mike dixon Posted November 30, 2011 Share Posted November 30, 2011 Here's a <a href="http://mikedixonphotography.net/farrahcol24.jpg">photo</a> shot on color slide film (either Astia or E100). To the eye, the bike is metallic purple. In the photograph, notice that "metallic purple" doesn't look much different than the light blue used in the BMW emblem. And this was shot with a film that has "natural" color. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
randrew1 Posted November 30, 2011 Share Posted November 30, 2011 <blockquote> When you run a few thousand colors from the botanical spectral database, digital exceeded the color accuracy of film by about a factor of three, <em><strong>way way back</strong></em> in 2003. </blockquote> Joseph, Could you supply a reference for this claim? I'm interested to learn how the study was run. BTW, I know some of the people who made the sensitizing dyes, couplers, and color developing agents (the things that control film color reproduction) for color film. I'm familiar with their specifications, I really do believe that are made with purity and consistency at least as high as the bayer filters in a digital camera. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sridip_nag Posted November 30, 2011 Share Posted November 30, 2011 <p>Bahhhh, here we go again...<br> 1. What's the big deal? Make the necessary changes in Post-Processing and be done with it.<br> With that being said...<br> 2. What's your final output medium? Web or Print. If you are still not getting the right color, hue, saturation, ad nauseam... If it's web, then perhaps your monitor is not calibrated. If it's print, then your monitor and printer (whether you're printing at home or otherwise) need to be in sync. Are they? If not, then they need to be, don't they?<br> What exactly are you fighting? You against a process to get correct color or others that say the color is off, or something else?</p> <p>I saw this in another posting the other day: Can't remember the fellow who posted it, so I can't give credit to the individual, but I think it applies... "The internet is a mother-lode of anal-retentive, obsessive-compulsive, over-complicating perfectionism - and this is especially so in the field of photography...". <br> Do you even enjoy the art of photography?</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
john_castronovo Posted November 30, 2011 Share Posted November 30, 2011 <p>I am a professional who specializes in reproducing original works of art. Needless to say, color accuracy needs to be spot on in this endeavor. I used to shoot 8x10 film and I had my own custom lab and drum scanning equipment. My lab was also a pioneer in color management, so the accuracy of our work was second to none. As good as we were, however, once I converted to using a Betterlight scan back I never looked back. The same story has been told by everyone else in my field as well. The direct scans are more accurate with less post processing and just as sharp if not sharper than anything I could do with film. Of course, this scanning back is the accepted gold standard in this kind of work, but it's safe to say that digital capture can be more accurate than film, if it's done right.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steve m smith Posted November 30, 2011 Share Posted November 30, 2011 <blockquote> <p>Well I never take offense.. </p> </blockquote> <p>I've never taken offence but I have put up a few fences.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sfcole Posted November 30, 2011 Share Posted November 30, 2011 <p>Since just about all films are scanned, and are subject to interpretation by the scanner and software, I'm not sure how anyone can really judge the film itself. Vuescan, for example, tends to blow out reds on most films I've scanned. So, while we look at Mike's slide (above), we're really unable to look at Mike's slide on a light table (each of which may have its own color temperature bias). We're just seeing Mike's scan of a slide.</p> <p>Having said this, to my eyes well-scanned images from Portra or equivalent Fuji films look more natural than most of the digital images I've seen. I'm not saying pleasing, though--quite often digital does produce more pleasing colors in mid-day light.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mattb1 Posted November 30, 2011 Share Posted November 30, 2011 LOL, too funy. Film never had good color fedility. All film had to have color adjustments when printed or scanned. I shot positive film because of this, but still I used films that exaggerated colors. Now with digital, things are so much easier and better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
