Help me understand why this photo looks this way

[TEZillman]

Earlier this year we were in Hawaii. One afternoon we were going to try taking a ride in an outrigger canoe. This is not a place for expensive camera equipment (unless its waterproof), so I locked the good camera in the hotel safe and took an Olympus XA2 along with me. As we were walking down the beach, I took the attached grab shot. I don't know what it is that gives me the feeling of a 1960s vacation poster. It has a Kodachrome look to it, but it was shot on Fuji Velvia 100. Is there something with the XA2's lens that gives it a color cast? (The color is very close to the original slide). Is it that the shot was taken in the afternoon and most vacation pictures today are taken during the "golden light"? Am I too used to using a polarizer that I've forgotten what a picture looks like without one? None of the other shots from the roll I took with the XA2 look like this. I'd like to be able to recreate the effect, but I'm not sure what caused it. Any ideas?

 

[nmorozov]

It's composition

It's composition

It has nothing to do with color, IMHO (color is badly mangled). The composition, however, is excellent even if achieved by a chance... I'd probably crop it a bit differently - but overall the composition is what gives this photograph its feel.

 

[tapesonthefloor]

It looks like many of my underexposed Velvia scans. Scanners don't play nicely with slide film, in my experience.

Compare the exposure to the slides around it that scanned with proper colours and see what differences you find.

Also, I notice shadows are falling almost perpendicular to your POV... could it be that the sunlight is making the lens coating glow? I searched for XA2 and glare and found this:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/robertbrycemilburn/3623788602/

Awfully similar colours. Does anyone know what sort of coating the XA2's lens has? Is this crazy talk?

 

[bensyverson]

Fuji slide film goes blue and magenta very easily, which is what's happening here. Velvia is really not a go-to for accurate color IMHO -- it's more for amping up landscapes and sunsets and so forth.

The reason why it looks so 1960s is pretty simple -- a lot of 1960s vacation snapshots were taken as slides, because people used to love torturing their friends with slideshows.

Should you want to "correct" the image for more natural color, all you need is a gentle Curves adjustment -- see attached.

 

[julio1fer]

Could well be a developing problem - such as wrong temperature in first bath. Are all pictures in the roll blue-shifted?

 

[tlitody]

I'd say it's over exposed a tad. Don't know why you have the magenta cast.
Don't know why you'd want more with that colouration. It's so unatural for that type of image it just looks wrong.
I played with it too, for what its worth, using various means but primarily colour balance tool by shifting shadows and midtones towards green which is the opposite of magenta. i.e. minus magenta as in colour printing.
View attachment 81605

 

[TEZillman]

Thanks for the comments. The common consensus seems to be that the color is "wrong", but perhaps that's what gives it the "feel" that I'm trying to describe. I've shown the slides from this trip to a number of friends and I seem to get a strong reaction to this one. Of course the crowd that we hang around with are all in the late forties and fifties age group. It seems to strike a chord that has something to do with how island vacations were depicted when we were all much younger.

I personally do not think its a great photo. The reason I didn't discard it myself when I put the slide show together is that I think I share the same reaction. With all of the technically much better slides in the show (you'll have to take my word for that), I have been kind of surprised that this one gets such a reaction.

The way the slide appears on a computer screen is not much different than the original. Its not quite as sharp and it loses some of the highlight detail. I have a consumer grade scanner (Minolta scan dual IV) that is OK, but not great.

I'm not at all sure that I want to "correct" it, after all isn't the point of a photograph to strike a chord with the viewer? I'm just trying to understand what it is about it that causes the reaction.

As an aside, I realize that there is a popular idea that slide shows are somehow a means of "torture" and I have no doubt that the proverbial slide show put together by uncle so and so could be really bad, but if you have ever seen a really well done slide show, you would see this as a misconception. One of the greatest photographic experiences that I have ever had was seeing a slideshow of Alaska that just knocked my socks off. Even 30 years ago, when I saw this show, the travelogue presentation shown in an auditorium was dying off, but if you ever saw one like this you'd undoubtedly consider it a lost art form. I count myself very fortunate to have seen it.

 

[oftheherd]

Fuji slide film goes blue and magenta very easily, which is what's happening here. Velvia is really not a go-to for accurate color IMHO -- it's more for amping up landscapes and sunsets and so forth.

The reason why it looks so 1960s is pretty simple -- a lot of 1960s vacation snapshots were taken as slides, because people used to love torturing their friends with slideshows.

Should you want to "correct" the image for more natural color, all you need is a gentle Curves adjustment -- see attached.

Nice correction. As to being tortured by slide shows, there was indeed some of that. I think the main reasons were of course, a fair share of mediocre shots, but probably more importantly, a lack of knowledge of how to keep a slide show to a short length. It isn't necessary to show every shot, only the best and most informative. Proper slide shows can indeed be a pleasure.

 

[CK Dexter Haven]

Yes, the color is 'wrong,' but i agree with the OP. That purple shift DOES give it the vintage look. I wasn't thinking of Kodachrome, though. Ektachrome, maybe, because it used to be associated with a blue shift.

 

[sprokitt]

Tough to say without seeing the whole roll. If all the frames have the same color shift it could be old film (that was not properly stored), or possibly bad development (spent chemistry).

I agree that it looks like a slide from the 60's.

 

[David Hughes]

It's a black metal camera; it could have been left in the sun and baked the film.

I worked entirely with slide film since the late 50's and never saw that strange colour shift. Ditto the XA shots taken when it was a brand new camera. Slide shows get boring when they are the personal "us on holiday" type with pictures of the same wife/children/people in cafes, pubs, hotels etc.

Regards, David

 

[TEZillman]

Thanks for the responses. I appreciate you guys taking the time to respond. Some of the responses have suggested old film, poor development or mistreated film. I've been shooting slides for over 25 years. The films were developed in house by a professional lab that I've been using for slide and print film since 1978. None of the exposures on this roll, or any of the other 21 rolls that I had developed, looked like this.

A rather strange thing happened when I went to pick up the developed slides that's never happened to me before. When I walked into the lab, the owner looked up at me and asked if I was the guy who had the slides from Hawaii. When I responded yes, thinking to myself that they had ruined them or something, the owner went in the back room to get the technician who had developed them. The technician wanted to ask me about how they had been taken, what camera I used, etc. To say the least, I was completely taken aback by this, after all these guys see images that are made by professionals on a daily basis. I don't mean to pat myself on the back here, but rather to offset the idea that the cause was poor film or development.

The slide show I put together was ruthlessly edited down to a show that lasts about 30 minutes. I really don't know why I included this one. What I can't figure out is why, in a slide show that includes some really good images, this one seems to capture many people's attention. I suppose that one could discount their reactions as the opinions of people that aren't serious photographers, but, on the other hand, I would like to learn from their reactions as one of my goals as a photographer is to be able to make photographs that cause such a reaction.