{Moderator's Note: This thread is intended as a repository for a bunch of digital colour posts that arose out of a thread about colour negative films, colour processes and rendition of colour.
That thread can be found here: https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/colour-negative-film.192985/
As a result of the moving of posts, both threads may end up being a bit choppy and disjointed.
The discussion was in response to the following very interesting post, which shows examples of how negatives designed for and processed in ECN-2 chemicals print on RA-4 paper designed to be used with negatives designed for and processed in C-41 chemicals.
Somewhat analogous in some ways to using materials set up for one colour space, in another colour space}
It's an accurate way of summing up what I experienced in my testing. I'm not saying it is fundamentally impossible to make color-accurate RA4 prints optically from ECN-2 negatives, but as far as I can tell, it would take considerable doctoring with complex color masks to get there. Not something I would consider worthwhile.
That's a very fair request indeed and I agree wholeheartedly with you that 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder', and that it's up to anyone to decide what they find acceptable. I didn't scan everything I made in that period - actually far from it, but I did find some things I happened to have online anyway, here they come:
This is a promising early experiment; Vision 3 50D in 'straight' ECN-2 developer according to Kodak processing parameters. This may seem to come out OK to some, which is mostly due to this being a low-contrast scene, so most of what draws our attention is crammed into a narrow density range and hence, we can print without crossover being a very apparent problem. However, note the lack of saturation in all the primaries. The mug is supposed to have a quite vibrant (but rather dark) blue print, and I guess we all know what a bell pepper looks like in reality. This initial test actually inspired me to give it a go with portraits; the inherently 'toned down' look of ECN-2 seemed suitable for this to me.
So here's one of the more successful portraits; again, this mostly works because of the narrow density range resulting from deliberately flat lighting. There still is a sickly greenish tint to the skin, which additional filtering would only fix at the cost of other problems (I tried), and more importantly the wall in the background was in reality neutral white...due to severe crossover issues, it doesn't render as underexposed white at all.
This is a scene that more directly demonstrates the issue, with a deliberately chosen high dynamic range. This is something Vision 3 should excel in, but as you can see it doesn't translate well to an RA4 print. Note how we cross pretty much through the entire rainbow as we transverse the scene from dark to light. I actually made this as part of a pH and development time test series where I tried to doctor the ECN-2 curve by adjusting the pH. While the color balance did shift, the crossover problem did not go away at all; indeed, it seemed to help very little at all.
Of course, one could exploit the crossover issue artistically as I did here, deliberately filtering the print for a very warm, golden skin tone while keeping the shadows very cool. Problem is, of course, that you're basically stuck with this kind of thing; it's not something you can control. It's what the material gives you.
For more examples I'd really have to start digging and frankly I'm not sure if I can be bothered...I've had my say on the subject several times; it's up to those who want to experiment to decide if they feel it's worth their time. I do think the material has artistic merit in a way. But whenever people start off saying things like "ECN2 is pretty much like regular C41 film only better/cheaper/whatever"...well, I just don't see it that way. It's a different animal, and not an animal that was designed to mate with RA4 paper. That you can seduce them to create offspring, doesn't mean the offspring will be particularly pretty or nice to live with.
PS: in most of my experiments, I resorted to exposing Vison 3 50D at EI 32 or even 25 to get enough shadow density to get it to work sort of OK with RA4 paper. This will give a relatively (compared to C41) low-contrast image with somewhat decent shadow detail. For contrast comparable with C41 film, I would advise extending development time while remaining closer to box speed.
PPS: I don't think I saved my early experiments with developing Vision 3 50D in C41 developer, but the results were so abominable that I very quickly gave up on it. While ECN-2 developed film at least prints in somewhat believable colors, C41-developed film looked exactly what it was: cross-processed (and not in a pleasing way, to my eye).
I tried natural light outdoors, indoors, sunlit scenes, shade, strobes...the works. See my examples above; the severity of the problems depend mostly on the contrast of the scene and more subjective factors such as what kind of color fidelity the viewer intuitively expects from shadows and highlights, so basically subject matter. But the technical phenomenon was at least for me unescapable.
Btw, I did show some of those same images to PE in our discussion on the subject, and in his polite and soft-spoken way, he didn't seem particularly pleased with the results or hopeful of substantial improvements.
