# Color Balance with a film camera...



## WileyP (Jun 29, 2010)

Hey everyone. I had a question about getting a proper cb with my Nikon FE2. I am a cinematographer so I understand the concept of color temps. I received a large box full of Kodak Ultramax film for Christmas. I found out that this film should shoot in any lighting situation but I still come out with orange, blue, and green pictures. I was wondering if I could trick the camera by shooting through colored gels to counter the locations lighting. What are the best options at hand to handle this situation?


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## Photo13 (Jul 21, 2010)

When you are saying that they are coming out orange, blue and green are these on the prints or scans, or are you talking about the negatives.


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## PJL (Jul 21, 2010)

Different light sources can produce different tints in color film.  It's common for a color film shooter to use a blue 80A or 80B filter indoors for "daylight" films under tungsten lighting without a flash.  Tiffen recommends a FL-D filter (purple) for use with "daylight" corrected films in fluorescent lighting or a FL-B (orange-red) filter for tungsten-corrected films in fluorescent lighting.

http://www.tiffen.com/filters.htm


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## Petraio Prime (Jul 21, 2010)

WileyP said:


> Hey everyone. I had a question about getting a proper cb with my Nikon FE2. I am a cinematographer so I understand the concept of color temps. I received a large box full of Kodak Ultramax film for Christmas. I found out that this film should shoot in any lighting situation but I still come out with orange, blue, and green pictures. I was wondering if I could trick the camera by shooting through colored gels to counter the locations lighting. What are the best options at hand to handle this situation?



Such films are daylight balanced. If tungsten light is used, 80A filter is required.

What do you mean, 'trick the camera'?


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## Helen B (Jul 21, 2010)

Are you referring to the effect of multiple sources of different types in one image, or to a single type of source in an image? It's much harder to correct images shot under multiple types of light source. 

Still neg film behaves pretty much like MP neg film. It has a large dynamic range that can be used to facilitate colour correction, or you can correct with the same filters that are used in cinematography.

Imagine that you are using your daylight-balanced neg film under tungsten lighting. If you don't use a filter and you expose it in the same way that you would expose in daylight the green-sensitive layer will be slightly underexposed and the blue-sensitive layer will be quite underexposed. This makes subsequent colour correction more difficult to achieve perfectly than if all three layers were properly exposed (it also leads to very grainy shadows).

If you give a stop or two more exposure - the easy way is to set your meter to a quarter of the box speed of the film - all three layers get properly exposed (unless the scene brightness range is so great that the red-sensitive layer is overexposed, of course).

(more in a minute)


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## Helen B (Jul 21, 2010)

If you use a blue colour filter such as an 80A (NOT a 47) you are attenuating the red and green part of the spectrum to some extent - and hence losing effective speed to a similar extent as if you gave the unfiltered film more exposure. You are in less risk of overexposing the red-sensitive layer.

You can choose any combination between no overexposure to about two stops of overexposure, and filter correction from no correction to full correction - all depending on how exact you need your correction to be. Negative film is very versatile, and digital post production is ideal for this kind of situation. It's very similar to the way that digital cameras cope with different types of light source.

Sidebar: It's easier to use tungsten-balanced neg film in daylight than it is to use daylight-balanced film in tungsten, but we are now short of daylight-balanced still neg film and it isn't easy to use use MP tungsten neg film because of the processing issue.

Enough for now.

Best,
Helen


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## Mike_E (Jul 21, 2010)

Wiley, I'm pretty sure that Helen has answered your question but could you post an example?

I haven't gotten unexpected results with Fuji and was wondering what the Kodak looked like (without actually buying, shooting, developing and printing any ).

If you would please, that would be great.

thanks
mike


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## djacobox372 (Jul 21, 2010)

WileyP said:


> Hey everyone. I had a question about getting a proper cb with my Nikon FE2. I am a cinematographer so I understand the concept of color temps. I received a large box full of Kodak Ultramax film for Christmas. I found out that this film should shoot in any lighting situation but I still come out with orange, blue, and green pictures. I was wondering if I could trick the camera by shooting through colored gels to counter the locations lighting. What are the best options at hand to handle this situation?



