shooting through the base

Charles Haine · February 8, 2005

Chuck D and I got RGB Color Lab in Hollywood (sadly going out of business in 2 days) to wind some 35mm motion picture film into a still cannister with the emulsion out, instead of in, and then went out and shot some side by side shots, with my camera shooting through the base, his normal.

We used two rolls of 5218, and exposed both outside without an 85 filter, mostly since it was my theory (which proved totally wrong) that the resulting blue cast would help balance out the red look of shooting through your base.

check out www.oblivionnebraska.com/throughbase/ for a page of images from this experiment.

chuck haine

Chris Keth · February 8, 2005

Wow, I rather like the second and third images. the one looking through the fence (the flipped one) looks like a very hot, balmy day.

Nothing you can't get with filters and much less light loss, though.

Edited February 8, 2005 by Christopher D. Keth

DavidSloan · February 8, 2005

Those images don't look bad, at all. Actually, I don't see any excessive grain or focus issues as were told to us by other members. Did you have to do any exposure compensation for this? Nice stuff...love the one of the girl sitting down.

Jeremy · February 8, 2005

We bought a short end that was actually loaded backwards, so that it was exposed through the base. Luckily, we only took one shot on that roll... but it was a complicated shot that took hours to set up, and I also wanted to cry... but we got the location back, and got the shot off again... and then much celebration was had. Actually, we short-ended that short end, and the unexposed stock is still sitting in my fridge.

This link will take you to an image which was a one-light of 5217, shot through the base, and photographed at a T2.8, which had it not been shot through the base would have been a correct exposure. The image is reversed and very underexposed... well, you can take a look for yourselves:

http://www.throughaglass.com/images/air1.jpg

I hope this answers questions as to the look of unknowingly shooting through the base, and not compensating for the loss of light...

Jeremy

http://www.throughaglass.com

DavidSloan · February 8, 2005

For the same reason you would change shutter angle, ramp, shoot at 4 fps, shoot 96 fps, pull the lens out of the mount while filming, start and stop the camera while filming, shoot reversal, push, pull, flash, re-rate stock, skip-bleach, cross process, shoot on print stock, mix stocks, mix DV with film, mix HD with film, mix 35mm with 16mm/s8mm, bake the film, use custom filters, go through a DI, scratch the emulsion, desaturate the image, choose 500D to shoot at high-noon, emulate Technicolor, shoot an entire film with video against blue screen, go hand held for all 90 minutes, edit the film in reverse chronological order, use blue moon light, use white moon light?.

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Remove lens while filming? More please.

J. Lamar King IMPOSTOR · February 8, 2005

Remove lens while filming? More please.

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Well you dont actually remove it. Just loosen the mount and " J-J-J-Jiggle it a bit" as Arkwright would say. Try it with a still camera and you can see the effect easily.

Sam Wells · February 8, 2005

Remove lens while filming? More please.

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You can see examples of this in "Lost Highway" (David Lynch)

-Sam

DavidSloan · February 8, 2005

You can see examples of this in "Lost Highway" (David Lynch)

-Sam

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Thanks...can you point me to a scene?

Dominic Case · February 9, 2005

THis thread just came back to life - just realised that the earlier posts are a mnth old, but I noticed a couple of points that ought ot be corrected . . .

I think this is why your blue printer light is generally 10 points below the other two (or at least mine always is),

Actually, many labs set up their standards for printer lights some years ago - and they resist making changes as it would affect all previously graded work. In recent years, Kodak and Fuji's technology has led to emulsions with a less yellow masking layer, so requiring less blue light to punch through it when making the print. A typical neg a few years aog might have been 25-25-25, or up to 30-30-30: now it might be 28-30-22 in the same lab.

If you take your negative and its printer lights to another lab, you will almost certainly find that they will give a different set of RGB values to get a matching print. Every lab is a little different. If they have revised their line-up more recently you will probably find more even figures.

Additionally, the base of color camera film is orange, and that is acting like an orange filter would on the lens

No. The base of colour negative is clear. The orange colour is due to unexposed and undeveloped colour couplers (the chemicals which form y, m or c dyes in the emulsion layers during development).

But in general, Chuck's post was on the mark. The red colour is due to most expoure taking effect in the (bottom) red-sensitive, cyan forming layer, which now filters some light from reaching the green-sensitive layer. On top of those two layers is a yellow filter layer. Normally this prevents blue light from reaching the G and R -sensitive layers beneath it (as they happen to be sensitive to bluye light as well. When shooting through the base, there is nothing to stop this blue exposure in the bottom two layers (which effectively desaturates the image even more) and thn the filter layer blocks the blue light from ever reaching the blue sensitive layer, completely eliminating any blue information from the image.

So you couldn't hope to grade the image back to restore the other colours - they aren't there in the negative.