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How To

Colors of cross-processing.

Colors of cross-process #2 (Velvia 100F)

Colors of cross-process #6 (Provia 100F)

Colors of cross-process #7 (Provia 400X)

Colors of cross-process #9 (64T Type II)

By Siim Vahur

17 Nov 2008

Here are many story's about cross-processing - what it is and how its done and I'm not going to re-write it. For the basics you can read from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_processing . Practically I have tried many different color-reversal films in different time and weather and light, but every time I want something to cross, I just can't remember, what kind of result - color shifts, contrast, size of grain etc. - I got witch kind of film. So I made my self kind of experimental worksheet of colors and contrast with different types of E-6 film. Fuji in this time.

Notes I've written down:

Sensia is sensitive (ISO100). Don't underexpose it ever. Or you got just deep red pictures without any kind of half-tones.

Sensia 200 looks like old-school color-film and got minimal cross effect. (Quite similar to Provia 400X.)

Sensia 400 - green, green, green, brownish, green. Tones are like rough version of Velvia 50, but softer than 64T II.

64T II got most high contrast and blue-yellow tones. (Interesting, that crossed 64T II have no tungsten-film effect in crossing - indoor pictures are really yellow ones.)

Both Provia's needs 1-2 stops overexpose and got extremely high contrast. 64T needs 1/2 overexpose, but only in tungsten light.

It is interesting, that two pairs of Fuji's ISO100 color-reversal films are quite similar. Velvia and Sensia have burning orange and pink look, but Provia (witch is the most blueish film in this line-up with it's boring simple tungsten-in-daylight look) and Astia (a bit more greenish, reminds overexposed Velvia 50) got deep underwater tones.

Underexposed Astia (in daylight) is quite gray.

My favorites are mad orange Velvia, a bit pink'n'purple Sensia (both ISO 100 variants) and minimalistic, almost monochrome Velvia (ISO50) and Astia. And 64T in daylight. In my opinion, Provia's are boring.

It was fun to test them and maybe someone find's it useful. And have nice try.

So here are some samples - no correction, no after-manipulations.

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