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Black & White options


Ian Jackson

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Hey,

 

I've been wanting to shoot a series of portrait shorts on Black and White for a while now and I'm unsure what route to take. With the recent release of "The White Ribbon" and also (not so recent) "La Haine" choosing to shoot colour and change to black and white in the DI, I'm not to sure on what to do. Either to shoot Kodak's B&W negative stock or shoot some colour negative and change in post? The upside to shooting on colour (for me) and changing in post is the choice of faster film stocks, but then am I just paying for the premium of colour, only to throw it away in post. It should be said that I am a student so I get a great discount on colour stock.

 

Just wondering if anyone has any experience in shooting colour and chaging to black and white in post.

 

Thanks

 

Ian

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Hey,

 

I've been wanting to shoot a series of portrait shorts on Black and White for a while now and I'm unsure what route to take. With the recent release of "The White Ribbon" and also (not so recent) "La Haine" choosing to shoot colour and change to black and white in the DI, I'm not to sure on what to do. Either to shoot Kodak's B&W negative stock or shoot some colour negative and change in post? The upside to shooting on colour (for me) and changing in post is the choice of faster film stocks, but then am I just paying for the premium of colour, only to throw it away in post. It should be said that I am a student so I get a great discount on colour stock.

 

Just wondering if anyone has any experience in shooting colour and chaging to black and white in post.

 

Thanks

 

Ian

 

I prefer the grain you get when you originate on B&W stock.

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I like b/w for b/w work, however, someone (forget whom) just posted an interesting b/w film they shot on color with a bleach bypass which had a more organic feeling than simply desaturated color (they underexposed by 1 stop and then bleach bypassed). Do a quick search and it should pull it up.

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Dunno if this will help you, but I made this test several years ago: http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4017/430266...9288fb7ea_b.jpg.

 

Sorry this version is so small, if anyone would be willing to host a 1.4MB file please let me know. Full size jpeg is 3888x960.

 

The color stock is 7212 Kodak Vision2 100T, all shot in natural light with an 85 filter and a pola for the foliage shot. Desaturated in post, no other corrections. The B&W stock is 7231 Kodak Plus-X negative, unfiltered except for the foliage shot, which used a #25 Red. Both were shot with Canon Scoopic 16mm cameras side-by-side. Same exposure for both, after factoring in filter corrections. Both were transferred to miniDV on a BTS Quadra telecine.

 

You can see even in the smaller pics that the color stock has more range both in shadows and highlights, but because of this it also looks a bit flat and boring. The b&w stock really emphasizes texture, you can see that in the face. In the filtered foliage shots, you can see what effects you can create. Not so much on the sky and clouds (which would look about the same if there were clouds in the color shot), but in the leaves - the b&w has more tonal range. There's a silvery quality to those leaves which you don't get with color stock.

 

What you can't see because of the small size is the difference in grain - the b&w grain is much bigger (some would say better!). In the shot of the hand, the b&w stock also has halation on the highlights in the chain. The color does not, but if you want to mimic this with the color stock then you can use a light diffusion filter like a Classic Soft or Glimmerglass.

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To produce a black-and-white motion picture film is a confession. What are you talking about with post production, digital hiphop, and negative contrast ranges? You light a black-white totally different. You draw the story rather than paint it. The relation between picture and sound is different, too.

 

Polenta or popcorn

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I like b/w for b/w work, however, someone (forget whom) just posted an interesting b/w film they shot on color with a bleach bypass which had a more organic feeling than simply desaturated color (they underexposed by 1 stop and then bleach bypassed). Do a quick search and it should pull it up.

 

I couldn't find anything on the search? You don't perhaps know the topic do you?

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Anytime. Took a bit of "remembering where the hell it would've been posted!" Of the B/w processes I've seen to desaturate color, that particular one, perhaps because it's recent, really struck me as similar to what one would get some b/w film, though, as mentioned, with the flexibility of the full range of neg stocks.

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