color – Koraks tinkers

Ginkgo leaves on expired Vericolor film

Rainy Sunday. Had the studio strobes setup for a bit reproduction. Some ginkgo biloba leaves I picked up in my parents’ backyard were sitting in a tiny vase, waiting. Some old Kodak Vericolor film loaded in cassettes. Heck…why not?

Flipped – doing color negative inversions manually

One of the frustrating bits of digitizing color negatives is how to get the colors to come out right. At least, that’s how many people feel, and I can relate. There are many ways of doing this, and there’s also software dedicated to this purpose. Since scanning is a bit of sideshow for me, I make do with just the curves tool in GIMP.

Not just muted – Vision3 250D colors

My interest in Vision3 films was initially sparked a few years ago because of the muted color palette it would give. So my exploration at that time focused on portraiture and other subject matter that I considered this film a good match for. But this is not to say that these films are necessarily limited to just muted, desaturated images with low contrast. Here’s an example.

How I broke my fixer

“My genius knows no bounds”, Jeremy Clarkson says something. I often feel the exact opposite: my own stupidity never ceases to amaze me! Here’s another one that had me stumped for a while: a weird red/cyan cast on my ECN2 negatives. Annoying!

Color potential – Remaining dyes in processed RA4 paper

As I was setting up for a color printing session, I did a quick experiment to prove something to myself that I already knew. It’s just that I had never before empirically witnessed it. It’s about the dye couplers that remain in the emulsion of chromogenic color materials, such as RA4 paper. Yes, they just stay there, even if they’re not part of the image. Pretty neat – or disconcerting?

Ciao from Sicily – Some postcards

I’ve participated in the postcard exchange on Photrio recently, and I thought I might share some of the cards I’ve sent out. The month prior to the exchange, we spent a few days on Sicily, so I decided to use some frames from that trip for the cards.

Knowing what’s right, but getting it wrong – Some silly color problems

Learning involves making mistakes and if there’s one thing I’ve learned by now, it’s how to make excellent mistakes – all the time. Most of them are silly ones, too: I know better, and then I do it wrong anyway. Recently I goofed hilariously badly when working with a batch of ECN2 films. Here’s to show that I’m by no means perfect. Far, very far from it…

Peaks or plateaus – Light sources for DSLR scanning color negatives

Many people like to shoot film, but enjoy their images in the digital domain and the possibilities it warrants for post-processing, printing, etc. This means that the film images need to be scanned, and using a DSLR to do this has become very popular in recent years. But it does bring up some questions – mainly: what’s the best way to do this? And in particular, if you photograph a backlit negative, what kind of backlight would be preferable? I’m going to reflect on this for a bit on a theoretical basis.

Creative RA4 – Bleach and redevelop

Straight printing on RA4 paper is great fun and it’s what I do most of the time when I print color in the darkroom. But the RA4 process has several tricks up its sleeve. The other day I decided to revisit one of those tricks I had played with briefly some years ago: bleach and redevelop. Here’s an example of what it does and how it’s a useful took in boosting print contrast without saturation going overboard.

Pixels, not grains – Why RA4 paper is ‘digital’, and why this matters (not?)

Look at the back print of some papers, such as FUJIFILM’s Crystal Archive Supreme HD, and the word ‘digital’ features prominently. Indeed, I’ve been told that current Fuji RA4 color papers are exclusively intended for digital exposure. But does that mean we can’t use them anymore for optical enlargements?