I wouldn’t assume cc filters, though.
I wouldn’t assume cc filters, though.
Hi, Larry. In one aspect, Kodak has already tested the speed for you. But if you need to fine-tune it to your own equipment, you really need to do that in relation to your full output, whether as RA4 print, or as viewable scan, whatever. And you need to factor in actual hue reproduction because that is what is really the crux of such testing and not hypothetical dynamic range. Here's how I do this. I have a MacBeth Color Checker chart that is clean and unfaded. The color patches on them are very thoughtfully chosen and manufactured under strict quality control. The gray scale on it is also precisely made and color-neutral, unlike most ordinary gray cards, and there is a gray patch midway of 18% gray; the others are evenly spaced. So I set up the camera and given sheet film - Ektar in this case - and take a shot of the Chart that will become my master negative - bellows extension factored in, if applicable, precise shutter speed, and significantly, color balance filtration to standardized temperature using necessary filters. A color temp meter helps. I like to standardize on 5000K, but if you prefer 5200 or 5500 that's still in the ballpark of this film; but it's important to standardize. My critical print viewing station is also 5000K, though I keep other lights around for sake of viewing a print under various hypothetical display conditions. I won't go into all the details for my choice of 5000K, since some of my lab usages for that master neg get complicated. But you want to be careful this master neg is not exposed by light either too warm (tungsten), too cold (direct blue daylight), or wacko (fluorescent). Most of us probably know how to use gels or filters to achieve precise color balance, as well as have access to a color temp meter. ... Then if you are actually darkroom printing like me, the point is to take that master neg and calibrate your colorhead settings and paper batch till you match that original gray scale in print as accurately as possible. That might sound obvious, but few people really understand how to do this right. No only do you want the full gray scale reproduced, but with complete neutrality and no hue bias when viewed under your official viewing light. All the primaries (R,G,B) as well as secondaries (C,M,Y) should "sing" with the same intensity. Each should be very clean hue-wise, and equal to all its companions in how it hits you - its intensity. That is why you need a high-quality viewing light. Ektar can achieve this in a very balanced way. Then you start looking at all the tertiary color patches, and see if they're as good as you can get them. Of course, no film is perfect, so even after you've done you're best, there might still be some tertiary color issues; and these are quite important because they teach you something about the film's limitations. Color in nature are more involved, and you can learn the film's response to these via experience; but if you have a neutral starting point beforehand with a good Chart test, life will be a lot easier. And of course, you can do something analogous with digital workflow if that is what you prefer, but still try to do it the first time with everything calibrated to your equipment set to a standardized conditions, without tweaking the Chart colors digitally. You want a home base, so to speak, in terms of color reproduction. After that, real-world images can be adjusted for color correction or esthetic reasons. But if you battle with all that up front before a truly standardized film test, it takes way more effort to correct native film or lighting idiosyncrasies. So I hope I haven't confused anyone; but film speed and accurate hue reproduction are completely linked, and need to be tested in combined fashion.
Steve, I got to see a lot of that experimental 70's work before it really caught on. I think it started in LA, but the best known practitioners were on the East Coast, plus Misrach in this neighborhood, who lived here but tended to photograph in the SoCal desert. Some of them were simply awful color printers; Meyerowitz was an exception and got very good at it. But back then 8x10 contact prints were the Museum thing - not huge prints like now. Most of them wisely let pro labs make their enlargements afterwards. The whole point of the "creativity" aspect was to identify and exploit, or even exaggerate, the color reproduction flaws in color neg films of the era. Sally Eauclaire championed that era of color photography in a couple of well-known books. Vericolor L was a popular film choice, or sometimes tungsten film used uncorrected in daylight for odd effects. Stephen Shore turned the whole poison-green vs pumpkin-fleshtone tendency of Vericolor into a whole body of work. Misrach painted the entire desert homogenized pale false hues. Most of these people never left that mode of working, though Misrach went digital and obnoxiously academic. Meyerowitz has a relatively recent wonderful example, a book of LF shots in Tuscany all washed-out and exaggerated off-color, much like his early work but devoid of the blue hues of Cape Cod. If anyone can find remaining stocks of Fuji S or L sheet film, that might work for such looks. The current Kodak films are better corrected, and the crisp geometry of the dyes in Ektar are simply not amenable to the same kind of effect.
You really need a classic portrait film to do that kind of thing. I find it all quite dated by now. Time to move on.
>> I've been extremely eager to experiment and play with different types of film.
Why not to do just that and see what suits your needs?
Some advance precautions can help, Sergey. Not everyone can drive a stick shift; there's a learning curve to it. On the other hand, I have trouble with these newer cars with all their distracting electronic nonsense on the dashboard, resembling an airplane cockpit. Learning new films can be like that too. Chrome films are easier to monitor your progress with because you can just slap the result on a good light box and assess the qualitative result intuitively. But color neg films need something properly calibrated in between if you want to realistically evaluate them. People who might have been comfortable making portrait prints for years using traditional color neg films might find Ektar challenging - not because it's a tricky film, but because they're unprepared for it, having stereotypes about color neg film which no longer apply in this case. Even worse are these newer people who think they can mess up exposure any way they wish and simply recover it via PS manipulation afterwards. But the best digital printers I know had years and years of color darkroom experience behind them, and understood specific films. I've not only played with, but
printed almost every kind of chrome film made within my lifetime, including some which were almost extinct when I had my first camera, and then later, quite a selection of color neg films too. Each had its own kind of personality.
