Konica Impressa 50??? - Chromatic Abberation??? - Both?

This last weekend, I had the opportunity to try out many different films, as I attened our first Regatta of the season. I tried the following films for the first time: Konica Impressa 50, Fuji Reala, Ektachrome G100X, and Fuji Astia 100F. I got the prints back on Tuesday and I was astonished by Fuji reala, simply amazing, I dropped my only roll of 160NC in the lake, and I managed to not set my F1 to the correct film speed for two whole rolls of film. I really wanted to see the prints from Konica Impressa, but when I got them back I was really disappointed with how it handled the scene. It appeared to smear the reds to a really ugly bright bloody messy colour, and on the highlight reflection areas, I saw what looked like digital blooming. Reflective metal with purple and magenta highlights, even though the rest of the print had no magenta cast. And then an overall washed out performance by the film. The roll of Impressa was cold stored by me when it was bought in december, with an expiration date 9/2004. My lab uses a Frontier Pro and printed on Fuji Crystal Archive, is this the way that Impressa is supposed to look? The following was shot on a F1 w/ a 200 2.8 w/ lenshood extended, metered at 50 ISO for the shadows with +.5 of a stop added to that reading.

 

Impressa2

 

Impressa3

 

I dont know why their not displaying Inline, they are 500 pixels, sorry.

 

Fuji Reala!

 

Another

 

These are from the rolls I shot on the F1 accidently at 400ISO I Pushed the Negs on these, the pics above on Reala and Impressa were scanned from prints, and these are scanned from negs. Kodak is robust!

 

Another sucessful push

 

Kodak Ektachrome g100x

 

I've seen enough. The Reala is very impressive. I am buying some tonight. Thanks for sharing those with us. Sorry i don't have any answers for you, just thanks.

 

Ok, for just a bit of clarification,

The slide film was Ektachrome E100gx, the 2nd push photo was Kodak gold 200. And a handheld incident meter was used with the F1 and the metering technique described above.

The 100gx photo is soft, because they were moving and I was using a slow shutter speed because of the stacked filters, sorry I posted it, I didn't want my 15 min of waiting on scanned film to be wasted!(it looked ok in the preview).

 

No answers from me either, just guesses.

The Kodak even pushed looked as good or better than the Fuji to me.

The Konica looked too hight in contrast and it seemed to have an effect called Cyan Undercut. That is a loss of detail in reds due to lack of cyan image there for some reason. It can also cause blooming. It is a problem with some films. Just a guess though.

Ron Mowrey

 

I find the photographs differ too much in subject matter to really tell. Ideally you would have identical or at least similar images taken on each film. Of course the Reala stands out in the close portrait of the girl in blue, so may have the Impressa. The Impressa looks good enough to consider and it would be interesting to see, by looking at the negs under magnification, if it performs better with respect to resolution.

 

Reala + Frontier is going to be a good combination, although I'm, baffled why you were screwing around with pushing Gold films when NPH would have done marvelously rated at 320 and *annihilated* the Kodak films.

The pushed Gold 100 shots you have posted: look grainy with crossover. If the guy above perfers those over the Reala shots, he'll be blown away with Max 800 .....{annoyed look}.

I haven't had any trouble with Impresa on a Frontier in terms of red blooming, but given that many labs don't know what channel to print it on, they probably guessed at a setting not compatible with the Konica film. Or, Koncia has reformulated this film recently. In any respect, it's a high contrast material that I've stated on many occasions it isn't the best for people shots or general picture taking. My general advice on this topic then applies - you should stick to Fuji print films on the Frontier anyways.

 

I haven't had any trouble with Impresa on a Frontier in terms of red blooming

Scott, since you use Impresa with a Frontier, have you noticed a yellow color shift in the highlights when exposures 1/8 of a second or longer have been used? I use National Geographic's processing services for my C41 and have been very satisfied with them across multiple film brands. They do very well printing Supra 100 as well as Agfa's Ultra100. However...it seems that Impresa goes slightly yellowish on long exposures. Is this something to do with reciprocity failure and color shifting? Or is it the operator? I think it is logical to say that NG's frontier operators are more skilled than the average walmart frontier jockey. However...bright sunlit shots on the same roll of Impresa turned out beautiful. Nice rich blues and such.

So Scott, any ideas what is going on with Impresa at long exposures?

