photographic printing, theoretical exploration

[allenying]

having successfully printed color for the 1st time, i started having a bunch of thoughts and theories, and wanted to share them and see what others think.

i feel like it's actually such a weird roundabout way of making photography, and in a way digital photography is much more direct and sensible,
we record light with sensors, preview it and adjust it before using up materials, and it becomes a photograph when it's printed, and especially with ink on paper, it's sensible straightforward concept.


i feel like the analog way we have is this workaround that was created due to limits in technology, and then once it was in place, the system didn't change.

we expose a light sensitive film but get an invert color image on a (seemingly arbitrarily) orange film base.
then we project the orange negative image onto negative paper that is calibrated to factor out the orange color of the film base.
if we think the print is too magenta, in order to add green, we add more magenta colored light, because it's negative.
it gets complicated as you start trying to fine tune colors.


i doubt that technology in the last 20-30 years would have limited a system like this:
shoot color positive film, like slide film, but very low contrast for greater dynamic range. you'd be able to view the photos on a lightbox, and when projected see it clearly.
(or shoot slide film if for projecting slide shows)
project the image onto positive paper, and if the print is too magenta, dial the magenta down so the light is a visibly less magenta color.
it would be very straight forward.


also, after having used an ilford enlarger for b&w, in which you push buttons to set the time and contrast filtration, and having used a color processor to feed the paper through chemistry, why not go another step and have the enlargers and easels be electronically controlled? they could line up a projection with perfect focus, and perfectly to the size and position of the paper you'd like. the color of the light could be controlled electronically. ideally there'd even be fiber based baryta color paper, with color emulsions, that could also be machine fed through a processor.


i know this basically all sounds like digital photography, and digital printing, and that darkroom printing is a craft in itself, so much so that some people are professional printers but don't do much actual shooting, but as a photographer who values much of the analog, slow photography process, look, and quality, and prefers the quality of an optical print over printing from a file that has to be sharpened perfectly to not be either soft or oversharpened, why shouldn't the process of making photography and photographic prints just make a little more sense?


i'm curious, what benefits are there to having an orange negative that could not be accomplished with a flat contrast color positive?
if color film technology had continued to advance, would the colors have become more sterile the way digital colors can be, in attempts to be more accurate to real life?


to be clear, i used to primarily shoot slide film and scan it, or have it scanned to be published, so only recently have i taken an interest in making prints. there is a lot i don't like about digital photography, from the experience of shooting with a digital camera, to the side effect consequences it has made on every aspect of the world of photography, from the analog processes, to materials, cameras, costs, societal effects, etc. etc.

 

[Prof_Pixel]

>we expose a light sensitive film but get an invert color image on a (seemingly arbitrarily) orange film base<

There is nothing 'arbitrary' about the orange mask. It is designed to correct for unwanted color contamination in the color dyes used.

There are lots of web sites explaining it. Here is one: http://photo.net/learn/orange-negative-mask

 

[Sirius Glass]

The orange color has been put into color negative film so that the color balance will be better than if no orange base was in the film. It is based on the capabilities of the color dyes and the color response of the color sensitized silver coatings. There is a good technical reason for it.

Negatives provide a better way to make multiple prints from both color and black & white. Getting good color prints from slides requires the use of Cibachrome which is not longer available or the use of an internegative. Either way the copy of a slide has a tendency to show increased contrast that changes the photograph.

 

[Sirius Glass]

It is much easier to focus an enlarger if one uses a grain enlarger.

https://www.google.com/search?q=photography+grain+focuser&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

https://www.google.com/search?q=pho...&ved=0ahUKEwiJqprT7JjKAhWEVZQKHVafC5cQsxgI6wQ

 

[DREW WILEY]

The advantage of a positive chrome or transparency or slide film, is that you can put it on a light box and easily assess what you have. If you try to significantly lower the contrast via some developing tweak, you'll spoil something else in terms of both visual and printing qualities. Printing modifications can be done via supplementary unsharp maksing; but specifically how this is done depends on the print medium, all of which are now obsolete other than scanning and digital options, or else collecting a lot of esoteric supplies in order to revive some past technique like dye transfer printing. Cibachrome is largely gone. Printing color negatives is fairly easy and inexpensive by comparison. It just takes practice like any other skill set, along with some basic gear and temperature control, along with the standard RA4 chemistry kits. After you've mastered the basics, there are numerous ways to improve reproduction with advanced techniques; but the orange mask often makes supplementary steps unnecessary. In some ways, it's even easier and more affordable than high-quality black and white printing. Just realize that certain color chemicals are nasty, so you always need good ventilation.

