Copying color negatives with camera

ZOIP wrote:

On the issue of filtering it is difficult to say what would work best, I use proper CC Filters but they are hard to get and expensive, I suggest you start with a moderate cyan filter, hopefully the ones you get will include something in that ball park.

As for resolution, you don't need high res unless you are printing 8x10 or bigger and certainly for web use low res is probably preferable, but countless experiments and jobs I have done show high res stitched works brilliantly for high quality 11 x14 prints and bigger, the resolution bump give an increase in textural information and subtle tonality. It does not increase grain size, but rather resolves it better which actually makes it look smaller and tighter in "print", due to it not being alaised by the fixed pixel matrix of the cameras sensor. Note I refer to print, neg film is designed and intended to be printed, not for digital display, I think this is a sticking point when people make comparisons between film and digital, generally film will look grainy and rough on screen (there can be a messy interaction between the grain of the image and the fixed pixel grid of the monitor) but well scanned and processed colour neg images can print beautifully displaying tonal subtlety and texture that digital often misses, its all about the final print. The grain is actually an intrinsic and essential part of obtaining the look so removing or messing it up in some way will work against the look, but if all you need is on screen images then low res, (below the level where the grain even begins to be rendered at all) is the way to go.

Ulimately it comes down to artistic intent and purpose as to how you approach the resolution question.

On the exposure bit, yes middle is best, clipping the red channel or any channel really messes things up when you invert the image making proper colour and tonal correction near impossible, the idea of pre-filtering is to keep the exposure across the three channels in proper balance . Red channel clipping can mess up your skies for example because the red channel when inverted is cyan, it pays to consider that we are dealing with a negative process.

Hope it helps

I took one of my copies to a print shop that did 8x10, and for the most part I was satisfied with the results of a 16mp copy.

I had to check how much a cyan CC filter costs, not cheap. Though there seems to be some good alternatives on ebay. I'm expecting a used cyan filter to arrive in the mail this week. For now I have a blue 80A CC filter, and a "variblue" filter which more or less puts out similar light, though I would say that variblue filter is closer to the cyan scale.

Putting the filter on the camera lens did reduce the sharpness by a tad, though some digital sharpening filters seemed to offset it.

I have a rubber lens hoods and just now thought to my self, if I just put this over the flash head with a filter attached to it, it's basically like a flash gel. Here is the result of that using the 80A CC filter.

Only did an invert and some white balancing in software, but no other touch ups.