Balancing act – A brief look at ECN2 vs. C41 colors

When ‘Cinestill’ film came around, I just had to try it – although I have mostly used the original Kodak Vision3 stock instead of the remjet-less Cinestill variants. Frankly, I didn’t get along with it, and I’ve been quite vocal about it on the forums, too. But a couple of years after my initial bout of experimentation, I felt it was time for a re-assessment. Here’s a brief reflection on color balance of Kodak Vision3 250D film. After all, color balance is perhaps the most pressing matter when it comes to using Vision3 films for still photography.

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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?

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Sickly colors – the crossover issue

I like to print color RA4. That’s no secret. And I like to tinker. I’m not alone in this, and as a result, working with color film and printing color RA4 pops up regularly in one way or another on the photo forums. One issue that often meshes into technical discussions on ‘analog color’ is that of color crossover. Some people immediately ‘get it’, probably because they have experience looking at and analyzing color crossover. Others struggle with the topic and don’t know exactly what to look for. In this post, I’m going to try and illustrate the issue through some (digital!) mockups.

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