What you say is more or less the case. I do not think it is possible to
OPTIMIZE any given film emulsion so as to meet the necessary criteria and
needs of both digital and traditional. What is being done now is an attempt
to reach a compromise in the areas of grain structure, dye cloud structure,
contrast range, and shadow denisties so that the films like Supra will be
usable and acceptible to both classes of users. I personally do not think
that such compromises at this stage involve changing the orange masking in
any way. If this does take place, it will be when the digital scanning
market is large enough to support a dedicated scanner film optimized
exclusively for digital scanning with no conern for traditional chemical
printing; only then will we see films for scanning and films for traditional
printing IMO.
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Gordon Tassi
Sent: Monday, January 15, 2001 1:18 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: filmscanners: orange mask
If I am not mistaken, there seems to be a drift on the part of manufacturers
to
provide film stock that will be usable for both digital and paper
processing.
Kodak Supra has been portrayed as such a film. Considering the
capabilities of
digital technology, it seems to me that the primary adjustments will be to
minimize grain size and the ability of a scanner to neutralize the orange
masks
required for paper processes. As long as there is a film market, it seems
that
the prudent move for a manufacturer would be to optimize their films for
both
the film and digital markets for economic purposes (theirs and ours).
Most of us have had to burn and dodge, adjust exposure time, and mess with
color
balance to achieve the results we wanted when developing prints. Unless we
take
the perfect photo that needs no tweaking or croping, we will have to adjust
scans in the same ways. Maybe the scanner industry has to put more time and
effort into optimizing the ability to scan film stock rather than expecting
the
film industry to adjust to the scanners.
Gordon
Laurie Solomon wrote:
> There is no reason why said negative films could not be designed to be
> optimized for digital uses only ... Now such a thing may very well be
> impractical but it is not
> impossible or illogical.
