239 in s16mm

[Miguel Bunster]

Hi,

I am about to shoot a film in s16 and we been considering using a 2.39 aspect ratio. The director has a plan of blowing up to 35mm and there is not anamorphic adapter here for s16mm and the way I considered doing it by cropping the image in post to get the 239 aspect ratio and explained that if it goes through and HD master (or DI) and then blow up it could work. I have reearched this and makes sense but never done it in s16mm. I would loose a lot of vertical resolution by the cropping process but then it would be printed in 35mm cropped. ANy1 has done this or have any references or eperiences in this please?

Thanks a lot

Best

Miguel

[David Mullen ASC]

There have been a number of films that have done this. Yes, you'd be cropping to 2.39, and this cropped area would get stretched vertically by the laser recorder to become a 2X anamorphic image for recording to 35mm. Expect more grain and some loss of sharpness from the process; if you can, use slower film and sharper lenses.

 

You'd get slightly better results doing the work in 2K rather than in HD.

 

Dave Klein showed me some tests he did of Super-16-to-35mm anamorphic done by Laser Pacific using their cheaper HD D.I. process and it looked pretty good all things considered.

[Max Jacoby]

I have seen a reel of Super 16 letterboxed to 2.39 blown up optically by Color By Dejonghe in Belgium to 35mm and I was very impressed. If you shoot correctly (lower ASA stocks and a bit of over-exposure tog et a thick neg) this can give you very good results.

[Jim Feldspar]

I have seen a reel of Super 16 letterboxed to 2.39 blown up optically by Color By Dejonghe in Belgium to 35mm and I was very impressed. If you shoot correctly (lower ASA stocks and a bit of over-exposure tog et a thick neg) this can give you very good results.

 

Max, you always seem to know your stuff and I learn from your posts but I've been confused about

something regarding thicker/thinner negatives. I hear it mentioned but it would seem to me that

overexposing would use up more of the chemicals involved in the negative and thus there would be

less information which would seem to me to be more aptly decsribed as a thinner negative than

say something that's uderexposed but perhaps has information that can be dug out of the shadows.

 

Am I going wrong somewhere? Doesn't a bit of overexposure obliterate the most exposed parts and then

they can never be available to be addressed in post?

 

Thanks.

[Leo Anthony Vale]

I would loose a lot of vertical resolution by the cropping process but then it would be printed in 35mm cropped. ANy1 has done this or have any references or eperiences in this please?

 

The height of the 2.39/1 area on S16, a bit over 5mm, is also about the same height as the 1.85/1 area on regular 16mm. So, depending on the quality of the blow up, one would expect the two to be similar.

[David Mullen ASC]

Film negative has a lot of latitude so you can overexpose to some extent before you start visibly seeing a loss of detail in the bright highlights. When we talk about "overexpose for more density" we're talking about 2/3's of a stop, one-stop max, more than within a safe range that the film can handle.

 

The more you expose a negative, the more the silver halides collect photons and become "developable" -- convertable into silver when processed. The more silver gets developed, the darker the negative becomes, the denser it becomes. So more exposure = more density.

 

Unexposed silver halide never gets developed into silver and thus is washed away in the fixer & wash steps. Underexposure = less density.

 

You're thinking of video, which dramatically "clips" overexposure information above a certain point, often only two or more stops over normal. Film negative burns out to pure white more gradually, maybe five-stops over, hence why overexposing negative (within reason) is possible without any significant bright detail lost.

[Jim Feldspar]

Film negative has a lot of latitude so you can overexpose to some extent before you start visibly seeing a loss of detail in the bright highlights. When we talk about "overexpose for more density" we're talking about 2/3's of a stop, one-stop max, more than within a safe range that the film can handle.

 

The more you expose a negative, the more the silver halides collect photons and become "developable" -- convertable into silver when processed. The more silver gets developed, the darker the negative becomes, the denser it becomes. So more exposure = more density.

 

Unexposed silver halide never gets developed into silver and thus is washed away in the fixer & wash steps. Underexposure = less density.

 

You're thinking of video, which dramatically "clips" overexposure information above a certain point, often only two or more stops over normal. Film negative burns out to pure white more gradually, maybe five-stops over, hence why overexposing negative (within reason) is possible without any significant bright detail lost.

 

Now I get it. That is so clear. Thanks!