film stocks

[freddie bonfanti]

hi all,

 

sometimes i hear people talking about the image they see on the screen as thin or dense, saying that its a particular kind of stock. is thin therefore that crisp and sharp quality of fast films rated at 800 and dense the heavier and less detailed look of slower stocks like 50?

 

thanks

 

freddy bonfanti

[John Pytlak RIP]

hi all,

 

sometimes i hear people talking about the image they see on the screen as thin or dense, saying that its a particular kind of stock. is thin therefore that crisp and sharp quality of fast films rated at 800 and dense the heavier and less detailed look of slower stocks like 50?

 

thanks

 

freddy bonfanti

 

The "look" of the films in the Kodak VISION2 family is designed to be similar, so they intercut well. Faster films generally have more graininess than slower films. Of course, some films are designed for a different "look" such as the lower contrast and saturation of the Kodak VISION2 Expression 500T Color Negative Film 5229/7229:

 

http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/products....4.4.4.14&lc=en

[David Mullen ASC]

Density is controlled by exposure and development, and in a print, by the d-max of the stock and the printer lights used. This holds just as true for slow or fast film -- you can make a slow-film look "thin" through underexposure and printing at low numbers. Or you can do it to fast film.

 

There are a few "low-con" negative stocks like Expression 500T and Fuji F-400T which have "smokier" blacks and less contrast overall.

 

And the older EXR line of stocks had more contrast than the newest Vision-2 line, so you may have felt that a movie that used EXR 100T for exteriors but a Vision-2 500T for interiors had a mismatch in contrast (but now the EXR stocks are almost all gone.)