how are the 2 prints you have of empire not faded
They are faded. Badly faded - they would look completely red with no color at all if projected. The scanning process is able to recover the color information by scanning at a high bit rate. Standard consumer bitrate is 8bits per color channel, whereas film scanners can scan at higher bitrates. For example, when I finally get around to having BATB scanned I have the option of having it scanned at 10-bit or at 12-bit, but as BATB is not faded 10-bit is fine. I’m not sure what bitrate poita has scanned these at, but it could be as high as 16bits per channel.
As for the “un-faded Australian print” I have no idea how it’s possible - my guess is it might have been struck much later for example in 1983 or something; or it could be a pre-release print made a year earlier than the release prints, or there could be some other reason.
I will be happy to make some kind of contribution to help see this project to its conclusion. These rare Empire materials are endangered and time is clearly of the essence so maybe someone needs to be more aggressive about passing the hat around.
Hi Shuggy, use poita’s paypal.me link - I’m sure he’ll appreciate it!
Who’s ready to chip in? Can we get a show of hands?
It’s unlikely, lol. Just because you don’t see people put up their hands doesn’t mean stuff isn’t happening - I just made a contribution to something else behind the scenes, and I have to start prioritising my own projects now.