Using Cinema Film

"Rod Smith" wrote in message news:ah6982-

As a practical suggestion, if your negatives are still in good
shape, you could have new slides made from them.


Unfortunately I was not as thoughtful back then, and I have misplaced and
lost some of my negatives. Mea culpa.

Those were cult emulsions, and I took the bait. Some of the labs'
advertising made it look like Kodak was refusing to process the film out of
some motivation to keep it under wraps. The truth was that there WERE
better Kodak films for still photography. Kodak said as much.

I remember reading in one of the photo mags that consumer labs' machines
were not set up for the masking on those negs, and could not do a good job
making prints or enlargements from those films.

I am most embarrassed over the fact that I went out of my way to acquire
those films, waited for them to be processed and returned to me via mail,
didn't save much, and ended up getting slides that faded and shifted color
balance. Meanwhile, the "guy next door" bought a roll or Kodachrome or
Ectachrome, had it processed via a local store, got his slides back in a
couple of days, and got a better result that lasted longer.

And I thought I was the smart one . . .



The color masking on those negs was unlike any ordinary Kodak film,
making
it difficult to produce well-balanced prints from any lab other than
those
few that were set up to handle that type of film. Your typical
drugstore
lab, with their machine-made prints, did a bad job with this film.

This was true in the 1980s and early 1990s, too. I've not tried getting
any commercial prints or enlargements made from this type of negative
since the early 1990s. I have recently begun scanning my old negatives,
including my ECN II stuff. My software (VueScan) doesn't seem to have any
settings for this specific film, but I usually get good results with the
Kodak Commercial 200 setting, or by setting the "Restore Colors" option,
which bypasses the film type setting altogether.

In other words, if you've got negatives of this type, they CAN be dealt
with today by scanning them yourself. You might need to fiddle with the
color settings, but you should be able to get decent results.

I was one of those users, and I regret having been taken in by that
hype.
My old Kodachromes are saturated and crisp. My 5254/5247 stuff is badly
degraded.

Note that I'm not trying to say ECN II film made a good consumer film for
still photography. I agree with most of your assessments, which I've
snipped. If I could re-live the 1980s, I think I'd stick with more
conventional films, which tended to be finer-grained. At the time, I was
obsessed with higher-speed films, and the ASA 640 rating on 5294/5296 was
appealing to me. It was also cheaper to order slides and then get
reprints only of those shots that I liked than to get prints from
everything. (I was in college at the time, so cost was very important to
me.)

I'll add one complaint to your list: I've found that my ECN II negatives
have more in the way of scratches than my C-41 negatives from the same
period or before, so I suspect the stuff is less scratch-resistant.

--
Rod Smith,
http://www.rodsbooks.com
Author of books on Linux, FreeBSD, and networking

"Rod Smith" wrote in message news:ah6982-

As a practical suggestion, if your negatives are still in good
shape, you could have new slides made from them.


Unfortunately I was not as thoughtful back then, and I have misplaced and
lost some of my negatives. Mea culpa.

Those were cult emulsions, and I took the bait. Some of the labs'
advertising made it look like Kodak was refusing to process the film out of
some motivation to keep it under wraps. The truth was that there WERE
better Kodak films for still photography. Kodak said as much.

I remember reading in one of the photo mags that consumer labs' machines
were not set up for the masking on those negs, and could not do a good job
making prints or enlargements from those films.

I am most embarrassed over the fact that I went out of my way to acquire
those films, waited for them to be processed and returned to me via mail,
didn't save much, and ended up getting slides that faded and shifted color
balance. Meanwhile, the "guy next door" bought a roll or Kodachrome or
Ectachrome, had it processed via a local store, got his slides back in a
couple of days, and got a better result that lasted longer.

And I thought I was the smart one . . .



The color masking on those negs was unlike any ordinary Kodak film,
making
it difficult to produce well-balanced prints from any lab other than
those
few that were set up to handle that type of film. Your typical
drugstore
lab, with their machine-made prints, did a bad job with this film.

This was true in the 1980s and early 1990s, too. I've not tried getting
any commercial prints or enlargements made from this type of negative
since the early 1990s. I have recently begun scanning my old negatives,
including my ECN II stuff. My software (VueScan) doesn't seem to have any
settings for this specific film, but I usually get good results with the
Kodak Commercial 200 setting, or by setting the "Restore Colors" option,
which bypasses the film type setting altogether.

In other words, if you've got negatives of this type, they CAN be dealt
with today by scanning them yourself. You might need to fiddle with the
color settings, but you should be able to get decent results.

I was one of those users, and I regret having been taken in by that
hype.
My old Kodachromes are saturated and crisp. My 5254/5247 stuff is badly
degraded.

