Testing E6 (reversal) films

[spotless_camera]

The ColorChecker that Calibrite now sells is the real deal and has been since 2021. (The babelcolor.com site provides a corporate history listing the changes in ownership.) The current X-Rite site product listing for the ColorChecker says:

“ColorChecker® Classic
Out of Production
Upgrades to this product are now available through our global partner Calibrite. Visit calibrite.com to learn more.”

If you want a “real” MacBeth ColorChart, I guess you will have to buy a used copy, which may have suffered degradation due to years of use and possible incorrect storage.

Babelcolor.com comments on the changes X-Rite made in 2014 (8 years after acquiring Gretag-Macbeth in 2006) to the colors formulations by saying that “Regulatory and compliance reasons are invoked, so the changes were likely due to the toxicity of pigments used in previous charts [sic] incarnations and to stricter environmental laws in some jurisdictions.” I suspect that X-Rite needed to remove mercury/cadmium/lead pigments to meet then-new European Union standards (similar to RoHS for electronics). Whatever the reason, babelcolor.com notes that charts made before November 2014 have visible color differences to those made after November 2014.

Why does it matter which version you use, as long as you know what the colors should be?

[Drew Wiley]

I'd have to take a look at them with my own eyes. Hard to say concerning EU restrictions on pigments; cadmium and lead are quite restricted here too. In fact, I was directly involved in the first big wave of EPA compliance, working in tandem with them providing licensing instruction and selling lead abatement equipment. It's especially ironic because the company I worked for was built over what were formerly industrial sites so heavy in cadmium and lead that it's illegal to even drill a hole through a concrete slabs or asphalt surface. That's how they do it - simply cap it all off. That's way safer than trying to remove the contaminated soil. All kinds of paint factories used to be there. Now its Biotech and Pharmaceutical factories instead, along with expensive condos and restaurants.

Safe cadmium pigments can be made. There is an EU patented method for encapsulating them in clear titanium, similar to how lenses are optically vacuum coated, making them physiologically inert. I remember the ground floor of that technology too. But the problem in the EU is that there is a restriction on them acquiring enough cadmium at a time to make the process economically viable. Strange, since NiCad batteries were made tons at a time.