Tips for a first time slide user?

[Sean Lewis]

Hi Mike , I find that straight scans give a magenta cast even on velvia 50. I nearly always push the magenta/green slider towards the green in the colour balance in PS until it matches the tranny.

Regards

Sean

[Mike M]

Thanks Sean, the colour cast is also very evident on the slide. It is an easy enough fix in PS to remove the colour cast but I'm not too happy about having this much magenta in there.

I've spoken to Formatt and I've just sent the filters to them for testing and hopefully should get replacements soon. I have next week off work and was looking forward to shooting more colour film but I guess its not to be! Plan B is to shut myself in my darkroom and get stuck into some B+W printing.

[Bip]

Velvia produces a magenta cast. Provia is more on the blue side. Maybe Velvia is best shot with a filter to reduce the magenta.

[Joanna Carter]

I find that straight scans give a magenta cast even on velvia 50. I nearly always push the magenta/green slider towards the green in the colour balance in PS until it matches the tranny.

If you are getting casts on scanning, might I suggest that you profile your scanner with the appropriate target for the film base you are using?

I would recommend using targets from Wolf Faust http://www.targets.coloraid.de/. You can use the same target for Velvia 100 and Astia 100F but different targets for either Velvia 50 or Provia.

There are significant differences in the colour of the "base fog" which become very obvious once you compare the unprofiled scan with a correctly profiled one.

[Charles Twist]

Hello,
Isn't Bip talking about the tranny itself?
Regards,
Charles

[Joanna Carter]

Isn't Bip talking about the tranny itself?

Sorry, my reply was directed more towards Sean and I forgot to quote him; I've corrected that now.

As I mentioned to you, on the phone the other night, magenta and green casts, apparently, can be caused by the pH of the water used by the lab that does the processing.

[Sean Lewis]

Thanks for the tip and the link Joanna, I,m still reletively new to the digital side of things. Most of my colour work is done using Velvia 50 so I think a target profile for that should be just the ticket.

[Charles Twist]

Hello Joanna,
Thanks for sorting out my mis-understanding.
Joanna wrote:

As I mentioned to you, on the phone the other night, magenta and green casts, apparently, can be caused by the pH of the water used by the lab that does the processing.

Well, it was mid-morning here. The west coast is not possibly that far... This is a UK forum, isn't it?
More seriously, it occurs to me now that the chemicals in the E6 soup must be at a concentration which overpowers any local variations in water standards. Having said that, I don't know if that includes buffering salts. I would have thought so though, for that very reason.
Best regards,
Charles

[Baxter]

Yes you have to adjust the pH of the colour developer bath to get correct colour balance. The proper way to do this is using expensive E6 process strips.

A more empirical set-up works fine, once you have the right pH. For my set-up it is pH 12.2 using Fuji-Hunt chemistry and it recollect was similar a few years ago for Tetanol 3 bath too. When I mix the fresh chemicals, the pH is about 11.7, so I add NaOH in a 20% solution using a syringe to bring it up to the correct figure.

An electronic pH meter from E-bay with temperature sensor is all you need. Prices obviously vary, but think I paid about £25, buying from RS components etc the equivalent was £60....

[timparkin]

Hi,

Glad to see the exposures came out OK.. Exposing isn't that hard if you approach it with a little logic. Most of my bad exposures were only out by a stop max (apart from complete failures of cognitiion like compensating in the wrong direction, etc)

I think I see some flare too, you should probably shade the lens from direct sunlight if possible as the image circle means that even if the sun is outside the picture, the light is still getting through the lens ..

Tim