Expressively for ARGUMENT...only.
Put that real life leaf next to the Velvia color transparency.. There is NO possible way that leaf looks the way it does as rendered by Velvia, aka Velvia ~False~ color rendition and why Velvia remains a color fantasy color transparency film making is SO popular to this day.
Yes <-> no ?
Bernice
Originally Posted by Corran
Why should that matter to me, you, the viewer, or anyone? With the understanding that very few, if anyone is doing LF film commercial reproduction work and this is not a factor in the discussion.
I note that b&w imaging is also inherently "different" from reality as we perceive it (assuming no color blindness or other issue). How is this any different from using Velvia?
Back to individual values, yet there remains absolutes and truth-reality.
Artistic expression does not always mean bending truth-reality-the way nature really is, yes <-> no ?
Making stuff that is market appealing and saleable often involved bending facts-truth-reality into what one wants to believe, no <-> yes ?
Fact is none of this image making and all means much of anything to most, all of it is only relevant to those interested and wanting to be involved with it all in some way.
For the sake of further inflaming this ...
False color, different take. 360mm Imagon, no disc, Kodak Ektatchrome, crappy-quickie scan intented.
Picking a fight for the sake of pressing passions & opinions & ego...no thanks.
Bernice
The color response dye peaks and curves in any given film are engineered to operate in a specific way in balanced relation to one another at a specific color temperature. With Kodak, photographic daylight is 5500K, with Fuji it seems more like 5200K. Yes, unless one has a critical assignment where hues and the gray scale need to be rendered at correctly as possible, they are at perfect liberty to bend to the rules to their own taste. Often a chrome will provide an appealing look in this manner, even though it is somewhat inaccurate.
More often these days, I run into types who try to get away with the same tricks using Ektar color neg film; it comes out looking like hell, and then they call Kodak stupid, even after they've spent a week beating the image to death in Photoshop. A simple correction filter at the time of the shot could have saved them all the fuss. And very few of those people ever learn to correctly work with an objective standard like the MacBeth Color Checker Chart to begin with. They think they're smarter than decades of proficient practitioners of the past just because they have some new push-button toys; but the proof is in the pudding, and theirs often tastes outright raunchy.
So Bernice is completely correct with respect to what it takes to get chrome shots as color-accurate and predictable as possible. Personal esthetic decisions and preferences are a valid topic in their own right, but not the same question. When it comes to uncompromised hue accuracy and gray scale balance, few tasks are more demanding than making high-quality duplicates. Fuji's CDU series of duplicating sheets films was basically just tungsten-balanced Astia; and then when Astia 100F finally came out, it proved for me to be the best dupe film ever, with the additional important improvement of being on dimensionally stable polyester base instead of triacetate, which shrinks.
I was glad that Fuji once offered a trio of chrome film species between Astia, Provia, and Velvia. But there is no single silver bullet. I loved the way old Ektachrome 64 could reproduce the complex dirty hues of greiges, sage greens, and so forth; but it didn't yield brilliant clean spring green unless one jumped through the hoops of dye transfer printing, which allowed the red contamination to be selectively removed from the green. Then Fuji 50 came out and changed all that - clean primary greens, but the subtlety of complex greens was lost. I could of course apply analogous statements to all kinds of other hue categories. One picks the right tools for the job, and nowadays the available selection of chrome films is less than what is once was.
No fight-picking here, just pushing back a bit on your statements. Of course artistic expression does not inherently imply "bending" reality, but NO photograph, regardless of medium or tools used, is a completely perfect "truth." Simply choosing a composition and including/excluding what is in the picture distorts our ability to perceive the whole of what was there in real life, not to mention leaves out all of our other senses outside of visual (and may limit even those, when removing color).
Market appeal has nothing to do with what I'm saying.
At the end of the day using Velvia over Astia is no different than using an R25 filter on b&w film over shooting naked, or using movements to correct keystoning vs. shooting at an angle to get the perspective distortion. This is ALL a distortion of "reality" and is a matter of individual choice at the time of exposure. About the only possible way this is somehow "wrong" is if one chooses to use a certain tool or technique only because that was/is the "accepted" or "popular" thing, rather than thinking for themselves and making the choice based on how they want the image to look.