How would you expect a film to correctly white-balance itself when shooting in different colors of light? 

There's no such thing as a color film that will shoot in any lighting situation--in fact kodak should be ashamed for false advertisment of ultramax.  

If  you read the tecnical data, you'll see that they suggest using color correcting filters in different lighting situations: http://www.kodak.com/eknec/documents/4c/0900688a8088594c/E7023.pdf


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## c.cloudwalker (Jul 21, 2010)

djacobox372 said:


> ...in fact kodak should be ashamed for false advertisment of ultramax.



Haven't see any ads so I won't say they are not lying but it is true that a color film can be used with any light. Just have to use the right filter. 

To the OP: everyone saying to use filters is correct but I wanted to add that depending on what you are shooting and what kind of light you are going for, you can also gel the existing lights. I gelled neon fixtures many times in office buildings while also using strobes. Not ever perfect because no 2 neon bulbs are exactly the same color temp but a lot better than not doing it.


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## Alpha (Jul 21, 2010)

I have to say, orange blue and green sounds an awful lot like a c41 neg.


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## Josh66 (Jul 21, 2010)

Do you have any scans you can post?



...You can't change the white balance on film like you can with digital.  You have to use filters to do that.

Although - some Fuji films (the ones with the "4th color layer" - which would be all of their 'Pro' films, and some of the Superia ones) seem to be perfectly balanced in any light.  It really does work as good as they say, lol!


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## Helen B (Jul 21, 2010)

I think that some of you are underestimating the capabilities of modern colour negative film. Think of a colour negative as being the equivalent of a Raw digital file - the recording medium has an inherent colour balance that can't be changed, but the colour balance can be altered during post processing. I frequently shoot ISO 400 and ISO 800 colour neg film in all kinds of light, unfiltered. 

Read that Kodak tech pub carefully. It says "_For best results without special printing, use the color-correction filters in the table below as starting points when you expose these films under fluorescent and high-intensity discharge lamps._" (my underlining) They don't mention filters for tungsten - only those sources that require more than a simple CCT (correlated colour temperature) change.

The results you get from colour neg film shot under different sources depends a lot on the printing.

It's a very different story if you are shooting reversal film because of its smaller dynamic range.

Roughly twenty years ago when EXR (extended range) colour negative motion picture film was first released by Kodak a bunch of us spent a week with Kodak trying it out in practical situations. One of the things I was interested in seeing was how important it was to use colour conversion filters. Even back then it was noticeable that the increased dynamic range made the use of conversion filters less important than it had been in the past.

Best,
Helen


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## c.cloudwalker (Jul 21, 2010)

Are we underestimating modern color film or are we realistic about today's labs?

Commercially, I shot very little color neg film (never?) but no matter what, I lived in the DC area and had access to good labs. For the last 6 years, I lived in the boonies about 10-14 hours from DC and there was no way I would drive that far to watch over my processing.

You live in NYC. Great. No everyone does. Believe it or not I still have photos I am waiting to find the right lab for. None of the ones I knew/used could do what I wanted.

Yes, I have been away from the business for a while, but it makes it that much harder to figure out who to trust. No matter what film I'm using. Not that I would be using film anymore for non-personal work.


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## epatsellis (Jul 21, 2010)

CC, if color work is important, and in your workflow there are times when film works better, it's really not that hard to process C41 film correctly, nor expensive. If you have a film scanner already, and remember how to process b&w film, the only significant difference is continuous agitation and a water bath, that's it. (unless you do what I did and buy a processor, of course)


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## UUilliam (Jul 22, 2010)

With film, Most do not have the capability to set itself for a specific colour temperature

it can be fixed by using a colour filter (thus their existence, they have little to no purpose in digital photography unless your looking to offset colour balance but even at that...

I think you could also fix it in the dark room using different toners (i have no experience in a dark room therefore do not take my word for it.)

or now we are in the digital age, buy a negative scanner and load it into your computer and correct the colour temp via photoshop (LAB mode and use curves on A channel and B channel L is lightness) or open in adobe camera raw and fix colour temp within seconds.


