightness step to compensate for scan-step loss — both are very slight mark-ups, then profiling (sRGB & AppleRGB, each used for proof printing). Printing is on a Canon giclée printer, set aside overnight to dry, then to frameshop for MGC frame-up — this reflects the same production as I did with Ilfochrome Classic, until its (somewhat unsurprising) demise in 2010.
Ah, but I'm reminded, somewhat brutally, just what we are missing by the 400+ of these beauties in storage, and numerous prints in private and commercial collections). RA4 Pegasus print production post-2010 was carried out from production (various drum-) scans up until April this year, when the last two machines in lab service went belly-up rather spectacularly; these old dinosaurs were not economical to repair or source parts for and they are now becoming very scarce in Australia.

 

[Carnie Bob]

Do you have to do any of the editing to get the colors etc right? Or are digital edits from the photographer good enough?

sometimes the files are perfect and other times I get raw files and am required to edit. It depends solely on the photographer who is submitting the file.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

sometimes the files are perfect and other times I get raw files and am required to edit. It depends solely on the photographer who is submitting the file.

The reason I ask is because doesn't the printing process and printer require certain settings for color etc in the file to get the best out of the print? Or do you provide the photographer with "templates" settings to work from?

 

[MattKing]

The reason I ask is because doesn't the printing process and printer require certain settings for color etc in the file to get the best out of the print? Or do you provide the photographer with "templates" settings to work from?

Good commercial labs provide printer profiles that you incorporate in your colour managed workflow, in order to have the resulting prints closely approximate what you see on your editing screen.
I don't know whether Bob provides that, but I would expect his experienced clients would work in a colour managed environment.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Good commercial labs provide printer profiles that you incorporate in your colour managed workflow, in order to have the resulting prints closely approximate what you see on your editing screen.
I don't know whether Bob provides that, but I would expect his experienced clients would work in a colour managed environment.

That's my question. Does Bob provide his own colored management environment? Or does he tweak what he gets?

 

[koraks]

Does Bob provide his own colored management environment? Or does he tweak what he gets?

Those are different aspects, and although they're related, having a color managed environment is distinct from adjusting the colors on an image to make them look as desired. Which is yet again something different from distributing color profiles to external parties.

AFAIK most of @Carnie Bob's color work at this point is gum printing and/or combinations of gum and other alt. processes from digital negatives. Given what I know of how Bob works, I don't think he provides his customers with ICC profiles. That would fit more in the style of printing of someone like Calvin Grier.

 

[Carnie Bob]

We design profiles for our papers , to get the most out of the ink and paper... we do not supply these profiles to our clients.. rather we ask for Flattened Tiff Adobe 1998 16 or 8 bit files.

These days most computers our clients are working on are calibrated and give good results... The biggest problem we see is when people edit using a screen that is set to maximum brightness, most print shops set their monitors to about 60% brightness.

For images that are going to be separated into CMY we ask that at one stage of the edit convert to CMYK to see if the colours are all still in gamut.

Sometimes we tweek but in most cases with repeat clients they know the relationship between their screen and our prints after a few rounds.