Fountain Hills, Arizona (Ektachrome Infrared, 1982)

[lonesome_dave]

Here's a few more color IR pics from the film era.

 

These were all shot on Kodak Ektachrome Infrared film with a Rollei 35S rangefinder camera. That little camera made a great sidekick to the usual bulky SLR setup. The lens accepted 30.5mm filters of which I used the #9 (yellow) and #21 (orange) filters here.

 

These photos are from the annual Spring Arts & Craft Festival held every year around this time in Fountain Hills, Arizona. All of these shots feature the signature fountain that this community was built around just northeast of Phoenix. It was the highest fountain in the world from 1970 when it was created until 1985 when a larger one in Saudi Arabia was completed. It usually runs every day for the first 15 minutes of each hour from 9AM to 9PM.

 

First pic is with the #9 yellow filter.

 

The #21 orange filter was used for the next two.

 

 

 

Finally, here's a pic from 1985 of the same event that shows what happens when the wrong processing was used on this film. 

 

 

I'm not sure but I think they used C-41 (color negative) processing here. This version of the film required E-4 processing which was only available at a limited number of labs. (Later on in the 1990s a version was released which could use the common E-6 process.)

 

Much easier to fix digital processing mistakes these days than the chemical blunders of the film era.

[Andrea B.]

Dave, these are fascinating IR photos. I love old photos of any kind, but old IR is special. I get "lost" while looking at them.

 

Of course I was alive during that time, but 80s photos seem so strange somehow. I suppose because we experience actual change so gradually. 

 

Interesting too about the processing requirement.

 

I highlighted the film type and the camera. Do you still have that old Rollei 35GS? It was like a point-n-shoot of those days, yes?

 

I added a film tag too.

Thanks for posting!

[Andrea B.]

Found this interesting write-up abut Rollei 35s:

https://www.35mmc.com/29/03/2021/rollei-35-my-experiences-with-and-love-for-these-little-cameras/

 

Not sure if those are like the one you had.

[lonesome_dave]

Hah. Thanks Andrea for that link about the Rollei 35 cameras. That little black 35S is the reason I was able to take so many IR photos back in the day as it was so compact I would carry it as an accessory to the Pentax 6x7 kit. I made all the filters myself using Kodak gelatin mounted in 30.5mm UV blocking filters. Unfortunately it got left in a rental car in the 1990s and I never got it back.

(I corrected the model above as Rollei 35S (not GS). I was conflating the model number with the old Yashica Electro 35GS camera I used in the 1970s.)

[Chris Barne]

Goodness, you would definitely need something like the Rollei 35S as a backup carrying around a Pentax 6x7 kit! I carry my Mamiya 645 Super and an Olympus Pen EE and get tired out, let alone the beast that the 6x7 is!

 

These photos are great and I'm adding it to the mental image I have of how EIR appeared. I've been hard at work on a digital emulation using some other users work as a starting point, but there are some things, like the light blooming around the trees that just can't be carried over without some work.

[lonesome_dave]

Welcome to the forum Chris. You're taking up a very popular pursuit here on UVP!

Yeah the blooming is a feature of all films to some extent but not nearly as much evident here on EIR as it was on HIE, the black & white Kodak IR film. In many ways B&W digital IR is a more accurate rendition but not nearly as artsy as a film with extreme light halation like HIE.

[Chris Barne]

18 hours ago, lonesome_dave said:

Welcome to the forum Chris. You're taking up a very popular pursuit here on UVP!

Yeah the blooming is a feature of all films to some extent but not nearly as much evident here on EIR as it was on HIE, the black & white Kodak IR film. In many ways B&W digital IR is a more accurate rendition but not nearly as artsy as a film with extreme light halation like HIE.

Thank you for the welcome!

 

It does seem like there are literally dozens of us trying to make a working solution for digital. Meanwhile kolari chrome sells "red tree filters" like hotcakes... I'm hoping to take my full spectrum to Corfu next month so maybe I can get some nice sun and palm trees like you have here!

 

I think that something else may have happened with that very green shot by the way, apparently E4 films showed extreme reticulation if they were cross processed in C41 as the first stage of E4 processing was a hardening chemical to make the emulsion more resistant to heat. 

 

EDIT - Never mind I just saw you mentioned 1982 in the title, so this would be E6? It really is bizarre, parts of the film are positive and some are negative. I think you're right - this has been processed as a negative, and the thing that can happen with slide film on bright light points has happened on the balloon and people's backs.  It's like the inverse of the effect you get when you catch a flash in a reflection on instant film.

[OlDoinyo]

HIE lacked any antihalation dye in the plastic film base; coupled with the natural tendency of IR to find its way into tight spaces, this explained the strong halation observed with it. As it was originally sold for medical diagnostic use, the antihalation properties were not deemed necessary. One of the Efke IR films (Aura) also had no antihalation measures. The infrared Ektachromes did not have this property, nor do the few IR-sensitive emulsions still available.

 

These last films were an implementation of IRG cross-sampling, wherein red represents infrared, green represents red, and blue represents green. The closest digital equivalents are those that also follow this recipe, but require more complex acquisition or post-processing strategies to achieve. A rival image type, IGB, looks somewhat similar but can be produced directly in-camera with the right filter (such as what Kolari is selling.) In this latter paradigm, the green and blue output channels are not cross-sampled and infrared is substituted for red.

[Chris Barne]

I'm familiar with the digital methods, I've been filter stacking and channel swapping for months at this point. I find it interesting the variety of methods people use to get to similar results. 

 

I imagine that the halations of HIE are not perfectly able to be replicated, but could closely emulated in Photoshop or another editor in a fairly non-trivial way. I did see someone take a very fine grit sandpaper to the back of a fungus-y lens to try to get the effect... You wouldn't catch me doing that, even if the lens did have fungal growth!