What film has the best dynamic range ?

[GLS]

I was in York yesterday photographing the interior of the Minster using a mix of T-Max 100 and Portra 160. In some of the shots the stained glass windows were metering at +8 stops over middle grey in places, so it will be interesting to see how the Portra shots turn out when developed. I expect it will handle things fine.

 

[Bronson Dugnutt]

Don't you have to add contrast and saturation to this Cine type of film to make it more appealing for most viewers?

When developed as a negative, yes. When cross-processed as a positive you get the opposite effect -- high contrast and saturation.

Vision3 500T

 

[LolaColor]

Portra 160 has a wider range than Porta 400, but is also intentionally softer.

In my testing I've found the exact opposite of this claim to be true: that Portra 400 is slightly lower contrast and has more dynamic range than Portra 160.

 

[pentaxuser]

In my testing I've found the exact opposite of this claim to be true: that Portra 400 is slightly lower contrast and has more dynamic range than Portra 160.

A brave person, if I may say so

pentaxuser

 

[LolaColor]

A brave person, if I may say so

Ha ha! Yeah, I know

 

[Steven Lee]

In my testing I've found the exact opposite of this claim to be true: that Portra 400 is slightly lower contrast and has more dynamic range than Portra 160.

I have read in several books that, all else being equal, faster films offer more latitude than slower films. IIRC this was explained by a bigger variation in the size of silver salt particles. By that logic, and assuming all current CN films are built on a similar technology, Portra 800 should offer the widest latitude.

My personal experience cannot confirm any of that. I have never done any controlled comparison of the latitude of CN films, and the available range never feels limiting. Even in high contrast situations the highlights compression goes seemingly forever.

A much more interesting question to ask would be: which film offers the longest straight curve?

 

[Paul Verizzo]

Vision3 line.

I've exposed 500T from 25 all the way to 3200 in 35mm. I've yet to find a way to blow the highlights with the stuff. It's bullet proof. Same for 50D and 250D in their own way. The whole Kodak cine film line is some amazing film.

250D

50D

500T

Wow! I have a roll of Eastman 500T...I'll have to check it out.

Are you developing C-41 or ECN?

 

[Paul Verizzo]

When developed as a negative, yes. When cross-processed as a positive you get the opposite effect -- high contrast and saturation.

Vision3 500T
View attachment 309263

Whoa.........how do you process as a positive? I mean, sure, I get the hypothetical. But not the real world.

 

[AgX]

What color negative film has the best dynamic range and exposure latitude ?

"Dynamic Range"

is a term common in electronics. There it can mean different things.

When applied at film then also the question arises what is meant:
-) the range of subject luminances to be recorded
-) the range of densities yielded after the processing

This issue is not a formalism, as in the past I only came across the term dynamic range for the latter.


Concerning "the range of subject luminances to be recorded" for film the term to be used is:

"Exposure Range"





"Latitude"

is dependent on the Exposure Range. A film having "best" (read "largest") exposure range by this also has the largest latitude.

Latitude just means the sum of leeway a exposure range yields for an actual or a standardized luminance range of the subject.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

With film, don't they refer dynamic range in stops such as 4-5 stops for color chrome and 6-7 stops for negative color film?

 

[Cholentpot]

Wow! I have a roll of Eastman 500T...I'll have to check it out.

Are you developing C-41 or ECN?

C-41. It needs some help in post though but not really any more than regular film.

 

[Sirius Glass]

In the end while black & white and color film may capture as much as 12 f/stops or more, the papers at best can only produce 6 or 7 f/stops and it is always a tight squeeze. For that matter screens can only reproduce relatively few f/stops.

 

[Bronson Dugnutt]

Whoa.........how do you process as a positive? I mean, sure, I get the hypothetical. But not the real world.

That strip is 500T with 1-2 stops overexposure seeming to give the best slides / reversal results.

E6 times & temps: remove remjet, D-19 1st developer, stop bath & re-expose to room light, ECP-2 2nd/color developer, bleach & fix.

The presence of an orange mask in the film precludes the 'more perfect' color fidelity you'd see from ektachrome/provia but the extra blue response from shooting unfiltered in daylight seems to offset that at least a little. I've attempted this processing regime exactly one time so YMMV. Dynamic range does seem to suffer with this process versus intended use as a negative but that's what you'd expect from a slide film.

 

[Paul Verizzo]

That strip is 500T with 1-2 stops overexposure seeming to give the best slides / reversal results.

E6 times & temps: remove remjet, D-19 1st developer, stop bath & re-expose to room light, ECP-2 2nd/color developer, bleach & fix.

