What is the most natural colour film ?

[cosmicexplosion]

I hAve just been corrected as to my thinking that portra was
The truest or most natural colour film
Apparently not so

My interest is landscape not portraits.

Cheersalot!
Andy Pandy

[Drew Wiley]

OK. I wasn't trying to spook you. There is no such thing as a perfect film, or even an ideal
film for every application. You need to experiment and come to your own conclusions,
based on your chosen subject matter and own method of printing. Ektar is very nice for landscape work, but a common complaint is with the blue in the shadows or during overcast days. This may cause issues with the three dye layers not being proportionately exposed. I recommend carrying a few corrective warming filters like pinkish 2B, and 81A, and maybe an 81C. This is the correct way to get adequate exposure across the board, rather than simply overexposing the film in general. Of course, you will need to apply the correct exposure factor to your ASA.

[bob carnie]

I use Fuji 160 nc for a lot of my colour work and it seems quite natural to me.

[Lachlan 717]

Morning, Andy.

If these are going to be scanned, it's pretty much a moot point for me. Given you can micro-correct so many things in PS, such as colour balance and saturation, perhaps you should look at the most forgiving in order to get the best neg as often as possible.

I generally use Velvia when I do shoot colour, but that's just out of habit and availability. I also tend to only shoot colour in the golden hours, so I'm chasing saturation then, or in the rainforests where Drew's advice of chucking on a warming filter is vital. For what it's worth, I find that Velvia needs something around 81C as a minimum in the rainforest shots.

I'm toying with trying some Ektar, but scanning a C41 scares me a bit!

[richardman]

Out of "necessity," for the first time in years, I am shooting color film. Since the camera is on a tripod, it doesn't matter that much whether it's ISO400 or ISO100 most of the time. I scan all my stuff (sorry). I am quite proficient with computers and post processing using PSD and LR.

Ektar is nice but it has a heavy magenta cast that's difficult to manage. I have been shooting Reala lately and while it still some some blue/magenta cast, it's not as severe as Ektar so for the time being, it's my film of choice. I tried Portra a couple times but have not extensively so no opinion yet.

For slide, I swear by Provia. Velvia is just amazing though.

In the end, computer post processing do equalize things A LOT.

[Drew Wiley]

With color neg, if you disproportionately expose one of the color layers you not only alter the color balance, but you alter the geometry of the respective curves relative to one
another (they're not either symmetrical or matched). So you can't post-correct just anything. It's a lot easier to exp and balance in the first place. I've never seen a magenta cast on Ektar, so assume this must just be some fluke of your particular digital workflow.

[richardman]

With color neg, if you disproportionately expose one of the color layers you not only alter the color balance, but you alter the geometry of the respective curves relative to one
another (they're not either symmetrical or matched). So you can't post-correct just anything. It's a lot easier to exp and balance in the first place. I've never seen a magenta cast on Ektar, so assume this must just be some fluke of your particular digital workflow.

Drew, looks like the web's experience is all over the place:
http://www.apug.org/forums/archive/index.php/t-107815.html
http://www.flickr.com/groups/kodak_ektar/discuss/72157608207797750/
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3049211

So looks like YMMV

p.s. I do some long exposure (2+ mins) so that could be a factor)

[David Lobato]

Speaking about transparency films, the discontinued Ektachrome films were fairly accurate. Kodak EPN 100 was the most accurate for matching textiles and fabrics. I used to love Ektachrome EPR 64 for its moderate to soft contrast in winter outdoor scenes. Warming filters handled some tendencies toward blue casts. Fujichrome Astia 100 is discontinued but it had moderate contrast and color compared to Velvia76.

As for now, seems all we have is Fujichrome Provia 100. Perhaps 1/3 stop overexposures will soften tendencies to over saturated colors.

[polyglot]

Your original guess of Portra (160) is still the right one, going by objective metrics like delta-E. Chromes cannot use a mask (who wants a slide with a heavy orange or cyan cast?) therefore they suffer the inherent shortcomings of their dyes whereas colour neg can work around the dye shortcomings (gaps in spectral response, etc) because the capture media is separate from the display media.