That thread can be found here: https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/colour-negative-film.192985/
As a result of the moving of posts, both threads may end up being a bit choppy and disjointed.
The discussion was in response to the following very interesting post, which shows examples of how negatives designed for and processed in ECN-2 chemicals print on RA-4 paper designed to be used with negatives designed for and processed in C-41 chemicals.
Somewhat analogous in some ways to using materials set up for one colour space, in another colour space}
It's an accurate way of summing up what I experienced in my testing. I'm not saying it is fundamentally impossible to make color-accurate RA4 prints optically from ECN-2 negatives, but as far as I can tell, it would take considerable doctoring with complex color masks to get there. Not something I would consider worthwhile.
That's a very fair request indeed and I agree wholeheartedly with you that 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder', and that it's up to anyone to decide what they find acceptable. I didn't scan everything I made in that period - actually far from it, but I did find some things I happened to have online anyway, here they come:
This is a promising early experiment; Vision 3 50D in 'straight' ECN-2 developer according to Kodak processing parameters. This may seem to come out OK to some, which is mostly due to this being a low-contrast scene, so most of what draws our attention is crammed into a narrow density range and hence, we can print without crossover being a very apparent problem. However, note the lack of saturation in all the primaries. The mug is supposed to have a quite vibrant (but rather dark) blue print, and I guess we all know what a bell pepper looks like in reality. This initial test actually inspired me to give it a go with portraits; the inherently 'toned down' look of ECN-2 seemed suitable for this to me.
So here's one of the more successful portraits; again, this mostly works because of the narrow density range resulting from deliberately flat lighting. There still is a sickly greenish tint to the skin, which additional filtering would only fix at the cost of other problems (I tried), and more importantly the wall in the background was in reality neutral white...due to severe crossover issues, it doesn't render as underexposed white at all.
This is a scene that more directly demonstrates the issue, with a deliberately chosen high dynamic range. This is something Vision 3 should excel in, but as you can see it doesn't translate well to an RA4 print. Note how we cross pretty much through the entire rainbow as we transverse the scene from dark to light. I actually made this as part of a pH and development time test series where I tried to doctor the ECN-2 curve by adjusting the pH. While the color balance did shift, the crossover problem did not go away at all; indeed, it seemed to help very little at all.
Of course, one could exploit the crossover issue artistically as I did here, deliberately filtering the print for a very warm, golden skin tone while keeping the shadows very cool. Problem is, of course, that you're basically stuck with this kind of thing; it's not something you can control. It's what the material gives you.
For more examples I'd really have to start digging and frankly I'm not sure if I can be bothered...I've had my say on the subject several times; it's up to those who want to experiment to decide if they feel it's worth their time. I do think the material has artistic merit in a way. But whenever people start off saying things like "ECN2 is pretty much like regular C41 film only better/cheaper/whatever"...well, I just don't see it that way. It's a different animal, and not an animal that was designed to mate with RA4 paper. That you can seduce them to create offspring, doesn't mean the offspring will be particularly pretty or nice to live with.
PS: in most of my experiments, I resorted to exposing Vison 3 50D at EI 32 or even 25 to get enough shadow density to get it to work sort of OK with RA4 paper. This will give a relatively (compared to C41) low-contrast image with somewhat decent shadow detail. For contrast comparable with C41 film, I would advise extending development time while remaining closer to box speed.
PPS: I don't think I saved my early experiments with developing Vision 3 50D in C41 developer, but the results were so abominable that I very quickly gave up on it. While ECN-2 developed film at least prints in somewhat believable colors, C41-developed film looked exactly what it was: cross-processed (and not in a pleasing way, to my eye).
I tried natural light outdoors, indoors, sunlit scenes, shade, strobes...the works. See my examples above; the severity of the problems depend mostly on the contrast of the scene and more subjective factors such as what kind of color fidelity the viewer intuitively expects from shadows and highlights, so basically subject matter. But the technical phenomenon was at least for me unescapable.
Btw, I did show some of those same images to PE in our discussion on the subject, and in his polite and soft-spoken way, he didn't seem particularly pleased with the results or hopeful of substantial improvements.
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