Suggest a color film that's one step better than Kodak Gold or ColorPlus?

[dcy]

Addressing this potential issue might make many of your current problems vanish. Seriously consider getting a camera that gives you control.

I will seriously consider that. I'm not eager to spend a lot of money so soon after spending $500 on a brand new camera that I honestly like very much. I love many things about my camera (its size, how it feels in the hand, etc), and I like the controls. But I don't love the fact that I've no idea what the camera is planning to do and that makes it harder to compensate. If the camera just had a little screen that said "this is the exposure I'm planning to use", that'd be perfect.

And read a good book on exposure determination/control. Learning piecemeal on forum threads can be challenging because of the diversity of recommendation/options available.

I do have several books already and I am reading them. Some of them I bought because they were recommended in this forum. Others were sent to me by a generous member of this forum.

 

[BrianShaw]

• Pro Image 100 --- $10 / roll --- Larger grain (same as K. Gold), but with much better dynamic range.

Going back to post 1... I'm in the process of trying ProImage 100 (but can't seem to finish the roll fast enough even though I have a motor drive on my F3). I'm trying it based on lower cost and alleged finer grain than Kodak Gold. For example:

Proimage 100 Film Reviews & Photos - The Darkroom Photo Lab

If Ektar and Portra had a baby it’d be Kodak Pro Image 100. This film has sharp grain like Ektar 100, but its colors are closer to Portra 160 colors and tones

thedarkroom.com

Are their sources that disagree?

 

[aconbere]

I will seriously consider that. I'm not eager to spend a lot of money so soon after spending $500 on a brand new camera that I honestly like very much. I love many things about my camera (its size, how it feels in the hand, etc), and I like the controls. But I don't love the fact that I've no idea what the camera is planning to do and that makes it harder to compensate. If the camera just had a little screen that said "this is the exposure I'm planning to use", that'd be perfect.

Having followed your journey on the forum I do think you will benefit enormously from a camera with fully manual controls along with a high quality light meter. If for no other reason than you seem to enjoy working out all the details on your own.

But this doesn’t have to cost very much! Certainly an excellent manual camera can be had for less than $100. The light meter might actually be the tricker of the two to find at a decent price, but again this seems like the sort of thing that this forum is well suited to help with.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Sorry, Brian. Gotta disagree on a few particulars.

Overexposing Ektar to boost the shadows is likely to blow out the highlights instead, and risk color shifts or washing out there. Ektar has only about a stop further each direction of latitude than typical slide film. There is a way to selectively improve the shadows by pre-flashing the film instead; but I won't outline it here.

Ektar suffers from cyan contamination of blue, especially at the fringes of exposure latitude. Getting a magenta shift is less common. I once got an interesting blue to magenta gradient shift toward the corners of the field by employing the native fall-off characteristics of a wide angle lens near the summit of Haleakala.
It was deliberate. But on the same Island, the turquoise tropical water came out absolutely stunning due to the cyan imbalance of Ektar; yet the greens and earthtone hues in the foreground were rendered quite
accurately anyway.

Most problems with scanning are due to an insufficient sampling size in relation to 35mm film. Either pay for a higher quality scan or shoot a larger film format.

Ektar 25 in 120 format scanned with Epson V600.

Flickr Search

www.flickr.com

 

[koraks]

Most problems with scanning are due to an insufficient sampling size in relation to 35mm film.

99% of the problems I see people running into and asking help with when scanning color negative film relate to color balancing, and to a lesser degree contrast management. In virtually all instances, it turns out that neither the recording format, nor the scanning/digitization setup is the problem, and the fix is in how to use them properly.

 

[DREW WILEY]

That is no doubt true in a general sense, Koraks. But I was speaking in reference to specific tests involving a high quality Creo scanner and trained operator. The same "economy" level of scanning involving 35mm slides produced far less satisfactory color repro than the same entry-level scans involving larger 120 film. If that's the case with a high quality professional Creo setup, how much more must it apply to amateur scans. Those who rely on better equipped labs typically have a choice in the quality of scan, based on what they are willing to pay.

Local labs here will give you c41 processing, and if you wish, both a contact sheet and the scan itself. I print darkroom style, so don't typically need scanning. But there have been commercial applications where I did.

And when it comes to Ektar, the steepness of the dye curves seems to exaggerate the sampling size issue.
I'm not going to try to sleuth that in a technical sense; it's just a practical observation. And on these forums, comparing this to that film always seems to get muddied up by less than ideal scanning variables.

 

[koraks]

specific tests involving a high quality Creo scanner and trained operator

OK, that wasn't clear as it wasn't specified.

The same "economy" level of scanning involving 35mm slides produced far less satisfactory color repro than the same entry-level scans involving larger 120 film. If that's the case with a high quality professional Creo setup, how much more must it apply to amateur scans.

Not necessarily; it depends on how the materials are scanned. In practice, there's plenty of ways this can (and will) be different across film formats, and ways in which this can be done with more than satisfactory results also for 35mm film. Sure, bigger is better. But that doesn't mean that there's an inherent problem with 35mm. There is, for my photography, but it's not so much in color rendition. And it's there whether I scan or optically print my film (with scanning followed by inkjet output yielding marginally better results).

the sampling size issue

Can you define the term 'sampling size' as you're using it in your posts here?

