Colour Negatives vs Colour slides

[Valerio Trigari]

Hi All,

this might be a daft question, but because I always worked with B&W film, I hope you shall forgive my ignorance. It seems that everyone who's shooting landscape in colour uses colour reversal film, instead of colour negatives. Is there any specific reason behind that?

Which one of these four reversal Fuji films would you recommend: Velvia 50, Velvia 100, Velvia 100F or Provia 100F? As well as, which colour negative film would you recommend?

Thanks,

Val

[Dave Tolcher]

Val, I think you will find that there is a shift happening right now towards negative film from slides. Scanning slides has always been more straightforward than negative film and the advantage in dynamic range was not sufficient a differentiator. The latest Portra offerings from Kodak have changed the mix and some of the rainmakers here in the Uk are producing superb work on Portra 400. Velvia was an unquestioned de facto standard for years because of its ability to work magic in certain light conditions in the landscape and the fact that leaders in the field used it nearly exclsuively (likes of Joe Cornish).

For me, one of the main reasons I historically shot Velvia 50 is that my primary output is a slide on the lightbox, its what I do it for and I love the way V50 responds to the type of light I like to shoot in. If I didnt have V50 I am not sure what I would shoot - today it would probably be Portra in either 160 or 400 because it scans so well and has unending dynamic range.

To your question.... its horses for courses. I tend to carry a few sheets of Velvia 50, Provia and 160S in my bag. I personally dont like V100 because of its exaggerated red response esp at dawn and dont see the need for extra speed when I am using a tripod and long exposures already. Provia can be very ugly in shade or overcast conditions so I use it when I need lower contrast or reduced saturation. When I have used up my supply of Quickload I will shoot Portra (probably 400) and Velvia 50.

Best regards

Dave

[dennis]

I have always used Provia 100 since it was introduced (& knocked Ektachrome off its stand), but I remember reading the late Geoffrey Crawley writing in the AP that he thought better results were obtained for scanning from negative rather than transparency film. It probably comes down to what you like & what's available. I'm mostly B & W nowadays. Dennis.

[joolsb]

What Dave says is essentially correct. There has been a bit of a reawakening of interest in colour neg of late - especially Kodak emulsions - and the main driver as I see it is the death of Quickload. Now that new film is only available in cut-sheet, the convenience of sticking with QL (and hence Fuji) is no longer a factor and people are starting to realise that Kodak also make good emulsions.

Portra and Ektar are both superb films but they sacrifice a punchy palette in favour of creamy-smooth tonality. Great if you like that 'look' not so if you're hooked on vibrant colours (cold turkey seems to be working in my case - allbeit with the occasional lapses ) I'm slowly moving to just shooting Kodak neg stock simply because I love how it looks as well as its (esp. Portra's) amazing dynamic range. In fact, once I work through my remaining stash of Velvia, I may even be selling my set of grads leaving just a polariser as my only filter. You simply don't need grads with colour neg....

The other big advantage is that it's easier to scan than transparencies - once you get the inversion stage down (admittedly this can be tricky and no one method works infallibly in every case) and is very 'malleable' in Photoshop.

[Emmanuel Bigler]

Colour Negatives vs Colour slides

In the good old days of analogue photogravure, most, if not all, quality colour images printed in the press, in magazines, books, etc .. originated from some kind of colour slide / revesal colour film. Humorists used to say that the square 6x6 medium format was perfect ... but only for shooting ektachromes for the cover of 33 rpm vinyl records
And in aerial photography, 23x23 cm colour slides were also in use. I've seen a few ones, this is, per se, a magnificent object, an original image, directly human-readable, directly extracted from the focal plane of our LF camera.

To the best of my knowledge, fine art books of the good old days demanded a 5x4 colour slide, this was a kind of an industry standard of the past for quality images. Of course not for colour images printed in your favourite British tabloïd journal (a typically British "printed specialty" that we, French, envy from across the Channel )

Now that everything printed (including you own hardcover-printed family albums from your grandmother's JPEGs) are made through a 100% digital computer-to-plate process, the old story about colour slides in analogue photogravure is something of the past.
Modern colour negs seem to feature a broader dynamic range that direct digital image capture on silicon. Hence probably the continuation of using colour negs (like the last generation of Kodak 400 colour neg film) for portraits with flash illumination e.g. weddings, etc ...

For colour lanscape images, I must confess a kind of devotion to colour slides ... although so far in what qualifies here as LF photography I have only shot some 6x12 provia images on 120 rolls... but I already have some 5x4 Provia in the fridge and have no plans for using colour negs in 5x4 ... at least as long as 5x4 colour slides are still available, and I hope that this will last at least until "capitalism will self-collapse under its own self-contradictions" (to quote a famous Londoneer of the XIX-st century)

[Charles Twist]

I must say that the malleability of negative is what bothers me. With a positive, I know where I stand: the final print must look like the transparency - a great simplification in the morals of processing. Negatives, like digital in many ways, are empowering and oblige you to decide how your print will appear. That takes confidence. And in my case, a better scanner than the V700. I just can't get the cyan-blues to look right, especially where the tone is closest to the inverse of the baseline russet of negatives. An English evening sky which gradually shifts from yellow to cyan to blue really suffers around the cyan mark: the transitions aren't smooth, like there is insufficient bit depth. And I struggle with over-saturated reds too on Portra 160. Oh well, maybe a surefire recipe will make itself known. Otherwise, yes, a fantastic dynamic range.
From a commercial point of view, one of the advantages of neg film is that the dynamic range allows one to emulate the typically digital, bright shadows. Where Velvia's shadows are often dense, digital and neg are a lot brighter. So it's an easier sell to customers used to digital.
Regards,
Charles

