crossprocessed tungsten slides for night shots

[josphy]

Okay after reading Dan Schwartz recommendation in several other threads to try

crossprocessing overexposed tungsten slide film for night photos...I decided to

give it a try. I've shot a couple of rolls of Fuji 64T so far, but I'm not sure

what I'm getting. They just turn out really greenish (well purple-ish, but

scanned as a negative=green). I've tried bracketing exposure, and doesn't seem

to make a whole lot of differences as metered or a couple stops over. Maybe my

scanner is freaking out and not interpreting the colors correctly. I can play

with curves PS and get some interesting colors out of it -- basically just bring

it back to looking semi-normal but w/ a little weirdness to it.

 

Some examples in my flickr galleries:

 

Dan or whoever else has experience with this...do you have any examples of the

effect that this should produce? So I know what I'm aiming for in my scanning

process.

[robert himmelright]

try scanning as a positive then inverting instead fo scanning as a neg

[josphy]

Ahhh yeah that seems so obvious. Will try it.

[josphy]

Hm...well that really helped the grain look better scanning as a slide and then inverting, but it's as green as can be, so I wasn't crazy. This was a pretty overcast night, so I might be tempted to say it is just from that, but I shot some on blue sky nights too, with the same effect.<div></div>

[josphy]

Here's one that had a blue night sky...not overcast at all...<div></div>

[discpad]

Joseph,

 

The pix you posted on Flickr with the blue sky is gorgeous!

 

Keep in mind that for nighttime cityscapes, the colors will be all sorts of funky blue, green, and yellow-orange from the wide variety of HID (mercury vapor, metal halide, sodium vapor) lighting, which produces all sorts of discontinuous spectra... Sort of like you shooting with fluorescent light, which throws a greenish cast.

 

In other words, since the light city lighting is sooo screwed up, take advantage of it to produce a new color palette -- And E-6 tungsten film cross-processed does a nice job, as you see from this shot:

 

 

By the way, was the stalagmite shot cross=processed, too?

[josphy]

Hey, Dan, the ones you see on my flickr that use the Fuji 64T are all crossprocessed, but I just took the curves tool in PS and totally jacked the blue curve way over to the left to make the sky blue. Otherwise they really just look GREEN GREEN GREEN like the ones I posted here. Basically the ones I put up on this thread are how the slides actually look...the ones I put on Flickr are after curves adjustment.

 

Like if you look, the shot you linked to and the one I put up on here are the exact same one. From looking around on Flickr, it looks like maybe the Kodak Ektachrome 64T stays pretty blue even when crossprocessed (e.g. Kodak 64T xpro in daylight ). All the shots I see of Fuji RTP 64T look like they go GREEN (e.g. )

 

This guy ( ) and this one ( ) have a lot of cool Fuji 64T night shots processed as E6. I think I'll probably just process normally henceforth since what I really wanted anyway was those like insanely royal blue skies at night. And in the event that I want some GREEN I know I can always crossprocess it.

 

 

p.s. yeah aren't those stalagmite things kickass?

[josphy]

Hey, I actually have another question about what I can expect from this film in terms of latitude if I process it as E6 versus crossprocessing it C41? The reason I ask, is because I bracketed my shots -1, 0, +1 stop, and really the -1 and 0 shots both came in completely useable. Actually +1 was okay, just starting to get a little bit of blown highlights.

 

So I was very surprised the latitude I was getting with a slide film even bracketing in full stops. I have bracketed Provia in 2/3 stops before in regular daylight conditions, and the exposures were like drastically different and usually only one exposure that would really be satisfactory with such a wide bracket...probably should have done 1/3 stops.

 

Anyway so I guess what I'm asking is does the fact that I'm processing as C41 give it more latitude and when I do it E6, the exposure will be more critical like other slide films?

[switchedcraigmageephotogra]

I've found that fuji slide always goes yellow green when crossed, no matter what you do. I havent used done it in a while but i always used Kodak. you will still get some yellow but it does stay mostly blue/magenta end of the spectrum.

 

The scanner does have an effect, as does the software. What are you using? I found the old Nikon Supercoolscan 2000 was best, or the Imacons..

[wirehead]

As far as I can tell, crossprocessing film does not appreciably change the dynamic range of the film. What does happen, however, is that when you scan/print crossprocessed film, you bump up the contrast and blow out the highlights and shadows, which gives the appearence of more lattitude.