Combining classic soft and skip-bleach

J Costantini · March 30, 2009

Hi. I'm about to shoot my thesis for my filmschool which will be my first photography on 35mm. the camera is a BL4, standard 35, zeiss 2.1 lenses. and the filmstock will be fuji eterna 250D and 500T and it will be finished optically (aii!).

For this specific scene, which is an interior/day after the main character has had a sort of break down, massed up the whole apartment and painted a portrait of his girlfriend on the wall to show her love when she comes the morning after. so here we're, this is the morning when she comes and sees it! the director asked me for a 'medium' blown-out look, really bright, he tells me (which we'll start creating from prod design, etc). The overall look we're going for the whole film is desaturated, muted colors, since he's a little muted too.

I think the eternas go well with that. But for this specific scene I've described, I would like to try a schneider classic soft filter 1/4 (which is the only gradation I've access to...) (to create the famous halo over the windows and strong highlights) combined with a partial bleach by pass of 25 or 50% to get the 'silver', un-natural, desaturated look plus blowing out a little bit the whites. I would rate the 250D as it's recommended (or maybe 320?), since I'm going to rate it 160 for the rest of the film where there's no bleach (mainly because it's fuji and to get good blacks...)

I'm going to test in the following days, just would like to ask for your opinion, if you have tried partial skip-bleach and/or skip-bleach combined with diffusion filters. I just thought that maybe it's a good/weird combination between lowering contrast/diffusing the image a little bit AND compensating, somehow, the feeling of sharpess a bit with the skip-bleach. the lens for this sequence must be around 40mm, in case it influences the diffusion gradation I'm talking about (1/4)...

thanks,

julio

Edited March 30, 2009 by J Costantini

David Rakoczy · March 30, 2009

I think the eternas go well with that. But for this specific scene I've described, I would like to try a schneider classic soft filter 1/4 (which is the only gradation I've access to...) (to create the famous halo over the windows and strong highlights

thanks,

julio

1/4 Classic won't give you that.. 1/4 Classic is very subtle and for the most part Classics won't give you that at all.. you need like a 1 or 2 Promist, Supafrost and the like to get those 'blooms'... and some serious hard pounding light.

J Costantini · March 30, 2009

1/4 Classic won't give you that.. 1/4 Classic is very subtle and for the most part Classics won't give you that at all.. you need like a 1 or 2 Promist, Supafrost and the like to get those 'blooms'...

Thanks, David. But let me clarify, the bright look should be a little bit more harsh. BUT the halo effect I'm looking for is really subtle, and I'm probably going to be 'looking' at a blown-out window, which I think helps to increase a little bit the effect.

I also have an BLACK PRO MIST 1/4 available, but no PRO MIST.

Do you think it could work better than the classic soft for that?

David Rakoczy · March 30, 2009

Yes.. because the Classic has areas that do no diffusion at all.. I own a Set and love them because of their Subtle nature which is very important (to me) when shooting S16 as compared to 35mm. Of course, this all depends on the Project but for cleaning up skin (cleanly) it is hard to beat a Classic Soft filter. Any of the promist series would deliver more of what you are describing.

Rob Webster · March 31, 2009

I shot a very similar thing recently on S16 (7205 250D) where we were in this abandoned military base, which had these huge 8 foot windows all the way down one side of the room. We were filming a scene with soldiers advancing slowly through the room, covered mostly in wides so you could see most of the room and the windows down one side of the frame.

I wanted the windows and the highlights to blow out and have this "halo" or "blooming" effect we hear about so often so i rated 250 at 320, used a 1/4 black pro-mist (that i compensated for- about 1/3 stop) and had a partial skip bleach done on the neg (about 70%- as it went through the bleach bath on only one roller instead of all 4).

So combining these techniques, i was over exposing about 1-1/2 stops with the diffusion and the effect was not anywhere as severe as i would have liked. On the set we were shooting around F4 or 5.6 and the windows read F11-F16, so i figured with the skip bleach and the diffusion it should definitely blow out and get a nice bleed around the highlights, but 1/4 promist was not enough. I could still make out details through the windows. Although i tried this again on the shoot a few days later but put some hampshire frost on the outside of the windows and up-lit it with a 2K and it worked much better. Big windows though-pain in the arse. To get this kind of effect from NOW on, i would make sure to light the windows untill they are at least 5 or 6 stops over and use a much heavier diffusion such as SUPAFROST 1 or 2, or a heavy black pro-mist (normal pro-mist tends to eat contrast and black is not as bad).

So basically what im saying is- POUND THE LIGHT!

USE AS MUCH DIFFUSION ON THE LENS AS YOU CAN- could even try a net?

hope this helps.

David Rakoczy · March 31, 2009

I wanted the windows and the highlights to blow out and have this "halo" or "blooming" effect we hear about so often so i rated 250 at 320, used a 1/4 black pro-mist (that i compensated for- about 1/3 stop)....

Actually Rob you did not overexpose or underexpose at all. If you have 250iso and rate it at 320iso you are under exposing 1/3 of a stop... you probably really don't need to compensate for a 1/4 Black promist so opening up another 1/3 just got you back to where you started.

You may want to consider underexposing by 1 stop whenever using Skip Bleach.. most Labs recommend it.

Rob Webster · March 31, 2009

Actually Rob you did not overexpose or underexpose at all. If you have 250iso and rate it at 320iso you are under exposing 1/3 of a stop... you probably really don't need to compensate for a 1/4 Black promist so opening up another 1/3 just got you back to where you started.

You may want to consider underexposing by 1 stop whenever using Skip Bleach.. most Labs recommend it.

That was a typo, i rated the 250 as 120 :rolleyes:

My bad. One of my lecturers at uni told me the same thing about pro-mists, that you don't need to compensate, but opening up a 1/3 usually helps to get the desired effect (especially if its being used for highlites)

Chris Keth · March 31, 2009

The windows will look better and do that effect better if you dirty them up some. Lots of light coming through a window doesn't look like much on the window itself. It's kind of like smoking a set. The light has to have something to hit.