Part 3 of my adventures with cross processing Fuji Reala 500D cinema film stock.
One of the problems that I've encountered with using this film was the hit or miss nature of scanning the film. Sometimes it'd turn out great, but most times not. In fact, they turned out greenish-blue. Not very ideal. A lot of post processing color correction was needed and I felt that really destroyed the character of the film.
This would not work.
By chance I had stumbled upon a YouTube video by Michael Fraser entitled How to Get Good Colour from Colour Negative Film Scans. It's a lengthy video, but worth the watch. The key takeaway from the video was:
Use the scanning software (VueScan) to scan the negative as a raw image and then use ColorPerfect to correctly reverse the negative back into a positive image with the correct color profile applied.
This was a game changer for me.
Leica M6 TTL, Summilux 50mm ASPH lens, Fuji Reala 500D film @ ISO 500, C41+1.R500D developed
CF Systems Color Perfect was a life saver! This was the missing link. My old scanning software had a plethora of film profiles to provide corrections, but they were mostly standard films. Color Perfect had a profile for Fuji Reala 500D! And it works!
So now I have modified my workflow to:
Scan the negative as a 48-bit raw image to capture as much detail in the negative as possible
Import the raw .tiff file into Lightroom
Edit the original image in Photoshop, apply the Color Perfect correction, and save
Continue edit workflow as needed
For the most part, the corrected images need very little editing. Whatever additional edits I do are usually stylizations such as deepening the blacks or slight tweaks to the color balance since the film is balanced around 5400K.
Leica M6 TTL, Summicron 28mm ASPH lens, Fuji Reala 500D film @ ISO 500, C41+1.R500D developed
Currently I have shot through 15 rolls of Reala 500D and I already love this film! I look forward to shooting more with it in the future!
Leica M6 TTL, Summilux 50mm ASPH lens, Fuji Reala 500D film @ ISO 500, C41+1.R500D developed
Leica M6 TTL, Summilux 50mm ASPH lens, Fuji Reala 500D film @ ISO 500, C41+1.R500D developed
Leica M6 TTL, Zeiss Biogon 35mm f/2 ZM lens, Fuji Reala 500D film @ ISO 500, C41+1.R500D developed
Leica M6 TTL, Summilux 50mm ASPH lens, Fuji Reala 500D film @ ISO 500, C41+1.R500D developed
Leica M6 TTL, Zeiss Biogon 35mm f/2 ZM lens, Fuji Reala 500D film @ ISO 500, C41+1.R500D developed