 

[allenying]

thanks for the responses.

i did think that color printing was relatively easy, it just seems very indirect.

i know what a grain focuser is, and use them, thanks, but sometimes the focus changes between prints, and i've always found it better to re focus.

i wasn't considering developing slide film for lower contrast, i was saying, what if a film was created that was color positive and with a comparable latitude as color neg, a new emulsion, base, or technology, not using what's already in existence. maybe it wouldn't be e6, cibachrome, c41, or ra4, but something completely new. it's not a Q of why film has an orange base, but more would an orange base still be used today if using different dyes and chemistry? is it that crazy to think that would be possible in the right circumstances?

i've never operated a minilab machine, but it sounds like they were pretty automated compared to darkroom printing.

 

[RalphLambrecht]

what's the color of the sky on your home planet?

 

[MattKing]

The dyes that are used in the current and most recently discontinued products give the best results available, irrespective of what current display procedure used.

The orange mask improves results when either printing optically or scanning because it compensates for the strengths and limitations of those dyes. A negative material that doesn.'t use an orange mask won't add much utility, because the colours will still be reversed.

You could make a positive material that is too low in contrast to give acceptable results when projecting, but why would you want to when negative materials work better when either printing optically or scanning.

What I would like to see is colour print paper optimized for the colour negative materials currently processed in motion picture ECN processes, and still film that uses the same processes, without need for remjet. That would permit high quality transparencies (printed from negatives), high quality optical prints and hiqh quality scans.

 

[Photo Engineer]

thanks for the responses.


i wasn't considering developing slide film for lower contrast, i was saying, what if a film was created that was color positive and with a comparable latitude as color neg, a new emulsion, base, or technology, not using what's already in existence. maybe it wouldn't be e6, cibachrome, c41, or ra4, but something completely new. it's not a Q of why film has an orange base, but more would an orange base still be used today if using different dyes and chemistry? is it that crazy to think that would be possible in the right circumstances?

i've never operated a minilab machine, but it sounds like they were pretty automated compared to darkroom printing.

At Kodak, we did design a low contrast positive film for printing. There were two problems with it. It still needed a mask to get the best colors, and at the low contrast needed the images were not suitable for viewing. In fact, they lost a lot of color saturation. In the end, the project died due to several insurmountable problems.

PE

 

[BetterSense]

i feel like the analog way we have is this workaround that was created due to limits in technology, and then once it was in place, the system didn't change.

This is how it is with every technology. Look at television...the idea of encoding electron-gun deflection voltages, in an analog fashion, and broadcasting that via radio, and the end-user would have a giant vacuum tube display with 3 different color phosphors coated to make a color image...the scheme is almost absurd to the modern mind, but also elegant because of the way it used the technology available. And modern video standards are still corrupted by its influence via the concepts of scan lines, 60hz framerates, overscan...yet if they waited until the IC and high speed computers were invented, we would have lost half a century of television...even more fascinating, those ICs and computers may not have been invented since it was the radio and television industries were a driving force in semiconductors. We still call the industry-standard method of wafer cleaning the "RCA clean".

Without a doubt, the technologies we use today will eventually be understood as crude and only invented because of the proliferation of packet - switched networks, very odd adoption of Intel's x86 architecture, this very odd concept of "operating systems", etc. If there is only one ugly technology, the modern web must be it.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Think of the orange mask this way: the light sensitive dyes could not put enough orange in the negative, so enough orange was added to make it work right. Ok then add a little more orange in to be sure and take the slight excess out in printing. That way if the combination of subject, lighting and film were a little short there is extra orange there to save the photograph. Over simplified but it gets the idea across.

 

[allenying]

yeah, i've often felt that's happened with various technologies as well.

thanks for the various interesting ideas and input.

regarding the low contrast slide film that was developed for printing, did it also need a color mask? and were orange color negs more suitable for viewing than them? even though we're not going to ever shoot or process it, i'm really curious.

so much of analog photography is already such a magical chemical process, any color photography, analog photo booths with wet chemistry, polaroids, especially type 55 making a print and a negative at the same time, it all blows my mind that it's possible at all, so the idea of making a low contrast slide film that you can read easier than a color neg doesn't seem too far fetched, and at very least is an interesting idea.

 

[Bill Burk]

The orange mask of color negative film (to solve the problem of impure cyan and magenta dyes as already explained) was a brilliant stroke of genius, Dr. Bunny Hanson, who came up with it, explains it in these videos.

(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

 

[Bill Burk]

At 1:04 into the first video he explains the idea of using color couplers in the cyan and magenta layers, where the coupler itself starts out yellow or orange.

He makes it sound so simple.

 

[allenying]

aha, very interesting, thanks,
i guess it's really the limitations of the physics of light and chemistry then.