Redscale the Post-Pro Way

Wild Grasses. Canon PowerShot SD780 IS.
Full-color image, post-processed.

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Rescale Pansies

Redscale Pansies. Nikon N80, Kodak Gold 200, rated at ISO 100.

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Rollin’ Some Redscale...

I’m going through another film phase it seems. It was probably spawned by the recent news that Kodak will be emerging from bankruptcy protection in September as only a fraction of its former self, sans its film and paper division. So, get your Kodak film that’s actually made by Kodak while supplies last.

Speaking of film, I found two rolls of very expired Kodak Gold 400, which is perfect for making redscale film. So, I decided to respool them using my favorite technique.

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D90 Redscale Revisited

Encouraged by the results with the X10, I set out to attempt the same Redscale effect with the D90. And while it’s entirely possible to achieve a similar effect with a 10,000K white balance on the D90, the results are not nearly as pleasing.

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Redscale in the City

Well, the X10 looked like it had redscale potential in my initial tests. Then I brought it into the City. At night. In Times Square. Wow.

That the X10 was able to capture some remnants of color in its fiery orange images was a pleasant surprise. it's one of the things that make film redscale photography compelling. But I had no idea this would happen...

As it is, the Fujifilm X10 responds differently than you’d think to various colors and light sources, most notably deep, saturated blues and cyans. It’s a striking contrast to the yellows and oranges in the rest of the image.

Reds often turn magenta, adding yet another dynamic. But the results vary widely from scene to scene, making for some enjoyable shooting:

Redscaling the X10

White balance works a little differently on the Fujifilm X10 than it does on the D90. Once you set it, you can push it further with the WB Shift.

If you set the D90 to 10,000K then start playing around with the WB Trim, it can drop down below 10,000K. On the X10, any adjustment you make seems to be in addition to the overall setting, which makes for some interesting possibilities. Like Redscaling simulation.

Set the Kelvin WB to 10,000K, then set the WB shift to +9 (red) and -9 (yellow). (the WB is still indicated as 10,000K) then, set the film simulation to Velvia, and bring the color saturation all the way up. You can also play around with sharpness and contrast.

In-Camera Redscale Effect with the Fujifilm X10

The results are some interesting redscale simulations, better than I can get with the D90 using an orange filter. Unlike using a filter alone, more color separation information is captured, making for a more faithful redscale effect. you get nice greens, and the reds pop from the oranges. The highlights turn to a bright greenish yellow just as with film.

The really cool thing is you can set this all up in one of the two custom presets, so you can switch over anytime. Minor post-processing gets you very close to the effect you get with film.

Just another cool thing about the X10.

What Digital Can’t Do, Part One: Redscale

From the moment I learned about redscale, I was intrigued by the simple ingenuity of using the film base itself as a filter by loading it into the camera with the emulsion facing backwards. With the appropriate subject matter, the aesthetic could be quite compelling, and it seemed a wonderful reason to continue shooting with film.

But curiosity got the better of me, and when I accidentally used a Cokin Orange #A002 filter, (which I usually reserve for adding contrast to black and white images) on a color image, I noticed a similarity. So now I’m on a quest to find a way to shoot redscale with a digital camera. And the orange filter gets me in the ballpark.

Digital image captured through an orange filter; first attempt at digital redscale.

The results vary widely depending on the white balance, exposure, and the camera’s contrast, hue, and saturation settings. So, with an orange filter installed, I can get many different effects. An incandescent white balance, somewhere at the low end around 3500K, yields a shapely, “colorful’ image comprised of browns, reds, oranges and yellow-greens. A white balance towards the high end of 6,000K, such as flash, yields a saturated, relatively monochromatic image comprised of reds, oranges and yellows. The results can be quite unpredictable, not unlike redscale film, but they can also be quite controllable as well. For example, I might shoot a cityscape at 2500K to get as much shape and color variation as possible, while a sunset would look spectacular at 5500K, where it would display an intensely saturated collection of reds, oranges and yellows.

The first thing I noticed about my attempt was that it was a lot brighter and a lot cleaner. Despite using an orange filter, the neutral highlights were yellow, just like rescale film. But I also learned that using active D-Lighting was a no-no. It lightened the shadows, and forced browns to become a bright, saturated, shapeless red. So there is much work ahead to perfect the technique.

Could I make the image look like redscale using Photoshop? Pretty much. I’ve already created an action to convert a regular image to “redscale” using the channel mixer. But I really want to try to get it as close as possible without any post processing.

Do I think it will ever faithfully reproduce the effect captured on redscale film? No. Can it capture the overall feeling of a redscale film image? Maybe. Is it worth pursuing as a creative form of digital photography? Definitely.

Will I continue to roll my own redscale and perfect the technique on film?
Absolutely. And here’s why…

   

Kodak Gold 200 rated at ISO 100, redscaled.

To be fair, these images are a bit underexposed despite rating the ISO 200 film at 100. Next time I think I’ll keep the same rating, but open up a stop. The digital image on the other hand used used active D-Lighting, so it’s not a good example either. But, I think there’s potential.

Incidently, the square format image was photographed with the Nikkor 16-85mm f3.5 (a DX lens) on the N80 body. As you can see, if you crop it for a square format, it removes the vignetting and works just fine. So, it makes a nice, super-wide lens for my Nikon film body. I could also have cropped it for a 16mm x 24mm frame size, which also would have eliminated the vignetting and given me a landscape format.