oop. Typo. Ektar doesn't artificially warm the shadows like Portra, I meant.
oop. Typo. Ektar doesn't artificially warm the shadows like Portra, I meant.
You should edit your post, as you correction is on next page.
Drew, Does exposure level (errors) affect the color balance of these C41 negs?
More important than any of this, in my opinion, is the scan (assuming you are doing a hybrid process, as most are these days for color).
You can have the most perfect color balance in the world and all the dynamic range possible, but a bad scan and poor edit will still look like crap. There's a million tales of "blue casts" with various negative films that have nothing to do with the film and everything to do with the scan.
For the moment you could do a lot worse than just setting your meter to 100 for both films and placing the deepest shadows at Zone III (or II for Portra if you want) and seeing how it goes.
Absolutely. As with other color neg films, if you must wing the exposure, slightly overexpose the film. But with Ektar you never want to go too far off box speed.
This is due to its high contrast (compared to other color neg films per se). What happens if you underexpose it, is that you get the shadows way down where parts of the respective dye curves overlap, so cross-contaminate. With deep blue shadows, this means that particular dye will be underexposed and the whole category of blue tones will be hard to resolve. I realize that landscape photographers often liked unnaturally blue shadows produced by films like Ektachrome 64. But with Ektar you get a kinda sickly cyan cast. Merely overexposing the film won't cure this, and will risk crossover at the upper end, in the highlights. You need to filter for it, selectively. The reward is far cleaner hues overall. It's a wonderful product to have, now that chrome films are getting scarce. But ya gotta understand it.
Coran - Ektar is different. It's prone to cyan issues in particular if either the exposure or color balance is significantly off. Bad scans are a different topic and the
source of all kinds of visual crimes. But one of the most frequent issues with scanning Ektar is the sample size and how this interacts with slope of the dye curves. In real-world terms, the smaller the film, the harder it is to get a good scan. Sometimes I'll order up a scan with my C-41 order in lieu of a contact sheet. Even a 50K flatbed does a miserable job with 35mm film; the sampling is just too coarse. But the same level of scan does just fine with 120 or larger film. (I never scan sheet film, because it's what I am most likely to print myself. But I do use smaller films for the sake of economical testing or mock-ups.) In other words, the very film most people are most likely to place in a cheapo scanner is 35mm, and therefore they habitually get weird looking results they incorrectly blame on the film. But the same half-assed scanner might give acceptable results with 4x5 film. This problem is so routine that it's given Ektar a
pretty bad rap among amateurs, esp the "I can fix anything in PS" crowd.
Well I've scanned a lot of Ektar, in 35mm up to 4x5, on one of those (originally) $50k flatbeds.
As you already stated, Ektar is bluish in the shadows - which very well may be "how it was in real life" but for me it really is too blue/magenta in the shadows. Balancing it out with levels/curves/etc. is of course doable. The cyan tones in the sky are also a signature Ektar look (that I don't like). I can fix anything in PS (HSL layers can do a lot) but I prefer shooting a film that's better looking for my vision in the first place. But this is about learning the materials. My comment has to do with the scans I see often that look like they were shot through an 80A filter.
As for 35mm vs. 4x5 scans, I totally disagree with everything you said. Other than the obvious resolution/grain differences, I see no differences in the colors for different formats.
Here's an Ektar scan for reference. The shadows were very blue and the sky more cyan than I like. So I tweaked it quickly in PS. This shows the typical DR of negative film, with full sunlit bank on the right and deep shadows on the left.
I admit I have been winging it. I have a vintage Pentax 3/21 spot meter but now I am not going to take it out in public due to its shape.Originally Posted by Drew Wiley
Pehaps I need a little Sekonic, but my budget does not nearly reach an L758 !
Of course, EVERONE disagrees with me on the web. Once someone sees some of my actual Ektar prints, that shuts them up FAST. They're pretty surprised just how
clean a palette I get. So you can either take my word or not. I don't care. But from a simplicity standpoint, you agree with me anyway, Corran, since you apparently prefer to peg the neg exp correctly in the first place too. But academically, once again, I have plenty of visual proof of scan vs scan format-wise.
Small film needs a better scan not only per resolution, but hue distinction.
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