Shooting night interiors with 50 ISO--how practical is it?

[Owen A. Davies]

I am shooting a short film on Super 16 this June. The entire thing will take place during the night, with 70% being interiors. Low-key, hard lighting, tungsten lighting, with plans for use of haze as well as lens diffusion. The film will be black and white, so naturally, the obvious instinct was to use Kodak's only black and white negative film, Eastman Double-X. However, after further review, I am beginning to have my doubts. 

In the lead up to the shoot, I have been reviewing a lot of 16mm work shot on 7222,  both on YouTube and Vimeo, and one aspect that is giving me a great deal of apprehension is the sheer level of granularity present in this stock at this format size. From much of what I have seen from the 7222, the grain is just far too intense for what I feel comfortable with, and I can see it being a big distraction in the frame. 

I had the idea of simply shooting on Kodak 7203 VISION3 50D and taking out the saturation in post. The downside to this is of course that we would lose two stops of exposure, and have to light night interiors for 50 ISO. More lights, brighter lights, hotter lights, more electricity, more output, higher budget. Whether or not this change is practical and worthwhile over something such as grain structure and granularity, I am not certain. 

I am unable to escape my feeling that the 7222’s grain is just way too overpowering, so I wanted to reach out for some advice regarding the extent to which shooting on a lower speed film stock will complicate things. Am I too in my head regarding 7222's grain? It should be noted that shooting the film on a larger format such as 35mm is out of the question for budgetary reasons, and I am also entirely opposed to using any kind of DNR in Resolve. 

Any input is appreciated. Thank you. 

[Brian Drysdale]

You can shoot at 50 ISO, it's night exteriors that would be an issue, but night interiors should be fine. I used to shoot commericals on 16mm with 50D stock, the lights are hotter, but the main issue in the US may be the power, since in the UK you can take approx 3k out of a mains socket. So, you may have to do a mains tie in for the power.

If you shoot at T2, it would be at the old 100 foot candles traditionally used on films shooting at 100 ASA at T2.8.

I've also shot with 40 ASA Kodachrome on 8mm with limited lighting facilities, so all things are possible.

 

[Aapo Lettinen]

I would either change the stock to tungsten balanced or change some of the lights to daylight balanced, nowadays usually led versions work fine.

if shooting daylight stock with tungsten lights you will lose light and raise grain levels on blue layer even if converting to b/w later. with the b/w conversion it would be possible to control the blue grain separately if needed to make it smoother looking but it is less optimal in any case compared to having balanced colour image to start with (instead of overwhelming oranges and reds and very underexposed blues). You would get unique grain structure though if shooting wrong color balance so might add to the look, dunno 🙂 

I have never liked the 7222 much, I used to shoot Orwo UN54 back when it was easily available. plus-x was great too. Fomapans can be very pleasing on 35mm but on s16 might be a tiny bit too much grain for this project if you are worried about grain levels.

Slow films like 50D are good if wanting to shoot eerie low grain look almost wide open. works great on switars and other old lenses at like 1.4 to 2 aperture. you don't necessarily need that much light if it is hard light, maybe keeping some of the tungstens with using some 1/2 ctb if needed and replacing some of them with led technology if needed

[Aapo Lettinen]

12 minutes ago, Aapo Lettinen said:

 

if shooting daylight stock with tungsten lights you will lose light and raise grain levels on blue layer even if converting to b/w later.

.......

Slow films like 50D are good if wanting to shoot eerie low grain look almost wide open. works great on switars and other old lenses at like 1.4 to 2 aperture. you don't necessarily need that much light if it is hard light, maybe keeping some of the tungstens with using some 1/2 ctb if needed and replacing some of them with led technology if needed

you would have slow film to begin with and then the tungsten balanced lights would underexpose the blue layer and overexpose the red layer so you would need to balance for that too. Maybe losing a overall of 3 or almost 4 stops compared to 7222 depending on taste and what tests show the results look like.