a._t._burke Posted November 30, 2011 Share Posted November 30, 2011 <p>Gentlepersons:</p> <p>Back when Kodak was a real company didn’t it have a film especially for azo dyes? I thought I remember it being used in photography for clothing ads and catalogs. Wasn’t it 64 speed and formulated for 3200 or 3400 degrees? I used EPN back when they made it (with 5600 degree light) but this particular specialty film, although hard to get off the shelf, was supposed to be better.</p> <p>A. T. Burke</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Luttmann Posted November 30, 2011 Share Posted November 30, 2011 <p>I've never used film for it's accuracy.....only because of the look I achieve with it. </p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mike dixon Posted November 30, 2011 Share Posted November 30, 2011 "So, while we look at Mike's slide (above), we're really unable to look at Mike's slide on a light table (each of which may have its own color temperature bias). We're just seeing Mike's scan of a slide." On the actual slide, the bike also looked much closer to blue than to its real color. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
john_castronovo Posted December 1, 2011 Share Posted December 1, 2011 <p>Yes, who said film was supposed to be color accurate in the first place? Film is chosen for it's unique and beautiful way of interpreting reality and we often do all kinds of things to exaggerate those qualities. If you want clinical accuracy, then shoot digital in a totally color managed work flow, but that's not why we use film in the first place. Many cinematographers prefer the look of film simply because it shows a view that's NOT real. They're telling a story on film and they want it to look more dreamlike than television.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
don_essedi Posted December 1, 2011 Share Posted December 1, 2011 What John just wrote. If the mirrorless digicam fad of mounting old film lenses, as well as the fad of "film modes", continues, the only digital-looking images left will be reference photos shot with Velvia, Portra, or Ektar on this forum. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doug andrews Posted December 1, 2011 Share Posted December 1, 2011 <p>In my limited photographic experience, generally speaking film is no more or less color realistic than digital. Take a shot of the same scene with Astia, Velvia, and a DSLR and all three will render the colors a little differently. I loved Astia as it was a wonderful color faithful slide film and a dream to scan. Velvia, while still lovely and great in its own right is not like Astia at all. Crazy color saturation and tricky to scan. I love how my D200 handles color accuracy. However, purples are always the hardest to replicate and require more work in post processing to get them where I want them. As a landscape photographer, I don't photograph purples all that often.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
david_henderson Posted December 2, 2011 Share Posted December 2, 2011 <p>Its not really an important question. Its far easier to correct any colour inaccuracy in a digital image ( or an image that has become digital) than it is on film. In some cases it is far easier to identify a colour inaccuracy on a digital image than it is for example with a negative. </p> <p>That said I have examples of colour inaccuracy in both slide film and digital photographs. But for sheer magnitude with no way out except digitising, the excesses of Velvia's variants at the ends of the day take some beating. That horrid blue/magenta cast in some mornings. The gross exaggeration of warmer colours at sunset. And it wan't even predictable- sometimes you'd get a great picture and sometimes unusable. I do miss certain aspects of film. Colour accuracy is not one of them.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
duncan_murray1 Posted December 6, 2011 Share Posted December 6, 2011 <p>I would agree that film has better colour accuracy than digital. Nothing beats highlight rendition like Fuji Superia Reala or 200. I recently shot a wedding with Kodak Portra NC and a D3. For the outdoor portrait shots, the colour looked best on the film. There's a technical reason, too - the lag-log curve of the film characteristic means that highlights change hue smoothly to white on film. On digital the hue shifts are stepped as the channels max out.</p> <p>On the other hand, digital beats colour negative in the shadows...</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
larrydressler Posted December 6, 2011 Share Posted December 6, 2011 <p>What is true color? Our eyes fool us all the time with shadows because we have a brain that changes things in motion. Sit and look at the shadows some time and you will see they are not all black... A captured moment is just that... this could be why it took so many years for color film to catch on and for it to be "Improved." :) When they created digital it is new.. not yet improved... software will take care of that.. just like film we have to correct as we don't want exact we want moment we saw thought and captured....</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
randrew1 Posted December 6, 2011 Share Posted December 6, 2011 <p>Software cannot correct all color reproduction errors. If the sensor (film or digital) doesn't "see" color the same way the human eye does, the reproduction can never be completely faithful to reality.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
larrydressler Posted December 6, 2011 Share Posted December 6, 2011 <p>And Ron that is why I shoot B&W.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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