Fuji-kodak comparison

[marcshap]

What fuji stock closley resembles the kodak 320t 5277 ??? I am trying to find a similer look on a fuji stock.

 

Thanks

Marc

[David Mullen ASC]

Fuji F-400T is the closest to the low-con look of 5277 but Fuji F-250T is probably closest to the graininess of 5277. I'd probably either overexpose and print down F-400T to match or overexpose and pull-process F-250T to lower the contrast.

[Jarin Blaschke]

I'm actually beginning a project with the 250T in a week and a half. Is it really that grainy? Yikes. I'll be rating it at 125 or maybe at 160. There are some scenes I'll push it 1 for the contrast and the grain, but I'd like the remainder to look clean and rich. I chose Fuji for it's saturation in the blues, and figured the grain would be somewhere between '93 and '74, hopefully more toward the latter. How accurate is that? Fortunately we're shooting 35mm. Any further comments, anyone? David?

[Adam Frisch FSF]

Grainy? Up until 6 months ago when Kodak came with the Vision 2's,

nobody could claim that Fuji was grainier than Kodak. Now all of a sudden

6 months later Fuji is unusable? It's ludicrous. Who makes up all these

"thruths"?

[David Mullen ASC]

I didn't say that F-250T was a grainy stock, only that the grain is similar to 5277 Vision 320T, which is not a grainy stock either. However, it is lower in contrast than F-250T, so the grain can seem more visible because of the increased areas of midtones compared to a more contrasty stock.

 

Anyway, I shot most of "Twin Falls Idaho" on F-250T and F-250D rated at 160 ASA and it seemed pretty fine-grained.

[John Pytlak RIP]

The significant grain and sharpness improvements in the Kodak VISION2 films have "raised the bar" on quality. But Kodak continues to offer a wide variety of products using the older VISION and EXR technologies as well:

 

http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/products...0.1.4.4.4&lc=en

[David Mullen ASC]

I'd say that the stock that Fuji F-250T most resembles is Kodak EXR 200T 5293.

[John Pytlak RIP]

EASTMAN EXR 200T Color Negative Film 5293 was introduced in 1992, so its technology is over a decade old.

[Jarin Blaschke]

I never said that it was unusable. I'm a big fan of '93, actually, and have always shot it in 35mm instead of '74. I think my reaction to the '77 comment was from my 16mm experience with the stock, where the low contrast and the blank walls I was shooting really pronounced the grain, even rating it at 160.

 

David, it seems you've shot a fair amount of Fuji. Has this usually been due to budgetary reasons?

[David Mullen ASC]

Yes and no. I'd rather shoot the specific Fuji films I want than be told "here's some Kodak stock we got for cheap that you have to use". For example, I'd rather shoot F-500T than EXR 500T.

 

Use of Fuji was very deliberate on the two Polish Brothers films I shot, particularly on "Northfork" where I wanted to use the low-con F-400T (although I didn't use it as much as I thought I would.)

 

But on this current film, I went back and forth on the Fuji-Kodak question until I finally decided I wanted to use the new Vision-2 stocks, which I then tested -- only to be asked just before we started filming to switch to Fuji because they needed to find a way to cut the budget down. Which sucked only in that I had just tested Kodak and liked the results for this project. In the future I will be less accomodating to last-minute switches like that, unless I am allowed time to retest the alternative choice. Mainly I wanted enough 5218 because it pushes well one-stop and I have some low-light situations. Now I've only been allotted enough 5218 for two scenes and have already used it for one of them. Monday is the other scene, a bar with lots of dim blue neon and fluorescent ambience that I don't want to lose by lighting up the room too much.

 

Kodak stocks are great and perfect technically; Fuji stocks are a little softer but nearly the same in graininess, but I find that they retain the "texture" of classic film stocks. But the main reason I use Fuji is that it is a more subtle visual statement than shooting with a particular filter or usual processing. The film has a "look" but it's hard to put your finger on it because you are used to the standard Kodak Vision look these days (i.e. most people have been shooting '79 for awhile.)

 

Look at Kaminski, who shot "The Terminal" on 5293, even though this meant lighting that huge set to enough of a stop in order to use an 85 filter for many scenes. He could have gotten "better" results with 5218 (similar or less grain) and made life easier on himself but clearly he preferred the texture of 5293.

[Jarin Blaschke]

Did you use the F-400 on Northfork because of the silver-retention process? Why did you prefer it over 5277? Did you flash or pull the F-250 stocks when not using the F-400? Did you ever flash the F-400? That was only a skip-bleach to the print, right? How close does the video version of the film come to the look of the print?

 

Thanks,

Jarin

[David Mullen ASC]

F-400T is even lower in contrast than 5277. I flashed the F-400T and flashed the F-125T even more to try and match them. I also used heavier diffusion on the F-125T shots. The prints used a full skip-bleach. The home video transfer was from a normal IP and we digitally simulated the skip-bleach look.