Center filter question - usage on different formats

[Bernice Loui]

Over the course of human history, there has been a bent to apply the current "state of the art" technology as a means to solve age old questions (the humanoid brain was once believe to be a pump) and answers to age old questions.. and to varying degrees "problems".. And no, technology cannot and will never solve (all) the constant problems of humanity and the human condition.

As for using digital based imaging software to "fix" what are perceived as image flaws, sure it can be done.. Real question is to what degree and how much of the original image information recorded will be altered by the image software process and specific individual applying their personality making these "image corrections"... Image information not recorded at the moment the image was captured can never be recovered, it can be added via imaging software except that image information added can NEVER be what happened at the moment the specific image was recorded.. This topic begins to scratch the surface of information theory and laws of Thermodynamics..

Fix it post in image software, sure.. how much effort will be involved.. and to what point and metric of reference_?_

Given an image file of 100+ MegaPixles.. how much effort and more will be required to fix each individual Pixel_?_ one pixel at a time..
Or an example of there is an energy cost to creation of information and the information added can never be the same information that would have been recorded at the moment of recording..

As for color crossover in color films, this is a very real thing. Severe difficulty is, majority of foto folks do not know what color crossover is, why it happens, why it is Extremely difficult to fix post process or have any appreciation of how color crossover bends color rendition and much more in the color image be it print or color transparency or via video monitor.. There is little appreciation of proper and neutral color rendition and all related, just personal projection under the guise of "Artistic/Creative Expression"....

I'm still of the unpopular opinion that painters that work in color have a FAR deeper and greater understanding of the relationship between color/emotions/creative expression than fotographers today...

Lesson here, make the very best image capture/recording at the moment using the image recording tools (yes, this means using a proper ND center filter as and if needed) as needed as the "cost" to "fix it"post or later is not gonna be that easy or have any ability to recover information that is forever lost at the moment of image capture/recorded..



Bernice

[Michael R]

Maybe it's just that there's a lot more out there than in the pre-digital era, so there's obviously going to be a lot more crap to see, but that's normal. Particularly when it comes to colour, even back in non-digital times there really weren't very many people making their own prints, let alone good ones, so if you saw a good book or show of colour work by a respected photographer, odds are the printing/reproduction was done by custom/pro outfits, and it was always a specialty. Now, on the other hand, even people with relatively little scanning/editing/inkjet skill, time etc. can still make their own colour prints or images to display online. Some people are really good at it, most are not, and perhaps you're seeing a lot of the not good stuff.

I'm not blaming the darn medium, Michael, just the cavalier mentality itself that comes with the territory these days. Please think about my analogy of mixed concrete. Heck, I've seen harvester ant colonies take apart even high strength concrete grain by grain, and eventually, over many years, find a way in. But how many people have that kind of patience? The whole instant-this, instant-that mentality prevails. But all the really good digital printers I know seem to need more time to perfect their files than the effort needed to achieve excellent results back in their darkroom days. High quality printmaking takes serious commitment either way, but not many like to bother anymore.

[Drew Wiley]

Precisely, Bernice. I know how to fix certain crossover issues even in dye transfer printing. It's quite involved, and film specific. And that whole unwinding of the ball of yarn after the kitten already got ahold of it can be replicated using analogous tortuous digital steps instead. The practical issue, however, is that most such practitioners don't even recognize the problem or how it came into being; so how would they know how to untangle it? One can't just activate the usual instant apps to get there. Re-colorized or further saturated mud is still mud, and that will be obvious to a trained eye. Every decent painter knew that; but most color photographers apparently do not.

Michael - yeah, things were not any better back in the heyday of color darkroom work. Seriously good quality has always been the exception, always will be. But the medium is way more democratized today, for better or worse, so the good work might somehow eventually rise to the top of the general heap. But by then, the current generation of inkjet technology might itself have become arcane and obsolete, with something else taking its place.

[Bernice Loui]

Yep, color print and related color excellence was an a absolute exception, not the common offering back in the great Hey-Day of photochemistry based color images.. There were maybe 2-3 color labs in the SF bay area (this was commercial Big $ and much more foto district on the west coast) there were consistently any good and the results were decided by not just the materials and color original involved, the specific individual doing the color work had Huge to do with the end result.. There were folks that demanded/expected very specific color results, others and often the majority folks were simply not that demanding. It was a diverse client/customer base back then

Still of the opinion, majority of folks do not appreciate or know what absolute Fab color prints or images are.. For this vast majority, just good enough is enough..



Bernice

Michael - yeah, things were not any better back in the heyday of color darkroom work. Seriously good quality has always been the exception, always will be. But the medium is way more democratized today, for better or worse, so the good work might somehow eventually rise to the top of the general heap.