However, "most accurate" does not mean "best" and it's a rare landscape that I'd shoot on Portra (http://www.flickr.com/photos/24125157@N00/6529871693/). While chromes are less accurate in their colour, they generally look much better because their displayed dynamic range is greater... but that leads one naturally to the question of "do you have the facilities to project an LF chrome?". If the answer is no, then there is very little point to shooting chrome because you're either printing to RA4 (since Ciba is gone) or you're printing digitally. And if you're printing digitally, you can make a good colour-neg film like Portra (http://www.flickr.com/photos/24125157@N00/6896207343/) behave just like any chrome emulsion you want through photoshopping.

A properly-scanned C41 neg will look just like a scan of a chrome; if it's all flat, pastel and milky and that wasn't your express intention then your scanning workflow is broken. Likewise anyone moaning about colour casts on scans from negs, particularly in shadows: they're not doing the scanning right. Ektar (http://www.flickr.com/photos/24125157@N00/6016765633/), Portra (http://www.flickr.com/photos/24125157@N00/6658442109/), Reala (http://www.flickr.com/photos/24125157@N00/6436073751/), 160S (http://www.flickr.com/photos/24125157@N00/6016355655/), whatever; when properly processed and scanned, the hue errors are generally too small to perceive though of course the films differ in contrast and saturation.

If you wet-print to RA4 and do landscapes, I would suggest Ektar (http://www.flickr.com/photos/24125157@N00/5872970056/) as your best bet in LF.

(examples above are generally 6x7 not LF... but the emulsions are the same)

[richardman]

Yea, whatever. I get better colors with Reala than Ektar. Case closed for me.

[polyglot]

Can you buy Reala in sheets? 'cos I'd dearly love to if you can, and certainly agree it is more accurate than Ektar.

[richardman]

Can you buy Reala in sheets? 'cos I'd dearly love to if you can, and certainly agree it is more accurate than Ektar.

As far as I know, you can't. Sorry. I only use 120 film right now with my Shenhao 617. You have a good point here. Chances are I will move to a 4x5 in a few months. Hmmm...

Well, I am sure I can get Ektar to work too. I am a tech geek at my $dayjob, and I will tame that color monster one way or another :-) At worst, I will shoot Provia, which I do truly love. I shot hundreds of rolls on my XPan with that stuff, and I am sure sheets (if available, would be just as good).

[Peter Gomena]

There are so many variables in exposing (including initial color balancing), processing, scanning, post-processing and printing color films that I long ago gave up trying to reproduce "natural" color in favor of a film that gives me the best raw material to interpret the original scene to the best result my feeble color memory can recollect. I appreciate Portra 160 NC for its ability to hold shadow detail, so that's my default film. If I want more speed, I go with Portra 400. I tried Ektar in 120, and found it too saturated for my taste, as was the Fuji 160C. I haven't shot any color transparency film in more than a decade, so I don't have any idea what's "natural" these days.

I carry an 81C filter for all my formats to help balance blue shadows, overcast days and moderate high altitude colors. If I did a lot of mountain work, I'd carry an 85B. Shadows tend to be blue or blue-cyan, so saying that a film tends to give shadows too much blue is probably an error in color balancing the initial exposure rather than the film's fault. A film that gives saturated colors will saturate blue shadows, too, and the difference in color temperature between warm and cool sides in an image can become pretty extreme, making it more trouble to balance the final image than it's worth in some cases.

Peter Gomena

[Drew Wiley]

I've run objective test on nearly all these films and the notion that color neg is more color
accurate than chrome as a class, or visa versa, is utter BS. It all depends on the specific
hues and all kinds of variable, even before we consider the variables of printing. People tend to adapt their mind to what a film can do and subconsciouly translate that into reality. No color film ever invented is even close to truth - it's an approximation. So I strongly agree with what Peter just stated. Use what works best for your intended endpoint.

[Drew Wiley]

So Reala vs Ektar, Portra vs Ektar? Have you actually done controlled testing under the and color balance and speed the film was engineered for? Then printed it or read it in a
densitometer under the same paramaters? As an example, what makes Portra presumably
more "realistic" for its intended market of skintones is actually due to engineered errors in
how it handles shadows. You get more open shadows, but actually less hue accuracy. And what you complain about in Ektar is often something annoying which really exists. This whole line of talk is largely misleading if one simply assumes everyone else is working with
the same class of color, or has the same output taste, as you do. Thank goodness we still
have choices in color film. I wouldn't want to go quail hunting with a boar rifle, or go boar
hunting with birdshot.

