Using Tiffen Cranberry, Grape, Plum filters?

[Guest George Markov]

Hi

Does anybody know what is the purpose of these Tiffen filters: Cranberry, Grape, Plum, Tropic Blue, Chocolate, and Tangerine? Are you using them?

I?m doing commercials and telecine all of my footage. So I?m wondering can I acquire any advantages using these filters or it's posible to achieve the same results with telecine color corrections.

[John Ealer]

They're more useful when shooting for an "old-school" film finish, help you create colors that are hard to replicate using traditional printing methods.

 

I really never use them much when finishing digitally.

 

J

[Tony Brown]

In my experience its not possible to replicate these filters in transfer. You can produce very similar results, but shifting the spectrum on the neg like this gives you a whole new pallette to work with. I use mostly tobacco filters as a correction at the moment but its a steep learning curve. Even when you allow for the density of the filter, shadow areas can still fall off into total black way before you expect.

 

TEST the filters before you shoot. Golder rule, capital letters.

 

An old DP once warned me about any colours that grapes come in. He was right, its the colours I've struggled to match over the years when mixing light sources. Beware.

[David Mullen ASC]

Yes, I think if you can find a colored filter that exactly creates the look you want, then why not use it rather than attempt to get it in post?

 

Brown is a pretty weird color to simulate in timing later and I find filtering (like with Chocolates) to be a simpler way to get that look. Or at least, shoot one shot with the colored filter so the colorist has an idea what to try and match to digitally.

 

However, I don't use Blue filters much since I can just shoot on tungsten-balanced stock in daylight for that color. I don't use slight warming filters much either because that's pretty easy to create in post.

[Brent J. Craig]

I would use them when I'm hungry! (I wonder if Mr. Tiffen has done any research into what times of day these filters come out? Are they used more often when craft service is weak?)

 

I know several commercial shooters who like to filter and grad in-camera, because in the commercial world the telecine process is largely out of their hands.

[Dan Salzmann]

I agree with David about the chocolates. I have used them in rap promos for certain types of skin.

Never used grapes or cranberries.

Shifting the spectrum on the film itself is a whole new palette and this requires testing as has ben said.

Certain colours seem to add more noise in TC than others.

I try to get the neg as close as possible to the final result-Guess that makes me old school!

This is not always doable because of time and budget issues.

[John Ealer]

I didn't mean "old school" pejoratively ;) I was just referring nostalgically to the time when the DP was hired to get the final look on-set, rather than to deliver a clean, easily manipulated image for the Flame artists.

 

I agree, though, that the browns (tobacco, chocolate) are tricky to get in color correction; Gold Diffusion F/X gives a great color that is difficult to create later, too.

 

J

[Lisa Wiegand]

I did a test on the Grape filters (1/2, 1, 2, 3) for a different kind of night-exterior look. I liked the look of the color when I was just looking thru them by eye --- but after testing, realized that they look much more magenta on film than they did to my eye. Bummer.