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Color film works the same way, actually. Color film is "just" made up of three layers of monochromatic film, stacked on top of each other. There are color filte

Color film works the same way, actually. Color film is "just" made up of three layers of monochromatic film, stacked on top of each other. There are color filters between each layer to filter the light. With color positive film, these layers are removed during processing. If you have a knife, you can scrape off the color layers in order. Starting from the emulsion side (the side which is less shiny), you'll scrape of the magenta layer first, then the yellow, and you'll be left with cyan on the bottom. It's always in this order, due to the physics of how film works.

datameta 5y ago
Why is this the order it must be in? The order of wavelengths of light passing would be: green -> blue -> red ? Doesn't make intuitive sense to me. Can you explain?
- Finnucane 5y ago
  According to ‘Making Kodak Film’ by Robert Shanebrook, the blue emulsion layers were on top, the red layers on the bottom (the acetate side), and the green in the middle. There was a yellow filter layer under the blue emulsion. All of the various layers of chemistry were applied to the acetate backing in one pass.
- klodolph 5y ago
  Yeah, sorry, I mixed it up. It's been a while since I've actually done this. You scrape off yellow first (leaving blue), then magenta (leaving cyan), and finally cyan.
paulmd 5y ago
Color film is similar to the Foveon sensors I was talking about, since it’s actually three different emulsions stacked on top of each other, while most digital sensors are actually monochrome with a color filter (just all color filters tiled on a single piece of film rather than three separate strips like Technicolor). Although fun fact some of the early Minolta digital SLRs (“RD-100”?) actually did have three separate sensors, and also interestingly they used telecompressors to “resize” the image down to the smaller sensor so that the lenses effective focal length didn’t get super long on the tiny sensors they could cost-effectively produce in 1993. And this also somewhat mitigated the loss of light from having to split the light across multiple sensors.

datameta 5y ago

Why is this the order it must be in? The order of wavelengths of light passing would be: green -> blue -> red ? Doesn't make intuitive sense to me. Can you explain?

Finnucane 5y ago
According to ‘Making Kodak Film’ by Robert Shanebrook, the blue emulsion layers were on top, the red layers on the bottom (the acetate side), and the green in the middle. There was a yellow filter layer under the blue emulsion. All of the various layers of chemistry were applied to the acetate backing in one pass.
klodolph 5y ago
Yeah, sorry, I mixed it up. It's been a while since I've actually done this. You scrape off yellow first (leaving blue), then magenta (leaving cyan), and finally cyan.

paulmd 5y ago

Color film is similar to the Foveon sensors I was talking about, since it’s actually three different emulsions stacked on top of each other, while most digital sensors are actually monochrome with a color filter (just all color filters tiled on a single piece of film rather than three separate strips like Technicolor). Although fun fact some of the early Minolta digital SLRs (“RD-100”?) actually did have three separate sensors, and also interestingly they used telecompressors to “resize” the image down to the smaller sensor so that the lenses effective focal length didn’t get super long on the tiny sensors they could cost-effectively produce in 1993. And this also somewhat mitigated the loss of light from having to split the light across multiple sensors.