>Seems a lot of confusion about why the orange mask is there at all.
Not on my part.
>Moreover, this is
>true of all film dye layers, and is why a negative is more accurate as a
>carrier of colour information than a transparency.
I think this is a questionable assertion. I do not know if negatives are
more accurate than transparencies as a carrier of color information; I do
know that negative film is more tolerant of exposure errors and of color
casts than transparencies.
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of PAUL GRAHAM
Sent: Monday, January 15, 2001 4:05 PM
To: Filmscanners@Halftone. Co. Uk
Subject: filmscanners: negative masks
snip> So would one be wrong to interpret what you are saying here in a
fashion as to infer that it might be generally said that these films with
their orange
masks, whatever the differences, are optimized for traditional photographic
printing on photographic papers...<snip
Seems a lot of confusion about why the orange mask is there at all. Like was
said previously, the mask is a clever way of compensating for the
deficiencies in the response of the dye-forming layers. It makes a dye layer
act like it is 98% accurately responding to the incoming light rather than
92% accurate. It is also worth pointing out that it really works, otherwise
why would every single film manufacturer out there do it? Moreover, this is
true of all film dye layers, and is why a negative is more accurate as a
carrier of colour information than a transparency.
They can't mask a transparency because people want to view it/project
it/display it./.. whereas a negative is always intended as just a step in
the process (rather than an end product in its own right) so the chemists
are able to do whatever it takes to get maximum accurate response to the
colour of incoming light... It may irritate the hell out of you, and you may
prefer to have the reference of slides to an impenetrable orange negative,
(as many do) and you are perfectly free to make that small trade off.
Paul G.