PS: I say all this as someone who is leaving E6 behind for the most part, save for what I already happen to have in the fridge/freezer.
Well Drew,
How does this hard learned, very real experience becomes accepted fact-truth-reality for those who never had to struggle with this innate personalty baked into photographic materials?
Again, point being. Fully understand the photographic materials to be used. Apply them properly, once this is done artistic bending to any degree is more than possible .. with vast control to meet that artistic vision..
This could be partly due to a generational difference where those that grew up with digital imaging and software image bending habits then try to force them upon photo-chemical process materials that do not behave like digital image files. The generation that spent their efforts and struggles working within the limits of these photographic materials learned the very difficult way what it took to get proper results, then worked with them as these photographic materials demanded.
The realization the two worlds of Photo-chemical photographic materials are not the same as a digital image file needs to be appreciate and well understood instead of being a hammer with everything looks like a nail.
Bernice
Every really good digital printer I've known was a highly skilled color darkroom printer first. Limitation is really liberation. Anyone who thinks they can do just anything because they have the technology to do so, rarely does anything well. And mastering any given technique takes time and commitment. I went from Cibachrome, which only a fool thought he could tame - I danced with it instead, and let it lead - and parallel with that, made commercially worthy chromogenic prints from the various color neg films of the era. But once the handwriting on the wall concerning the demise of Ciba was apparent, and I had to commit to color neg films chromogenic printing for my much more demanding personal work as well, it proved to be quite a transition, made in unison with certain important improvements in the materials themselves. But the effort was worth it. Now it's more of a supply issue per se, with shortages due to the pandemic. So back to black and white printing for awhile.
More commentary:
Just because someone like me hasn't needed (nor wants) to shoot E6 in a commercial setting doesn't mean I haven't dealt with color temperature accuracy, color charts, and all of that kind of thing for (digital) commercial work. Neither does it preclude someone like me from understanding the irrelevance of this type of methodology when shooting E6 film for other, less color-accuracy-demanding work, and finally it does not disqualify my opinions or observations about E6 materials as used for landscape images or similar.
Many here also need to realize that shooting and printing E6, in 2021, necessarily involves digital imaging/editing at some stage, namely scanning and printing via any medium. This fact seems to be continually ignored. And one need look no further than Instagram or other online photography sharing venues to see many, many instances of E6 film being used for serious landscape and other "art" images.
Drew: per above, then I guess soon there will be no good printers at all? Give it a break.
My final statement because this has grown tiresome. Back several years ago when I had a large two-person show, the vast majority of images shown were taken on E6 film, scanned on a high-end flatbed, then edited digitally and printed via inkjet onto textured Epson paper. These were choices I made based on how I wanted the image to look, and E6 films have a unique look that at that time and for that work I valued. That's what matters, and if one is looking for that kind of look, they should shoot E6 and whatever films give them that.
Pushing back more...
ALL photographic image are bent impressions at best. There is no such thing as "straight photography" or similar moniker as humanoids have two eyes fostering visual depth perception no two dimensional flat image could ever hope to render. That alone enforces the fact, photographs and flat paintings (yes, even raised oil paintings) are essentially 2D falsehoods of reality-truth-facts.
~Now how does any individual render expressive images within these hard realities of the medium's limitations... This has been previously discussed on LFF to lots.
Again, and once more. photo-chemical materials have very specific limitations baked into them by the folks that designed and produce them. Acceptance of this is non-optional, acceptance is mandatory.
To claim there is no absolutes and fixed givens for what and how any photographic material innately behaves, illustrates a lack of understanding of these photographic materials.
Enough said,
Bernice
Bernice, your first paragraph is practically a quote of what I said in the quoted post, and your last statements have nothing to do with anything I've said.
Perhaps it's time to drop the professorial tone and talking-down to others, especially if you are putting words in others mouths.
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