Velvia 50 4x5 and 8x10 and Fujicolor 160NS Professional 120 discontinued

[SergeyT]

There is a never-ending debate over Canon vs Nikon vs Sony vs Fuji vs Brand X color science in D-world.
Reading too much of that stuff sooner or later leads to a conclusion that there no D-camera that can produce decent images.
Same with emulsion X vs emulsion Y ?
Whatever manufacturer built into their products generally provides a baseline in image making process. The rest is mostly up to photog\printer.


https://www.cavinelizabeth.com/news/...vs-portra-800/
http://canadianfilmlab.com/2014/04/2...rtra-and-fuji/

[Drew Wiley]

Oh there can be real cobweb tangles transitioning from one film signature to another, especially if one is as demanding of hue integrity as I am. And the notion that everything can be post-corrected using software afterwards is a marketing myth. Most color photographers don't even begin to see color itself acutely, at least in the way any decent painter would. But yes, alas, Sergey, a lot is simply stuck in the bottleneck of the printing process itself. You're only as good as your weakest link. And no color print media is perfect either. But we work with what we've got, and try to turn the idiosyncrasies into advantages.

I'm not routinely a portrait photographer, especially in color. But when I have done that, it covered quite a spectrum ethnically, with a full range of skintones cumulatively. And it certainly seemed that the Fuji product handled Asian skintones better than the then Kodak offering. But either were quite good overall. But any classic color neg portrait film came with the default that any other hue in the same family got smashed into a skintone instead. Older Vericolor films were infamous for that. Look at the landscape and city photography of Stephen Shore - nearly ever shot took creative
advantage of yellows to trend pumpkin, and earthtones to default into skintones, and greens to go cyan "poison green". One man's medicine really is another man's poison.

Ektar has made a giant improvement over that era, and even with respect to current Portra films, but has a distinct cyan-blue error of its own, for a different crossover reason. But portraiture is not its intended target zone anyway. But where there's a will, there's a way. Most of my own color portraits were actually taken on chrome film and printed on Ciba!

[willwilson]

Props to you color folks, but does this make anyone want to freeze a bunch of Delta 100? Is that crazy?

[unityofsaints]

There is a never-ending debate over Canon vs Nikon vs Sony vs Fuji vs Brand X color science in D-world.
Reading too much of that stuff sooner or later leads to a conclusion that there no D-camera that can produce decent images.
Same with emulsion X vs emulsion Y ?
Whatever manufacturer built into their products generally provides a baseline in image making process. The rest is mostly up to photog\printer.

The crucial difference here is that on the D-side people are trying to find the better image science because once you buy a camera, you're stuck with it. On analog you can switch between them from roll to roll or even frame to frame so there's variety instead of competition. Depending on your workflow, it's not just a baseline: when printing RA-4 it's pretty much baked in.

[Drew Wiley]

Why would I freeze Delta 100 when I've already got a stash of the REAL deal in the freezer? - both speeds of TMax in 8x10. And why would I want to freeze any black and white film? - well, acquiring it at one third the going rate today, and riding on that, does make a lot of sense. Even more so with color film.

[SergeyT]

The crucial difference here is that on the D-side people are trying to find the better image science because once you buy a camera, you're stuck with it. On analog you can switch between them from roll to roll or even frame to frame so there's variety instead of competition. Depending on your workflow, it's not just a baseline: when printing RA-4 it's pretty much baked in.

The reality is that all modern sensors are capable of producing equally good images with very similar color rendition. When saving in RAW manufactures' differences between brands become mostly irrelevant. And choosing one brand over another because of so called color science is mostly a nonsense. Plus, if much needed, every camera can be profiled for particular lighting situation. In uncontrolled environment (typical landscape) even that becomes irrelevant as nobody can predict the tint and usually it goes by - the wilder the better... I bet that on a blind test an average viewer (intended consumer of images) won't be able to tell which band of camera an image was taken with.

Now, back to where we started. I never said that Portra 160 is an exact equivalent of NS. But rather it is as good as NS for most applications. It allows to use the same photo equipment at the same settings to capture and print images using the same photographic materials and processes and the resulting images will be quite close in terms of overall rendering, tonality, sharpness, grain and saturation.
Not everyone takes portraits.
Not everyone follows manufactures recs up to a letter.
Not everyone is interested in precise reproduction of color scheme embedded by R&D (mostly engineers) into emulsion X
Not everyone is interested in RA-4 printing.
But anyone who used the NS and is still interested in continuing taking pictures after it is gone can easily switch onto using Portra 160 without changing the habits or compromising on quality.

Do I appreciate that the NS will no longer be made ? Not at all.
Is it worth crying over it - No, as there is equally good option still available.

[r.e.]

The reality is that all modern sensors are capable of producing equally good images with very similar color rendition. When saving in RAW manufactures' differences between brands become mostly irrelevant. And choosing one brand over another because of so called color science is mostly a nonsense.

I'm inclined to think that the makers of hybrid cameras are fairly focused on colour science and know that people who shoot video, in particular, believe, correctly in my view, that the various camera brands have different colour baked in. This becomes particularly important to someone shooting video because the word RAW in Apple ProRes RAW and Blackmagic RAW doesn't mean what it does in still photography, and is unlikely to do so for the foreseeable future. I think that you'd hard pressed to find someone who shoots video who thinks that differentiating between the brands on colour is "a nonsense". There are also people who make still photographs who prefer to minimise the time that they spend mucking about in Photoshop or Capture One. For them, I don't think that Camera RAW makes a camera's built-in colour science "mostly irrelevant".

[Alan Klein]

I don't know if that's the case, especially when people can shoot almost anything and these days and saturate it to hell after the fact in PS or some equivalent program, more loudly than ever it seems. Velvia can be a wonderfully nuanced film if used thoughtfully within a more limited scene contrast range. It doesn't necessarily have to be loud.

As far as sheet film base is concerned, triacetate is hell to work with in anything I do because it's not dimensionally stable and won't hold registration for long. Far more headaches. Estar is a blessing.

I don't think these Velvia 50s in 4x5 are "loud". What do you think? Right now I have one box of 20 sheets in the freezer. So I'll have to be selective in shooting or stock up before they end in 2023.
https://www.flickr.com/search/?sort=...N05&view_all=1

[SergeyT]

I'm inclined to think that the makers of hybrid cameras are fairly focused on colour science and know that people who shoot video, in particular, believe, correctly in my view, that the various camera brands have different colour baked in. This becomes particularly important to someone shooting video because the word RAW in Apple ProRes RAW and Blackmagic RAW doesn't mean what it does in still photography, and is unlikely to do so for the foreseeable future. I think that you'd hard pressed to find someone who shoots video who thinks that differentiating between the brands on colour is "a nonsense". There are also people who make still photographs who prefer to minimise the time that they spend mucking about in Photoshop or Capture One. For them, I don't think that Camera RAW makes a camera's built-in colour science "mostly irrelevant".

I used that as an analogy and since this is a photo forum it was in context of taking still images only.
People who use digital for more or less professional work are interested in flexibility, consistency and quantity, and usually care about delivering a set of images looking in a certain way ( as a set). Out of camera JPEGs is not the best material for such work. The point was - any modern pro D-cam is capable of delivering quality results and accurate colors for those who so desire. There always borderline special cases when model X has an advantage over model Y for a particular use.

[r.e.]

I used that as an analogy and since this is a photo forum it was in context of taking still images only.

That's why I commented. The camera makers are not just focused on still images. Indeed, I suspect that the growth market is video. One of Panasonic's hybrid cameras is now approved for Netflix production. That is a big deal.