Fuji Eterna 250D

[Jayanth Mathavan]

Hi,

This will be my first post in this forum. am a student of film school in india. am in 1st year of my course.

We are supposed to make a short film with Fuji Eterna 250D. I have heard that its a very good stock which is low in contrast. I basically want to know which will be best lighting conditions under which we can use Eterna 250D for the best results. I want the film to look with realistic colors and bit of high contrast. Will it be possible to get it using Eterna 250D, if so, under what lighting conditions can we achieve that? Please give some examples if possible. Thanks

 

Cheers

Jayanth

[David Mullen ASC]

It's slightly lower in contrast and saturation than Kodak 250D but otherwise, you won't have a problem making it more contrasty if you are transferring it to video. It's not unusually low in contrast.

[Jayanth Mathavan]

Thanks for a quick reply. I am not planning to convert it to video. No telecine will be done.

So I just want to achieve a higher contrast with lighting and playing around with exposures.

 

Thanks

Jayanth

[Robert Lewis]

I am quite a fan of Fuji filmstocks, and find I get very pleasing results with Eterna 250D. I find that it produces excellent saturation of colours if there is sun. In cloudy weather, it is less saturated as one might expect, but even so I do not think I have ever been disappointed with it. That having been said, Fuji have recently introduced a 250D Vivid, and I have now obtained some of this stock. Certainly, the clips shown on the Fuji web page are super, and I am looking forward to trying it.

 

In short, then, I would say that Eterna 250D is a stock which produces saturated and contrasty colour if there is some sun about, it less so, obviously, in cloudy conditions.

[David Mullen ASC]

Thanks for a quick reply. I am not planning to convert it to video. No telecine will be done.

So I just want to achieve a higher contrast with lighting and playing around with exposures.

 

Thanks

Jayanth

 

If you are printing in 35mm, you can try a more contrasty, saturated print stock like Fuji XD or Kodak Premier.

 

Or you can use Fuji Vivid 250D instead.

 

Otherwise, I suggest rating it at 160 ASA because the print will be a little richer-looking then.

[Joseph Eckworth]

I put together this test on 16mm Fuji Reala 500D and Eterna 250D

 

Its an interesting side by side comaprison, sorry the resoloution inst so great, i think vimeo have removed HD from thier free accounts? im not too sure.

 

anyhoo, Enjoy!

 

[Joseph Eckworth]

I also put together an exterior test which you can see here

 

 

Hope these are helpful

[Chris Burke]

I also put together an exterior test which you can see here

 

 

Hope these are helpful

 

 

Great tests. It really helps me, because I needed to see such a test for a possible sitcom pilot. The Reala really doesn't look that grainy on the web. Did you filter the Eterna for the interiors, it really looks a good deal warmer, very interesting. Thanks for posting this.

 

 

I have heard of a carrot from Camberwell.

[K Borowski]

The really low-contrast stocks are/were Kodak 5229 Vision2 Expression 500T (discontinued), and Fuji 400T, think they're on the Eterna line now, used to be F400.

 

 

 

Anyway, I digress, the gamma (contrast) of most stocks is around 0.55 (meaning 16-17 points / 6 or 7 0.025 ∂LogE Bell and Howell printer points) per stop. With the Expression/400T stocks, that contrast is significantly lower, with an average gamma of about 0.45 (just 5 B&H points per stop / 12.5 points). Actually, 5229 (discontinued so it's academic anyway) may have had a gamma higher than 0.45.

 

 

Essentially, if you were shooting Eterna 400 or F-400, you'd get gamma (contrast) like regular film with a one-ish stop pull.

 

 

Now as to Eterna 250D 8563 versus Vivid 160 or Vivid 500 (sorry, 250D is too new for me to have data for it), the first has gamma of ~0.53, the second ~0.57, and the third at ~0.59 (almost 0.6, making the 500T the most contrasty, at least for Fuji).

 

 

Overexposing, pushing, or both can raise gamma up to almost 0.8 with Kodak stocks ( http://www.kodak.com/US/plugins/acrobat/en/motion/education/Film_Basics.pdf p. 60 ). I'm sure you could get something quite comparable with Fuji as well.

 

 

 

Keep in mind that the numbers I gave you are based on averages conducted by FujiFilm and its worldwide processing surveys amongst major motion picture laboratories. Depending on the activity of the developer at your lab. These numbers could be lower, they could be higher.

 

Only way to know for certain is to shoot grey cards at half-F/stop intervals, process, and hit them with a densitometer. Both gamma and average gradient (which takes into account the non-linear portions of a film's characteristic curve) are simple to plot, like in grade school algebra. The change in density over change in exposure (1/2 stop is 0.15 Log units in all three colors) will stay at a constant value on the straight-line portion of the characteristic curve, and will start to change in both the toe and shoulder of the curve (you'll get less density per stop's increase exposure than you should, or you'll run into the film's base fog and not get any clearer, less-dense areas).

 

 

EDIT: typo

Edited December 20, 2011 by K Borowski

[K Borowski]

Jayanth: Sorry, I just realized you were a student, which I didn't notice when I first posted.

 

In optical printing, a Bell and Howell printer point is 0.025 color units. 0.30 in each color (red green and blue) is the same as a change of one F/stop with a gamma (contrast) of 1.0. However, because ALL negative films have a lower contrast than the real world (1.0 is a one to one reproduction of the contrast in nature), the LOWER the gamma, the smaller the amount of difference between a stop on the negative.

 

If you multiply the gamma of the film by 0.30, and then divide by 0.025 (B&H points) that gives you B&H units per stop, so you can visualize the flatness as a fraction over 12.

 

So the low con 400T would be 5 B&H points per stop over 12 compared to 6 or 7 over 12.

 

 

 

Comparatively, there's almost no difference between 250D and 500T, less than one B&H unit. It'd be hard to see.

 

 

In any case, I always wonder what ever happens with these student posts we give advice on. Please let us know how things turn out and what you decided to do :-) Thanks!