Methods of affecting image tonality and saturation density in the E-6 development process

[Owen A. Davies]

You might remember last year when I started a topic with the hopes of identifying ways to achieve a photochemical look with modern film stocks which would be comparable to older Kodak motion picture stocks such as 5250 and 5251. Since then, I have grown a strong appreciation for Kodak's modern Ektachrome stock, and have had explored its use and limitations rather extensively. I'd like to explore the various ways in which one would go ab out manipulating the positive during the development process as a means to yield some kind of change in saturation density or tonality. 

It is without question that factors such as your optical pairing, production design, lighting setup, and numerous other subtleties all have a pronounced affect of how your final image is going to look. With that said, I am chiefly interested in further exploring the photochemical aspect associated with the image and the tonality of many older films. I come to appreciate the significance of the photochemical aspect in the time I have spent examining many older Kodachrome slides from around the 1960s era. These are images which were captured without any premeditation for aspects such as production design, wardrobe, incandescent lighting, or any kind of gaffing. The tonality of these slides is a product of the photochemical properties present in the film itself. 

Off the bat, I will be eliminating push processing as well as overdevelopment from the mix. Been there, done that. An overly dense white point, an overly dense black point, and the reduction of midtones work precisely in the opposite direction of what I hope to achieve. Another elimination is cross processing. I have found E-6 chemistry to undoubtedly be the most ideal way to achieve a more characteristic tonality from Kodak's modern 5294 Ektachrome. Both ECN-II as and C-41 crush the shadows, muddle the granularity, and back a heavy yellowish, greenish, brown into the image. 

From the research I've done, I've identified the following tweaks for E-6 film --- varying the formula or brand of developer, utilizing a higher dye yield developing agent, using a full strength developer for worker solution, utilizing a staining developer, varying the strength of your bleaches and/or fixers, using E-6 chemical additives or modifiers, choosing between acid fixer vs neutral fixer, and latensification. I have also become hyper aware of what an immense bearing the machine profile and calibration of the scan has on what kind of RAW file you are left with. I still need to do more research on digitization, IT8 targets, ICC profiles, and RGB light sources, but that's an exploration for another time. 

With the exclusion of push processing, pull processing, overdevelopment, underdevelopment, cross processing, and bleach bypass, what are some methods I could utilize to manipulate my positive in the E-6 development process to further yield saturation density and affect the final image's tonality?

Here are several examples of shots taken with Kodak's modern 5294 E100 Ektachrome as well as some (rather low fidelity) Kodak 5251 examples as stills from West Side Story 1961. Both manage to capture rather well the particular kind of tonality I associate with these older stocks.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/xoiy9veigjlk3mfnevpyf/AO9P3ubG5HPPHHU1U9z9WJU?rlkey=65elj2zg2xv02t4fj3zl92cyx&st=48d2u5op&dl=0

Edited November 13 by Owen A. Davies
Typo

[David Mullen ASC]

E6 reversal film has the gamma (contrast) of camera negative printed into a positive projection stock, as you'd expect - it's meant for direct display. So the main problem is that it has little latitude for color-correction compared to color negative film.  Given that challenge, the last thing I'd do is any processing that would add even more contrast.

Ektachrome 100 much finer-grained than 35mm motion picture negative stocks of the past but again, I wouldn't push it to add any grain.

[Owen A. Davies]

13 minutes ago, David Mullen ASC said:

E6 reversal film has the gamma (contrast) of camera negative printed into a positive projection stock, as you'd expect - it's meant for direct display. So the main problem is that it has little latitude for color-correction compared to color negative film.  Given that challenge, the last thing I'd do is any processing that would add even more contrast.

Ektachrome 100 much finer-grained than 35mm motion picture negative stocks of the past but again, I wouldn't push it to add any grain.

Gotcha. Definitely was not my plan to push the film in any shape or form. With that said, would you still rule out any other kind of processing modifications such as additive chemicals, staining developers, two-stage development, latensification, or higher dye yield color developers? Would they have that pronounced of an affect on the stock's latitude?

[August Strada]

Your initiative looks interesting. Think Ektachrome has really nice vintage colors. Regarding your reference images, it seems Dropbox has assigned the wrong profile to them (sRGB Black Scaled), which makes the reference images from the movie look way too dark and saturated. Looks like the original encoding shouldn't be anything like sRGB for them. But it's difficult to say which is the original encoding, probably some "log-ish" colorspace (or probably a DCI to HLG concatenation). Hard to say. But just as reference (from 4 different websites), the SDR video rendering of the movie would look something like this:

https://movie-screencaps.com/west-side-story-1961/page/1
http://allscreencaps.com/intro_img/8734/sort_2/index_0.html
https://film-grab.com/2023/04/26/west-side-story/
https://fancaps.net/movies/MovieImages.php?name=West_Side_Story_1961&movieid=662
 

Let's notice those are direct "screencaps" from the SDR video, this is Rec.709, to be seen on video monitors ( BT.1886 is like 2.4 gamma with a slight black offset). Hope it helps. 

 

 

 

[Robert Houllahan]

Ektachrome is run professionally in the Fuji Pro6 E6 chemistry these days as the Fuji chemistry is the only real E6 option currently.

There are several threads on places like Reddit about using a number of B&W developers as the first developer and ECN2 developer as the color developer.

As a lab we will only offer Pro6 to the exact control strip spec unless it is for a large order that wants to change something and I would guess that Andec in Berlin would be on the same page.