The Beatles inside smallformat 3*2008

[Jurgen Lossau]

 

smallformat 3*2008 will be shipped in one week. This is what you will find inside:

 

*cover* THE BEATLES -- at a London photo dealer watching their first 8mm movie

 

*clapper* SUMMER IS HERE -- and it offers perfect footage for everybody. There are no more excuses, says Jürgen Lossau

 

*viewer* SUPER 8 DAY IN AUSTRALIA Rodney Bourke about some events down under

 

*viewer* NEWS All about a real find in London and about the first Santorini Super 8 festival

 

*viewer* 100X BERLIN When 100 projectors rattle at the same time...

 

*my film diary* THE CRAZY WEDDING Unbelievable - Fabrizio Mosca shoots his own marriage on 16mm

 

*my film diary* THERE MAY BE PLEASURE A diary for Christopher Wallace's short film

 

*16mm* TO THE MAX Jürgen Lossau talked with filmmaker Max Sacker about his way up

 

*16mm* FRENCH ELEGANCE The history of the Beaulieu R16 series, revealed by Dr. Carl-Hellmut Hoefer

 

*portrait* RISKING A FEATURE FILM Kivmars Bowling discusses his debut, "Donovan Slacks"

 

*time lapse* ALL YOU NEED IS 8MM Is that what the Beatles said? Jürgen Lossau digged up some interesting photos and a story from 1964

 

*sound* TESTING - ONE, TWO... Interesting microphone facts, collected by Oliver Kochs

 

*power pack* WHERE FILM GOES ELECTRONIC Jürgen Lossau visited British transfer wizards Cintel

 

*test* NO GRAIN - NO PAIN Oliver Kochs tests Kodaks's new Vision3 negative film 500T

 

*super-8* THINK BIG Super-8 enlarged for 35mm cinema projection? Daniel Henríquez-Illic says "yes"

 

*screening* OUT OF THE BOX (12) The history of the package movie: Piccolo Film, Büscher and UFA. A report by Andreas Eggeling, Keith Wilton and John Clancy

 

*forum* LETTERS TO THE EDITOR about how to paint the wall to get a screen, about Pete Gelderblom's great comics and about life long subscribers

 

*zoom* DIRECTORAMA Peet Gelderblom's cine comic

 

Exclusively for readers of cinematography.com and as agreed with Tim Tyler, here is one article from the newest issue:

 

No grain ? no pain

smallformat tests Kodak's new Vision 3 negative film

Text & Photos: Oliver Kochs

 

Kodak?s new IS0 500 Vision3 artificial light stock promises increased latitude, finer grain and better color reproduction in mixed light situations with extreme contrast range. Kodak has already delivered such improvements with the introduction of the Vision2 series in 2003. At the moment, Kodak 5219 is the only member of the 3rd family to see the light; the others will come out of the shadows later. smallformat put this new negative film to the test and compared it to the older Vision2. In direct comparison ? with the same scene, lens and lighting ? the improved grain and contrast of the newcomer are evident.

 

To be able to conduct the test quickly, we had to realize an unconventional film idea. A friend who inhabits a large artist?s studio was enthusiastic about the idea of shooting a ?real? film with her one-year-old daughter. However, the spacious studio was still too cold in the spring, and the highly sensitive stock allowed us to abandon the idea of heating the room with floodlights. The warmer adjoining room would suffice, and we covered the windows with black cloth to create an artificially illuminated scene in the foreground. Our lighting rig included two 100 W Dedolights, a fan-cooled 1kW Hedler Halogen for indirect lighting, along with a candle. We wanted to create a lighting situation in which it was possible to shoot the corner of the room lit only by candlelight. For the test, we used two identical Super 16 Bolex H16EL cameras with 122 m magazines and PL Mount adapters. This enabled us to quickly swap lenses between the cameras. Vision2 and 3 films were loaded into the magazines, enabling filming in synchronization or by swapping the prime lenses to capture comparable images.

 

Exposing the test series

 

The 25% light loss from the Bolex prism was compensated by metering a shutter angle of 135 degrees. With two 100W Dedo lights and the candle, the exposure meter reads f/2 from the grey card. In the brightest spot (the candle), an f/8 aperture is desirable, because then the image blends less into the darkness. Nevertheless, for our test we generally chose f/2, even when we later used indirect ceiling light in the form of the 1000W Hedler lamp. Indeed, these images show much lower grain in the shadows, although the composition doesn?t work well with candlelight. The actual f/4 exposure would not have altered this dull mood. For comparison, we shot our ?proud mommy with playing baby? scene with PL-Mount Zeiss T2 lenses and their suitable RX counterparts.

 

The Bolex viewfinder turned out to be conspicuously problematic. With so little light, one can hardly see anything in the viewfinder. The additional light loss to the prism aggravates the condition. In this case, only cameras with rotary reflecting shutters can score with this image composition, although while shooting, the image will be even darker. Over and over again we manage by measuring and using additional lighting, which is a good help when arranging the scene in the viewfinder.

 

Development and scanning

 

Ludwig Draser from the German lab Andec Filmtechnik in Berlin handled the development and cleaned the film for scanning, which we carried out in Munich though AVP Videotransfer. We should acknowledge the friendly support from both companies when conducting this test, because Andec and AVP offered their services free of charge. Right from the start, the images from the Vision stocks looked promising on the Cintel

URSA film transfer machine.

 

The sharpness at f/2 with the Zeiss optics ? which must do without RX correction on the Bolex ? was generally satisfactory. The shots with 200W artificial light and a candle offer persuasive lighting and the Vision3 scenes exhibit slightly lower noise in the shadows. Mr. Sandl of AVP confirmed this on the URSA scanner by scaling the screen image by approximately 400 percent, which makes the grain structure clearly visible. In the RGB color extracts, particularly the blue channel, a reduction of grain is recognizable in the shadows when compared to its predecessor. However, we admittedly have to strain our eyes to see a difference. This may be valid when scanning to video, but not for projection, which sees the image increased to cover several square meters. Super 8 filmmakers may be happy about the fine grain, because Kodak has plans to manufacture the Vision3 stocks soon for Super 8 cartridges.

 

Our tip: By all means try it out, but also remember that high speed stock like 500T should be refrigerated and used within a short time (less than two years) because fogging might occur otherwise.

 

Scanned frames of the film stock - please see inside the article.

Edited July 17, 2008 by Jürgen Lossau