sasaki@harvard.ARPA (Marty Sasaki) (11/08/85)
More dogma, be warned... I've sat back long enough during the negative
vs. slide debate.
The eye and brain are wonderful optical instruments. Together they
record the world in such a way that white is always white, no matter
what color it really is. A good example of this is the color of snow
in the shade on a sunny day. The snow is very blue. Ever wonder why
blue jays are so blue?
When you take a photograph of snow in shade using color film, the snow
will be blue. The film can't do what the brain has done. Which is the
"true" color? Your brain/eye saw the snow as white so in reality, the
snow was white.
The answer to "which is the true color?" is, "It doesn't matter."
Photographs are, at best, gross approximations of reality. The color
isn't right, things aren't in the right focus (the eye/brain see
everything in focus), and the picture is flat, two dimensional. I like
to think of photographs as transformations of reality into objects.
When taking photographs meant for prints, the photographer's job is to
set things up so that the print looks "right". Ideally, the
photographer has pre-visualized the print. This means knowing the
effect of the color of the lighting, the contrast of the film/print
system, the color rendition of the film/print system, etc.
Photographic film is just part of the transformation process. If your
aesthetic sense likes high contrast, and extreme color saturation,
then Kodachrome printed on Cibachrome is probably the way for you to
make color prints. You can (and should) tailor the film and print
material you use to the kind of prints that you like to see.
The overall color balance is up to your aesthetic sense as well. I
usually print shaded snow as slightly blue, because I like blue, it
looks more natural to me. When I make a print of my sister, I usually
end up making the print a lot yellower than what machine prints from
the drug store usually yield. My sister's skin has a slight yellow
cast to it, my print seems more natural. (When I started to make color
prints, I was shocked to find that Japanese people's skin is yellower
than the Caucasian norm.)
I have found that I use my color analyzer less and less the more I
print. I use the analyzer to get into the right ball park. My first
test print is usually pretty good, but each print takes a bit of
fiddling with the color to get it "right".
The only time that I obey exactly what my analyzer tells me is when I
do wedding prints. I make a master print, usually of the bride, and
zero in on her face. Each following print has her face the same color.
This makes printing easy. The families seem to prefer the consistency
too.
One last bit before I close. Kodachrome II was well known to have a
distinctive magenta cast in the blue tones, especially in large
expanses of sky. Usually, when you point this out to someone they
disagree at first. After you show them a few Ektachromes (or
Fujichrome, or Agfachrome) they begin to see your point. Kodachrome II
was really very "inaccurate" in this respect.
When Kodak introduced Kodachrome 25, they received a lot of complaints
from customers, the skies in their slides weren't right. Kodak thought
it was quality control at first, but after some study, they found that
the color in the new Kodachrome was "more accurate". Apparently, the
customers were just used to the old color rendition.
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Marty Sasaki net: sasaki@harvard.{arpa,uucp}
Havard University Science Center phone: 617-495-1270
One Oxford Street
Cambridge, MA 02138