Midnight_Trooper said:

Thanks for posting those shots Mike. The desert shots are much warmer than would have expected.

Now the question is can the blu ray source be made to look anything like it?

Well the warmth issue is precisely why I wanted to see the images on vintage equipment. The print itself isn't necessarily as warm - the color temperature of the light source changes everything about the image. I wanted to see -as far as possible- what environment the filmmakers were judging color in. Older bulbs were warmer by nature than we're used to today. Our computer monitors have a far cooler white than projector bulbs from the 70's and 80's did - they were more yellow. But the coloring from those light sources is what was driving decisions in color timing. To my eye, the film is "too" yellow when viewed that way; but that eye has been tainted by 30+ years of getting used to increasingly cool/pure whites. If you compare the two shots below, all you're seeing is the difference between the warmer bulb of the 70's (top) and the average xenon bulb in projectors today (bottom).

I would be willing to bet that to most of us, the bottom image looks more correct, and the top polluted with reds, but the top image is actually how it appeared in theaters (more or less). In a projection environment, there is much more luminance in the image that can be captured by a camera, and our eyes white balance naturally, so it doesn't "feel" as red as it does in this comparison, but if you know the images well, you can't miss the prevailing warmth when seeing it projected. Most arresting is how warm the opening Tantive sequence is. The floor is basically tan throughout much of the sequence, instead of gray.

One thing I would like to put to bed, though: 3PO is not yellow. He's gold bordering on copper. The bright golden yellow he's morphed into over the years and in transfers is not representative of the costume.

_Mike