[rollei_list] Re: C-22 Kodacolor-X negative
- From: John Wild <JWild@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2011 12:46:07 +0100
Carlos,
An excellent 'first attempt'. Could have been taken by one of the 'masters'
I have just been scanning negatives of my daughter to 'embarrass' her at her
wedding this weekend. Many of the early ones (1980 >>) were taken with a
Kodak Instamatic 110 (blasphemy) on Kodacolor; having traded my Rolleicord
Vb for a Polaroid SX70 (head bowed in shame), the 110 was used as a point
and shoot. I then upgraded to a Pentax 110, then to a Pentax ME Super, then
to a Pentax Super A and then to my Rolleiflex 3003 and also a 3.5F -
essentially back to where I had been a few years previously. A painful
series of mistakes that are difficult to confess to!
Anyway, my scanner, a Minolta Dimage Scan Multi Pro has ICE (dust removal)
ROC (colour restoration) and GEM (grain reduction) built into the software.
I was surprised at the quality of the little 110 negatives when scanned at
4800dpi and blown up to 10x10 having used all three 'filters'. The colours
were bright and correctly balanced, The grain, having used GEM, was not
noticeable but the image was not crisp. The scans took a long time and I
guess, because of high memory usage, scanning to 80-100mb caused the Minolta
software on my iMac to periodically lock-up. I stopped using GEM; that
speeded up the scans and the computer 'sang' from then on. The images were
grainy but the subjects were a lot crisper too.
Having wandered away from the topic of scratched negatives, I now return
because I found that I still had to do a certain amount of work to
de-scratch many negatives. My feeling - because as you mention, never having
taken the negatives from their sleeves before - is that the D&P house that
was used must have 'massacred' the negatives after printing. This affected
many of my films taken during the 70's to 90's. I also noticed that some of
the film edge markings were not well defined, which may be caused by having
used exhausted developer to save money too.
I guess that the large 'domestic' D&P house that was used by local dealers
for processing films for 'happy snappers' worked on the theory that once
returned, the negatives would never see the light of day again until
eventually being binned during a clear-out; 'handle with care' was not in
their phrase book. I started to use a mail order professional house and
everybody commented how good the prints were, all with brilliant colours. It
was more expensive but well worth the extra. The negatives are totally
different to the 'domestic' ones.
When it became the 'norm' I started to use a local dealer with an in-house
lab and the negatives from then are fine and well developed. They must take
more care to look after their customers. I still use the professional house
for 'important' negatives.
Don't tell me that all negatives are important - I know - it's just the
bigger hole in my pocket!
John
On 26/03/2011 21:32, "CarlosMFreaza" <cmfreaza@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> This photograph was one of my firsts attempts to get an ³artistic²
> composition when I started to use the Rolleiflex 2.8C Xenotar, I was
> 16 years old.
>
> The color negative film is Kodacolor-X (manufactured from 1963 to
> 1974), it was designed for the C-22 process, the direct C-41 process
> predecessor. These films from the Œ50s and Œ60s almost have no data
> along the strip, you can see the film type at the beginning and only
> hardly visible numbers for each frame, there is no data for film speed
> and if you don¹t have the film beginning you don¹t know what film it
> is, at least it happens with the 120 B&W Perutz and Kodacolor.
>
> These color negs were preserved within a dark box ( about two rolls, a
> very little sample regarding the photographs I took at the time),
> however despite they were rarely touched after to leave the lab in the
> Œ70s (I think, my sister has them) they are plenty of scratches, some
> spots,dust etc., I don¹t know the reason but even older B&W negs kept
> under similar conditions look a lot better. Thanks to VueScan Infrared
> clean I obtained a decent scan (I think):
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/itarfoto/5561264224/
>
> Carlos
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