Note that I'm not trying to say ECN II film made a good consumer film for
still photography. I agree with most of your assessments, which I've
snipped. If I could re-live the 1980s, I think I'd stick with more
conventional films, which tended to be finer-grained. At the time, I was
obsessed with higher-speed films, and the ASA 640 rating on 5294/5296 was
appealing to me. It was also cheaper to order slides and then get
reprints only of those shots that I liked than to get prints from
everything. (I was in college at the time, so cost was very important to
me.)

I'll add one complaint to your list: I've found that my ECN II negatives
have more in the way of scratches than my C-41 negatives from the same
period or before, so I suspect the stuff is less scratch-resistant.

--
Rod Smith,
http://www.rodsbooks.com
Author of books on Linux, FreeBSD, and networking

"Rod Smith" wrote in message news:ah6982-

As a practical suggestion, if your negatives are still in good
shape, you could have new slides made from them.


Unfortunately I was not as thoughtful back then, and I have misplaced and
lost some of my negatives. Mea culpa.

Those were cult emulsions, and I took the bait. Some of the labs'
advertising made it look like Kodak was refusing to process the film out of
some motivation to keep it under wraps. The truth was that there WERE
better Kodak films for still photography. Kodak said as much.

I remember reading in one of the photo mags that consumer labs' machines
were not set up for the masking on those negs, and could not do a good job
making prints or enlargements from those films.

I am most embarrassed over the fact that I went out of my way to acquire
those films, waited for them to be processed and returned to me via mail,
didn't save much, and ended up getting slides that faded and shifted color
balance. Meanwhile, the "guy next door" bought a roll or Kodachrome or
Ectachrome, had it processed via a local store, got his slides back in a
couple of days, and got a better result that lasted longer.

And I thought I was the smart one . . .



The color masking on those negs was unlike any ordinary Kodak film,
making
it difficult to produce well-balanced prints from any lab other than
those
few that were set up to handle that type of film. Your typical
drugstore
lab, with their machine-made prints, did a bad job with this film.

This was true in the 1980s and early 1990s, too. I've not tried getting
any commercial prints or enlargements made from this type of negative
since the early 1990s. I have recently begun scanning my old negatives,
including my ECN II stuff. My software (VueScan) doesn't seem to have any
settings for this specific film, but I usually get good results with the
Kodak Commercial 200 setting, or by setting the "Restore Colors" option,
which bypasses the film type setting altogether.

In other words, if you've got negatives of this type, they CAN be dealt
with today by scanning them yourself. You might need to fiddle with the
color settings, but you should be able to get decent results.

I was one of those users, and I regret having been taken in by that
hype.
My old Kodachromes are saturated and crisp. My 5254/5247 stuff is badly
degraded.

Note that I'm not trying to say ECN II film made a good consumer film for
still photography. I agree with most of your assessments, which I've
snipped. If I could re-live the 1980s, I think I'd stick with more
conventional films, which tended to be finer-grained. At the time, I was
obsessed with higher-speed films, and the ASA 640 rating on 5294/5296 was
appealing to me. It was also cheaper to order slides and then get
reprints only of those shots that I liked than to get prints from
everything. (I was in college at the time, so cost was very important to
me.)

I'll add one complaint to your list: I've found that my ECN II negatives
have more in the way of scratches than my C-41 negatives from the same
period or before, so I suspect the stuff is less scratch-resistant.

--
Rod Smith,
http://www.rodsbooks.com
Author of books on Linux, FreeBSD, and networking

"Rod Smith" wrote in message news:ah6982-

As a practical suggestion, if your negatives are still in good
shape, you could have new slides made from them.


Unfortunately I was not as thoughtful back then, and I have misplaced and
lost some of my negatives. Mea culpa.

Those were cult emulsions, and I took the bait. Some of the labs'
advertising made it look like Kodak was refusing to process the film out of
some motivation to keep it under wraps. The truth was that there WERE
better Kodak films for still photography. Kodak said as much.

I remember reading in one of the photo mags that consumer labs' machines
were not set up for the masking on those negs, and could not do a good job
making prints or enlargements from those films.

I am most embarrassed over the fact that I went out of my way to acquire
those films, waited for them to be processed and returned to me via mail,
didn't save much, and ended up getting slides that faded and shifted color
balance. Meanwhile, the "guy next door" bought a roll or Kodachrome or
Ectachrome, had it processed via a local store, got his slides back in a
couple of days, and got a better result that lasted longer.

And I thought I was the smart one . . .



The color masking on those negs was unlike any ordinary Kodak film,
making
it difficult to produce well-balanced prints from any lab other than
those
few that were set up to handle that type of film. Your typical
drugstore
lab, with their machine-made prints, did a bad job with this film.