[John Rodriguez]

Any reason to prefer 81 filters vs red decamireds?

[Bernice Loui]

Color balance of films is not simple transparency or neg. The overall color balance is affected by the specific lens used, processing lighting, and an entire host of other factors that goes beyond the innate color balance and saturation designed and built into the specific film.

*Kodak Ektachrome from years ago tended to be render slightly bluish.

*Afgachrome rendered slightly magenta.

*Fuji (Provia) rendered slightly magenta to neutral, Fuji Velvia ( IMO, excessive color saturation, high contrast)

There was a time when one would do gray card test using a very well controlled light source, a specific lens used, have the film processed by a specific lab, then color densitometer measured to determine what specific Kodak CC filters would bring the color balance to neutral.

Having not used any color films in ten years now, I have no idea what color films are available or post exposure work flow. It seems, so much of film based imaging has changed in the past decade.

Much of this does come down to individual perfernce and what results in they are trying to achieve in the image produced.

Bernice

[Drew Wiley]

John - you generally have better quality filters for field use in the 81 warming series. But
you do have to watch the exact quality of tint. The best ones do have a pinch of pink in
them and not just the yellow component of amber. In the studio cc's might be appropriate
in certain condition, esp if you have a color temp meter handy. And it depends on exactly
which film you are using, under what conditions. One simply can't tote around every option
that might be useful in a studio. Very minor corrections can be made in the printing stage.
Major ones cannot. Even PS won't rescue a serious dye layer error.

[John Rodriguez]

Interesting. I may pick up an 81 to compare to my red decamireds. As a bonus I wouldn't mind being able to use 2mm instead of 4mm filters.

[richardman]

Drew, I agree with you. The best is for the individual to shoot some film in their prefer environment and see whether they like a particular film or not, for their workflow. Right now, I'm quite happy with what I am using. Even though I am a "bit head" in dayjob, in my photography, I tend to "play by eyes." Sure, I color calibrate my Eizo monitor and use a HP Z printer with built in spectrometer so I have a color managed workflow, but 100% accuracy to "real life" is not something I aspire it due to so many factors from the physic of lights to the physic of film and also the viewers' emotional response etc.. As long as the output is pleasing, that's what I care about.

[Drew Wiley]

I appreciate well-nuanced work regardless of specific output medium. Its obviously easier
to judge the idiosyncrasies of particular films when they are chromes, cause you can just
slap em onto a lightbox. With color negs, it takes some experience either printing them
outright or understanding what happens thru the scanning step. The temptation is when
folks have too many options and just go hog wild in PS. In my thinking, I'd rather dance
with the film than beat it into submission. But it's a lot more cooperative in the first place
if some time is taken to really understand it.

[Peter Gomena]

I remember, back in the late '80s, taking a class in which the instructor laid out a roll of ektachrome next to a roll of fujichrome on a light table. Both were shot in the same environment, all outdoors, subject was wildlife in natural environments. The fuji was hands-down the prettier film. The ektachrome was more neutral, certainly, but really less interesting. No zip. So much for a "natural" look. In the studio, in other classes, and later when I was photographing catalog work, ektachrome was preferred for its ability to render fabrics and skin tones more neutrally. Tests on fujichrome produced some really bad skin tones. It also gave the color separators fits. Fuji eventually changed its emulsions and produced transparency films that were pretty darned amazing. They gave Kodak a real run for the money. Kodak then fought back with the E100 series, E100 S, W, SW, etc. I really liked the look of E100S. All gone the way of the dodo bird now, so it's a moot point. That was a real golden age of E-6 films. Great films from both manufacturers, and a big choice of emulsions. You could show art directors a range of films and they could pick the look they liked. Ektachrome 64 was the choice for "natural" or "neutral" renderings, but it was a little bland. It usually needed a little spicing up with warming filters to give things a little life. Regardless of the film you used, it took time and experience to learn to use them well and how to control and filter light to make them really sing.