The presence of an orange mask in the film precludes the 'more perfect' color fidelity you'd see from ektachrome/provia but the extra blue response from shooting unfiltered in daylight seems to offset that at least a little. I've attempted this processing regime exactly one time so YMMV. Dynamic range does seem to suffer with this process versus intended use as a negative but that's what you'd expect from a slide film.

Wow! Gotta hand it to you. Too bad there's that mask.

 

[Sirius Glass]

That strip is 500T with 1-2 stops overexposure seeming to give the best slides / reversal results.

E6 times & temps: remove remjet, D-19 1st developer, stop bath & re-expose to room light, ECP-2 2nd/color developer, bleach & fix.

The presence of an orange mask in the film precludes the 'more perfect' color fidelity you'd see from ektachrome/provia but the extra blue response from shooting unfiltered in daylight seems to offset that at least a little. I've attempted this processing regime exactly one time so YMMV. Dynamic range does seem to suffer with this process versus intended use as a negative but that's what you'd expect from a slide film.

Wow! Gotta hand it to you. Too bad there's that mask.

You both fail to understand the purpose of the orange mask. The orange response is somewhat poor so the orange was added in and then not fully deleted. That is what give the color negative film the good and complete color match. Without the orange mask the results would not be acceptable to anyone. Armchair Sunday Afternoon Quarterbacking is no replacement for true R&D work in a film company's laboratories.

 

[DREW WILEY]

"Dynamic range" is an expression that needs to be handled carefully. With black and white films, you have a continuum of gray scale. But when it comes to color film, different hues saturate at different points along that scale, relative to box speed 18% gray. One needs to understand how this happens in each specific scene, or else by formally controlling the contrast and lighting in a studio. The fact itself is easier to recognize when shooting slide films and viewing the result atop a light box. But in principle, this applies to color neg film too. Just because you can bag "something" using the extremes of latitude range doesn't mean you'll get acceptable color reproduction in that manner.

It always amazes me on forums like this one how some people go around complaining, and blaming Kodak or Fuji for making shoddy films, when it's their own carelessness at fault. Many decades of thoughtful engineering and steady improvements have gone into these films, and thankfully, there is still a good selection of them. But one also needs to understand how they differ, and what kind of film is best for what color and contrast situation.

 

[Paul Verizzo]

You both fail to understand the purpose of the orange mask. The orange response is somewhat poor so the orange was added in and then not fully deleted. That is what give the color negative film the good and complete color match. Without the orange mask the results would not be acceptable to anyone. Armchair Sunday Afternoon Quarterbacking is no replacement for true R&D work in a film company's laboratories.

Not sure what your point is. The conversation is about reversal processing C-41 film. Nobody is quarterbacking anything.

It's my understanding that the mask is a way to reduce contrast to enable exposures that are not critical. As with many consumer cameras. Color neg was always thought to be inferior to slides, not very professional as it were. A lot of that was due to the difficulty of accurate color rendition when printed to paper. The fact that color negatives as used in the movie industry is then printed to 35mm perfectly shows that there is nothing wrong with color neg materials. Likewise, printing C-41 materials to the long discontinued Kodak 5072? made stunning slides.

 

[MattKing]

It's my understanding that the mask is a way to reduce contrast to enable exposures that are not critical.

Not correct, I'm afraid.
The colour response of the various dyes and colour couplers in negative film inherently have some deficiencies that cannot be engineered out. The mask provides a proportional compensating factor for those deficiencies which responds exactly to the image itself - the mask and its compensating factor varies with the colours in the negative. Then, when it is time to print, the effect of the mask can be reversed by simply filtering the result. The RA-4 paper or EF-P cine print projection film has that filtration built right in (along with inversion of the resulting colours).
Negative alone: - some colours are deficient, and colours are inverted.
Negative + mask: - deficient colours are compensated for, but overall single colour cast added, and colours are inverted.
Negative + mask + RA-4 paper/projection print film: - deficient colours are compensated for, the mask colour is filtered out and the the colours are inverted.
Voila, beautiful, natural colours!

Discovery and implementation of the technology behind the orange mask was revolutionary, and is the reason that negative + positive colour systems have a better chance to achieve colour accuracy than direct positive or positive + positive systems.

 

[Sirius Glass]

You both fail to understand the purpose of the orange mask. The orange response is somewhat poor so the orange was added in and then not fully deleted. That is what give the color negative film the good and complete color match. Without the orange mask the results would not be acceptable to anyone. Armchair Sunday Afternoon Quarterbacking is no replacement for true R&D work in a film company's laboratories.

