Re: Color Negatives...
Re: Color Negatives...
- Subject: Re: Color Negatives...
- From: Bob Smith <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2001 12:43:28 -0600
James Kober wrote:
>
1.) Can I do it? Do Kodak, Fuji or Agfa make an IT8 in the form of a color
>
negative?
I've seen a recommendation from Kodak (quite some time ago) to approach
profiling negative film much the same as you would a digital camera. The
recommendation was to shoot a MacBeth chart on your chosen neg film and
build a profile in Kodak's Input Profile Builder software... in the same way
that you would with a digital camera capture. I suppose the new Digital
Camera Checker DC would probable work even better if you have a software
package that supports it. It makes more sense to use such a chart rather
than in IT8 as the camera/neg film is generally used to photograph a greater
range of colors than an IT8 would represent and you're trying to profile how
the film/scanner combo responds to those colors.
When attempting to profile negs, you have to remember that you're really
profiling an entire process... and that process must remain very consistent
or the profile is worthless. Changes in exposure, changes in processing can
alter color in ways that the profile won't be able to compensate for. For
these reasons, the value of trying to create a neg profile is questionable
at best.
I typically simply scan negs based on the display of the image on a well
calibrated monitor and never bother with an input profile.
I've recently been revisiting the methodology described above as a possible
way to digitize a large number of negs quickly using a digital camera in a
copy situation. In such a case I'm not dealing with scanning software that
can analyze a neg and compute an appropriate neg to pos transform. I'm
hopeful that an even semi accurate profile can get me a decent initial
image. I tried this several years ago with very limited success but there's
many more capable tools available now that might make it worthwhile. I'll
know soon...
Bob Smith