Peter Gomena

[E. von Hoegh]

I hAve just been corrected as to my thinking that portra was
The truest or most natural colour film
Apparently not so

My interest is landscape not portraits.




Cheersalot!
Andy Pandy

Kodachrome 25.

[adam satushek]

I agree with those who like Portra 160.

I do generally shoot landscapes, but prefer more muted tones than some. Also I love the dynamic range and can often retain shadow and highlight detail even in non-ideal lighting conditions. I have played around with chromes in the past, and I admit at the time I had old gnarly shutters that were likely far from accurate so that may have been part of the problem, but I always found I could not get the shadow and hightlight detail I needed in 1 sheet. But I also did not spend much time trying to figure it out. Once I discovered Portra NC 160, that was all I needed until Portra 160 came out. I did shoot some fuji neg films for a while but always had issues with greens being way saturated, though that was years ago and could have been my old lenses, old Imacon scanner I was using, or many things in my process that I was probably not doing correctly.

Anyway, Portra 160...all the way, only film I need....just as long as they keep making it.

[Drew Wiley]

... Just as long as we keep buying it!

[adam satushek]

... Just as long as we keep buying it!

yeah exactly! I buy as much as I can, but need a larger freezer, not because im stocking up per say, but because I have a very small alotment of freezer space.

I just read an article that stated that lomography may be interested in purchasing kodaks film division. Seems odd to me...but as long as its still the same portra and is availiable at least up to 4x5 I would be happy.

Reference:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/what-kodak-could-still-learn-from-polaroid/2012/11/29/01b8b8e4-38d7-11e2-b01f-5f55b193f58f_story.html

[Drew Wiley]

Wouldn't that be like some skateboard company trying to buy Chrysler?

[adam satushek]

Wouldn't that be like some skateboard company trying to buy Chrysler?

Ha! yeah it certianly would, thats a good way to put it. Like I said, it would be wierd....but as long as its the same film and it means its around longer it seems like a good thing to me. The same article states that lomographys boutique stores are doing well....now they just need to make a hipster 4x5 camera....or Ben Syverson can sell Wanderlusts to them. Im sure hipsters would pay $99 for a 4x5 camera.

Sorry, im not trying to hijack the thread with my woe-is-me kodak whinning...

[cosmicexplosion]

I did not realize the lense effects colour

I will be primarily using dagor 19 and 14

Though I am happy to change if another lens is
Better for colour work.

I may also of course completely hate cour
And use black And white

But I like the muted tones over saturated.
I suppose I like over v under exposed colour
As it has a nice light airy feel.

But I don't think 160 is made in portra ange more.

Any way as posted I think I need to be less gen y and more old school
And do some scientific field tests with my gear.
And a range of films and printing


Which is another tangent; printing optically v digitally.

I guess it's hard to find optical printers nowadays.

Does one have more or less permanence.

Should each print sold be offered a reprint every 60 years after destroying original and paying costs.
As a way of making an immortal print.

[adam satushek]

I did not realize the lense effects colour

If you are refering to my comment about my old workflow and gear where I mentioned that my old lenses could have been part of the issue I was seeing, please take this with a grain of salt. It could have been part of the issue, and I convinced myself at the time that i needed more modern lenses, but who knows. I got rid of the rickety old wooden Korona and uncoated lens and never looked back. But at the same time I got some really great color shots with the setup, it is very likely that my issues were more to do with technique, exposure, scanning, and learning photoshop. I'm not saying that lenses dont affect color, but just that there are many other more improtant considerations. You can make great color work in LF with all sorts of old gear.

I'm sure your dagors will be great.

[Drew Wiley]

Cosmic - Portra 160 has basically replaced Portra 160NC. Portra 400 is roughly similar to the old Portra 160VC but obviously faster. Ektar is like the old 160VC on steroids - more
saturation, which you might not personally care for. Optical and digital printing are both
done on the same kinds of RA4 paper, so will have identical permanence characteristics if
properly done. But these should be distinguished from inkjet prints, which are an entirely
different category and digital only.

