Tungsten Film

[Fausto]

Well, I did a few searches, including here, to see if 35mm tungsten print film is still available.

How else you get decent color indoors without a flash?

I understand that it's also good for nighttime street shooting in color.

It seems to have gone the way of all flesh.

 

[keithwms]

I use fuji 64T slide film for outdoor night shooting. Love it. You can also push it a stop or so.

For indoors I either use daylight film plus a flash and gels, or if the lighting is mixed and I don't want to use flash, I just wing it with some of the newer fuji print films and do minor colour temp adjustments in photoshop. I haven't bothered to shoot through a filter.

 

[Fausto]

Yes, good advice. I rarely do any 'post-production' on my snaps, & my slide technique was never the best but now with the seconic 308s things should be easier.

I will try the 64T.

But I still wish 'they' made some color-corrected film!

 

[dmr]

I've had good results with plain old Fuji Superia in available tungsten or mixed light.

It seems to be very tolerant of indoor light of almost any type.

Some will tell you that the "4th color layer" helps, others say that's just marketing hype.

 

[charjohncarter]

Fausto, I hate that, I like shooting indoors without a flash. And I thought that I remembered a filter that compensated for tungsten when using daylight film. I think I was wrong. Here is what I found on the B&H site: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?shs=tungsten+film&ci=0&sb=ps&pn=1&sq=desc&InitialSearch=yes&O=product.jsp&A=search&Q=*&bhs=t

If you find an easy answer to this let us know. In the meantime, I will shoot B&W. Here is a shot that I recently did in a grocery store while testing a new camera. http://rangefinderforum.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=48309&d=1186443811

Post processing, I used auto color adjust, and then went to hue/saturation which made things worse. Maybe some of the smart guys could make a plug-in or a hue/saturation formula for us. Maybe there is one I'll check.

 

[charjohncarter]

Fausto, I remembered I had a plugin that has a correction feature for tungsten. It is Optikverve Labs; here is the site. http://www.optikvervelabs.com/

By the way, it is free.

I will post my first image and the corrected one. I didn't mess with it too much, but I think some of the sliders can fine tune.

 

[keithwms]

Charjohncarter, when in doubt about the dominant colour temp in pure or mixed light, what I do is take one shot of a colour separation chart. Then when I get back and find I have to do some photoshopping, it is very obvious what correction is needed.

Generally with mixed lighting, as you know, one can have regions in a scene that are primarily incandescent and other regions that are fluorescent. Bummer. But the fuji films do reasonably well with those situations. The best solution is to use a gelled flash. I really like available light and don't like flashing but sometimes...

Shooting through a filter is fine, but it doesn't solve the problem of mixed lighting, and you quickly find yourself with ~2 stop filter factors.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/9059-REG/B_W__43_mm_CC_40G.html

 

[gdi]

You get decent results using a blue filter (80 series?). If you have any blue filter try it out under a tungsten lamp with white paper ...

 

[like2fiddle]

I've had good results with plain old Fuji Superia in available tungsten or mixed light.

It seems to be very tolerant of indoor light of almost any type.

Some will tell you that the "4th color layer" helps, others say that's just marketing hype.

I must be doing something wrong. I have dreadful results when using this film indoors unless it is during the daytime with ample natural light.

 

[charjohncarter]

like2fiddle, the images that I posted were taken with Fuji Superia X-Tra 400 from Costco, the four layer stuff.

Kiethwms, I'm sorry, I don't know what a color correction chart is. Where do you get one? Thanks!

 

[keithwms]

Kiethwms, I'm sorry, I don't know what a color correction chart is. Where do you get one? Thanks!

Any old colour chart will do but here's the fancy one:

http://www.adorama.com/GHCCC.html

Take a shot of it under your lighting and then once you have that shot on your screen, with the chart beside it, you can work out the colour correction quite methodically. You can use white point selector in photoshop (curves), if there is a white object in the capture. And many colour charts have a white square so voila! (if not, then a white piece of paper will do) There are a number of other tricks but those are the basics. Defining the white point is critical.

A digital makes a nice colour temp meter, by the way But they do get faked out by fluorescents because of the spiky mercury lines in the spectrum, particularly the green spike. But nevertheless, a lot of digitals allow you to dial in a white balance or colour temp and once you know that you can prescribe the right correction filter. Something like an 80A may do it for incandescents, but frankly if you define a white point in a scanned image taken without a filter, it'll often work better and won't cost you any light.

For mixed lighting, nothing works perfectly, you just have to find a spot where one colour temp is dominant and work it.

 

[keithwms]

I must be doing something wrong. I have dreadful results when using this film indoors unless it is during the daytime with ample natural light.

Probably stating the obvious but...

Some mixed light combos are a killer no matter what you do. But the best thing you can do is to try to get your subject into a zone with a dominant colour temp/ light source. For example, a bad thing to do would be to take a photo of someone standing beside a window and with fluorescent light overhead. No miracle film or digital trick is going to rescue that completely, and you would be looking at some serious postprocessing. So in that situation you need to move the subject entirely under the fluorescents or simply turn off the fluorescents and use only the window light.

The fuji stuff is good but it's not a miracle; just analysing the light sources will yield a better result. Any way you slice it, there has to be a dominant colour temp on your subject or you're usually out of luck. And of course a daylight or gelled flash is a great way to establish the dominant colour temp of your choice.

