Mastodawn

Tristan Colgate-McFarlane May 10

Some photos from our Norfolk Broads visit. These are the 3 rolls of colour i randomly decided to buy from Asda on the way there. I'm glad I did, it turns out that open marsh land does not contain huge tonal range or funky shadows. I'm quite pleased with a lot of them, far more so than I expected. I'll pop a note on a pleasant darktable experience in the next post.

#BelieveInFilm #OlympusOM1n #KodakColorPlus200

Tristan Colgate-McFarlane May 10

All the colour grading on these is *entirely* in #darktable's negadoctor (other than white balancing off my scanning light). Dmax and Dmin set off the leader, used the corrections tab highlight colour off the leader. I then found a good shadow on an actual photo for shadow colour correction. This settings were used on an entire roll. Then I just used the print exposure and contrast gamma. I'm *very* pleased with the results...

#BelieveInFilm #OlympusOM1n #KodakColorPlus200

Tristan Colgate-McFarlane May 10

There are a lot of boat pictures coming, you've been warned!

#BelieveInFilm #OlympusOM1n #KodakColorPlus200

Tristan Colgate-McFarlane May 10

This includes my first proper holiday snap using a 1970s camera self timer

#BelieveInFilm #OlympusOM1n #KodakColorPlus200

Tristan Colgate-McFarlane May 10

On to the Gold. I want to try RA4 printing one from each roll to see hoe close this grading is to what I'd get there.

#BelieveInFilm #OlympusOM1n #KodakGold200

Tristan Colgate-McFarlane May 10

This dog wanted to play. So much so that he decided to put a stick on the boat right by my feet. Genius mive as I literally had to throw it!

#BelieveInFilm #OlympusOM1n #KodakGold200

Tristan Colgate-McFarlane May 10

#BelieveInFilm #OlympusOM1n #KodakGold200

Tristan Colgate-McFarlane May 10

#BelieveInFilm #OlympusOM1n #KodakGold200

Tristan Colgate-McFarlane May 10

#BelieveInFilm #OlympusOM1n #KodakGold200

Tristan Colgate-McFarlane May 10

...and then the UltraMax400

#BelieveInFilm #OlympusOM1n #kodakUltramax400

Tristan Colgate-McFarlane

#BelieveInFilm #OlympusOM1n #KodakUltramax400

Tristan Colgate-McFarlane May 10

...and that's all folks! Zero regrets on the colour. It has also reasserted my opinion that most colour negative films are basically the same. I know Gold is beautiful RA4 printed. The one roll of Ektar I've used previously was punchier, and printed exceptionally well, but not 3x the cost better. I'll keep the ektar for half frame, and stick to gold in future.

#BelieveInFilm #OlympusOM1n #KodakUltramax400

Tristan Colgate-McFarlane May 10

from a purely photographic PoV, while these are just holiday snaps, I'm quite pleased with them, of the nominally 86 exposures (24+36+24, and cheated an extra 1 or 2), I got about 50 or so I like, and about a dozen id consider taking the time to print. That's better than I expected.

Tristan Colgate-McFarlane May 10

It's also quite interesting that the look of these is very close to what I get from my olympus em5mkiii with the natural profile. I only ever use JPEGs when not scanning negs, and only natural or monochrome. Remember that I did no per-image colour adjust here, only contrast and exposure. I think I would get close to these with wet prints (might need some chemically boosted contrast on a few).

@tmcfarlane what a lovely series and a beautiful trip, thanks for sharing.
I'm quite impressed with you setting the negadoctor inversion once per roll. I exclusively use Darktable but I end up adjusting much more. It did help that your shots were under relatively similar lighting conditions and well exposed, but still impressive!

Tristan Colgate-McFarlane 6d ago

@shom I didn't even nail the scanning (used the wrong settings in the CS -lite). Setting the shadow colour shift was the only bit I wasn't happy with, it should work using the unexposed rebate but using a real shadow seemed to work better. I'd like to be able to set allthat crap off the leader and the just use the print options.
It feels very "honest"

@tmcfarlane yeah, it's not perfect, but it is indeed very good. It would be really cool if it could analyze the entire roll for color shifts.

Tristan Colgate-McFarlane 6d ago

@shom I'm fine with negaf9ctor just doing the "vanilla" conversion. It's be nice'ish if the print exposure gave the option of CMY filtration. I feel like doing actual colour shifts in negaf9ctor like daylight/tungsten adjustment is the wrong place to do it. You can do that in a extra module. I really want the most direct translation of a negative from negaf9ctor. When it works, it does a good job.

Tristan Colgate-McFarlane 6d ago

@shom I'm very suspicious when I see NLP's options. My RA4 paper doesn't know what film I'm using, or anything about sharpening. It feels very suspect. I've always suspected that NLP , and lots of lab scanning , enforces more of a "look" on given film stocks than really exists. "He's using Gold, make it look 1989s".

Ian Tindale 6d ago

@tmcfarlane @shom it all looks just a hint +Y – not badly, but fairly consistently.

Tristan Colgate-McFarlane 6d ago

@u0421793 @shom interesting. That might be me making a poor choice on that shadow colour balance, or maybe having used the neutral scanning light setting. Skin tones in the selfy are slightly off, but otherwise they all look good on my devices (laptop. tablet and phone)

@tmcfarlane So Gold vs Ultramax basically a choice on the ISO you need?

(I do love these photos. Something about the very pale colours suits my nearly 70-year-old memory of the Broads down to a T!)

Tristan Colgate-McFarlane 6d ago

@carusb yeah, plus the extra grain, but that's not very noticeable. The higher key look felt right,lots of very "James Popsys" looks. I up the print exposure and uppedthe contrast about a grade. There's plenty of detail in the highlights on the negs that got crushed/washed out. I do think it looks better than the portra pastel look though.

@tmcfarlane I used to over expose my Portra 400 a bit, made it a bit less pastel. Still got some...