[polyglot]

I did not realize the lense effects colour

Yes, but it's a pretty subtle effect. Lens coatings work by destructive interference because they're about 1/4 wavelength thick, so the reflected wave self-annihilates. Because colours are different wavelengths, a coating will have slightly different effects on different colours. Different manufacturers coat differently, which results in very slightly different colour renderings. Minolta for example used colour uniformity across their line of AF lenses as a selling point at a time when most other manufacturers had different balances on different models.

On a negative film you're never going to notice unless you test carefully (controlled comparisons of quite different lenses on a high-saturation film) and the effect is swamped by print-filter settings.


But I don't think 160 is made in portra ange more.

Wut? 4x5 (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/759411-USA/Kodak_1710516_4_x_5_Portra.html) and 8x10 (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/759408-USA/Kodak_8493751_8_x_10_Portra.html).

[Bernice Loui]

+1

There was a time when Kodachrome was made in sheet film.. It remains one of the great color films.


Bernice



Kodachrome 25.

[Bernice Loui]

Of all the lenses I have used over the years (Rodenstock, Schneider, Nikkor, Goerz, Fuji, Kodak, Kinoptik, Canon, Zeiss, and...) The best color IMO was from the single coated Kodak Commercial Ektar, Kinoptik and Apo Artar.

The modern multi-coated optics tends to have some small degree of color bias.


Bernice

[Bernice Loui]

Speaking of color film.. Why not consider making three color separation negatives using pancromatic B&W film using Kodak Wratten filters.

#25 Red.
#47 Blue.
#58 Green.

Then scan each color separated negative and combine them post process?

There were sheet films cameras made with color filters built in years ago.


Bernice

[cosmicexplosion]

I was thinking of taking a photo with every possible filter and then combining
But things like birds are too hard to train.

But really. Just kidding.

Great info everyone. It's amazing one thread can be a hundred years of trial and error.

[Struan Gray]

I use Portra for my landscape work. I'm still working through a stock of 160 NC, but the new, plain 'Portra 160' is supposed to be similar enough.

In any case, when I was doing my own testing I found that colour rendition was very similar between sheet film and roll film stock, so if you want to test a number of films on a number of subjects feel free to use a roll film back or a smaller format camera. That said, with Kodak film only coming in 10 sheet boxes, it's no biggie to suck-and-see.

I like Portra because I am happy manipulating contrast and saturation in a digital step before printing, and I prefer to see the piece of film as a capture medium rather than an end in its own right. I have never had any problems bumping up the saturation on the rare occasions I want a piece of Grand Nature. I have often had problems with E6 film with blown highlights and unrecoverably lost shadow detail. If you like the slide film look, and can make your exposures accurate enough, slide film offers some unique benefits, but you are locked into a particular feel in a way that you are not with neg film.

For my taste, Portra has weak reds. They are there (sunsets come out looking like sunsets) but you don't get much colour descrimination - lots of red plastic toys of similar but different hues will all come out looking the same. On the other hand, greeny-blues and the different shades of green foliage are all nicely separated, so you don't lose the variety of hues that exist in the plant world. Spring buds and grasslands recovering from winter have a look that would be uniform green on most slide films. Portra can go cyan with heavy overexposure, which can make bright skies look odd (especially light overcast skies over a dark landscape as you get in many northern dawns) and can accentuate colour casts between, say, under a forest canopy and out in the open.

That sounds like a lot of moaning, but it's not. Reala supposedly has better reds, but I hate the way Fuji colour neg turns my wife's pale-skinned relatives an ugly shade of puce. Swings and roundabouts.

I use Portra a lot in bright sunlight (when we get it) and in the endless twilight of the northern summer nights. 'Accurate' and 'natural' are probably the wrong words, but the film is versatile, forgiving and applicable to a wide range of final looks.

Printing onto RA4 with no digital step will lock you into the colour characteristics I mentioned above. With a digital step, and output to RA4 or inkjet, you can sidestep nearly all of them.

[cosmicexplosion]

Wow Straun those evening shots of the Scottish beaches are amazing
Really nice
Way further down the road of muted or subtle colour
Than I have in mind but in some ways better
Beautiful atmosphere
The most feeling I've seen lately in a photo.

