Comparing Film

[Pepe]

After having been told time and time again that the National Geographic Guide to Better Photography is a book one should have at least leafed through at some time, I caved and got me a copy.

Very early in the book I was pleasantly surprised by it in that it explains some very basic hings like the different types of metering in a much simpler and clearer way than any other book/site I came across so far.

But I digress.

In the chapter on film, they placed examples of the same scene, photographed exactly the same way with different films (velvia, ektachrome and another I forgot allready) so as to very clearly point out the differences.
They did both a landscape and a portrait this way, with added blown up crops.

Now I've been scouring the web for a more extensive comparison of more films, only to find that Nikonians seem to be the only ones offering anything remotely alike, but with different scenes....

Any of you know of something like that ? Might be nice for people who scan film, to see how it is "supposed" (I know...) to look, before being "butchered" by auto levels , saturation boosts and contrast adustments.

 

[kaiyen]

Well...first, what makes you think that those kinds of adjustments are "butchering" the scan? Even the prints you saw in the book had to go through some print processing. Everything other than the negative (which can be impossible to interpret) or the slide is a manipulation.

allan

 

[Pepe]

Obviously the "'s and the "(I know...)" failed to convey that I know that and didn't want to go that route....

So I'll say it differently : is there a difference between velvia and sensia with added saturation

 

[kaiyen]

Pepe,
I apologize that I didn't get quite how you mean your question.

Each film responds differently at the time of the shot than another. A good example would be taking a shot in color and trying to make it into infrared. Now, to Kodak HIE, water comes out black and green vegetation comes out white. If you run a conversion in PS, the best you get is that green turns white and blue turns black. But what if something that is blue shouldn't have turned black? Like a blue chair? Shouldn't that be a different tone of grey?

So while it is possible to get Sensia to look like Velvia, you can't get it perfectly, and certainly not every time.

If you are willing to trust folks about how much they edit their files, pbase has the ability to search by just about anything. I do that a lot when comparing lenses, but it's useful for film, too.

allan

 

[Pepe]

No apologies needed, this is why most of us prefer actual talking over typing.

Anyway, yeah I've done the pbase and photosig searches on film, but it still makes it difficult to see the subtle differences. Different light, lenses, locations, subjects and the scan itself ( and for BW, development ) make it all kind of useless.

Of course, blowing 20 different rolls of film on one landscape with a model in the foreground just to compare them is tedious and costly. They don't make three exposures film, do they. Probably why noone does it.... ( as compared to pics of brick walls, I'd think it more fun though 😀 )