Chris - you can still learn masking with b&w alone - one of the mfg, possibly Radeka,
has a web tutorial on b&w printing using masks. Once in awhile I mask b&w, primarily
my older negs before I started using pyro. And color printing from color neg film is
quite easy, since the primary orange mask is built-in.
If you look at the promotional images on the BetterLight site you will find that all of them could have been made with a LF camera exposing three sheets of film in sequence through Red, Green and Blue filters.Originally Posted by Drew Wiley
Think about the potential. If you were to scan a 5X7 negative with an Epson V700 you would get about 2300 spi of real resolution. That would give you a file size of 11,500 X 16,100 of useful pixels, or 185 mp, and with a film like Tmax-100 grain would be almost non-existent in this format.
And with Photoshop the merging of color separations is a piece of cake. In fact, I would wager that you could expose the negatives, develop them, and merge in Photoshop in about the same amount of real time it would take to make the original exposure with a BetterLight at maximum resolution.
Sandy King
For discussion and information about carbon transfer please visit the carbon group at groups.io
[url]https://groups.io/g/carbon
So how is your own tricolor camera refurbish project going now, Sandy? With modern optics and filters, and the ability to merge the separations more precisely, some exciting results should be possible.
That project is mostly completed, though I have not yet gotten one of the beam splitters perfectly aligned.
However, there are some big disadvantages to the one shot camera compared to using a regular view camera and making three separate exposures. Exposures are longer than with a view camera because the beam splitters take more than 50% of the total light. And composition is more difficult because you have to compose on the ground glass through the red or green filter, which cuts about three stops of viewing exposure.
I should also add that the 5X7 one-shot camera is one big piece of equipment, a lot heavier and bulkier than a regular 5X7 view finder and three film holders!!
Sandy
For discussion and information about carbon transfer please visit the carbon group at groups.io
[url]https://groups.io/g/carbon
I just posted a response on the Jack D... thread today that answered a related question and some of that response applies to your question also.
My own body of work is about landscape and nature. Like many the experience of being out in nature for those special moments captured is something I value greatly beyond the resulting developed film or large prints. Serious digital photography is only a few years old now and in a state of constant rapid change, evolution, and often confusion. One issue that others on this board don't bring up but which matters to this person given my own personal style relates to a camera system's ability to record subjects with reasonable fidelity. With high end DSLR's that have been properly calibrated with a pricy X-Rite colorimeter or spectrophotometer, the pro Eye-One calibration sw, the big Gretag Macbeth SG chart, etc one can get superb results just as pro commercial product photographers do. However almost no one shooting landscapes has those accessories much less the training to use such, so their DSLR's are soon set up to merely result in reasonably enjoyable images they can then mold into something back on their computers. Days later they only have fading memories to recall the experience raw captured even if that mattered to them. So instead they see the raw file and go to work adjusting and manipulating it towards their vision of an aesthetic result. Sometimes that in part may be something they vaguely previsualized when they actuated the shutter.
Now with color transparency film that is reasonably neutral like Provia, Astia, and EPN100, if one chooses subjects that are not overly contrasty within the range of those films, the results can represent moments in time captured with reasonable fidelity. Such so that an audience of ordinary people will easily be able to state "oh that's really close to what I saw and much enjoyed". In particular, Provia does a wonderful job outdoors in sunny conditions. One then has a record that can last decades and if one desires like this person, use it to reasonably match on a light table beside one's computer for a resulting print file that also reasonably reflects a moment in time. How wonderful it is to look a big beautiful color transparency on a good light table, today, tomorrow, and ten years from now. Unlike smaller formats one can even enjoy such to some extent without even grabbing a loupe although doing so obviously makes the experience even better. And the transparency on a light table has a way of always looking better than what one can end up with even the best printing processes that has much to do with the fact it is a transparent medium instead of a reflective.
And per my own personal style I also enjoy printing results that reasonably represent those moments in time that I often made such great effort to capture. Historically an essentially element in some photography especially in the eyes of the general public is that it graphically captures static moments in time like no other form of visual art. I am one that believes there are others that still hold value in such image making regardless of the current artistic state of the status quo.
I have to disagree. For one thing, trying to create ICC profiles for cameras is an exercise in futility unless you're shooting in a studio under highly controlled conditions. Fortunately, it's also completely necessary, and you don't need all that expensive gear and software. All you really need to get calibrated output from a DSLR is a ColorChecker chart (the $50 pocket-size version will do just fine). Adobe's RAW-processing pipeline makes it extremely easy to build a custom DNG profile by just taking a picture of the color checker chart.With high end DSLR's that have been properly calibrated with a pricy X-Rite colorimeter or spectrophotometer, the pro Eye-One calibration sw, the big Gretag Macbeth SG chart, etc one can get superb results just as pro commercial product photographers do. However almost no one shooting landscapes has those accessories much less the training to use such, so their DSLR's are soon set up to merely result in reasonably enjoyable images they can then mold into something back on their computers. Days later they only have fading memories to recall the experience raw captured even if that mattered to them. So instead they see the raw file and go to work adjusting and manipulating it towards their vision of an aesthetic result. Sometimes that in part may be something they vaguely previsualized when they actuated the shutter.
But even without building a custom profile, today's DSLR's in their "neutral" or "natural" color setting will be considerably more accurate both in tonality and color reproduction than most color films. I won't claim to know the accuracy of every film out there, but DSLR's are certainly more accurate than traditionally popular landscape film choices such as Velvia and Kodachrome. Provia is nowhere near extreme as those two, and has much more reasonable contrast, but the colors are still somewhat enhanced from reality, and I don't think any more accurate than DSLR's.
But I think even if trying to create a realistic impression of what a scene is actually like, you wouldn't want a truly accurate, scene-referred reproduction. Such results would be quite dull and boring.
If those colors are so neutral why then all the usual variations on prominent web camera testing sites? ...well because many are not that accurate out of the box. Indeed if one takes the minimum approach using the small ColorChecker chart one will immediately get just as close to natural as the best films. I asked that question on a prominent pro nature site none that answered did so but rather just set controls to what looked pleasant.
Your comment about "quite dull and boring" indeed applies when trying to make an image in mediocre light or poor light end up with impressive aesthetic impact. And there are many subjects that fall into such categories. As an example would be most of those early late light images so many take of landscapes in shadows in order to start with a low contrast capture. However there are many subjects one can actually capture when the sun is out like I do that look wonderful when people are observing such scenes and if captured well can look great on the transparency or latter print as much of my body of work shows.
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