No color from old Kodak C-41 film? (samples inside)

I have just had a roll of old C-41 Kodak Max 400 processed at a local lab, a roll out of a set of three that I picked up at a thrift store while traveling. The rolls were still in their black plastic containers, but not in the boxes, so unfortunately I have no idea how old the film is or how it was stored.

I wasn't expecting perfect results, but I was a bit surprised to examine the negatives, as I found that they had essentially no separation in the colors.


Does anyone have any thoughts on what might have gone wrong? Is this just what film does when it ages or is stored improperly? :confused:


Here are the "scans" of the negatives (via a Nikon D40 with a slide duplicator), along with my best attempt at a color correction (including the orange mask removal):






Please forgive the composition - the camera is handmade, and doesn't yet have a viewfinder. I can see that I still need to dial in the focusing and catch a few light leaks as well.

Thanks.

These have a very interesting feel to them, and I like them.

Sorry I cannot offer any help.

Richard

I really like the first one.

The problem is mostly in your digitalization method and "color correction". As a quick help, try much more blue light source to compensate for mask to begin with. Or, try making prints traditionally, or ask for prints from a minilab.

In addition, fog in old film reduces contrast and saturation to some extent, so the saturation may be a bit low to begin with.

hrst said:

The problem is mostly in your digitalization method and "color correction". As a quick help, try much more blue light source to compensate for mask to begin with.

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That was it! Thanks!!


I don't have any genuine blue light sources, so I picked a light blue color and displayed it full-screen on my monitor here, and used that as the backlight for the slide duplicator. It wasn't nearly as bright as using an incandescent light behind it, so my exposure times were really long (4+ seconds)... Here is the blue color that I used:




... and here are the results!






Thanks again for the tip, that was definitely the key piece I was missing.

For future transfers, do you have any suggestions on how to obtain a bright blue light source?

I tried something like this, but I used an enlarger I had lying around. It's just the head off of a 4x5 color enlarger, but turned sideways I could dial in just the right amount of color into the diffusion box I needed to minimize the orange mask of the film. Of course the digital camera still made it look crappy, but at least I could see the positive color image.

Cromlech said:

These have a very interesting feel to them, and I like them.

Sorry I cannot offer any help.

Richard

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guitstik said:

I really like the first one.

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Thanks to both of you for the kind words.


The results I received were not at all what I was "expecting", but I must say I wasn't disappointed in them either. They ended up with a neat vintage look, sort of rough around the edges... something different than what I am used to. It is always fun when you try to take normal shots, but are surprised by an artistic style that you hadn't even been intending.

Scheimpflug said:

Thanks again for the tip, that was definitely the key piece I was missing.

For future transfers, do you have any suggestions on how to obtain a bright blue light source?

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Nice that it helped! I've built several adjustable light sources with RGB leds. If you are into electronics, or know someone who is, it is a trivial task of just using variable resistors (potentiometers) as current-limiting resistors for LEDs. Of course as your light comes from multiple LED emitters/chips, you need to diffuse it. You need to experiment a bit, but soon you'll find resistor values that allow you to completely compensate the mask away so that you'll achieve good color balance by just doing "invert". I find this is the easiest way and gives better results than correcting residual color casts in Photoshop...

And remember, even when the "right" color looks quite blue to our eyes, it must still contain green and red wavelengths.

But your method of using your display to create different colors can be actually quite good. Just experiment with RGB values until you find one that gives no color cast (just grey) with the blank orange film leader of the same negative. You seem to be very close.

Scheimpflug said:

That was it! Thanks!!


I don't have any genuine blue light sources, so I picked a light blue color and displayed it full-screen on my monitor here, and used that as the backlight for the slide duplicator. It wasn't nearly as bright as using an incandescent light behind it, so my exposure times were really long (4+ seconds)... Here is the blue color that I used:

... and here are the results!

Thanks again for the tip, that was definitely the key piece I was missing.

For future transfers, do you have any suggestions on how to obtain a bright blue light source?

Click to expand...

CTB gel, if thats too pricey, get blue cellophabne for $1 at the newsagents.

In any case, if youre film is stable, you can do three separate exposures, one for each channel, Photoshop makes ita real PITA to swap out colour channels though...

dSLR film copying is one of the highest quality digitisations you can get.. and it can deal with any density as long as its on the neg/slide.

hrst said:

And remember, even when the "right" color looks quite blue to our eyes, it must still contain green and red wavelengths.

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Thanks for the reminder, that is something that would be easy to forget.

hrst said:

But your method of using your display to create different colors can be actually quite good. Just experiment with RGB values until you find one that gives no color cast (just grey) with the blank orange film leader of the same negative. You seem to be very close.

Click to expand...

That's a good idea.

My captures with the slide duplicator are catching a bit of the sprocket area on the sides, which has not been exposed... so those thin strips of bright orange in the first post, and the thin strips of light blue/purple in the second post, are the same color as the leader of the film.

Since this portion is a light blue/purple in my latest scans, instead of a grey, does this mean that I have gone too far with the blue backlight, and I need to make it a bit "warmer" in color again?

Thanks again for the help.

Athiril said:

CTB gel, if thats too pricey, get blue cellophabne for $1 at the newsagents.

In any case, if youre film is stable, you can do three separate exposures, one for each channel, Photoshop makes ita real PITA to swap out colour channels though...

dSLR film copying is one of the highest quality digitisations you can get.. and it can deal with any density as long as its on the neg/slide.

Click to expand...

Thanks, I'll keep an eye out for the gels.

I did a quick test today with a transparent blue lid from a "Gladware" food container, using my original incandescent light source, and got results which were much closer to my second set of results from the monitor backlight. The color wasn't perfect by any means, but they had color! Of course, they also had the word "GLAD" embossed across them.


My rig is pretty stable (I think...), so merging channels might be an option. I don't intend to scan a thousand negatives with this, just a few dozen, so the workload wouldn't be excessive. I might even be able to script it if I can get the workflow to something consistent... If I did this, would I switch then to an RGB backlight - making one shot with each color?

One other thing I had been thinking...

Instead of a blue filtered light source, couldn't I achieve the same effect by placing a blue filter between the lens and the slide holder?

I'm thinking of filters such as the 80A/80B/80C or 82A/82B/82C "cooling" filters...

The advantage of this is that I wouldn't have to build anything.

"Cool vs. warm" is not enough when you are looking for the correct light source color to color correct the negs; you have to separately evaluate for red, green and blue, whereas cooling/warming filters only adjust the balance between red and blue. So, you will need C/M/Y filter set. (In fact, any two colors will do as you can change the total exposure to control the third, just like only M & Y knobs are turned in RA-4 printing. But, you still have to be able to change those two separately.)

For example, if it (uninverted raw picture) looks too cyan, add some red. If it looks too magenta, add some green. If it looks too yellow, add some blue. If it looks too red, reduce red or add cyan. Etc. If you use your monitor, or an adjustable LED light source, or a dichroic enlarger head, or "color printing filter kit (CMY filters with different densities added up)", you can take a picture of the leader and look at the RGB values of resulting image to help in adjustment until you have it down.

With other kind of filters, you have only trial and error and you might not find optimum values, mostly because you cannot adjust green-magenta with warming/cooling filters. Then you are back to d****** color correction, and for that I suggest www.hybridphoto.com .

Filters can be before or after film, but I'd place them between light source and film if possible, or otherwise you have to use higher-quality filters (multicoated?) to avoid reflections, and keep them very clean.