Fascinating topic. Some posts mentioned CineStill’s upgraded light panel (CS-LITE+ Spectracolor). Does that light eliminate the need for a trichromatic workflow?
Welcome to the forum @Snappy-McSnapface
Using a trichromatic workflow is a choice rather than a consequence of lighting.
Trichromatic workflows can be regarded as a remnant of old times, when scanners were built with monochromatic sensors recording each image light by red, green and blue light respectively.
Using a trichromatic process (with monochromatic sensors) is one way to get colour into an image. Other ways of creating the perception of colours is e.g. the CMYK process of four colour printing. And last but not least, human colour vision developed with light that changed during the day, resulting in our eyes’ respective top sensitivities near blue, green and yellow.
So whatever model we use to produce images, the goal is an “image that looks as I want it”.
Current offerings tend to be continuous spectrum light and sensors that can separate colours. Other tech emerges as we talk and might provide results that we like better.
Lastly, the magic comes from our skills using the tools we can access. And maybe one process is easier to handle than an other. Or more flexible as found by the OP.
I went from the new CS-Lite+ to the big scanlight from jackW01. They are different approaches for capturing negatives. I have found that the CS-Lite+ works well with NLP and gives better color reproduction than their original light. But I would say the nice even light that the 95cri mode on the big scanlight can provide works really well with NLP. The single capture RGB mode not so much.
Trichromatic scanning is a different animal entirely.
This whole thing is very interesting. I’m thinking of experimenting a trichrome process with my monochrome camera at some point.
Guys… I can’t wait to get the Negative Lab Pro standalone version out… you are going to love it. There is so much that I am able to do with it (like proper RGB capture support, custom inversion color spaces, etc) that simply wasn’t technically feasible in Lightroom’s environment.
-Nate
Exciting stuff! Can’t wait to try it. I am glad you will be including RGB support. Does that mean only single capture or also trichrome?