If wanting tungsten fixture - daylight mixture mix to save costs but still control the grain levels, I would probably use higher powered tungstens for hot areas which are supposed to be bright anyway and aim the cool daylight balanced lighting to shadow areas where I want to reduce grain. The highlights might burn a little bit easier if being tungsten balanced but if protecting them a little when exposing and adjusting the levels of those tungsten units (taking into account that they might look like a stop brighter than the meter shows, or a tiny bit more) then this approach could work pretty easily and you could expose the 50D as 50 ISO . I would rather want cool light in shadows and if there is tungsten light, have that tungsten in the mids and highs so that it does not mess the blue layer shadow grain too much.  If the smoke mixes these too much then correcting the exposure for something between the two.

Or if gelling the tungstens a little would probably not need any corrections. I think 1/2 ctb would work fine but you may need to shoot a test to check how they behave. it is possible that you like the look just by doing no corrections and underexposing blues + overexposing reds  could just work for the intended look when converted to b/w

Edited April 13 by Aapo Lettinen

[Tyler Purcell]

The reason why 500T is such a great stock for low light, is that they formulated it for DR under middle grey, the toe is much more refined for night work. The daylight stocks, 50D and 250D, just struggle a lot with below middle grey. You'll find it to be very difficult to retain much if any detail unless you over expose the highlights and shift the middle grey up a bit, almost like a pull process. 50D can take the over expose no problem, but it also means you need to light for 250 probably, that's about what I'd rate it at if you were attempting this. I generally over expose 50D outside to help retain blacks and 9 times out of 10, it works great. Film has such a great amount of highlight retention, you can't really screw it up too much unless you're dealing with direct sun or reflections of direct sun. 

Where I haven't shot a lot of 7222, I have scanned a bunch and I don't know why you think it's grainy. Maybe the films you've seen shot with it are older? 

[Owen A. Davies]

2 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

The reason why 500T is such a great stock for low light, is that they formulated it for DR under middle grey, the toe is much more refined for night work. The daylight stocks, 50D and 250D, just struggle a lot with below middle grey. You'll find it to be very difficult to retain much if any detail unless you over expose the highlights and shift the middle grey up a bit, almost like a pull process. 50D can take the over expose no problem, but it also means you need to light for 250 probably, that's about what I'd rate it at if you were attempting this. I generally over expose 50D outside to help retain blacks and 9 times out of 10, it works great. Film has such a great amount of highlight retention, you can't really screw it up too much unless you're dealing with direct sun or reflections of direct sun. 

Where I haven't shot a lot of 7222, I have scanned a bunch and I don't know why you think it's grainy. Maybe the films you've seen shot with it are older? 

It is definitely not the date in which they were shot. These are just three examples of shorts from the past five years that I found on YouTube. All of which were shot on 16mm with Kodak 7222. I think that ones personal preference and subjective opinions play an important role, but these three clips are prime examples of footage that has what I would consider to be a distracting level of grain. 

 

[Giray Izcan]

You could shoot 7219 or 7213 and overexpose and desaturate in post instead of dealing with 50ASA.

If you find 7213's grain too distracting, then you should re-evaluate your decision on shooting on 16.. 

Edited April 14 by Giray Izcan

[Tyler Purcell]

6 hours ago, Owen A. Davies said:

It is definitely not the date in which they were shot. These are just three examples of shorts from the past five years that I found on YouTube. All of which were shot on 16mm with Kodak 7222. I think that ones personal preference and subjective opinions play an important role, but these three clips are prime examples of footage that has what I would consider to be a distracting level of grain. 

Yea, the grain structure is challenging on YouTube, especially when you don't know the exposure or post process. I work with 7222 all the time on my own scanner and system, so I have a better understanding of how it compares to other stocks. I do find it to be pretty much in line with 250D in grain structure, but 50D is absolutely less grainy. However, you will have LESS black detail with 50D, it's a lost cause trying to get that detail, it just won't be there no matter what you do on set. Blacks are a big problem with these finer grain stocks, you have to light everything, you can't let anything just roll off, it will be unrecoverable. Fine for a film noir, but not for anything else.