The directional arrangement of the illumination plays an important role on image contrast and sharpness of silver-based photographic film. This paper explores how the directional arrangement of light (directed or diffuse) affects cinematographic colors. The experimental results show that a consistent color difference can be observed between the image projected on screen (directed illumination) and the image acquired with a scanner (diffuse illumination), no matter how well the scanner is calibrated. This fact has to be properly considered in film scanning and color correction; otherwise early color films can be notably distorted during the digitization process.