#31
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No, it isn't. The overall color balance shifts rapidly depending on age, and seems to be linked to certain batches. The older the film gets before development, the more the blue hues will drift toward a cyan/green/teal blue. It's not as bad as faded 50s slides, but it was enough of a problem to make me pause before taking it to Isle Royale and Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. I really like Ektar when it behaves predictably, and I loathe Fuji Velvia. With the QC issues of Ektar, I really wish I had some new Ektachrome or Kodachrome to shoot.
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#32
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Wow, that's crazy. Are other colors affected, or mainly blues?
Edit: also wondering - do you judge as photographic (silver/dye) prints or as scans? |
#33
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Only blue. Some folks have even gone so far as to say that Ektar simply can't render blue properly. I wouldn't go that far. If you have a roll from a good batch and it's processed immediately, it turns out fine. I *always* judge from optical prints made by Blue Moon Camera in Oregon, the same folks who develop my 120. I develop my 4x5s at home. I'm still experimenting with large format, so the bulk of my experience with Ektar, and the only experience I feel it fair to judge the film by, is on 120.
Ektar has similar color rendition to Kodachrome. I think it looks like a really good single-shot separation with narrow "cutting" filters; the still equivalent to a Technicolor film, well, when it isn't turning teal... If I could afford a turn of the century 8x10 single shot separation camera, I'd go that route, layer the negatives in photoshop, and ditch the color film altogether. |
#34
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Narrow cut filters are one technique that has been used in color separation to increase saturation since the beginning of color graphics art. Masking using a negative of one color separation to modify one of the others was a common technique to compensate for the deficiencies in printing inks. (The magenta ink was usually the worst, having far too little blue reflectance.) The amount of masking could be reduced over the years as printing techniques and inks evolved closer to pure primary cyan, yellow, and magenta.
Technicolor depended both on sharp cut filters and printing to high contrast to enhance saturation, but provided no inter-separation masking. When they went from filters to dichroic mirrors in the late 1940s, the bandwidths were much greater, but the crossover regions were very steep. Multilayer film has added inter-layer inhibition - the products of development in one layer inhibit development in an adjacent layer, thus enhancing the difference between them. I know Kodak has used this in some versions of color negative material in the past to produce a high-saturation version of a product range, and I'd guess probably uses it in Ektar. I wonder if what you describe is due to unwanted variation in the strength of interlayer interaction. This seems to align with the observation that it is batch related. |
#35
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It's threads like this that make me wonder if we should have a forum section dedicated to cameras and film.
__________________
Tom C. Zenith: The quality stays in EVEN after the name falls off! What I want. --> http://www.videokarma.org/showpost.p...62&postcount=4 |
Audiokarma |
#36
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Good point, especially since we have a lot of Film photographers here. I like this idea.
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#37
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I thought everyone knew there's a photography section over on our sister site, audiokarma.org?
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#38
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I'm barely ever on AK and most sections I've not visited.
__________________
Tom C. Zenith: The quality stays in EVEN after the name falls off! What I want. --> http://www.videokarma.org/showpost.p...62&postcount=4 |
#39
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Just an FYI for anybody who followed Wayne and I's discussion of slide film: Kodak is bringing back Ektachrome 100 slide film, and preproduction work is underway, and Kodak is considering revival of K-14M process Kodachrome by 2019. A buddy of mine from my undergrad program is a physical chemist with Kodak Alaris or whatever the film division is called nowadays.
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