[Struan Gray]

Thank you cosmic.

I have flaming red sunsets too :-) Portra seems to handle them all.

[Drew Wiley]

Gosh - I was just backtracking and noticed Richard's remark about long exposures on Ektar per color cast issues. Can't answer that one. Still on the learning curve one step at a time.
But I never trust casual web chatter by people who don't even know how to read published curves on a tech data sheet, esp the ones that think PS can correct anything,
and that when it can't, the film must be crap, or that Kodak engineers really stupid in the first place. Reminds me of a 16-yr old who's convinced he can drive a car better than his
dad, at least until he runs into his first tree.

[cosmicexplosion]

Yes mr Wiley
I am putting my brain in the onterlectual
Gym and one day soon I will be strong enough to read
One of those things with out falling asleep like a junky at a bus stop

Androooo

[richardman]

Well, Drew, that's a bit harsh. In theory, everyone should learn to read MTF, study the manuals, have a complete calibrated workflow for digital or temperature / humidity / everything by the book analogue darkroom etc. I guess we should throw in animal husbandry in while we're at it.

In practice, it's like choosing a dog: all dogs are great, but some dogs are perfect for you while others are perfect for others.

[Drew Wiley]

Harsh ... being pretty damn polite considering all the ballyhoo I got when I tried to explain
it over on APUG. Some of those kids were blaming the film for an aphid crawling across the
lens. Dumb Kodak this, dumb Kodak that. ... why can't Kodak make my camera focus, etc.
Ill admit to the same issue this morning ... couldn't figure out why I couldn't read. Low on
coffee ... kept rubbing my eyes. Then I noticed that one of my cats had conveniently pounced on my reading glasses and knocked the left lens out. At least I didn't blame Kodak.

[richardman]

OK, lets have some fun. 4 photos, all taken in the last 30 days. All on the Shenhao. The same 2 or 3 lens are used. One each from Provia 400, Velvia 50, Ektar 100, and Reala. I just spent a little bit of time (under 5 mins max on the colors) to get the colors pleasing to me, not accurate per se. The Ektar took a little longer but still not too bad, hence switched to Reala and generally happier.

See if you can figure out which is which:

http://richardmanphoto.com/PICS/20121114-Scanned-9-Edit.jpg


http://richardmanphoto.com/PICS/20121121-Scanned-15.jpg



http://richardmanphoto.com/PICS/20121109-Scanned-46.jpg



http://richardmanphoto.com/PICS/20121109-Scanned-49.jpg

[richardman]

Harsh ... being pretty damn polite considering all the ballyhoo I got when I tried to explain
it over on APUG. Some of those kids were blaming the film for an aphid crawling across the
lens. Dumb Kodak this, dumb Kodak that. ... why can't Kodak make my camera focus, etc...


My life gets simpler when I ignore people whom I cannot stand to have a conversation with :-)

[D-tach]

OK, lets have some fun. 4 photos, all taken in the last 30 days. All on the Shenhao. The same 2 or 3 lens are used. One each from Provia 400, Velvia 50, Ektar 100, and Reala. I just spent a little bit of time (under 5 mins max on the colors) to get the colors pleasing to me, not accurate per se. The Ektar took a little longer but still not too bad, hence switched to Reala and generally happier.

See if you can figure out which is which:



Provia, Velvia, Reala and Ektar...?

[Drew Wiley]

Bingo - anyone can make a dunk if the hoop is only three feet above the court! Web =
lowest common denominator of visual communication. Let's start with the kind of prints
LF is meant for, and leave web smudges for the cell phone crowd. Not that the web is
irrelevant for communicating subject matter, but it's pretty damn worthless for comparing
films! Garbage-in/garbage-out.

[richardman]

Provia, Velvia, Reala and Ektar...?

25% correct :-)

Drew, the problem with making print comparison then is adding one more variable - the printer workflow, whether RA4 or inkjet.

Anyway, shoot some film, choose the ones most appealing to you, and then done.

