Old Time Color Film

brianmichel · Aug 17, 2009

So I'm looking to try some film that has the more muted colors and tones of an older style image and I was wondering if anyone here could provide a recommendation of where to start with this or perhaps more clarification is needed.

I'm thinking 70s style film coloration with that warm fuzziness associated with it. I've linked a picture of exactly what I'm looking for. Let me know if you have any ideas!

Ian Grant · Aug 17, 2009

Kodacolor was like that, the C22 stuff, truly awful. Prior to C41 Agfacolor was vastly superior IMHO based on using both. And the Agfa hasn't faded either.

Ian

tim elder · Aug 17, 2009

This looks like a fading print to me, not a particular look from an earlier film stock.

Tim

Mark Antony · Aug 17, 2009

Well obviously that print has aged, gone magenta/red the whites are creamy. IMHO nothing will give colours like that out of the box. What you can do is pick a low contrast emulsion like Portra NC 400 which will give a softer image with a little grain, over-expose it by 3 or stops to clog the highlights.
I have done it successfully to give a retro look I feel here:

Although without the aged 30 years look....

brianmichel · Aug 17, 2009

Mark,
That looks pretty good! Pretty much what I'd like to accomplish. Sorry about my included photo, didn't really know how to describe it well, but it seems you've captured it quite well.

Mark Antony · Aug 17, 2009

this is a try to match your original:

Same treatment as above but lightened and magenta/yellow. The film Fuji 160S overexposed.
Oh the 1970's I remember them so well...
Mark

Pinholemaster · Aug 17, 2009

You'll have to do post-production in Photoshop to get the look and feel of a faded, color shifted print.

c.w. · Aug 17, 2009

Wild guess: Portra NC pulled 1-2 stops and overexposed another 1-2, plus a reddish brown stocking on the lens?

tim_walls · Aug 17, 2009

Pinholemaster said:
You'll have to do post-production in Photoshop to get the look and feel of a faded, color shifted print.
View attachment 15008

Is this an announcement that they don't manufacture filters any more? Shouldn't this be in the product availability forum?

DanielStone · Aug 17, 2009

Same recommendation as some above. Try the Portra NC line of films, overexpose by about 2 stops or so, and pull by the same(2 stops). You will block up the highlights, and have a low contrast negative to work with.

In addition, throw a slight net filter over the lens to break things up a bit, or a piece of plastic food wrap, and in addition, a 10 points of red, and 5 points of yellow.

try it out in various ways to experiment and see what YOU like.

I've used the combo above, metering through the filters ( I was shooting transparencies at the time, so I had to have good accurate exposure).

shooting with negatives will allow much more combinations than shooting with chromes, and when you pull the film in development, you can get less color cross-over than with slides.

try out some different things, and see what you get! thats the fun of it!

-Dan

Photo Engineer · Aug 17, 2009

That print is badly faded. The dmin is turning orange as well. This is typical of a print from those days that was either not processed well or came from an early process. It may also indicate bad keeping as I have some from the 50s that look better than that.

I also have some Agfa negatives and prints that look worse than that. It varies with process and with keeping.

If you have the negative, you might try a reprint. That might change your mind about the prints of that era. It might have been quite vibrant at the time.

PE

brianmichel · Aug 17, 2009

Thanks for the input everyone, I'll have to try the over expose and then pull technique to see what happens!

srs5694 · Aug 17, 2009

Another option is to shoot with genuinely old, outdated film. For an example, see my Flickr set with Svema CO32D film, which is about 20 years past date. Of course, this would have looked different if it had been shot fresh, but you can get some interesting effects with old film. If you scour eBay, you'll see an occasional roll or two of old film, and even several rolls every now and then. I bought ten rolls of the Svema CO32D slide film along with ten rolls of Svema CND64 negative film from one seller, for instance. The slide film is in much better condition, which emphasizes an important point: Shooting old film is a crap shoot. You generally don't know the storage conditions, and keeping qualities can vary from one brand or type to another. If you consider the unpredictability to be part of the fun, then that's all to the good. If not, you'll need to buy several rolls, stored together, from one source.

srs5694 · Aug 17, 2009

Photo Engineer said:
That print is badly faded. The dmin is turning orange as well. This is typical of a print from those days that was either not processed well or came from an early process. It may also indicate bad keeping as I have some from the 50s that look better than that.

