It took this photo in early summer and all the trees were green.
The bottom photo was stopped down two stops…!
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No. The former is one stop, the latter is two stops.
The scene was impacted with the Fall colors hence the yellows.
Seems the yellow and blues show exaggeration like my photos…!
I know from eye color testing done for my job in the service that many have different color interpretations so I wouldn't be surprised if you have a different interpretation then I do.
An eye for an eye and a color for a color…!
I've trained professional color matchers, and there's more to it than meets the eye.
That Hoover Dam scene has at least two types of lights in it - with very different colour temperatures.
It's an example of a subject that has strong, unnatural colours - and lots of them.
So Ektar did what it was supposed to do - render the scene with strong, unnatural colours.
Your scene also has strong colours in it - albeit natural ones - and your Ektar also did what it is supposed to do.
By the way, you do understand, don't you, that there is no such thing as automatically correct colour in any print - whether done optically or from a scan?
All the automation does is essentially guess at what the colour is supposed to be, and print to that guess. The guess is based on a lot of built in experience, but in the end it is still a guess.
The same applies to custom manual prints, except that there the guessing is done by a human, not a machine.
I used to work as a colour printer, doing mainly optical machine prints for professional photographers. We would first do a test, then correct for a final print based on that test. Even then, my decisions on colour and exposure were based on what were essentially educated guesses about how the subject appeared in real life. Some of that guessing was quite reliable, because skin tones were often the most important element, but even then we would sometimes be tripped up by different complexions and racial and sociological factors.
Even the best meter isn't going to change your scene. No matter how you meter a scene, you're never going to change these two things:
1: the inherent contrast of the scene. In this case, it's a big difference between the shadow areas and the sunlit trees.
2: the quality of the light, in particular the already mentioned difference in wavelength distribution (color) between shadows and direct evening sunlight.
Concerning (1): what measurement result did you get for the shadows vs. the sunlit areas? Did you measure the different light levels in your scene? How did you strike a compromise between the conflicting exposure settings? Which side did you balance towards in this compromise?
Overexposure can sometimes do funny things on film due to crossover, but that's not the main issue in these shots. It may have contributed slightly, but other problems are far more dominant in this case.
+1
The scene appears to have a colour temperature and contrast problem.
IMO, no amount of filters or exposure compensation or post production will bring it to what you want. (unless you are a Photoshop expert).
In such lighting extremes, I feel the only way to overcome the problem was to move to a different viewpoint before taking the shot or to use fill in flash or reflectors (not always practical in outdoor scenes).
I never let anyone else print my work. That way I can only blame myself if something is off.
Trying to judge actual color accuracy and repro quality over the web is like listening to symphony performed by a Junior High marching band equipped with tubas and kazoos. And in terms of actual film response, Ektar sometimes handles artificially colored fabrics and so forth better than hues in nature which our own eyes accept as a certain color, but apparently the film doesn't, along with insects either. Nighttime lighting also elicits something different. You got a pleasing result; but there's no way you can tell me that's how the Hoover Dam scene actually looked to your own eyes. So once again, there's a significant difference between objective diagnostic testing and testing for "good-enough" personal purposes, which is fine too, but not in the same sense.
Every single color film and print media ever made has been idiosyncratic in some respect. So at a certain point you have to dance with it and not fight it. But it helps if you know where to place your feet so they're not stepped on! At least that's the way I think about it.
Color accuracy was not a consideration at all. Keep in mind that this was an exposure lasting about 45minutes and Kodak Ektar 100 only accounts for 1 second and states to try it yourself for longer than that.
Many years earlier I took a photo of that scene with my EOS3 on Fuji RVP 100 which came out grossly underexposed due to it's max 30 second aperture priority mode.
Fuji RVP100F_06-22 by Les DMess, on Flickr
You can see the colors are similar but of course much brighter due to the longer exposure. I looked up nighttime pictures of the dam and saw others with similar colors but of course no idea if film was even used as well as post work applied.
I never let anyone else print my work. That way I can only blame myself if something is off.
Adjusted by exposure and temperature, right…!
You adjusted the scan of the same negative, right? Not a photo/scan of the print on the left?
Original left.
Adjusted by exposure and temperature, right…!
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