[D-tach]

25% correct :-)



dang! :-) just the Velvia probably

[richardman]

dang! :-) just the Velvia probably

Nope! Bwahbwahbwah :-)

Lets put it this way, I shoot quite a lot of B&W, and it does not matter whether it's Tri-X, HP-5 or Leica M9 converted, they all have similar tones after I am done. I have been scanning and working post since 2003 so I have my B&W workflow down fairly well. I don't have much experience working with scanned colors besides Provia/Sensia hence I was doing experiment with color films. I expected after a couple more months I will get my color workflow down as well.

[marfa boomboom tx]

the most natural color film is:

Lippman plate.

[Gary Tarbert]

OK, lets have some fun. 4 photos, all taken in the last 30 days. All on the Shenhao. The same 2 or 3 lens are used. One each from Provia 400, Velvia 50, Ektar 100, and Reala. I just spent a little bit of time (under 5 mins max on the colors) to get the colors pleasing to me, not accurate per se. The Ektar took a little longer but still not too bad, hence switched to Reala and generally happier.

See if you can figure out which is which:

http://richardmanphoto.com/PICS/20121114-Scanned-9-Edit.jpg


http://richardmanphoto.com/PICS/20121121-Scanned-15.jpg



http://richardmanphoto.com/PICS/20121109-Scanned-46.jpg



http://richardmanphoto.com/PICS/20121109-Scanned-49.jpg O.K i"m game Ektar , Provia , Reala , Velvia .This is harder than i would imagine because the original image has been processed and web colours etc make it hard, and the only reason i chose provia as number two is why would you shoot the other scenes on a faster emulsion when number two would require the most exsposure . Regards Gary

[Zaitz]

Provia
Ektar
Reala
Velvia

[cosmicexplosion]

the most natural color film is:

Lippman plate.

What is that?

[richardman]

OK, in fact, the point is that after some fairly easy processing, it's hard to tell the film apart, and no, prints don't show the difference more either. I must apologize though, I really thought that one of the them was Ektar, but in fact, I have two Provia here :-( Sorry about that folks.

In order then
Provia
Reala
Velvia
Provia




http://richardmanphoto.com/PICS/20121114-Scanned-9-Edit.jpg


http://richardmanphoto.com/PICS/20121121-Scanned-15.jpg



http://richardmanphoto.com/PICS/20121109-Scanned-46.jpg



http://richardmanphoto.com/PICS/20121109-Scanned-49.jpg

[SpeedGraphicMan]

Tri color filtered B&W and then printed in Tri-color Carbon.

Here Here!

[cosmicexplosion]

People dis the panorama as unnatural as its not how the eye sees.

But if you look left and look right......

There all great shots with beautiful colour richardman., but did you adjust them much in post?

I guess when thinking of natural colour of think of Mishrac although i'm sure there are others, his desert photos are wonderfully understated.
I could imagine though some finding them too realistic.

[richardman]

People dis the panorama as unnatural as its not how the eye sees.

But if you look left and look right......

There all great shots with beautiful colour richardman., but did you adjust them much in post?

I guess when thinking of natural colour of think of Mishrac although i'm sure there are others, his desert photos are wonderfully understated.
I could imagine though some finding them too realistic.

Hi "Cosmic," thanks for the kind words. I love the pano and it's how *my* eyes see things.

None of them took more than a couple minutes with LR to get the colors to look like this, if that. Usually I use auto-exposure and see whether I should start there, or revert and tweak manually from scratch. Of course, since I do make prints from them, I spent more time doing the post processing things - add some clarify, clear up some shadow, straightening the horizon etc. but really all told, it's less than 5 mins. Most work are done on Velvia, it's a bit too purplish for me so I have to dial it down.

[Tajmul12345]

I personal love landscape photo i suggest you to doing film.

[Drew Wiley]

Naturalistic???? Cosmic - Misrach has some of the least realistic colors of our deserts that
I've ever seen. Low-contrast Vericolor onto low-contrast Kodak portrait paper, often
deliberately chem-fiddled to even further accentuate the fleshtone bias of that combination, commercially printed by friends of mine. It worked for him in an esthetic sense, ala that 70's understated style, but sure doesn't match the colors in that world in any vaguely realistic sense. But to me, more acceptable than most of this hyper-psychedelic Fauxtoship postcardy enhancement I encounter nowadays.