Did Kodak color neg lose sharpness when it was reformulated to improve scanning?

[Drew Wiley]

You're convoluting or complicating the topic with a lot of apples to oranges comparisons, Pere. If you want to compare nominal 100 speed films, use Ektar 100, which states right on the box, "sharpest color negative film ever". It's also a far better color balanced film than any amateur Gold product. If you want to compare low-contrast Portra 160, you select one of the old Vericolor 160 S or L products. There are a number of factors you're not familiar with yet because you just don't have that much direct experience with them. I certainly appreciate your enthusiasm; but your perspective on tech sheets and so forth might warrant some reconsideration once you have benefit of the hindsight of more hands-on printing experience.

[Pere Casals]

You're convoluting or complicating the topic with a lot of apples to oranges comparisons, Pere.

Drew, don't worry, we'll compare apales with apples amd oranges with oranges. Say Vericolor with Portra/Ektar and VR-G vs modern Gold.

Placing a dslr in the trinocular of a Leitz it's straight, and we can always make contact copies of the usaf 1951 slide on films at different contrasts and exposure.

I certainly appreciate your enthusiasm; but your perspective on tech sheets and so forth might warrant some reconsideration once you have benefit of the hindsight of more hands-on printing experience.

Spending some effort in testing is always good, if not urban legends become science.

For example Pali made that test (https://www.largeformatphotography.i...=1#post1509776) that delivered surprising results that are very worth to know.


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Drew, me I want to know why a consumer film of the 1980s is sharper than modern Pro film:




So first let's see if pre-hybrid era film it's sharper or not, I guess I can obtain frozen Veri.

I lended my DSLR gear to a friend for a long trip, when I recover it in two weeks I'll place it in the trinocular, and we'll see. BTW, lending the DSLR for six month is even better than throwing the smartphome to the Potomac

[Drew Wiley]

Hi Pere. Consumer films had different requirements. They had to have a lot of latitude for exposure error, give decent skin tone, and were enlarged from small size to common snapshot print sizes. But certain other characteristics could be compromised. They figured out how to get certain bright colors to saturate, but weren't otherwise very well hue balanced. Pros like portrait studios routinely used larger film sizes, esp 120 film, but LF too. Extremely fine grain was not a priority. Highly detailed product and landscape shots were generally done using chrome film instead. Also a lot of color portrait work was printed rather soft; high acutance was not the point. If someone wanted an extremely crisp rugged old man look with every wrinkle showing, the studios were more apt to use Ortho b&w film. That's a bit of an oversimplified explanation, but it gives a valid clue. Today pro color neg film selection requirements are a bit different because they have to fill in certain niches left vacant as chrome films disappear, as well as be able to compete with digital options.

[Bob Salomon]

Hi Pere. Consumer films had different requirements. They had to have a lot of latitude for exposure error, give decent skin tone, and were enlarged from small size to common snapshot print sizes. But certain other characteristics could be compromised. They figured out how to get certain bright colors to saturate, but weren't otherwise very well hue balanced. Pros like portrait studios routinely used larger film sizes, esp 120 film, but LF too. Extremely fine grain was not a priority. Highly detailed product and landscape shots were generally done using chrome film instead. Also a lot of color portrait work was printed rather soft; high acutance was not the point. If someone wanted an extremely crisp rugged old man look with every wrinkle showing, the studios were more apt to use Ortho b&w film. That's a bit of an oversimplified explanation, but it gives a valid clue. Today pro color neg film selection requirements are a bit different because they have to fill in certain niches left vacant as chrome films disappear, as well as be able to compete with digital options.

But chromes, Polaroid, color negs had problems with color also. When I was selling Broncolor I got a call from General Foods factory in DE where they made Jello.
Part of the QC for Jello was to make a batch from each production run and photograph it record the color of the run when properly prepared.
The problem was that regardless of the film used, the lights used grape Jello never reproduced the correct color. Even though it was properly prepared and, to the naked eye, was the correct color. All other flavors reproduced properly. Even a color checker in the shot reproduced properly.
Never solved the problem, seems it was film related.
There was also a problem reproducing the proper color of a blue flower.

[Drew Wiley]

There always have been and always will be certain flukes, Bob. There are certain remarkable fluorescent lichen colors very vivid to the eye but that come out blaah on E6 films. But the old extremely grainy pre-E6 Agfachrome bagged them; but it had a terrible time with greens. When IBM full-spectrum spectrophotometers were starting to be marketed for industrial pigment matching, quite expensive back then, I'd drive them wild by brining in color samples that drove the machines nuts: fluorescent colors, velours, etc. "Blue" flowers etc? Nature didn't design them to match film, but the color vision of bees or other pollinators that see things differently than we do. Lots of foliage reflects light we don't notice. That's why leaves turn yellow and red in the fall, after the chlorophyll is no longer dominant. Its why green leaves tend to still look bright under a mild orange filter using pan film, but not when a red filter is involved; and note infrared imagery. Gosh knows what went into Jello colorants.

[Pere Casals]

When IBM full-spectrum spectrophotometers were starting to be marketed for industrial pigment matching...

Yes... Two equal "paints" have spectrally match, if not we may see the same color under some illumination, but two different colors under another illumination.

Consumer films had different requirements.

