New venture - color film - Ektar & Portra

[DREW WILEY]

Bormental - what film format are you using? The smaller the film, the higher the quality of scan is needed to prevent non-film crossover artifacts due to substandard scanning itself. It has to do with sampling size. I won't go into detail because this is the analog section of the forum. But with most labs, a medium cost scan will produce dramatically better and more consistent results just moving up to 120 MF film from 35mm. I don't request scans very often, especially for personal use, but am quite familiar with the old adage that you get what you pay for when it comes to lab services.

 

[DREW WILEY]

GLS - Polarizers are an iffy option. If you like what they do, OK. I think they generally render a fake look unless very circumspectly used. ND Grads tend to be even worse in that respect. I rarely see examples of them used well; and most add a color bias of their own.

 

[Lachlan Young]

ND Grads tend to be even worse in that respect. I rarely see examples of them used well; and most add a color bias of their own.

There's a tendency to forget (in the post Velvia+ND Grad+polariser world) that for a very long time plenty of people managed to do just fine with regular transparency film & not much in the way of special filters...

 

[Bormental]

Bormental - what film format are you using? The smaller the film, the higher the quality of scan is needed to prevent non-film crossover artifacts due to substandard scanning itself. It has to do with sampling size. I won't go into detail because this is the analog section of the forum. But with most labs, a medium cost scan will produce dramatically better and more consistent results just moving up to 120 MF film from 35mm. I don't request scans very often, especially for personal use, but am quite familiar with the old adage that you get what you pay for when it comes to lab services.

Both 35mm and 120. The sample above was MF. My lab is expensive though, the highest quality scanning of a single roll is $60 (includes development), and I still get more detail & resolution at home. They have an option for "minimal post-processing" for scanning (they swear it only means dust removal) but the results are overly processed to my eye. I suspect their Noritsu is set in some kind of "auto-enhancing" mode.

I am not too invested into color at this point, but I'm getting there.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Ouch! Which lab do you use? Printing optically onto RA4 paper is quite affordable if you shoot color neg film, but obviously a whole different ballgame.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Hi Lachlan - I've never used a ND grad in my life, and took hundreds of printable large format chromes - more than I'll ever have time to actually print. One of my ole backpacking buddies lived right next door to a well-known adventure photographer who licensed his name to a line of neutral grads, and plenty his own images looked miserably fake.

 

[Bormental]

Ouch! Which lab do you use? Printing optically onto RA4 paper is quite affordable if you shoot color neg film, but obviously a whole different ballgame.

Berkeley Photolab. They're basically next door to me, so I don't have to mail anything and the turnaround is ~2 days (well, bevore C-19). $60 is the high-res TIFF, smaller sizes are much cheaper. TBH the resolution appears to be the only difference, colors look the same to me. I've been meaning to try the darkroom, but haven't gotten around to it.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Well, they're very nice people. I worked in walking distance of there, prior to retirement. I only ordered up scans when commercial work was destined for a print shop, rather than for printing myself, since I do all my own printing optically; and that scanning was done by a far bigger lab previously in the neighborhood. For 8x10 developing, as well as present epidemic circumstances, I've been mailing film to The Darkroom in San Clemente. Very reliable, but I haven't had anything scanned by them.

 

[Lachlan Young]

Hi Lachlan - I've never used a ND grad in my life, and took hundreds of printable large format chromes - more than I'll ever have time to actually print. One of my ole backpacking buddies lived right next door to a well-known adventure photographer who licensed his name to a line of neutral grads, and plenty his own images looked miserably fake.

Were the initials of the individual in question 'GR'?

 

[DREW WILEY]

Yep. Nice guy in person. I just didn't care much for his marketing persona. But that was ski poster and SUV ad era, and stock photog for advertising purposes was where most of his photo income per se came from. That's all past. Now what they want is a GoPro flick of someone jumping off a cliff and splattering at the bottom, so they can sell more GoPros to more fools.

 

[Bormental]

That's all past. Now what they want is a GoPro flick of someone jumping off a cliff and splattering at the bottom, so they can sell more GoPros to more fools.

The conversation took an unexpected turn!