FWIW, I've got photo albums from the 1960s to 1980s with prints made at a variety of photofinishers (mostly drug stores' send-out and mail-order services catering to average people). Some of these prints look quite good even today, but others are just hideous. The effect can be quite dramatic, particularly when one sequence spans two photofinishers -- one print from a given event looks fine, and the next, placed next to the first in a photo album, is badly faded. My memory is that they looked equally good when they were new.

If you have the negative, you might try a reprint. That might change your mind about the prints of that era. It might have been quite vibrant at the time.

One of my projects over the past couple of years has been making reprints of many of these old photos, so that my sister and I can both have albums of the photos of our childhood. My reprints, on modern RA-4 papers, usually look better than the original prints, even the ones that aren't obviously faded. FWIW, I've found some of the earliest C-41 negatives are in worse shape than the C-22 negatives that are a few years older. These early C-41 negatives have faded a bit, producing color crossover effects. I don't know if that's typical of late C-22 vs. early C-41 or if one or more of the photofinishers my mother used just didn't get it quite right with their earliest C-41 efforts.

Photo Engineer · Aug 17, 2009

I have C-22 and C-41 negatives and E20 and E30 prints. These go from about 1949 - present. I find a wide variation in keeping. One constant is that those I processed seem to do best, on average.

Two things we found at EK. Poor wash in the EP2 and EP3 process or lack of a recommended stop led to retention of color developer in the coupler dispersion which then made for worse print stability. This may also be true of C-41, but I did not investigate those complaints. In addition, lack of proper formaldehyde stabilzer or formaldehyde fix bath could cause the orange dmin.

These were eliminated with an adjustment to the process and a change to couplers insensitive to those problems.

PE

Excalibur2 · Aug 19, 2009

tim elder said:
This looks like a fading print to me, not a particular look from an earlier film stock.

Tim

Indeed, I've scanned a 40 year old colour neg and it looks the same as the print (from 40 years ago)..............taken with a Pentax 55mm f1.8 auto tak lens and sharpness is inferior compared to modern films.

http://i304.photobucket.com/albums/nn172/chakrata/img148.jpg

bvy · Aug 19, 2009

Just out of curiousity, what's the date of the print?

Excalibur2 · Aug 19, 2009

bvy said:
Just out of curiousity, what's the date of the print?

erm if your post is for me, then it would be about 1963.

Photo Engineer · Aug 19, 2009

In 1963, the old magenta and yellow couplers were used which gave that Dmin problem and fade. The process itself could contribute to cyan fade if not done properly. That could have been either the P-122 process or the Ektaprint C process.

PE

EASmithV · Aug 19, 2009

You could also try soaking the print in water for a long period of time, the emulsion starts to degrade. I accidentally did this to some Elite chromes and they started to turn red.

Photo Engineer · Aug 19, 2009

EASmithV said:
You could also try soaking the print in water for a long period of time, the emulsion starts to degrade. I accidentally did this to some Elite chromes and they started to turn red.

That is normal. If you look at the back side, it would have been cyan. Drying down should restore the full color.

PE

Excalibur2 · Aug 19, 2009

Photo Engineer said:
In 1963, the old magenta and yellow couplers were used which gave that Dmin problem and fade. The process itself could contribute to cyan fade if not done properly. That could have been either the P-122 process or the Ektaprint C process.

PE

Just says "KODAK SAF.ETY FILM" on the neg.......... and the neg hasn't faded much, if at all, over all those years as I have proved.

Sirius Glass · Aug 19, 2009

Use any color print film, place it in the Sun for a few years and you will duplicate the colors of the OP.

Steve

Photo Engineer · Aug 19, 2009

Excalibur2 said:
Just says "KODAK SAF.ETY FILM" on the neg.......... and the neg hasn't faded much, if at all, over all those years as I have proved.

My response referred to the paper the film was printed on.

The film changed in about 1972 the paper changed in 1969.

PE

2F/2F · Aug 19, 2009

Those suggesting pulling color negative film several stops: Have you ever done it? The C-41 developer time is only three and a quarter to three and a half minutes. Not only is it incredibly difficult to accurately time a pull, but anything more than a stop or so, and the color goes haywire. Anything over 1/2 stop, and you lose a lot of control over color balance when printing. IME, you can go as far as one stop and still get OK color, as long as it is for this sort of thing.

In short, overexpose like Mark Antony said, and pull 1/2 stop or 1 stop is my suggestion. Even then, the film will likely be too "good", and you will need to manipulate the picture a bit later.

Old Time Color Film

Privacy & Transparency

Privacy & Transparency