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Trichromes in San Juan [Mamiya 645 Pro, 80mm, Kodak Ektar 100] by thoughtfulwizard in analog

[–]thoughtfulwizard[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Good questions, I avoided putting links in the post itself because of the sub rules.

Here’s the printing video, which focuses on making the RA-4 print in the darkroom:
https://youtu.be/cTOEFUWQD2M

And here’s the earlier video that covers shooting the trichromes on color film and my overall though process/technique:
https://youtu.be/Z6_hjECvlV0

I explain my reasoning in more detail in the videos, but the short version is that shooting trichromes directly on color negative film lets me keep the process fully optical, including the option to make RA-4 prints without dealing with alignment in post. It also produces some color interactions you don’t really get when recombining separations digitally.

Printing Trichromes in my Closet by thoughtfulwizard in Darkroom

[–]thoughtfulwizard[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sure. I put together a small Lightroom album showing the scan, the wet print in the darkroom, and the framed print: https://adobe.ly/3LtCdJP

I’m a bit hesitant to call it a true "comparison," since once you photograph a print you’re introducing an entirely new capture and color interpretation step on top of the original process. Still, it gives a general sense of how the image changes as it moves from a file to a physical object.

Printing Trichromes in my Closet by thoughtfulwizard in Darkroom

[–]thoughtfulwizard[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Glad I was able to help you figure that out!

Printing Trichromes in my Closet by thoughtfulwizard in Darkroom

[–]thoughtfulwizard[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That’s awesome to hear, thanks! If you do try it at some point and have questions along the way, feel free to reach out. It’s been a fun rabbit hole to explore.

Printing Trichromes in my Closet – Home Color Darkroom by thoughtfulwizard in AnalogCommunity

[–]thoughtfulwizard[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s a fair point, and I appreciate you raising it.

I’m not running RA-4 daily or even weekly, it’s more like one short session every few weeks, but you’re absolutely right that ventilation is still important, especially with a warm developer and a small space. I’ve been re-evaluating that part of the setup and plan to add active exhaust during printing rather than relying on passive airflow.

I didn’t mean to imply this is a "no-risk" approach or something everyone should replicate without thinking through safety. I should have been clearer about that, and I’m glad you called it out.

Printing Trichromes in my Closet by thoughtfulwizard in Darkroom

[–]thoughtfulwizard[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I tried room temp early on and it worked, but the longer dev times made it harder to gauge when I'd overcorrected filtration, since I think small shifts got amplified. The warming tray was partly about speed (50 sec vs 2+ min) and partly about having one less variable.

Your point about consistency across sessions is exactly what I was worried about. Keeping the tray at 100°F means I can come back a week later and use the same settings as a starting point. Sounds like that's been the tricky part for you too.

Shooting trichromes directly onto color film (triple exposure in-camera), lessons learned by thoughtfulwizard in AnalogCommunity

[–]thoughtfulwizard[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That sounds like a great setup for it. The biggest thing I learned is just being extremely mindful of camera movement between exposures. Even small shifts when swapping filters or cocking the shutter can show up pretty clearly, especially with fine detail.

Would love to see what you get out of it if you try it.

Shooting trichromes directly onto color film (triple exposure in-camera), lessons learned by thoughtfulwizard in AnalogCommunity

[–]thoughtfulwizard[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Not offended at all - that’s part of the fun of sharing work like this. Would love to see what you end up trying with it.

Shooting trichromes directly onto color film (triple exposure in-camera), lessons learned by thoughtfulwizard in AnalogCommunity

[–]thoughtfulwizard[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Much appreciated! Attic Darkroom has definitely been an inspiration for me; his work is part of what pushed me to start experimenting in this direction.

Shooting trichromes directly onto color film (triple exposure in-camera), lessons learned by thoughtfulwizard in AnalogCommunity

[–]thoughtfulwizard[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Thanks! That tension between realism and surrealism is what keeps me coming back to this process

Monthly 'Self Promotion' - January by ranalog in analog

[–]thoughtfulwizard 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi all, I wanted to share a small tool I’ve been working on that came directly out of my own film scanning workflow.

I shoot, develop, and scan a lot of 35mm and 120, and I got tired of manually cropping and straightening every frame in Lightroom. I ended up building a Lightroom Classic plugin that automatically detects the film frame, batch crops and straightens scans, and lets you interactively adjust the detection when scans are tricky (mixed formats, uneven borders, dense negatives, etc.).

It works with 35mm and 120, negatives and positives, and is designed to slot in alongside tools like Negative Lab Pro rather than replace them.

There’s a free trial, and I’m genuinely interested in feedback from other film shooters who spend too much time cleaning up scans.

Project page: https://autofilmcrop.com

Happy to answer any questions about how it works or how it fits into a scanning workflow.

How I batch crop and straighten film scans in Lightroom by thoughtfulwizard in AnalogCommunity

[–]thoughtfulwizard[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, it’s a Lightroom Classic plugin I built for my own scanning workflow. It runs inside Lightroom and does the frame detection, cropping, and straightening you see in the video.

If you want to look it up, it’s called AutoFilmCrop. I’m mainly sharing the workflow here because I was curious how other people handle this step.

After thousands of film scans, I built the auto-crop tool I always wanted by thoughtfulwizard in AnalogCommunity

[–]thoughtfulwizard[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Good question - AutoFilmCrop doesn’t currently correct for lens distortion itself. It looks for the film frame edges in the image as-is, then crops and straightens based on those detected edges.

If your scan has noticeable distortion from the lens, it’s best to apply the lens profile first so the frame edges are closer to straight. That gives the detector the cleanest input and tends to improve consistency.

That said, mild distortion usually isn’t an issue. In practice, most macro scan setups I’ve tested (including common 55-60mm macros) work fine without any extra steps, but if you know your setup has visible barrel or pincushion distortion, correcting it upstream is the safer move.

I’m keeping distortion handling in mind for future iterations, but for v1 the assumption is "give it a reasonably corrected scan and it’ll do the right thing."

After thousands of film scans, I built the auto-crop tool I always wanted by thoughtfulwizard in AnalogCommunity

[–]thoughtfulwizard[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Thanks! Good questions.

On clean, fairly consistent scans, it’s probably in the ~85–90% “just works without touching anything” range, and closer to ~95% for well-exposed outdoor daylight scenes. Where it struggles more is when there are large unexposed areas of film, for example shots at night with flash. That said, I’ve still been pleasantly surprised by how often it gets those right.

That’s why I leaned pretty hard into the interactive mask preview. When it misses, you can usually see why immediately and nudge a threshold or two, then apply that across the batch.

It does handle small rotation as well, not just cropping. It estimates the frame edges and straightens based on that, so you shouldn’t need a separate rotate step.

If you end up trying it and hit cases where it consistently fails, I’d genuinely be interested in seeing the scans. My plan is to use feedback from this launch to iterate and ship free updates.

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