Iford FP4 Reference Negative

[Ralph Turner]

Many moons ago, a good fr iend of mine gave me me two of these negs with their accompanying small print and instruction leaflet, one for FP4, the other XP1 (gives you an indication of their vintage. They were presented by the publication SLR Photography at the time (some folks here may well remember them). Anyway, as a continuation of my feeble attempt to get to grips with what’s going on ‘under the bonnet’ with my home processing in caffenol and subsequent scanning/editing procedure. I wanted to see how the ref neg behaved in my Epson 4870 in light of how it struggled with my home devved negs, as previously mentioned in my long ramble on the subject mentioned elsewhere on here. As I had a feeling it would, the flatbed coped perfectly well with it. The resultant scan essentially just needed a boost to its contrast to look similar to the silver print supplied with the neg. My camera scan, however, looked ok for contrast but far brighter in the shadow/mid region and needed a fair bit of modification in this area to come closer to said silver print. My caffenolled negs often seem to need less tweaking in this regard (thinner shadow ares or excessive highlight density?).
Anyway, the upshot of all this is that the more I look at it, the more my head starts to spin lol.
l’d like to reassure anyone who felt I was dissing flatbed scanners in my last post, I wasn’t, it was more a ramble about my as-yet not fully understood/controlled caffenol development process. Although they may mot be to dedicated scanner standards they can still give a good result, but most folks probably know all this already. (Ref neg developed in ID-11(D76) for 6 min @ 20oC)
(Example scans to follow shortly for anyone’s who’s interested)

 

[Stevenson Gawen]

Never heard of a reference negative but sounds a great idea... I wonder if they were widely available in the day? Interesting about the differences between camera scanning and, um, scanner scanning. Re contrast, I think you use RawTherapee? Do you leave the automatch tone curve enabled, when processing negs? Never done it with RT just curious.

 

[Ralph Turner]

Yes, I use Raw Therapee… sort of. When I first got my Fuji X-A3 for scanning, the only raw converter I had on my computer that would handle the raw files was RT (I have lightroom and PS Elements but the versions I have of these are too old), so had to go with it. I’d previously had a quick go with it with my Canon’s raw files but never got to grips with it. It’s an amazingly powerful tool for the purpose and for me it’s been (and still is) a steep learning curve, a bit like going from driving a little automatic hatchback to climbing into a formula one car, or something like. With RT I still feel like I’ve barely got beyond the default settings, just enough to give me a basic 16 bit tiff that I subsequently edit in PS Elements, which is the clunky workflow I’ve stuck to up to now. Not very efficient, I know, but it works. RT can process scans of negs directly, too, but I’ve never got to grips with it (probably about time I did lol).
Anyway, after all that waffle, to get to your point about the auto match tone curve in RT, I shamefully admit hadn’t given it any thought, just gone with whatever the default is. Thank you for the heads up, I’ll check it out and figure out what’s what with it . I admit I’m a simple soul who’s never been overly computer-minded, though I’m hopefully not quite the luddite I used to be )

 

[Stevenson Gawen]

Yes, I use Raw Therapee… sort of. When I first got my Fuji X-A3 for scanning, the only raw converter I had on my computer that would handle the raw files was RT (I have lightroom and PS Elements but the versions I have of these are too old), so had to go with it. I’d previously had a quick go with it with my Canon’s raw files but never got to grips with it. It’s an amazingly powerful tool for the purpose and for me it’s been (and still is) a steep learning curve, a bit like going from driving a little automatic hatchback to climbing into a formula one car, or something like. With RT I still feel like I’ve barely got beyond the default settings, just enough to give me a basic 16 bit tiff that I subsequently edit in PS Elements, which is the clunky workflow I’ve stuck to up to now. Not very efficient, I know, but it works. RT can process scans of negs directly, too, but I’ve never got to grips with it (probably about time I did lol).
Anyway, after all that waffle, to get to your point about the auto match tone curve in RT, I shamefully admit hadn’t given it any thought, just gone with whatever the default is. Thank you for the heads up, I’ll check it out and figure out what’s what with it . I admit I’m a simple soul who’s never been overly computer-minded, though I’m hopefully not quite the luddite I used to be )

Thanks Ralph! Although I have used it I'm not that familar with RT myself, having settled on the unrelated (I think...) but also open source (and similarly powerful) darktable.
The auto matching tone curve in RT uses the jpg preview that's embedded in almost all raw files as a reference to apply a custom curve to the raw file. Very handy to give a starting point similar to what you have in Lightroom or most other raw-capable software.
(Edit: forgot what I was saying to start with. I was thinking it might be adding contrast...)

