pastel color prints

lee · Aug 17, 2005

Greetings,

I am looking for information on how to produce a pastel print from color negatives. I am not an intuitive color shooter so hold my hand and show me the way. Any ideas?

lee\c

David A. Goldfarb · Aug 17, 2005

Do you mean that you are looking for a color neg film with a pastel-like palette? If that's the case, I'd shoot Portra 160 NC.

Agfachrome 100 used to have that kind of look as well, but I haven't shot it in years, and it's a slide film in any case.

lee · Aug 17, 2005

Hi David,

I am looking for ways to produce prints with a pastle look. Think David Hamilton without the vaseline on the filters and the subject matter.

thanks for you reply,

lee\c

jd callow · Aug 17, 2005

Lee has heard this from me, but I thought if I put out for others to read it might be helpful. I have not tried to achieve what he is trying but off the top of my head I felt the following might be worth a try:

1) Shoot low contrast scenes. Particularly ones that are predominantly lighter or pastel (I know obvious)

2) Do not protect against flare. In fact invite it. Shoot wide open. shoot into highly reflective areas or even into weaker light sources. Shoot w/o a lens shade.

3) try the above with a softening filter

4) Expose as normal and under develop (c41)

5) Over expose a fair amount (experiment but I suspect 2 stops) and under develop

6) try different combinations of the above.

7) I also agree that NC or even VC would be preferable to most of the Fuji line up.

Poco · Aug 18, 2005

This brings up a question I've been curious about -- is there anything in the printing stage that can be done to reduce the satuaration of colors? I was thinking maybe diffusion during part of the exposure, but haven't tried it yet.

jd callow · Aug 18, 2005

The greater the enlargement will have some effect. Using a portrait paper (fuji CA P or Kodak Portra opposed to C or Ultra) will have some effect, but mostly in contrast. I could be wrong but once the neg has been made so goes saturation.

Shortly I am going to be trying to reduce the bleach step. I assume this will lower saturation as well as effect contrast.

Poco · Aug 18, 2005

"I assume this will lower saturation as well as effect contrast."

Yup. I just posted a couple images to the tech gallery that shows the difference. Same shot, but one with partial bleach bypass. A couple things to note:

- Fresh bleach doesn't take more than a few seconds to do it's thing. 30 seconds or longer and the results are identical to full bleaching (with my processing).

- since time in the bleach is so short for partial by-pass, it's important to agitate vigorously or you'll get mottled skys and other solid tones.

It's fun stuff.

Poco · Aug 18, 2005

Yikes! Someday I really have to learn how to scan for the web. Well, I'll leave 'em up for a few hours anyway.

jd callow · Aug 18, 2005

Very Cool Poco.

Back to the pastel Look any ideas?

Poco · Aug 18, 2005

"Pastel look"

...only other thing that comes to mind is preflash of film. I've been fooling with that, but can't comment on the results until I actually print -- the scanner seems to "print through" the color of the pre-flash exposure. No question the contrast is brought way down with the degree of flashing.

jd callow · Aug 18, 2005

Poco, try scanning the neg as a tranie. The scanner software will not introduce as much bias. If your sw allows a raw scan (no optimization of the histogram or curves) this should work as well.

Poco · Aug 18, 2005

Thanks, will do!

psvensson · Aug 18, 2005

Poco,
You can use bleach bypass in the RA4 printing stage, replacing the blix with standard b&w fix. It reduces saturation but boosts contrast, much like you seem to be getting with the negative bleach bypass.

jd callow · Aug 18, 2005

psvensson,
Excellent information!
Would this in combination with a pulled (very flat) neg achieve a normal contrast, low saturation print -- as in a pastel print?

psvensson · Aug 18, 2005

Possibly. I know it can be used to save underexposed negs - the contrast boost gives sort of a retroactive push.

The advantage of doing this in the printing step is that it avoids the added grain that I understand is the side effect of neg bleach bypass.

pastel color prints

lee

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