This was true in the 1980s and early 1990s, too. I've not tried getting
any commercial prints or enlargements made from this type of negative
since the early 1990s. I have recently begun scanning my old negatives,
including my ECN II stuff. My software (VueScan) doesn't seem to have any
settings for this specific film, but I usually get good results with the
Kodak Commercial 200 setting, or by setting the "Restore Colors" option,
which bypasses the film type setting altogether.

In other words, if you've got negatives of this type, they CAN be dealt
with today by scanning them yourself. You might need to fiddle with the
color settings, but you should be able to get decent results.

I was one of those users, and I regret having been taken in by that
hype.
My old Kodachromes are saturated and crisp. My 5254/5247 stuff is badly
degraded.

Note that I'm not trying to say ECN II film made a good consumer film for
still photography. I agree with most of your assessments, which I've
snipped. If I could re-live the 1980s, I think I'd stick with more
conventional films, which tended to be finer-grained. At the time, I was
obsessed with higher-speed films, and the ASA 640 rating on 5294/5296 was
appealing to me. It was also cheaper to order slides and then get
reprints only of those shots that I liked than to get prints from
everything. (I was in college at the time, so cost was very important to
me.)

I'll add one complaint to your list: I've found that my ECN II negatives
have more in the way of scratches than my C-41 negatives from the same
period or before, so I suspect the stuff is less scratch-resistant.

--
Rod Smith,
http://www.rodsbooks.com
Author of books on Linux, FreeBSD, and networking

"Jeremy" wrote in message link.net...
"Rod Smith" wrote in message news:ah6982-

As a practical suggestion, if your negatives are still in good
shape, you could have new slides made from them.


Unfortunately I was not as thoughtful back then, and I have misplaced and
lost some of my negatives. Mea culpa.

Those were cult emulsions, and I took the bait. Some of the labs'
advertising made it look like Kodak was refusing to process the film out of
some motivation to keep it under wraps. The truth was that there WERE
better Kodak films for still photography. Kodak said as much.

I remember reading in one of the photo mags that consumer labs' machines
were not set up for the masking on those negs, and could not do a good job
making prints or enlargements from those films.

I am most embarrassed over the fact that I went out of my way to acquire
those films, waited for them to be processed and returned to me via mail,
didn't save much, and ended up getting slides that faded and shifted color
balance. Meanwhile, the "guy next door" bought a roll or Kodachrome or
Ectachrome, had it processed via a local store, got his slides back in a
couple of days, and got a better result that lasted longer.

And I thought I was the smart one . . .


Those of us who knew better tried to tell people like you, but you
wouldn't listen....


....who's sorry now?

"Jeremy" wrote in message link.net...
"Rod Smith" wrote in message news:ah6982-

As a practical suggestion, if your negatives are still in good
shape, you could have new slides made from them.


Unfortunately I was not as thoughtful back then, and I have misplaced and
lost some of my negatives. Mea culpa.

Those were cult emulsions, and I took the bait. Some of the labs'
advertising made it look like Kodak was refusing to process the film out of
some motivation to keep it under wraps. The truth was that there WERE
better Kodak films for still photography. Kodak said as much.

I remember reading in one of the photo mags that consumer labs' machines
were not set up for the masking on those negs, and could not do a good job
making prints or enlargements from those films.

I am most embarrassed over the fact that I went out of my way to acquire
those films, waited for them to be processed and returned to me via mail,
didn't save much, and ended up getting slides that faded and shifted color
balance. Meanwhile, the "guy next door" bought a roll or Kodachrome or
Ectachrome, had it processed via a local store, got his slides back in a
couple of days, and got a better result that lasted longer.

And I thought I was the smart one . . .


Those of us who knew better tried to tell people like you, but you
wouldn't listen....


....who's sorry now?

In article ,
Rod Smith wrote:
In article . net,
"Jeremy" writes:

The slides that were produced from those negs were not archival at all. I
have many of them from the mid-70s where NO image is left. It is as though
the images just vaporized, leaving only the base film left.

That's an issue with the copy film they used, not the original negative
film. I'd guess the copy film is the same stuff that's used for making
prints from movie negatives, but that's just a guess. FWIW, my Dale and
SFW slides from the mid-1980s still have good color. Maybe they improved
the stock in the decade between our experiences, or maybe a massive
decline occurs in the third decade, or maybe something about your storage
method has affected the copy slides but not the Kodachromes that you say
are fine.

Assuming that the slides were made using motion-picture print stock....

The Eastmancolor motion-picture stocks were significantly changed
in 1982, with the introduction of LPP (lowfade positive print)
color, which, as far as we know today, does not fade when stored
under decent conditions. Or at least prints made in 1982 and stored
under room temperature and humidity have not faded (yet). Before
LPP, Eastmancolor was a total disaster, fading to red/pink within
a few years. In the late '70s until 1982, "SP" stock was introduced;
the color on this is unstable--some SP prints look great today,
while others have turned to an ugly brown shade.

