BW BLEACH BYPASS

[freddie bonfanti]

hi

 

which bw films were bleach bypassed or manipulated during the processing? i remember "la haine" but im sure theres plenty more

 

cheers

 

freddie

[Max Jacoby]

In color film silverhalides are coupled to color dyes. Once the dyes have formed an image, the silver halides are not needed anymore and are bleached out. In black and white films it is the silverhalides that form the image, ergo you cannot get rid of them because you'd also lose the image.

 

'La Haine' was shot on clor neg btw.

[freddie bonfanti]

what other manipulation can be done on bw negative then?

[Max Jacoby]

You can push the neg to get more contrast, grain and deper blacks. There is also one very nice high-con print stock that is normally used for titles. Printing on that gives you amazing contrast. Only drawback is that it only comes in 1000ft rolls and is very expensive.

[John Pytlak RIP]

Audiris is correct: "bleach bypass" leaves some or all of the silver that would be removed by the bleach in a COLOR image, where dyes normally form the image. Skipping the bleach in a B&W reversal process would yield opaque film:

 

http://www.kodak.com/US/plugins/acrobat/en...10.12&lc=en

[Brian Pritchard]

what other manipulation can be done on bw negative then?

Probably one of the few things you could do with B/W processing is to partially solarise the negative by exposing the film during developing. It is not very easy to do; you have to get the exposure correct.

 

I remember a long time ago I worked in a lab where we had a small window that could be uncovered in the developer lid so that we could control the exposure. I think we used various filters to vary the exposure.

 

Like all methods which affect the quality of the image you should think carefully before making irreversible changes to your valuable negative.

 

You can do the same with colour negative, provided you could persuade the lab to do it for you, at your risk of course, taking heed of the above warning.

Brian

[freddie bonfanti]

thanks all

 

 

coming from a still photography background always makes me wonder if i could do the same tricks in cinematography...a great technique i do for stills is TONING BW PRINTS with sepia, copper or blue color. i insert them into a bleach bath to make the bleach wash the whole image and then i transfer them into water and finally i slide them into a tray of toner solution until i get the look i want. the images look great, especially with the sepia toner. you get a rather melancholy look. would it be too complicated in cinematography?

[K Borowski]

Yes you could tone real B&W film. I'd recommend doing it with prints though rather than the OCN. I have no idea if any labs would do it, but it is possible to do yourself with some effort. I believe there were silent films toned back in the early days of filmmaking. Kodak also had tinted print stocks, a sepia, and a blue tinted film were used to show the difference between indoor and outdoor shots sometimes. Check out Kodak's History of Film chronology for more info.

 

Regards,

 

~Karl Borowski

[John Pytlak RIP]

Yes you could tone real B&W film. I'd recommend doing it with prints though rather than the OCN. I have no idea if any labs would do it, but it is possible to do yourself with some effort. I believe there were silent films toned back in the early days of filmmaking. Kodak also had tinted print stocks, a sepia, and a blue tinted film were used to show the difference between indoor and outdoor shots sometimes. Check out Kodak's History of Film chronology for more info.

 

Regards,

 

~Karl Borowski

 

Unlikely to get most labs to run a special B&W process for tinting or toning. Don't overlook printing your B&W negative onto color print stock, where you can deliberately obtain a slight color shift similar to toning. You could also print to a fairly neutral image, and flash to put some color into the highlights.

[K Borowski]

Unlikely to get most labs to run a special B&W process for tinting or toning. Don't overlook printing your B&W negative onto color print stock, where you can deliberately obtain a slight color shift similar to toning. You could also print to a fairly neutral image, and flash to put some color into the highlights.

 

Yes, you can print B&W neg with color filters onto print stock. Wasn't the B&W segment of "The Wizard of Oz" done this way (or the Technicolor Equivalent)?

[Leo Anthony Vale]

Yes, you can print B&W neg with color filters onto print stock. Wasn't the B&W segment of "The Wizard of Oz" done this way (or the Technicolor Equivalent)?

 

---No. It was printed on B/W pos and sepia toned. & on a seperate reel.

 

The heaven scenes in 'A Matter of Life and Death' were printed in Technicolr using either three dupe negs or two dupes and the original neg cut into the YCM. But then they weren't really toned.

 

You'll have to avoid I/B movies to come up with an example.

I'm not saying there aren't any.

 

---LV

[John Pytlak RIP]

---No. It was printed on B/W pos and sepia toned. & on a seperate reel.

 

The heaven scenes in 'A Matter of Life and Death' were printed in Technicolr using either three dupe negs or two dupes and the original neg cut into the YCM. But then they weren't really toned.

 

You'll have to avoid I/B movies to come up with an example.

I'm not saying there aren't any.

 

---LV

 

As I recall, the last dye-transfer release of Oz a decade ago had the sepia-toned B&W reels printed on Kodak color print film, and the color sections were dye transfer.

 

In modern theatres, intercutting silver image B&W and color stock is usually not a good idea, because some adjustment of focus is almost aways needed because silver images absorb much more infrared energy than dye images, and so curl differently in the intense beam of the projector lamp. In the 1930's, the projectionist was right there to touch up focus at the reel change, today, the "booth usher" may be taking tickets or cleaning the restrooms. :rolleyes:

[Brian Pritchard]

Yes you could tone real B&W film. I'd recommend doing it with prints though rather than the OCN. I have no idea if any labs would do it, but it is possible to do yourself with some effort. I believe there were silent films toned back in the early days of filmmaking. Kodak also had tinted print stocks, a sepia, and a blue tinted film were used to show the difference between indoor and outdoor shots sometimes. Check out Kodak's History of Film chronology for more info.

 

Regards,

 

~Karl Borowski

There have been a number of labs in UK/Europe carrying out tinting and toning in recent years. Prestech in the UK has been producing tinted and toned prints recently; Soho Images did some work about 5 years ago. there is a lab in Rome that did some work on the NFTVA's restoration of 'Piccadilly'. The NFTVA has also done some work themselves in the last 5 years.

 

There is information on tinting and toning on my website at: http://www.brianpritchard.com/Tinting.htm

 

Mnay archives and archive labs have produced sinulations of tinting and toning on colour stock by pre-flashing and colouring images.

 

Brian

[K Borowski]

Very interesting information Brian. Thank you. While I've never toned any of the B&W I've shot, I have a great deal of toner in the darkroom for the toning of B&W prints. If anyone is interested, I can tone some B&W slide film I have to show the affects of different toners at different times and post them on this site. I don't have any 35mm cine film, but with B&W there's really very little difference in the way that print stock and reversal will tone except of course for differing absorbtion characteristics. To put it another way, you'll get the same exact color, but with varying intensity based on time. Oh, and I am NOT doing Uranium toner Brian ;-) I'll do mercury and arsenic though!

 

Regards,

 

~Karl Borowski