Still Film Latitude compared to 5218

[Stephen Whitehead]

Hey, I am planning on shooting tests very soon for a project I am working on. I am wondering how useful it would be to shoot the tests on still films instead of the motion picture stock which I will be using? I am not testing the stock obviously, but rather lighting styles. I understand that this is not the best option, but how does the latitude of consumer films compare to vision 2 stocks.

 

Cheers,

 

Steve

[Adrian Sierkowski]

I'm not sure if this is the proper way or not, but as there is not 500T consumer or pro still film that I am aware of, when testing out the '18 stock I normally shoot a few rolls of Kodak Elite Chrome 400, which is a daylight balanced color slide film. It'll have less latitude than a negative stock, and it'll be orange under tungsten light, but it'll give you an idea of exposure, and of course, having less latitude than your actual stock, will err on the side of safety. The best test would be a few feet of the actual negative shot on the location as a test, if you have that ability.

[Francis Kuhn]

Adrian,

 

If it helps, A&I Color Lab in Los Angeles is now selling and processing some of the Kodak and Fuji Motion Picture stocks:

 

http://www.aandi.com/

 

-Fran

[Adrian Sierkowski]

That's awesome, I'll have to look into them.

[Patrick Neary]

Hey, I am planning on shooting tests very soon for a project I am working on. I am wondering how useful it would be to shoot the tests on still films instead of the motion picture stock which I will be using? I am not testing the stock obviously, but rather lighting styles. I understand that this is not the best option, but how does the latitude of consumer films compare to vision 2 stocks.

 

Hi-

 

I'm finding that a dslr works just fine for what you're talking about. Some people will throw a fit about this, but it works great for me. In fact it's fast replacing my meters and becoming a critical tool in my kit.

[Jonathan Bowerbank]

I'm finding that a dslr works just fine for what you're talking about. Some people will throw a fit about this, but it works great for me. In fact it's fast replacing my meters and becoming a critical tool in my kit.

 

Vermeer used a camera obscura, so I see nothing wrong with a DP using a DSLR camera to preview his/her scene to see how it would look in the frame.

[Jon Kukla]

It's no better or worse than any other "rough guide" method, as long as one is aware of the peculiarities of will and will not be different between the two mediums.