 

[charjohncarter]

I agree with keithwms, mixed lighting is very difficult. And I appreciate the site for a color chart, but I don't shot color except for parties, and friends coming over. So it would be nice to have a plug-in that just fixes it, even if it is a somewhat fix. I'll probably get the color chart, thanks, just in case I have an important color shot.

 

[amateriat]

When the lighting calls for it, tungsten can't be beat.

Which reminds me: I have six rolls of Fuji T64 sitting idle in the 'fridge, from a art-reproduction job that fell through. Selling relatively cheap.


- Barrett

 

[dmr]

I must be doing something wrong. I have dreadful results when using this film indoors unless it is during the daytime with ample natural light.

Let me see if I can summarize the goings-on from early 2006 when I learned why this works, and excuse me for a long and motormouthy diatribe here ...

To make a long story long ...

I found the hard way a couple of times that the Walgreens/Agfa 400 and 800 films don't work well in available or mixed light.

The first two images below are taken under similar light and only a couple blocks from each other. This is grey twilight and incandescent/mixed lights from the businesses.

The first image was when I tried out the Walgreens/Agfa 400 for available light. I always had good luck with Fuji films for low/available light and was trying this out, hoping for similar results. I could not adjust the levels to get a normal looking image at all. I posted it here and also asked on APUG and a couple smaller boards.

A couple guys who were very much into the geeky techie spectral response diagnosed it as a weak (underexposed) blue layer in the film, and recommended that I shoot some similar scenes with Fuji and compare. The second one is just that.

If you look at the third image, the blue histograms of both, you'll see that for the Agfa, the information is all scrunched up over to the left (dark) side. For Fuji, although it's not perfect, it records far much more of the blues that were present, and gives a more normal print.

The way it was explained to me was that this "4th color layer" gives more of an even response under poor lighting situations, in the same way the classic Verichrome Pan, with two emulsion coatings of different sensitivity made the film very tolerant of poor exposure.

The Agfa film is apparently daylight balanced and only intended for daylight or daylight equivalent, while the Fuji is able to take a joke, so to speak, and give you a more normal appearance under incandescent, or more realistically, a mixed light situation.

Anyway, a slight digression which I did remember from my very young years. Apparently in about 1960, Kodak changed the balance of their Kodacolor film from straight daylight to kind of between daylight and the clear flash of those days, making the film usable for both.

When I was very young I always remember that Dad used clear flash for B&W and blue flash for color, so when I went to buy my very first roll of color film for my Brownie Starflash, I also picked out a package of blue blubs. The druggist then corrected me (this was back when shop employees actually knew things about what they were selling) and pointed out that the new Kodacolor was used with CLEAR flash. I do remember the boxes of 1960s vintage Kodacolor as saying "Daylight or clear flash" on them.

Anyway, that's my experience with this kind of thing. I use the Fuji films almost exclusively for low-light or available light work now. I can give several more examples of this if you want.

 

[amateriat]

dmr: Pretty much my findings as well. (And, somehow, I remember being given a similar drugstore lecture about flashbulbs...the confusing thing was that, in our household, I shot the roll film, while Dad shot mostly Polaroids, and he did want his blue flashbulbs. See the trouble I got in as a kid?)

I'm highly cautious when it comes to regarding any color film as "do-it-all". Even the so-called auto white balance function of certain digital cameras has caught me out at important moments. But Fuji Pro films, specifically the 400 and 800, have been reasonably good in daylight, but absolutely stellar from twilight onward.

Yes, you've seen this couplet before (most likely), but I like these examples. 400/800, respectively.

- Barrett

 

[dmr]

Both of those have quite a bit of mixed light. The look and feel of the twilight one is very similar to what I get, with a mix of streetlights, shop lights, afterglow, etc.

In the second one I clearly see a fluorescent tube and a regular (incandescent?) lamp. Both look neutral white. Is that lamp maybe a fluorescent curly-cue bulb?

(Wow, that looks like an exciting thrill ride!)

 

[amateriat]

dmr: The second shot is actually a mix of fluorescent and incandescent (and I think at least one other somewhere). This was shot in am industrial space in Brooklyn used fora one-night performance piece where the protagonists are flying through the air (the performer in the picture, and a few others, were in the much-better-known De La Guarda, which played near Union Square for a few years). Quite an experience to watch, but crazy to try and photograph, even during this rehearsal. (And, like so many things here in My Fair City, the space this took place in was knocked down and replaced by a condo shortly afterward.)


- Barrett

 

[dmr]

dmr: The second shot is actually a mix of fluorescent and incandescent (and I think at least one other somewhere).

That's what I figured. Regardless, the color looks normal.

(the performer in the picture, and a few others, were in the much-better-known De La Guarda, which played near Union Square for a few years). Quite an experience to watch, but crazy to try and photograph

I remember De La Guardia from its short-lived run in Las Vegas. It closed before I saw it, but I remember the "Theater that falls from the sky" promotions. I think the problem was that they insist the audience stand, and Las Vegas audiences want to SIT!

But back to the subject, the Fuji films do seem to a good job of making a normal-looking photo under some of the strangest lighting.

Some people can be terribly pedantic, insisting upon tungsten film for tungsten, daylight film for daylight, but the truth is that in anything other than pure daylight or pure incandescent studio floods, the actual light falls into the "none of the above" category. Some films just do a better (Fuji) job of handling real-world mixed light than others (Agfa).