120 print film

[ian_humphrey]

<p>I am very impressed by the colour saturation on some of the photos in the gallery and would like to know what is the best possible 120 film to buy to achieve similar results.<br>

Thanks<br>

Ian</p>

[ian_humphrey]

<p>ian</p>

[Colin O]

<p>For print film, a good option is Kodak Ektar 100.</p>

 

<p>I'd recommend trying some reversal film though to see if you like the results you get with that - try any of the Fujifilm Provia or Velvia options. (Velvia produces more saturated colours than Provia.)</p>

 

<p>However, it could be the case that the saturated colours you're seeing in the gallery have more to do with increasing saturation levels in Photoshop than the film used.</p>

[paul_loveteck]

<p>Ian,<br>

Color saturation, as Colin mentioned, can vary a lot with other parameters than film. Indeed Photoshop (or other software) are often culprits, but other factors are your monitor (the way it is calibrated or not calibrated), the use of filters and the printing process when you look at prints.<br>

Another source which affects color saturation when you look at a picture on a screen, source which is often forgotten, is the digitizing process. How was the film scanned? Then, how was the digital image converted from the "raw" scanning process into a jpg image? All these steps change the color saturation in the final result.<br>

If you could keep all these parameters identical between two rolls of different films (not easy to achieve), then the Velvia (specially Velvia 50) are probably the one giving the highest color saturation. But, this does not mean the best picture by any means. You might hate portraits done with Velvia 50.<br>

And, in a series of pictures, the picture you would call "best" when seen on a screen would often not be the one you call "best" when printed.<br>

One more parameter: your taste and the taste of whoever you share your pictures with. Some well known photographers love Velvia, some hate it.<br>

My recommendation to you: try them all and decide which one you prefer under which circumstance.</p>

[tom_bloomer1]

<p>I've been please with Kodak Ektar 100 when I want a saturated print film. Also, I plead guilty of bumping the saturation of some of my scans in Photoshop. ;-)<br>

My scanner (Microtek Artixscan M1 Pro) has very good color depth and seems to be able to grab every bit if detail that Ektar can hold. I usually scan at 16 bit for editing, color correction, and then reduce to 8 bit on final output.<br>

For comparison sake the two images below are the same negative. The top image is how the image was scanned by <a href="http://www.northcoastphoto.com/">NCPS</a> when I sent them the film for processing and scanning.<br>

The Bottom image is from my Artixscan and then mildly bumping the saturation and color in Photoshop - but not much. The original scan was almost where I wanted it.<br>

<img src="http://blackburnforge.com/Album/03630009.jpg" alt="" width="1177" height="960" /><br>

<img src="http://blackburnforge.com/Album/2012Sept40.jpg" alt="" width="1200" height="1000" /></p>

[ian_humphrey]

<p>Great. Must get photoshop.</p>

[ian_humphrey]

<p>Hi Tom<br>

Which version of photoshop do you use.<br>

Ian</p>

[Colin O]

<p>The version of Photoshop you use is not as important as the marketing department would like you to think. Any reasonably recent version is going to have adequate functionality. Certainly features such as adjusting saturation/levels/curves/etc are not recent additions to Photoshop. I've been using Photoshop since 1998 or 1999 and these features were available then.</p>

 

<p>It was reported recently that Adobe was making Creative Suite 2/Photoshop CS2 (from 2005) available as a free download. This isn't the full story though. Apparently what they have actually done is to make installers available that don't require the programs to be activated online with Adobe as would normally be part of the installation process. They've done this because the old CS2 activation servers have been disabled. These new installers are intended for people who bought CS2 and need to install the software now.<br>

You can read more about this here:<br>

<a href="http://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/policy-pricing/creative-suite-2-activation-end-life.html">

http://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/policy-pricing/creative-suite-2-activation-end-life.html</a></p>

[donbright]

<p>Remembering what a scene looked like, or what it was that was inspiring in the first place goes beyond the composition or subject matter, but it is also about the quality of light, tonality, the richness, or lack of color, that from exposure, filtration, scanning creates quite a mix of variances that can trick our original perception of the inspired scene. Velvia 50 is a film of saturation, some of that impact gets lost through digitization, it is through Photoshop that we have the tools to get it back. How true we are to ourselves, and the scene that motivated us to go through all of these hoops in the first place is a matter of judgement, and taste in the final print. I see loss of color impact from the light table transparency viewed, to scanning, so kicking it up, or back is alright by me. I spend the time at the light table soaking up the way the scene translated on film, so when in Photoshop there is a reference.</p>

[tom_bloomer1]

<p>Ian, that was done in Photoshop Elements 5, but it did not handle the 64 bit scans very well due to that programs inability to use more than 2GB of memory.</p>

<p>I have since upgraded to Photoshop CS6, Win-7 64bit, 12GB ram, Quad Core Extreme 3ghz, and SSD hard drive and got myself a Color Munki Display.</p>

<p>I tried the latest Photoshop Elements 11 and also the latest Paint Shop Pro X5 (I have an older version Paint Shop Pro X). Despite Corel making claims of 64bit windows compatibility, the program does not USE the 9GB of free memory that is available in my system.</p>

<p>Photoshop CS6 has superior 64bit memory performance to CS5 (I tried both). My raw scans of 6x7cm @4800PPI in 16bit color are about 790MB. To edit those files takes a lot of memory and I don't want my system swapping to disk and bogging down performance. </p>