 

[GLS]

GLS - Polarizers are an iffy option. If you like what they do, OK. I think they generally render a fake look unless very circumspectly used. ND Grads tend to be even worse in that respect. I rarely see examples of them used well; and most add a color bias of their own.

Fair enough, if you don't like the polarised look, but you can dial in exactly as much of the effect as you want. I just mention it as an extra tool available in the toolbox. Re: grad ND casts, I have found the Lee filters to be very neutral. The Firecrest Ultra glass NDs are even more so, but a full set of those starts to get very expensive.

 

[MNM]

@pentaxuser I have no way of knowing, since I have zero experience printing in color! Just recently I've added color film to my bag and, to be honest, I am still having difficulties evaluating negatives on the light table!

@Donald Qualls Agreed. By the way, the car's paint had a faint green tint to it in real life. I wish I had taken a digital photo as well.

And is it not parked along a tree-lined road and reflecting the foliage - such as the quarter panel above the wheel arch? Some of your scans show green tree reflections there while some show gray which I guess is not how it looked to your eye at the time. Since the trees are green so wouldn't that shift the color of the car on the side facing the trees?

 

[JWMster]

MNM: You guys are making thing sticking with B&W is looking simpler and simpler... which its not.

 

[DREW WILEY]

MNM - there's a recent study out complete with spectrograms showing just how bad a color cast Lee ND's have. I already knew that. There's a recent local venture called Breakthrough Photography which claims a far more neutral, even multicoated ND grad system, which you might want to check out. It still doesn't make me a convert to grads, but for those who like them, this seems to be quite an improvement. The typical Lee greenish cast (also present in many polarizers) is just about the last thing I'd want using Ektar.

 

[jtk]

I've shot Ektar 100, but haven't gotten around to having prints made yet. I read somewhere that Ektar is not as forgiving of over/under exposures the way other films are, so I was very careful to meter properly.

Now that the US (where I live) is gradually recovering from the Covid 19 pandemic and photo labs are starting to accept processing orders again, I'm looking for a good lab to make 8x10 prints for me. Any suggestions as to some good labs I can try?

Thanks.

Covid is getting a LOT worse in US...I've printed two large projects, mostly color, and some especially satisfying, long delayed B+W. I have the time (while sheltering). I don't know any active photographers who use labs, but from the online ads I'd bet few are shut. Film labs may start to suffer because Covid has been hard on elderly.

Red River 11x17 paper order and my Canon pigment orders just took about 10 working days, free shipment.

 

[Helge]

Once again the perpetual Eeyore of Photrio strikes down on a thread, spreading FUD to the gills.

Am I too harsh? I know there is some good stuff from jtk once in a while, but it seems he’s stuck in negative land.
I love good, well grounded criticism, especially if I disagreed, but there is a line and a tipping point.

 

[MNM]

MNM - there's a recent study out complete with spectrograms showing just how bad a color cast Lee ND's have. I already knew that. There's a recent local venture called Breakthrough Photography which claims a far more neutral, even multicoated ND grad system, which you might want to check out. It still doesn't make me a convert to grads, but for those who like them, this seems to be quite an improvement. The typical Lee greenish cast (also present in many polarizers) is just about the last thing I'd want using Ektar.

It was GLS that brought up the ND filters not me, but useful to know they aren't so neutral after all.

I had just noticed the reflections of the trees and asking my beginners question of how that reflected light might affect the color of the car. In some of the samples, there's distinctly green trees reflected in the quarter panel and in some of the other samples they went gray.

 

[DREW WILEY]

It can even depend on the lens used. For example, most wide angle lenses exhibit illumination falloff, so the same hue in the center of the scene correctly exposed might be underexposed in the corners and be symptomized by curve crossover in a film like Ektar. Once in awhile I've knowingly factored that for a deliberate hue shift effect, although I'm mainly a long lens shooter instead. Reflections are another topic, and I relish complex reflections, hence my personal disdain for polarizers. But paying attention to shadow coloration is one of the things that made early Impressionist painters so significant. It's a lot easier to fine-tune that kind of thing in a painting than on film, so getting highly familiar with a personality or look of specific films is important. And there's always a bottle of cheap ketchup Photoshop laying around for those who want to hide the flavor instead.