[Lynne Evans]

Hi Valerio
I have just started to experiment with colour neg film as an alternative to Velvia 50. I've been trying out the 2 Kodak Portra films (160 and 400) and Fuji Pro 160S, but only in 35mm format so far - 5x4 is too expensive to use untested! I scan the film using a Minolta film scanner set to colour positive then convert to a real positive in Photoshop. The tricky bit is getting rid of the orange base colour (hence the difficulty with cyan in the positive image). It's also worth noting that each film type converts differently - I have found the Kodak ones tend to be easier to get the colour I want than the Fuji 160S. I was kindly sent this instruction by Tristan Campbell as a way of getting to a good starting point for the colour image

go into curves – starting from a from a raw positive scan – and double click the white point tool. You’ll get a colour selector. Sample a bit of clear film if you can and in the colour selector drag it over to the left to take out the orange – but keep it at roughly the same tone. Click ok and click back where you took the sample to set the white point. This should neutralize the orange cast. Then go back into curves and as above turn on the show clipping option and drag just the black point for each channel. Again you’ll need to apply a curve to sort out the brightness and contrast once inverted. You may still end up very cyan if you are working on a landscape (long exposure or low light etc) and have not filtered the image with a warm up so you’ll need to do this in Photoshop.

As Charles says, the advantage of transparency film is that you know what you are trying to achieve in colour reproduction terms. The nice thing about negative film is that the colours have the possibility of being much more subtle - the control lies with the photographer. The strange thing is that I packed up using digital because I felt there were no clues as to what the 'correct" colour was, whereas I feel much more comfortable interpreting the scan of colour neg film. And when trying to lighten your load, being able to dispense with graduated filters is an outstanding benefit!

[Valerio Trigari]

Thank you very much for all your explanations!

Things are much clearer now and I will definitely experiment with colour as well, in the future.

[Joanna Carter]

Hi Valerio

Just thought I would throw another alternative into the mix. I have done a bit of Trichromie, which is the taking of three shots, one through a red filter, one through a green filter and another through a blue filter. There's a thread about it here.

Loads of dynamic range, because you are using B&W film.

[gary mulder]

Obviously you can put a color negative in an enlarger and in 10 minutes time have a nice dry print in your hands !

[dave_whatever]

Hi All,

this might be a daft question, but because I always worked with B&W film, I hope you shall forgive my ignorance. It seems that everyone who's shooting landscape in colour uses colour reversal film, instead of colour negatives. Is there any specific reason behind that?

Which one of these four reversal Fuji films would you recommend: Velvia 50, Velvia 100, Velvia 100F or Provia 100F? As well as, which colour negative film would you recommend?

Thanks,

Val

For general use go with velvia 50. If you work in low fading light a lot its worth having a few sheets of 100/100f/rdpIII for when velvia's reciprocity failure becomes unworkable.

I'm surprised nobody has made a c41 film specifically for scanning, without the nasty orange base. (In fact don't rollei do one?).

Personally I've never been seduced by the supposed advantages of neg film. A hundred stops of dynamic range is great but I'm not convinced any neg film can touch the look of transparency for general landscape/outdoor photography. In particular I'm not a fan of the sagey greens and weird cyan skies. Grainy highlights? Obviously this is art, its all personal taste. If anyone wants to unload a freezer full of velvia give us a shout.

Also, nobody has mentioned archival issues of negs fading....or the fact you've got to scan every negative to really know what it looks like.

[joolsb]

A hundred stops of dynamic range is great but I'm not convinced any neg film can touch the look of transparency for general landscape/outdoor photography.

That, as they say here, is a 'Geschmacksache' - a matter of taste. The punchy 'Velvia look' for landscape photography has become so ingrained that few question it anymore. I've seen some great images from people working with colour neg and that has led me to experiment for myself - with some pretty decent results, even if I say so myself.

In particular I'm not a fan of the sagey greens and weird cyan skies.

If you scan and process in the digital darkroom, this is simply not a problem. Just tweak the colours according to taste.

or the fact you've got to scan every negative to really know what it looks like.

OK, I admit this is a downside but a quick preview scan is usually enough for a first evaluation...

[Valerio Trigari]

Just thought I would throw another alternative into the mix. I have done a bit of Trichromie, which is the taking of three shots, one through a red filter, one through a green filter and another through a blue filter. There's a thread about it here.

Now this is something I want to try as well! It doesn't really matter if it's a long procedure, I think I will enjoy it.

So now I have three new things to try: transparencies, colour negatives and trichromie. Sounds good to me!

[Neil Barnes]

Valerio,

By way of 'poor man's trichromie' I did some experiments over on the caffenol flickr section with 'bichromie and luminance' - if you're going to play around in photoshop or gimp to make the finished image, you can recreated the green channel by subtracting 11% of the blue and 30% of the red from the luminance channel (i.e. no filters). This saves you the hassle of finding a narrow-band green filter, which don't seem to be terribly common.

I can expound in hideous detail if you're interested, but I don't have images except those I created for the original post which were actually extracted from an original (not mine) colour image.

Neil

[Joanna Carter]

By way of 'poor man's trichromie' I did some experiments over on the caffenol flickr section with 'bichromie and luminance' - if you're going to play around in photoshop or gimp to make the finished image, you can recreated the green channel by subtracting 11% of the blue and 30% of the red from the luminance channel (i.e. no filters). This saves you the hassle of finding a narrow-band green filter, which don't seem to be terribly common.

I can expound in hideous detail if you're interested, but I don't have images except those I created for the original post which were actually extracted from an original (not mine) colour image.

I think you'd better explain more, you've wetted my appetite at least