 

To Scott and Dan;

The Reala looked high in contrast to me. No detail in shadow areas and no detail in some areas of highlights on the water.

The pushed EK film should be grainy, but they are not overly so. The tone scale and detail in shadows is quite good. I actually don't see a crossover problem. But then, that is why I usually shoot a MacBeth color checker on the first frame of a roll, to keep track of such things. It is hard to see sometimes. On that pushed film, white is white and grey is grey, so I don't really see crossover. Flesh tones are pleasing.

But then again, photography is a field subject to viewer preference, so who am I to tell you what you prefer. I was just stating what I prefer. In designing a film, hundreds of people are asked to view pictures, and the most pleasing are 'averaged' to get a true aim for a given class of product. Just one person is not objective enough.

In my life, I have probably viewed and judged hundreds of thousands of prints and transparencies and hundreds and hundreds of hours of motion picture originals (yes, but usually hand viewed in a printer, only rarely projected) and motion picture prints. The Konica is not very good, the Fuji is good but very contrasty and somewhat low in saturation for some colors (without the originals, I can't really tell, just estimate), and the EK push is much better than I expected for that level of push with a good neutral, water tone, and flesh.

Ron Mowrey

 

I to have noticed a slight color shift in impressa at anything longer than and eight of a second ( slightly yellow in the hilights printed on a kodak channel ). However, My printer maintains that if you print in the darkroom its easy to remove this, just not as easy when machine printing. I agree about the reds. However, overall I like impresa very much and in open sun its a wonderful film. I am not using it for portraits so you know where I am coming from.

In regards to resolution I do know that impresa blows reala 120 out of the water in my opinion but I havent done any formal tests. It just appears to have higher acutance and hihger resolution with absolutely no grain whatsoever.

And finally: chromatic abberation is a function of your glass I would think. Could be wrong though.

 

Forgot to mention that I shoot Impresa at iso 30.

 

Hello Daniel, a agree with your "test results" an overall washed out performance. This is the dark side, it's an old & difficult film (like Kodak Ektar25 or even Royal 100 was). Maybe bracket like you would with slide film?

Regarding your scientific approach it is not fair to shoot FD 2.8/200 glass vs. EF 2.0/100 vs. IS lenses, sometimes use the polarizer (EOS 3 70-200 2.8 IS. B+W MRC CIR POL) and sometimes not. Then scan from the prints vs. negs. In this setup above I would shoot Fuji X-tra 800 rated at E.I.400 (or NPZ 800).
I think Impresa is light hungry while not handling bright sunny outdoor contrast well. It can do some magic to portraits/flesh tones and blue colors when freshed up with lots of FLASH light (say Metz 60CT4 (200Ws)) and on a tripod.
On the bright side of Impresa is still this red car picture of Scott Eaton. I got both sides of this film myself.

 

Camera: Canon EOS 620 Lens: Sigma 3.8-5.6/28-135mm IF APSH Macro (not tack sharp but very high contrast) Flash: Metz 60ct4, 1/250s Film: Konica Impresa rated at 50 Lab: Fuji Switzerland, Fuji Crystal ARchive supreme, glossy I agree, reds get not correctly printed, greens neither.

 

sorry, no way to post any decent pics with 100kB Limit

 

"Regarding your scientific approach it is not fair to shoot FD 2.8/200 glass vs. EF 2.0/100 vs. IS lenses, sometimes use the polarizer (EOS 3 70-200 2.8 IS. B+W MRC CIR POL) and sometimes not. Then scan from the prints vs. negs."
I used techniques that I knew would produce good results with the other films (pol, sky, warming), because I wasn't testing them.
I shot the "test" film in question on an unfiltered FD lens because I wanted to see how it would handle a neutral situation, I even used an incident meter for it!
I scanned the prints from reala and the impressa because my goal is to get good print results straight from the lab, and if the prints can't compete head to head straight from the lab, then I might as well not order prints. The only reason I had the negs scanned was to demonstrate a very good push of 2 stops.
Thanks for replying though, I always appreciate discussion.
-Dan

 

Bump! It's really been a while since my last post. I find myself coming back to these pics often these days.
Now, like most people, I have left film behind for the most part. I'm shooting a 5D mkII. Added a lot more glass over the years...
http://www.vividomaha.com

 

Some thoughts about this page:
http://www.vividomaha.com/blog/2009/11/12/konica-impressa-50-lonely-pictures