I'll add one complaint to your list: I've found that my ECN II negatives
have more in the way of scratches than my C-41 negatives from the same
period or before, so I suspect the stuff is less scratch-resistant.

That's likely to be a processing issue, not a stock issue.

In article ,
Rod Smith wrote:
In article . net,
"Jeremy" writes:

The slides that were produced from those negs were not archival at all. I
have many of them from the mid-70s where NO image is left. It is as though
the images just vaporized, leaving only the base film left.

That's an issue with the copy film they used, not the original negative
film. I'd guess the copy film is the same stuff that's used for making
prints from movie negatives, but that's just a guess. FWIW, my Dale and
SFW slides from the mid-1980s still have good color. Maybe they improved
the stock in the decade between our experiences, or maybe a massive
decline occurs in the third decade, or maybe something about your storage
method has affected the copy slides but not the Kodachromes that you say
are fine.

Assuming that the slides were made using motion-picture print stock....

The Eastmancolor motion-picture stocks were significantly changed
in 1982, with the introduction of LPP (lowfade positive print)
color, which, as far as we know today, does not fade when stored
under decent conditions. Or at least prints made in 1982 and stored
under room temperature and humidity have not faded (yet). Before
LPP, Eastmancolor was a total disaster, fading to red/pink within
a few years. In the late '70s until 1982, "SP" stock was introduced;
the color on this is unstable--some SP prints look great today,
while others have turned to an ugly brown shade.

I'll add one complaint to your list: I've found that my ECN II negatives
have more in the way of scratches than my C-41 negatives from the same
period or before, so I suspect the stuff is less scratch-resistant.

That's likely to be a processing issue, not a stock issue.

In article ,
Rod Smith wrote:
In article . net,
"Jeremy" writes:

The slides that were produced from those negs were not archival at all. I
have many of them from the mid-70s where NO image is left. It is as though
the images just vaporized, leaving only the base film left.

That's an issue with the copy film they used, not the original negative
film. I'd guess the copy film is the same stuff that's used for making
prints from movie negatives, but that's just a guess. FWIW, my Dale and
SFW slides from the mid-1980s still have good color. Maybe they improved
the stock in the decade between our experiences, or maybe a massive
decline occurs in the third decade, or maybe something about your storage
method has affected the copy slides but not the Kodachromes that you say
are fine.

Assuming that the slides were made using motion-picture print stock....

The Eastmancolor motion-picture stocks were significantly changed
in 1982, with the introduction of LPP (lowfade positive print)
color, which, as far as we know today, does not fade when stored
under decent conditions. Or at least prints made in 1982 and stored
under room temperature and humidity have not faded (yet). Before
LPP, Eastmancolor was a total disaster, fading to red/pink within
a few years. In the late '70s until 1982, "SP" stock was introduced;
the color on this is unstable--some SP prints look great today,
while others have turned to an ugly brown shade.

I'll add one complaint to your list: I've found that my ECN II negatives
have more in the way of scratches than my C-41 negatives from the same
period or before, so I suspect the stuff is less scratch-resistant.

That's likely to be a processing issue, not a stock issue.

In article ,
Rod Smith wrote:
In article . net,
"Jeremy" writes:

The slides that were produced from those negs were not archival at all. I
have many of them from the mid-70s where NO image is left. It is as though
the images just vaporized, leaving only the base film left.

That's an issue with the copy film they used, not the original negative
film. I'd guess the copy film is the same stuff that's used for making
prints from movie negatives, but that's just a guess. FWIW, my Dale and
SFW slides from the mid-1980s still have good color. Maybe they improved
the stock in the decade between our experiences, or maybe a massive
decline occurs in the third decade, or maybe something about your storage
method has affected the copy slides but not the Kodachromes that you say
are fine.

Assuming that the slides were made using motion-picture print stock....

The Eastmancolor motion-picture stocks were significantly changed
in 1982, with the introduction of LPP (lowfade positive print)
color, which, as far as we know today, does not fade when stored
under decent conditions. Or at least prints made in 1982 and stored
under room temperature and humidity have not faded (yet). Before
LPP, Eastmancolor was a total disaster, fading to red/pink within
a few years. In the late '70s until 1982, "SP" stock was introduced;
the color on this is unstable--some SP prints look great today,
while others have turned to an ugly brown shade.

I'll add one complaint to your list: I've found that my ECN II negatives
have more in the way of scratches than my C-41 negatives from the same
period or before, so I suspect the stuff is less scratch-resistant.

That's likely to be a processing issue, not a stock issue.