Velvia outdoor with Filter

[Jason Nardella]

Rookie that I am, I have just learned to my dismay, that when using daylight film, the "Sun" position for filter selection on my bauer camera is for indoor use. I have shot several rolls of Fuji Velvia with the filter on, since I assumed the "Bulb" position was for indoor use. I have more to shot and am wondering what I should do. Is there anyway this can be fixed during processing? Am I screwed or is there a solution?

 

Always learning.

[Freya Black]

Rookie that I am, I have just learned to my dismay, that when using daylight film, the "Sun" position for filter selection on my bauer camera is for indoor use. I have shot several rolls of Fuji Velvia with the filter on, since I assumed the "Bulb" position was for indoor use. I have more to shot and am wondering what I should do. Is there anyway this can be fixed during processing? Am I screwed or is there a solution?

 

Always learning.

 

This isn't quite right!

The sun position is not for indoor use. It puts a special filter in the light path that changes the colour of the daylight so that it will look normal on tungsten film. It is a sort of orangey colour.

If you are using daylight film then the film is expecting daylight and reacts normally to daylight WITHOUT a filter.

 

If you use daylight film outdoors AND you put the daylight filter on then everything will get all warmed up and be very golden and people may look orangey. It might be a bit extreme.

 

If you use the daylight film indoors with tungsten light however it's even worse because the tungsten bulbs are orangey, and the film is expecting daylight, so everything will be orangey, then if you turn on the orangey filter, everything will be more orangey than a terrys chocolate orange. So you don't use the sun postion indoors either.

 

The filter is just for tugsten film which expects light to be orangey but sunlight is more bluey, so it converts the blue light to orangey light and then it looks normal on the tungsten film.

 

Hope that helps!

 

love

 

Freya

[Freya Black]

Forgot to say.

 

You may yet be saved from the orange World.

Kodak foresaw that people might try and turn the filter on with daylight film so they allowed a special feature so that carts could be told to turn off the daylight filter completely, so that if you turn it on then nothing happens.

 

I expected that the carts have been set up to turn off the filter but the problem is whether your camera will listen to what the cart has to say or not. AYMK different cameras react very differently to things like notching etc so it's all very confusing.

 

I don't know how your camera will react so it's hard to say.

When you shoot the remaining films set your filter to bulb tho, just to be sure.

 

As for correcting the problem. If you are having telecine it could be timed out. However I assume you are planning to project the velvia as it is reversal in which case the only thing I can think you could do would be to put a coloured filter on the projector to compensate when you project those films.

 

OTOH you may actually love the warm up effect and it might not be so bad depending on the time of day you shot your films! :)

 

See how it goes I guess!

 

love

 

Freya

[Richard Tuohy]

Yes, Freya is right that with many cameras, when using daylight film the filter is automatically put out of the light path. Such cameras have a 'filter notch reader' - a pin that is pushed in by cartridges that don't have a filter notch. Sadly, most if not all Bauer cameras (except perhaps some of the early ones) don't have a filter notch reader and relied on there not being any daylight film. These cameras also were made relying on 40 and 160 asa film only, as you might well know already.

In any case, get one or some rolls processed before you shoot any more. It might be that you prefer to shoot all of this project the same way.

cheers,

Richard