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## epatsellis (Jul 22, 2010)

William, did you even read what helen posted above? Substitute noise for grain and suddenly that blue noise you see when shooting under tungsten makes sense. (every digital camera I have ever used does this) If anything, digital benefits as much, if not more, from proper color correction filtration. I use my Decamired and CC filters far more now than I used to. If you are trying to achieve the highest possible image quality, a color correction filter is mandatory to reduce noise and maximize dynamic range.


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## UUilliam (Jul 22, 2010)

No, I did not read it however I will do.


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## c.cloudwalker (Jul 22, 2010)

epatsellis said:


> CC, if color work is important, and in your workflow there are times when film works better, it's really not that hard to process C41 film correctly, nor expensive. If you have a film scanner already, and remember how to process b&w film, the only significant difference is continuous agitation and a water bath, that's it. (unless you do what I did and buy a processor, of course)



You are absolutely correct although I never upgraded my darkroom to color because I didn't see any point. Most of my color work was pro work and the cost of processing was passed on to the customer. The only C41 work I did was weddings and I had not intention to deal with that myself. The "wedding labs" were just fine  Not to mention I could make more money shooting then spending time in the darkroom.

My personal work was all B&W and, that, I did all the darkroom work myself. My way of relaxing 

But my point (however badly stated, I see now) was that unless you use pro labs, you have no control over the output. And considering that most amateurs today find film work to be expensive, they probably are not going to sent their films to such a lab.


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## c.cloudwalker (Jul 22, 2010)

By the way, epatsellis, how much C41 do you do and for what kind of jobs? From what I've seen of your posts, I'm not sure why you would use it that much and, thus, even need a processor.


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## epatsellis (Jul 22, 2010)

I have two clients that periodically require available light (day and night) images of construction projects and buildings. Two or three times a year, I shoot between 200 and 300 4x5 negatives over the course of a week. 

Final product is large (as in 4'x5' +) prints of selected images. The processor (a wing-lynch pro 6 tube based processor) cost me under $200, and I still bill the same rate as I did when I sent it out, it really doesn't take that long to load 8 sheets at a time and press start. When it's finished, I load the negs into hangers and do final rinse and dry. I can process a days worth of shooting in a few hours (and billed at the "pro" lab rate to the client). It can be very profitable, even using developer and fixer one shot and replenishing/regenerating bleach. 

Initial scans are done on a profiled Lino Opal Ultra for proofs, and when the final images are selected, I have them drum scanned and output. mounted and packed and shipped.

It's lucrative enough that the first run paid for my Sinar P, a pile of lenses and accessories.


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## epatsellis (Jul 22, 2010)

My personal work, on the other hand, tends to cross processed CDU, lots of work with the Betterlight back and "fine art" LF type images that are sold through several galleries.


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## c.cloudwalker (Jul 22, 2010)

Interesting. And thanks for explaining.

I never had any call for C41, aside from retail work, so I wondered.


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## Helen B (Jul 25, 2010)

c.cloudwalker said:


> Are we underestimating modern color film or  are we realistic about today's labs?
> 
> ...
> 
> You live in NYC. Great. No everyone does. Believe it or not I still have  photos I am waiting to find the right lab for. None of the ones I  knew/used could do what I wanted.



This is, of course, a  different issue - it's nothing to do with colour neg film itself.

Although  I live in NYC I travel a lot and prefer to get my film developed  locally when I am away - one less x-ray worry. (As an aside, it's  surprising how many minilabs can develop 120 as well as 35 mm, though  they may not be able to print it.) Because most current minilabs are  digital (scan-digitally process-expose onto light-sensitive paper) it's  usually not difficult to get them to colour correct if you ask.  You can  have control over the colour balance. 

It's better to be in full  control of everything yourself, of course, so I prefer to scan and  print my own work unless I'm printing large, when I will send the  processed, colour-managed files to an online printer (which can be  anywhere in the US or Canada) or to Laumont here in Hell's Kitchen.

Best,
Helen


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