Not correct, I'm afraid.
The colour response of the various dyes and colour couplers in negative film inherently have some deficiencies that cannot be engineered out. The mask provides a proportional compensating factor for those deficiencies which responds exactly to the image itself - the mask and its compensating factor varies with the colours in the negative. Then, when it is time to print, the effect of the mask can be reversed by simply filtering the result. The RA-4 paper or EF-P cine print projection film has that filtration built right in (along with inversion of the resulting colours).
Negative alone: - some colours are deficient, and colours are inverted.
Negative + mask: - deficient colours are compensated for, but overall single colour cast added, and colours are inverted.
Negative + mask + RA-4 paper/projection print film: - deficient colours are compensated for, the mask colour is filtered out and the the colours are inverted.
Voila, beautiful, natural colours!

Discovery and implementation of the technology behind the orange mask was revolutionary, and is the reason that negative + positive colour systems have a better chance to achieve colour accuracy than direct positive or positive + positive systems.

That is a more enhances statement of my point. The mask is for better color rendition and contrast reduction.

 

[foc]

Not correct, I'm afraid.
The colour response of the various dyes and colour couplers in negative film inherently have some deficiencies that cannot be engineered out. The mask provides a proportional compensating factor for those deficiencies which responds exactly to the image itself - the mask and its compensating factor varies with the colours in the negative. Then, when it is time to print, the effect of the mask can be reversed by simply filtering the result. The RA-4 paper or EF-P cine print projection film has that filtration built right in (along with inversion of the resulting colours).
Negative alone: - some colours are deficient, and colours are inverted.
Negative + mask: - deficient colours are compensated for, but overall single colour cast added, and colours are inverted.
Negative + mask + RA-4 paper/projection print film: - deficient colours are compensated for, the mask colour is filtered out and the the colours are inverted.
Voila, beautiful, natural colours!

Discovery and implementation of the technology behind the orange mask was revolutionary, and is the reason that negative + positive colour systems have a better chance to achieve colour accuracy than direct positive or positive + positive systems.

That is the best explanation I have hears in a long time and it is easily understood.
It should be kept as a reference for future use.

 

[MattKing]

That is the best explanation I have hears in a long time and it is easily understood.
It should be kept as a reference for future use.

Thanks!
I owe a lot to the posts of Rowland Mowrey, may he RIP.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Not correct, I'm afraid.
The colour response of the various dyes and colour couplers in negative film inherently have some deficiencies that cannot be engineered out. The mask provides a proportional compensating factor for those deficiencies which responds exactly to the image itself - the mask and its compensating factor varies with the colours in the negative. Then, when it is time to print, the effect of the mask can be reversed by simply filtering the result. The RA-4 paper or EF-P cine print projection film has that filtration built right in (along with inversion of the resulting colours).
Negative alone: - some colours are deficient, and colours are inverted.
Negative + mask: - deficient colours are compensated for, but overall single colour cast added, and colours are inverted.
Negative + mask + RA-4 paper/projection print film: - deficient colours are compensated for, the mask colour is filtered out and the the colours are inverted.
Voila, beautiful, natural colours!

Discovery and implementation of the technology behind the orange mask was revolutionary, and is the reason that negative + positive colour systems have a better chance to achieve colour accuracy than direct positive or positive + positive systems.

If the mask and its complementing factor vary with the colors in the negative, how does the process know how to compensate for it? Does the compensation factor vary with the colors in the scene?

 

[DREW WILEY]

The printing paper itself has a blue coating which offsets the orange mask density. The extra orangeness does not vary with image colors or density. It's consistent overall, even in the margins, but might vary a little from one specific film type to another. Just look at the ends of a spool of developed 120 color neg film, or expose a frame with the lenscap on (no image).

Or look at a developed neg atop the lightbox through a medium blue filter. That will null out the secondary orange. But a lot of orange might still remain, which indicates blue (like sky) in the original scene. Being a negative process, what you get on the opposite side of the color wheel from blue is orange (or strictly speaking, yellow; but pure blue is uncommon in nature). i'm oversimplifying this somewhat; but it should give you a reasonable clue.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Matt - color neg film has come a long ways. I've deliberately mixed in optical prints from chomes and those from Ektar in the same box, and major pro lab owners couldn't tell which was which. No film is perfect; but some CN stereotypes do not necessarily apply any longer if one understands how to optimize the exposure.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

The printing paper itself has a blue coating which offsets the orange mask density. The extra orangeness does not vary with image colors or density. It's consistent overall, even in the margins, but might vary a little from one specific film type to another. Just look at the ends of a spool of developed 120 color neg film, or expose a frame with the lenscap on (no image).

I know you're not into digital scanning Drew. So I ask this of others. If the print paper blue coating is the same color all the time, why can't we use that color in the digital scan process to similarly remove the orange mask?