Reala, unimpressive colors?

[Diapositivo]

My personal attempt somewhere attached to this message.

I would be very wary in judging a film when there are so many variables involved:
- developing;
- filtering;
- scanning;
- monitor calibration differences;

I also see a greenish cast in the picture as posted by the original poster. A little bit of this greenish cast on the parapet is probably due to the greenish reflection of the pond, so I did not eliminate it completely so as to avoid a magentaish cast emerging.

The sRGB colour space is in any case inadequate to render the amplitude of the palette of a colour film.

The scanning sacrifices highlights and shadows, burning the former, blocking the latter. It should be very easy for a scanner to capture the entire dynamic range of a negative colour shot. The contrast is then recreated by applying gamma curves while keeping the extremes safe. This looks like the scan of a slide (and that can be improved as well).

The colours seem to be fine although, not being there, I cannot judge on the rendition of the correct hue of the flowers. I don't see any colour problem besides the difficulty in filtering which is somehow intrinsic in the use of negative colour film unless a proper colour-managed workflow is adopted.

[Les Sarile]

It ma depend on where you live.

I find Reala not to my liking in Southern California and Nevada light. It comes out dull and lifeless.

To your point you may not like Reala but it seems we had a similar discussion about poor results from Kodak Ektar and the reason came down to the lowest common denominator - poor scanning and/or post.

Here is a common flower found everywhere in So Cal. This one I took outside LAX.

[wblynch]

I don't recall saying anything against Ektar. I love that film.

I have said that Portra strikes me as too pastel. I do like Portra much more than Reala. That is just my opinion. Only presented to show that not everyone loves Reala.

[Les Sarile]

How are you evaluating your results - from optical made prints or scans?

[wblynch]

There is no such thing as optical color prints anymore.

[Roger Cole]

There is no such thing as optical color prints anymore.

Whaaaaaattt?

There most certainly are.

You don't get them as 4x5 or so proofs from commercial processing (most places, don't know if that's true of ALL) but they certainly exist. You can make them yourself and there are still labs will make them for you.

[markbarendt]

There is no such thing as optical color prints anymore.

There are at my house.

[wblynch]

Evaluation must be done in the reality of the environment.

Sure, 100 people out of hundreds of millions print optical color at home. Or a handful of labs that will charge $20 for a single print.

The reality is optical prints don't exist for real life purposes. There are no new processing systems for optical prints. Even the paper now is designed for digital printing from scans.

We are lucky just to have places to get C-41 developed.

And of course anything seen or shared on this forum or any other is not a live optical print.

I wish optical color prints were still the norm.

[Roger Cole]

That is still simply wrong. Not one in at least thousands of people print silver gelatin black and white at home either. Does that mean it doesn't "exist for practical purposes?" You use the little scanned ones for proofs. For display prints you either get those labs to make good optical prints for you (for which $20 is a bargain - I wouldn't make one for you for that, but even when I printed color frequently I did it a few times a month and without a roller transport processor, so if I was that in practice and had the processor to make that very easy and quick, I'd probably do it for the twenty bucks) or you make them yourself. Either way, they certainly exist.

[perkeleellinen]

Where I live it's more practical to optically print colour than to go to a lab. And cheaper!