There's been some in depth discussion about processing colour negs with RT over on discuss.pixls.us but I must confess I haven't paid close attention.

The car analogy is apt, and as been used about dt too, funnily enough.

Extending the car analogy - there's some new software under development at present called (snappily) vkdt. It does all the processing in your GPU (have to have one....) which makes it blazingly fast, but at present it's very bare bones - anyway, that could be likened to a completely stripped out race car, with no creature comforts at all. Maybe not even a windscreen...

 

[Ralph Turner]

Thanks Ralph! Although I have used it I'm not that familar with RT myself, having settled on the unrelated (I think...) but also open source (and similarly powerful) darktable.
The auto matching tone curve in RT uses the jpg preview that's embedded in almost all raw files as a reference to apply a custom curve to the raw file. Very handy to give a starting point similar to what you have in Lightroom or most other raw-capable software.
(Edit: forgot what I was saying to start with. I was thinking it might be adding contrast...)

There's been some in depth discussion about processing colour negs with RT over on discuss.pixls.us but I must confess I haven't paid close attention.

The car analogy is apt, and as been used about dt too, funnily enough.

Extending the car analogy - there's some new software under development at present called (snappily) vkdt. It does all the processing in your GPU (have to have one....) which makes it blazingly fast, but at present it's very bare bones - anyway, that could be likened to a completely stripped out race car, with no creature comforts at all. Maybe not even a windscreen...

That stripped out race car vkdt sounds like it can fly, too - looking at their website, most of it went straight over my head at about 1000 feet lol

 

[Stevenson Gawen]

most of it went straight over my head at about 1000 feet lol

Ha, yeah at least 60% goes over mine. I have tried it... and rushed back to my 'comfortable' darktable pretty soon! I suspect in a couple of years time it may well be a viable option though.

 

[Ralph Turner]

@Stevenson Gawen Well, I’ve found the custom curves via right-clicking on the thumbnail in the folder view. So many options lol. Various standard film settings among them. I had a very quick play and the film presets seem to be closer to how my scanner sees film, but it’s too early for me to be sure what I’m playing with and I need to play with it some more. Interestingly there’s a ‘no clipping p’ option which seems useful… Anyway, thanks again for the heads up.

 

[Ralph Turner]

Of course, I still need to refine my caffenol development regimen to where I feel most happy with it, possibly somewhere nearer this ref neg, a point which may or may not ever be reached

 

[Ralph Turner]

Well, I’ve had a bit more of a play, reprocessing a number of previous neg scans. I’ve set the profile curve to one of the presets in the drop-down menu - film curve iso medium. It’s giving some beautiful end results with little or no adjustment needed beyond setting w/b points. The tonality is superb. On one or two I've upped the contrast by a tiny sliver to suit personal taste, but that’s it. Over exposed and possibly slightly over developed negs (as described in my ramble comparing scans from my flatbed and from the camera) still blow highlights a little in this mode, but by selecting either ‘neutral’ or ‘no clipping’ all is well, with very little if anything lost in either highlights or shadows, although the mid section needs more attention to balance the tones better. It’s remarkable what the film is capable of capturing. In case you hadn’t guessed by now, one happy chappy here

 

[Ralph Turner]

..

 

[Ralph Turner]

Here, for reference, are the two camera scans compared to the reflective scan of the grade 2 print. No1 is with the default (‘neutral’ as far as I know) profile applied, no2 is with the ‘film curve iso medium’ profile. When I compare the actual print to the on-screen representation of the second version, there’s very little between them in terms of overall tonality although the scan may have held a little more detail in the bright/highlight areas. No adjustments other than setting white/black points were made to the second version. (The actual print, no3, scanned on my Canon G650 all-in-one, looks a tad muddy compared to the camera scan(s) - this is due to losses during the reflective scanning process. The original print, as you can imagine, looks really good.)
Btw apologies for the incorrect ordering of the files. I couldn’t seem to get them to load in the right order lol.