Anyway (if it is the case) it would be interesting to discover why modern films are less sharp than 33 years old consumer films. It would weird that after 33 years Pro CN film could not equal consumer 1980s film, regarding resolving power.

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Let's shot the clouds as seen in the Leitz... this may deliver interesting information, comparing cloud for the same density..

[Drew Wiley]

You're the one claiming they're less sharp, Pere. Nobody else. Vericolor was a long-running brand name for Kodak with a variety and evolution of its own, long-exposure (L), as well as short exposure engineered for flash (S). Fuji had equivalents. The Kodak Gold line was something else specifically marketed as very fine grain and boosted color (at least in a few hues) for the amateur market. It needed to be very fine grained. But the current Ektar is even finer, and dramatically better in terms of color, yet not very friendly to careless amateur use. More of a pro product. What has replaced Vericolor usage is the Portra lineup, which is what you should be really comparing with Vericolor pro films. Gold is still an amateur product. But if you want to speculate, I've seen amazing results from classified films forty to sixty years ago with extraordinary resolving power. What those exactly were, I have no idea, but they were color neg and not chrome. I don't expect you'll get objective results if you thaw out old CN film. It tends to shift; and amateur films were never cold stored to begin with.

[Pere Casals]

You're the one claiming they're less sharp, Pere. Nobody else.

Drew, post #32 shows that it's not my opinion, it's well documented. Also the graphs Oren posted suggests the same, the Portra Graph has RGB individual curves compared to full spectrum curves for Veri, this suggests that a graph with individual curves for Veri would be much better that the one for Portra, or that a Portra full spectrum graph would be much worse than the Veri one.

Anyway it's clear (to me) that those graphs are missleading, because real photography usually works in other situations than that (probably) 1000:1 contrast described in the graph. We may have that contrast in silhouette, but not in (on film) 30lp/mm textures. Film MTF behaviour (contrary to lenses) depends on contrast !

To me, it's interesting to understand how real film works in real situations, and how film limitations are reached in 35mm, MF and LF.

My view is that those reengineering modifications are not clear, "Now the PORTRA Films have been reengineered" , a "reengineering" is not a little modification in the supercoating, a "reengineering" is suposed to involve complex changes in the design, if not starting calculations from zero.

Kodak datasheets have very good information and some weasel words comming from marketing department, I guess.

Again, let me photograph the color clouds in the Leitz, with a reticle, different films, different densities... and we'll see !!



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To me that reengineering is related to the way a discretization can generate color noise, so to address it, this is a IQ180 test, we had BW lines but color noise is generated:

Click to enlarge:

https://www.onlandscape.co.uk/2011/1...ra-comparison/
https://web.archive.org/web/20190102...ra-comparison/


Scanners usually have linear sensors, but a Frontier like machine has an Area Sensor, with a bayer mosaic!!! it could make 1 to 8 passes, but...

My guess is that at one point digital minilabs were crirtical for the industry, and emulsions were reengineered for that. Again, let's see what the Leitz has to say... in 2 weeks, I guess.

[Drew Wiley]

Pere, if you'd been printing these various flavors of Kodak CN film time to time over several decades like I have, you'd realize the significant steady improvement of these films in their respective categories over time. I don't want to get into a debate over marketing semantics and at just what point the term "re-engineered" might be appropriate. But in the case of the current Ektar option, it conspicuously applies. And if you look at the overall evolution of Kodak's primary line of pro CN film going from Vericolor S and L days, up to present Portra offerings, I think we'd all agree that there has been at least a CUMULATIVE re-engineering evident, especially during the last two decades. I have all kinds of old tech manuals from Kodak on my shelf going into details of past films. Minilab equipment has very little in common with pro film usage. The remaining drugstore venues etc which still have minilab services predictably sell Kodak Gold and other amateur films. Nobody is going to take sheet film to a place like that. They wouldn't even know what it is. Around here pro scanning is widely available, and involves drum scanners or older Creo units, but never consumer-grade units like Epson. All this is a fun topic, but I have to get to other chores at the moment, and hope to enlarge another 8x10 Ektar image this afternoon, optically of course. I only state that because, when Kodak optimized certain films for sake of scanning, these same films improved with respect to optical enlargement as well, just as printing papers have.

[Pere Casals]

Pere, if you'd been printing these various flavors of Kodak CN film time to time over several decades like I have

Drew, I've never printed RA-4, not a single frame.

you'd realize the significant steady improvement of these films in their respective categories over time.

... but I've friends that were printing a lot and they say just the counter than you... they say that new films were performing better for lightjets but worse for optic enlargements

Nobody is going to take sheet film to a place like that.

The film sharpness loss is detected well in 35mm film, but it's hard to notice in LF. You know, some lenses for 35mm cameras do deliver 140 Lp/mm...

Around here pro scanning is widely available, and involves drum scanners or older Creo units, but never consumer-grade units like Epson.

Of course a Pro service won't use much the Epson, this is cheap plastic, it is not made to scan 8 hours every day, but with Portra the V700 delivers the same quality than a drum scanner or a Creo. If you want we can review again those crops.

hope to enlarge another 8x10 Ektar image this afternoon, optically of course. I only state that because, when Kodak optimized certain films for sake of scanning, these same films improved with respect to optical enlargement as well, just as printing papers have.

If your print (from 8x10) has less than 2m you won't notice how sharp the film is or it is not.

It would be nice if you post a photograph of that print.