 

[dcy]

99% of the problems I see people running into and asking help with when scanning color negative film relate to color balancing, and to a lesser degree contrast management.

I find contrast particularly challenging. Here's an example from a roll I was working on this week. Notice how the tone curve has a sharp spike, where apparently most of the image is in a very narrow range of tones. This happens often, and it's not easy to deal with.

EDIT: The crooked horizon was bothering me:

 

[koraks]

Notice how the tone curve has a sharp spike

Keep in mind that the histogram is really just a pareto. The sharp peak is explained simply by having a fairly large area of flat, bright sky. There's not a whole lot you could do about that except point your camera at something else when making the photo. I wouldn't call it a contrast problem, but an issue of unfortunate compositional choices.

 

[dcy]

Keep in mind that the histogram is really just a pareto. The sharp peak is explained simply by having a fairly large area of flat, bright sky. There's not a whole lot you could do about that except point your camera at something else when making the photo. I wouldn't call it a contrast problem, but an issue of unfortunate compositional choices.

No. The spike is on the dark side of the tonal range. It's not the sky. It's the trees, the planters, the axel, and all the shadowed areas --- i.e. it's the subject.

Furthermore, had the same data and the same histogram been stretched to use all of the available horizontal space on the user interface, the process would have been a lot easier. This can be seen as either a limitation of the software UI (or equivalent, my ability to use it) in failing to use all of the available space, or a limitation of the film or the digitization process that fails to make the darkest parts of the image truly black, and the lightest parts truly white.

Here's the image again without the tone curve I added. What the histogram is saying is "this image is a giant muddy blob of dark gray".

To be clear, I am not asking for help. I understand the sorts things that need to improve, and this should get better with practice. I could improve my scanning to get more dynamic range in the digital image, and I could find better ways to use the software UI. I am simply giving a relevant supporting example of how someone might struggle with contrast --- I have an image with limited dynamic range and I need to adjust the black point, the white point, and the transition between them to make a passable image.

 

[brbo]

The spike on the lower part of the hostogram does imply that "data" was chopped-off. At exposure time (film was underexposed), scanning still had a healthy headroom before clipping would become a problem.

 

[dcy]

Having followed your journey on the forum I do think you will benefit enormously from a camera with fully manual controls along with a high quality light meter. If for no other reason than you seem to enjoy working out all the details on your own.

As a reference point, I have a mirrorless camera and I never shoot it in fully manual mode. I do not enjoy it. I shoot it in aperture priority mode, where one dial sets the aperture and another adjusts exposure relative to the camera's suggested exposure. Sometimes I switch to shutter priority. Either way, exposure compensation is easy because I have an LCD screen with a preview of the image and a truckload of info that helps me avoid clipped highlights and shadows.

But this doesn’t have to cost very much! Certainly an excellent manual camera can be had for less than $100. The light meter might actually be the tricker of the two to find at a decent price, but again this seems like the sort of thing that this forum is well suited to help with.

I'm curious to know what camera you have in mind for less than $100.

 

[dcy]

The spike on the lower part of the hostogram does imply that "data" was chopped-off. At exposure time (film was underexposed), scanning still had a healthy headroom before clipping would become a problem.

!!!!!!

That's it! Looking back, it seems obvious, but I really didn't make that connection. I looked through the other shots in this roll. Time after time, almost every shot, including the ones with a better tonal range that were easier to edit, exhibit a similar sudden "chop" at the dark edge of the histogram.

This film was Rollei Retro 80S, which I believe I shot at EI 80 --- I should've kept a record. Overall, I was fairly disappointed with it. Now I know, if I ever shoot it again, I need to give it more light.

 

[Paul Howell]

I will seriously consider that. I'm not eager to spend a lot of money so soon after spending $500 on a brand new camera that I honestly like very much. I love many things about my camera (its size, how it feels in the hand, etc), and I like the controls. But I don't love the fact that I've no idea what the camera is planning to do and that makes it harder to compensate. If the camera just had a little screen that said "this is the exposure I'm planning to use", that'd be perfect.

I have a number of cameras, way too many, including my point and shoots which carry for just that. I use the weather resistant Pentax and Konicas when shooting in a dust storm or rain, mostly when traveling with my wife. Other times I use a small compact SLR like a Minolta 5 or Nikon N60 which have both program and manual modes, matrix metering. Although I don't have one a Canon Rebel 2000 is another option. What I dont like about the N60 is that is does not allow for override of the DX ISO so I have to revert to exposure compensation. All three are cheap I bought my Minolta 5 for less than $20 on Shop Goodwill.com, cost more to ship, still inexpensive. The Minolta 5 will work with all Minolta AF A mount lens, 5 pin, 8 pin, SMA and newer Sony A mount full frame lens. I have Minolta pro bodies and lens which I use when I shoot wildlife or need addtioanl features. Ebay has similar prices on these bodies. Buy 2, one for a speare.