The Scanning Project-5: Editing Color Negative Film

There were literally hundreds of types of color negative film, with various speeds, brands and emulsion stocks on offer. When these were mass printed in photofinishing labs, the equipment processing and printing the film identified those various stocks by their edge coding and made automatic color balance decisions accordingly. Sometimes this worked well and sometimes it didn't. 

But knowing the brand and type of color negative film you are scanning can be quite useful. You might be able to read the brand of film on the perforated strip. (See Posting 4 for a link to a site that ID’s numerous Kodak films by their codes. You can also Google a particular film or type. For example, googling Kodacolor--Kodak color negative film--will yield the years of manufacture and film codes, which can be helpful.) This information is used when applying film profiles to the scan and different profiles can be profoundly different in terms of color balance and contrast. However, knowing exactly which “vintage” (emulsion stock number) of film you are scanning is near impossible and there were variations (though they can be slight) depending on which emulsion stock number the film might have been.

This color negative film, scanned as a positive to show the orange mask, is not an easy "read" in terms of color, since both color and density are reversed and sit within an amber layer.

Here's an image of what the negative would look like when the amber layer is removed. By studying the positive (below) you can see how "reversed" colors (actually the complement to the positive colors) look. This takes some practice, although the easiest way to figure this out is to simply scan the negative, as a scanner will remove the orange mask effect in the process.

Here's the positive made from the scan. This exposure was made on Kodak VR 200, a film sold starting in 1984 and discontinued about 1986. The perf code on the film is CL, which when cross-referenced on Wikipedia led me to the film brand and type, which I used as the profile when scanning. 

While batching the types for scanning sets by film type in your initial edits is a good beginning, it is likely that you will have to fine tune the color balance yourself during scanning, which is not a difficult task, though it can be time consuming.

One problem of course is being able to see through the color mask that was incorporated in virtually all color negative film. This orange/amber coating was incorporated to enhance color reproduction, but also makes “reading” color negatives tougher than slides or black and white. Being a negative, the colors are “reversed", if you will, to their complements when the image is printed (color slide film is processed so the reversal takes place during processing via chemical or light exposure). All in all, the only way to see what colors you have (unless you have a very trained eye) is to scan the negative itself, which will eliminate the mask and make the colors positive.

When high speed films came out in the mid eighties they gave a newfound freedom to low light shooting. They did have their problems, however, as most were daylight balanced, many were quite grainy and contrasty, and I have found that the years have not been kind to their stability. This photo inside a Chicago blues club was shot in 1985 using Kodacolor VR 1000.

This is a scan from the print I got back from the lab at the time. Being daylight balanced, the film recorded an overall amber cast. I am unsure if the lab attempted to rebalance the light but I accepted it as the final output of the image at the time.  It was enough to be able to shoot in such low light without flash. 

When I scanned the negative I had to rebalance the color myself as there was no matching profile provided in the software for VR 1000. Knowing that the image was heavily influenced by artificial light I added blue and cyan and played a bit with the contrast. My aim was to produce an image that looked like it was shot with tungsten balanced film. 

However, color reversal and the orange mask are not the only issues with color negative film. In my experience, color negative films of older vintage suffer from density loss, color shifts (some are worse than others) and emulsion deterioration. There are three main color layers (CMY—cyan, magenta, yellow) within the emulsion itself, with some layers usually suffering more than others. Frankly, manufacturers did not do a good job insuring that color negatives would be “memories that live forever”, as the advertising claimed.

Of course, how you stored those negatives is also an issue, and if you stored them in shoeboxes you will probably have dirt and scratch issues to contend with as well. Not to worry, however, as color negative films can be put through dirt and scratch removal software algorithms, which will help. You can also manually clean the film by rewashing and immersing the film in PhotoFlo, or passing the film very carefully through a chamois cloth.

One option is to remove the worry about color by converting problem or poor color negatives to black and white. While this should be a last resort, it can help maintain the image if not the original color itself. Doing so you can deal with contrast and density issues and not worry about color balance.

Most software will offer a color profile of many types of commonly used color negative film. While these should be considered ballpark algorithms, they are a good place to start; in my experience you will certainly spend more time balancing color negatives film than you will when working with color slides.

So, batch the negatives as best you can according to film type and brand, check each frame with an 8X loupe and be prepared to hunt and peck to find the right color balance. We’ll cover profiling in the coming post on color negative step-by-step scanning.

My guess is that the vast majority of color negative films were shot with affordable cameras and in many cases the negatives are lost or simply tossed as being thought unnecessary. These photos are often the storehouse of precious family memories and should be scanned to protect and preserve them for future generations. I am always amazed at finding family photos in the form of black and white prints from over a hundred years ago that are still in very good shape, but mass produced color prints from only thirty to forty years ago that quite clearly are not. Scanning color prints (those with or without negatives) using a flatbed scanner is an easy matter. This print is from the 1970s and had already shifted color towards a magenta cast, alleviated somewhat by changing the color bias when scanning. 

Unfortunately, many people who shot color negative film of family and travel memories usually used other than stellar cameras and lenses. The plastic or hybrid lenses used in these cameras were notoriously soft and more than not automatic exposure modes, or guesswork, was used when shooting.

When scanning such images, expectations should be kept in check, although getting good scans for web sharing sites and even photo books—if image size is kept “reasonable”—allows these memories to be preserved. Frankly, in some cases scanning from the original snapshot print, if it’s not too far gone, may be a better strategy for such uses.