One major difference between darkroom color prints - and the scanned color negative images is, that the latter are much lighter in the shadows. I looked at a few prints i made in 1994 - and saw that the shadows were much much darker. Almost all my prints had much darker shadows... Maybe it is a general tendency to make prints darker. At least I often found them to be dark. Or perhaps it was to preserve the highlights... I don't really remember. It's been 23 years the last time i made any color prints.
7 hours later

I've been scanning, scanning and scanning. correcting, correcting, correcting. Removing dust, dust, dust - and it all comes almost out of me butt. So, i have enough for tonight. But it is really nice to see all the images Olof and I made, coming alive, rich in details, colors and variations.
The strange Kodak Ektar 25 professional film
One film roll I didn't like so much (during this long scanning session).
There were two rolls of Kodak Ektar 25... and it appears to have been a rather funky film. Extremely low sensitivity, very sharp - but somewhat strange colors. And no tolerance for underexposure !! Trying to save those underexposed negatives, gave absolutely dreadful results.
If you would see the below image much larger - you would understand how deeply deteriorated those negatives turned out. But once they were correctly exposed - there was no problem to scan them. In reality, I didn't feel there was much difference in terms of small grain and sharpness.


Once you expose EKTAR films correctly, they turn out fine.
EKTAR films: Smaller tolerances
Well, the Ektar colors films are known, to be intolerant for under and over exposures. Those parameters were pretty similar to the very best ISO 100 color films from the the 90s. 'i believe Kodak never was successful with the Ektar 25; neither in 120-format nor in 35mm format (due to the very slow speed, and a bit unreliable colors). You had to develop them immediately, otherwise the colors would quickly turn funky.
In other words; Ektar 25 was not a success story, really. It sounded very cool - but wasn't. On the other hand, the amateur Kodacolor GOLD 100 in 1986 was an absolute hit worldwide. Finally punchy colors :-) you would write home about.
A rule that still is valid today for the contrasty Kodak EKTAR 100 you can buy in year 2025. I guess it is a landscape type of film. I still have some rolls in the fridge, but never used it. So far.
Fujicolor Super G-100
also was a bit funky in its own way. Not hopeless, and rather very contrasty, and very colorful film - but not really ideal for portraits. Not so easy to make good color prints from. In general a rather tricky film for anything other than poster type of motives.
The Fujicolor Super G-400
on the other hand was better behaved - and I like it a lot. It was one of my favorites. As was Fujicolor REALA 100 - which was known for it's colors and fine nuances that color negative film normally were not so good at to represent. Albeit REALA 100 was a bit grainier than other ISO 100 films. It still was a fantastic film, especially for portraits.
Keep in mind: They are digitally altered color negatives
These scanned film color negatives are not 100% representative for its typical emulsion. Simply because they have gone though too many digital alterations - mainly in Negative Lab Pro software, where i often change parameters for every negative individually.
You could say that due to the digital alterations, the inherent character of a certain type of color film is distorted. Sure, you can still get a hunch, such as that Fujicolor film often have a "happier" color scale - where the G100 perhaps is the most contrasty film i have used among Fujicolor films. Agfacolor professional films also have their own character - but i stopped using them in the early 90s. The ones from 1987 - are heavily deterioating. Turned out to be the most unstable of all color films.
So, not good "made in Germany" at all. |