Specializing in chromes made it fairly easy for me to transition to Ektar as my current primary outdoor color film. But I would have saved a lot of time and money if I had understood at the start what I understand now, because I happened to "play around" with 8x10 film, and made certain assumptions extrapolated from previous 160VS film usage which, as it turned out, didn't apply well to Ektar.
Last edited by Drew Wiley; 3-Jul-2019 at 14:33.
Fair enough Drew. Ektar is a beautiful film and also, as any other negative film, can be used for many interpretations of a photographed subject.
"Experiment" was one of the key words in the "opening statement". Following someone's steps leaves almost no room for a true experiment and new discoveries.
There are endless possibilities to experiment. Having a home base of exposure does not deprive you of that. A common example of what might work in one case but not another is how scenic photographers would often omit balancing filters with chrome films and print or publish them as is, with a deep blue bias intact. But when they try the same thing with Ektar there's a significant color shift to cyan which they find quite obnoxious, so they condemn the film rather than try to understand it. But there are cases where the same "flaw' in Ektar can render a true rich turquoise very hard to capture otherwise. I've exploited that in tropical shots where the water really is that color. But of course, these are accurate color reproduction issues. If you want to veer off the path, as we all like to do sometimes and "experiment", I just recommend doing it with roll film first, since it's far less expensive than sheet film. I had a little too much self-confidence when I started gunning with 8x10 Ektar. That cost me some big bucks until I realized its differences.
Lots of the "experimentation" people did with color neg films in the past just doesn't work with Ektar because of its significantly higher native contrast. I prefer to bag a solid exposure then leave the interpretive experimenting for the printing phase. There are also all kinds of alternative printing methods for those who want something different. A few people are even doing reversal processing of RA4 papers to get direct-positive images from chromes. But that's a whole different topic, I guess. It's all fun.
Thanks for the detailed explanation. It’s pretty close to what I did years ago and for the most part I was happy with the colors in my prints. Lately I’ve been shooting very little color film and have gotten a bit careless on filtering for color correction-I probably should fix that, especially with Ektar.
I gave up wet printing a few years ago after way too much struggling with contrast on the remaining papers. What’s your method of dealing with Ektar’s high contrast combined with the higher contrast papers on the market these days?
I'm getting pretty comfortable with Ektar, and about 60% of the time it has just about the right amount of contrast as is. But no film is a silver bullet. Significant contrast modifications are quite easy via either contrast reduction or contrast-increase unsharp masking.
Quite a bit more easily done that in Ciba days with chrome film, when you had to bludgeon-mask the film into submission; but that was really the fault of color repro idiosyncrasies in the Ciba print medium itself. When masking color negs you want a much gentler mask; but that means you need a very low gamma developer. I won't go into detail here. Minor tweaks in contrast can be done via specific paper choice or even specific enlarger lens selection. Right now I'm working with both Fuii CAII glossy RC paper and Fujiflex polyester base medium, which has more contrast and comes out a bit richer in color; but certainly not all images are suitable for the very high sheen. The various sheens of Super C are all similar in contrast. There are low contrast portrait papers available; but I'm not interested in them. It's pretty rare I want a predictable ole washed-out color neg look. But at the other extreme, I utterly hate color being used as noise, like so much digitally altered work. Both great hue subtlety and punctuations of intensity can exist in the same print to achieve modulated harmony. Anybody can make noise with film; and it seems anyone can do something bland and pretend its minimalistic. I'm tired of all the artsy games; seen enough of em already. Every image should be handled in its own specific way; no rubber stamp mentality. Technique-wise, masking allows a great deal of interpretive control and flexibility. This same approach can of course be mimicked to some extent in digital printing, but the outcome is not as seamless in my opinion. And the greatest flaw I see in digital workflow is the temptation to go overboard - way too much salt or sugar or whatever, killing the native flavor of the image. But that's enough sermonizing for today. I must admit that I prefer the tactility of hands-on darkroom film work.
Thanks again Drew. I was making masks for contrast control, and that hassle was one of the reasons I have mostly moved to the digital approach. The other is I'm not a fan of the RC paper surfaces, though I was mostly printing on glossy. If I pick it up again I'm going to better investigate the surface choices available. I've never used Fujiflex because of the lack of cut sheet availability. I would love it if Fuji rereleased a few different contrast ranges for their papers and FujiFlex in sheets. But I assume the market just isn't there.
I'm also not a fan of over done color or contrast, but I see that as an issue with the photographer, not the printing medium. I find digital printing's control allows one to get exactly what one wants in a print, but you need to be wary of blindly following recipes, adding "filters", or just cranking up the sliders.
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