jamesjewell

Yes. Ditch your digital camera and only work with film. And, by all means, don’t scan and post your film pics for online viewing because that digitizes them and might be dangerous to your eyes.

 

[The sign of the true genius photographer, in so many forums of the early 2000s, is he who wants to live in the glory of the ... past. Damned be creativity, vision, intimacy, and expression. The prior standards of the medium are really what count!]

 

I’m imagining Beethoven spending hours writing into his local chapter of Complaints About Modern Instruments about how awful these new-fangled pianos are compared to the gold standard of harpsichords.

 

Maybe because the nature of photography is often understood as being limited to imitating the world rather than as an act of creation, we’re tied so much to imitating the look of previous generations of photographers instead of discovering something new that looks different.

I'm not trying to get into a pissing war, but I'd say you are ignoring that there are, in fact, many older technologies that surpass their modern counterparts, especially when the modern "replacement" was designed for any number of economies over pure performance.

I just realised that I forgot the attachment. FWIW.

 

[ATTACH=full]1352220[/ATTACH]

What RAW converter is that screen shot from?

So let me thank everyone for their inputs. They've been most insightful. I posted this in "Casual Photo Conversations" because I guess I was looking to see if there were folks who had a similar feeling about digital color vs. analog color, if there even is such a difference, and what they had done about it. There is just something about my analog pics that I find more natural to my eye, be it C-41 or E-6. I've always assumed it was the colors, but perhaps is is the texture of grain, even though I don't see any grain in my 4x5 shots. Maybe I just need to put a lot more effort into my digital workflow to get the results I get right out of the box with film. Maybe it's a phase I'm going through........

BTW, my analog workflow is hybrid. I don't have a darkroom any more. Develop and scan.........

There was never a better illustration of accommodation to an existing condition.

 

I haven't seen the words natural and subtle much in conjunction with these particular films.:rolleyes: but to each their own, I guess.

OK, so Ektar is not subtle by any stretch of the imagination, but I still do find the colors to be more pleasing than my digital results (except for skin tones).

Nothing wrong with those colors as far as I can see. Are you sure your monitor is calibrated correctly?

I'm as sure as I can be. I'm not new to color management. I'm quite happy with my scanned analog color images, so I think I am doing it right, or they would be off. I'm starting to thing that this is a subtle psychological preference, though I cannot explain it.

RAW images are very flat and colorless without processing. The previews you see are always subject to processing, in a manner determined by menu options. You are the first person in PNET I've heard describe Sony color as "garish and plasticky." Most people describe it as flat, yellow, green, or red - anything but accurate (which is the best term in my experience.

 

Rather than start off with a complaint, ask where to learn about color management.

It must be nice to have enough time in your day to go out of your way to be patronizing and still contribute nothing. Well, I guess I have a little free time too.

Perhaps I didn't choose my words carefully enough nor provide enough background. I am well versed in color management, and have a fully color-managed workflow. I profile and calibrate my monitors regularly. My printers are also profiled. What I should have been more clear about is my use of the phrase "unprocessed RAW". I didn't mean before initial RAW conversion (of which Rodeo_Joe gives a most excellent demonstration) but rather the next step of image editing. Apologies for the bad choice of words. I've attached an image converted to JPEG and sRGB. The colors just seem hyper-real to me. It was shot on a Sony a99.

I shoot both film and digital, 35mm up to 4x5. I grew up in a Minolta family, so when I switched to Digital, I went with Sony. I've just never been happy with the digital colors I get. They seem garish and "plasticky", whereas Kodak Ektar and Portra look natural and subtle to my eyes. However I see plenty of pro digital photography that doesn't seem to have the plastic look. Is Sony known for garish colors? Do all RAW images look that way before being processed? Any thoughts on workflow? Anyone else share the same feelings? I've just started experimenting with some commercial film emulation profiles in Lightroom, but not yet sure if that will scratch my itch.

V/R

James.

FWIW, I developed a roll of ACROS two days later with Ilfotec DD-X and the same stop bath, fixer, and tap-water pre-rinse. No spots whatsoever, so we can eliminate the quality of the tap water and the fixer and stop bath. I'm leaning towards undesolved xtol.

Almost certainly due to insufficient mixing of the Xtol powder.

 

The spots are mainly absent in the shadow areas and greatest in the higher image densities. Therefore the spots were developed onto the film, and this can only have been from undissolved developer powder in suspension.

Joe,

Thank you for that. Do you have any advice on mixing XTOL? I went to town on that mixture with a power drill and paint-mixer attachment for many minutes.

Hi All!

I just developed a roll of Ilford HP5 in XTOL 1+1, and scanned it with a DSLR, and each negative has thousands of little dark spots on them. It is not dust (cleaned the negatives with pec pads and fluid to be shure). It is not air bubbles, as far as I can tell. I mix all my chemicals with distilled water, and do a final rinse with distilled water and photoflo. I use Patterson tanks.

I almost always use rodinal in a semi-stand method and have never had this problem. The only thing that changed was using xtol. I did use tap water for a pre-rinse.

Any thoughts?

Joe,

Thanks. I'm not quite sure what box my photos are in. I recently moved and still have many boxes to go through. Having said that, I unpacked a Soviet Leica copy and bought a few rolls of Ektar 100. I'll run some film through it this weekend. Give me a week to get it developed and I'll repost. Thanks again,

James

Once I finish the family happy snaps, I plan to rescan my old amateur landscape and portrait, as well as all of my new medium format film that I started shooting agan a few months back. For that, I had intended to start making linear raw scans to feed into ColorPerfect. My fear is that these medium format scans will be as bad as my 35mm scans.

Hi, thanks to everyone so far. I did notice the magenta cast but didn't correct it or any other adjustments for the picture I posted as I wanted people to see what is coming out of the scanner/vuescan combo with nothing more than scratch and dust removal. I didn't even think that the magenta cast could affect the shadow noise.

So while I try a few of your suggestions, can I get people to agree that (whatever the cause) that kind of noise is not "normal" for a color negative? Basically, I don't want to hear "sorry kid, that's the best you can get from a 35mm negative". I see this kind of noise in my older scans (taken with a variety of scanners over the decades) taken with pro gear and better-than-consumer film. I suspect it is something in my workflow, as the only other constant is Vue Scan, which I know people are getting better scans from.

When I adjust contrast to move the noise into the black, much detail is lost in the rest of the picture. They are standing on a maroon carpet, which now looks black. They are in front of a dark wood bar, and it is now black.

So this is an unknown color negative film type taken on an unknown camera (doing family archiving and not my usual real photography). It was scanned on the PrimeFilm XA at 5000SPI, and reduced in size with 2x2 averaging. This is also the product of 4x multiple scans and multi-exposure (which I guess doesn't affect the shadows on negative film). Just about every one of my scans with black in it shows this. The fact that the green noise remains as visible as it does after the 4x sampling and the 2x2 averaging leaves me wondering if it is my workflow, VueScan or the scanner.

Hi, I've used a number of prosumer scanners over the last decade. I've used all of them with VueScan. However, amongst all of my color negative scans, there appears to be little green dots in the shadows, and in fact there seems to be a lot of shadow noise in my scans. The only constant across the decade is me and VueScan. Multipass and multisample seem to do nothing, which surprises me, because if it is random noise, you would think it would average it out. As this is negative stock, that means the noise is in the light areas of the negatives.

Any idea what I am doing wrong?