Pushing Kodak Vision 2 500T

[frobozz]

I'm able to process B&W negatives quite well under difficult conditions (small townhouse, kitchen sink) but just don't have the time, money, room, etc. to take on color of any kind at the moment - I send all that out to labs for now. I have a storage unit full of darkroom equipment and will build a darkroom as soon as we get a house, but that's pretty low on the life priorities at the moment. I'm also leery of my ability to successfully scrub the remjet off. Folks running this stuff through a proper processing machine get it off the right way (water scrubber), anything I could do would be risky by comparison.

I suppose with enough demand, someone (Ed Hamrick?) could figure out the scanner presets for ECN-2 film, but I'm willing to go the release "print" route with Double Exposure Ltd. in my initial tests, just to give myself all the info and options possible.

Duncan

[Tim Gray]

Considering that most motion picture film shot nowadays is scanned, I'd just scan it instead of getting it printed to release print film. If you look at how a lot of the motion pictures tools deal with color correction, it becomes clear that we don't need Ed Hamrick to do any magic. Just bring the scan into Photoshop and adjust the RGB curves.

[frobozz]

Well this is swerving into DPUG territory, but since we're talking about variations in analog processing before the scanning... I think the scanners they use for real film have much better dynamic range than the poor little Nikon Coolscan 5000 ED I have. Ed Hamrick's tricks simply center the useful curve of the consumer scanners in the right spot for the film being scanned... something that would be easier if it has been printed onto something with a more normal set of colors and contrasts.

In any event, I plan to get my first test rolls printed onto release film but of course I'll also still have the original negatives, so then I can play with it to my heart's content, to see if the printing step is really worth it, or provides any advantage.

Duncan

[Tim Gray]

Yeah it is DPUG territory, but...

I don't speak from great experience, but I have had some film scanned to DPX and color corrected it in various film programs. The dynamic range didn't seem that much different than what you can get out of Vuescan and a Coolscan V (what I have), particularly if you scan to a linear gamma file. You do have to convert the gamma yourself, invert it, and set the curves properly, but there's quite a lot of dynamic range in those scans. This is how I deal with my scans and I get much better color than other methods I've tried.

The big difference is probably that motion stock is developed to a lower gamma in ECN-2, and the stocks are designed to be low contrast and have higher dynamic range.

[tomalophicon]

That Sheila's eyes must be pretty damn square!