7219 vs 7207

Matt Iacono · January 27

Hello, I am wondering if anyone can explain what the differences are between 500T/7219 and 250D/7207 film stocks? I know 500T is the speed and tungsten rating and 250D is the speed and daylight rating, but I'm curious how the dynamic range differs between the two stocks. Does one have more range in the highlights or shadows than the other? And does one have more grain than the other? Any info would be greatly appreciated as I couldn't find any comparisons online! Thank you!

David Sekanina · January 27

You can download the technical datasheets from Kodak's website.

https://www.kodak.com/en/motion/products/camera-films

Robert Houllahan · January 27

The Vision3 stocks are designed to be inter-mixed so they all have similar grain and base character, I have found they can be inter-mixed in scanning without having to do a base re-calibration between stock.

Similar when printing them to film a one light can be pretty good with mixed V3 stocks, scene and lighting dependent of course.

Robin Phillips · January 27

main difference beside color temp is that 7219 has more contrast to it

David Mullen ASC · January 28

I find the Vision-3 stocks to be quite well-matched, other than the 50D which is so fine-grained that it tends to stick out. The graininess is directly tied to speed, so 200T is slightly finer-grained than 250D but not by much. Plenty of movies have been shot in 35mm on 250D and 500T because they match fairly well -- for example, the three Batman movies shot by Wally Pfister for Christopher Nolan. Your eye tends to see the graininess in lower-contrast situations with lots of midtones, which is why often you want to shoot day scenes on slower-speed stock than night scenes.

Tyler Purcell · January 28

The big thing for me at least, is that 19' has much more dynamic range below middle gray than any of the other stocks. Honestly, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I do think 19' does have the most dynamic range of any color negative Kodak makes today.

I find myself able to push 19' much further in situations where lighting isn't optimal and still able to create detail.

The finer grain stocks, just don't have that same ability unfortunately. Sure, they'll retain highlights very well, but below middle gray, they just seem to be missing a few stops of latitude. They "fall off the cliff" so to speak after 3 stops under middle gray. You can almost get 5 stops of latitude below middle gray out of 19'. The other stocks appear to have all their latitude in the highlights, offering 8 or more stops above middle gray.

The only down side to 19' is that it's not great in daylight. The grain does tend to pop more and it's nice to use a finer grain daylight stock as much as possible whenever you can. I prefer 50D 7203 for broad daylight. I think the tighter grain just looks nicer, plus without filtration, it puts you at about F11 in broad daylight. With 250D, you're always having to filter for broad daylight. I carry a .9 and 1.2 around with me everywhere and sometimes need to use both with 250D, just to get in the stop range of the lens. So the added sensitivity, seems to be kinda wasted. 250D is great in sunset scenes, or shaded areas where you don't have any direct sunlight and are dealing with shadow. I used it quite a bit on my last shoot, where I had to deal with some extended sunrise scenes. (The beginning of this demo below)

Aapo Lettinen · January 28

one thing with tungsten stocks in daylight is that the dynamic range will suffer a lot if shooting them without in-camera 85 filter. without optical filtration you will overexpose the blue layer which reduces the dynamic range even if you compensate for it. Shooting for blue look is of course possible, then compensation not needed.

generally I prefer 250D for all uses which don't specifically need high speed tungsten balanced stock and which require more speed than 50D offers. The 250D tolerates longer storage (super important if making documentary style material or if shooting irregularly and / if shooting clearance/short end stock) and if shooting daylight balanced anyway the difference is quite small compared to 500T because the 500T needs either in-camera or post filtering to get correct balance and thus it is closer to like 320 ISO in speed when shooting in daylight which is not worth the extra effort most of the time unless really shooting at night and even the smallest speed difference matters. Pushing is another reason why 500T might be useful but with today's easy-to-manage led lighting it is less important in most shooting situations