250D in Bright Sunlight Issue

[Tony Sarandrea]

So I shot this car robbery scene outside of a mini mart this weekend just outside of Philadelphia. We used Kodak 500T V3 inside the place with no problem but outside we had a problem.

I was stuck using the Bolex Super16 SBM ,, had a 10mm, 16mm, 25mm, and a 75mm to work with, all switar C-mount lenses. All 100 ft daylight spools. I wanted it to look gritty and grainy, that's

why I bought the Kodak 250D Vision 3 instead of 50D Vision 2. We were expecting an overcast day and instead we ended up getting a lot of sunlight. We were getting f32 and f22 so then we

rated it at 125 instead of 250 expecting to pull process the film a stop. From there we were shooting at f16, 11, and at f8 for some of it as the clouds picked up.

With this explanation, is it sure to say I should pull process this one stop so it is darker? Not too sure on the latitude of this stock. I shot 50D in an abandoned building with only available light.

As it got darker, my lightmeter was picking up very little,,, I shot wide open, everything came out great.

Anyone run into this dilemma of too much light? The school didn't provide ND filters with the kit. Just wondering if it is that important for me to pull process, pay that extra money, and I wonder how much grain I'm going to lose ( considering that is why I decided on that stock) Still an undergraduate student in the learning process. Never did a push/pull,, please let me get your opinions/advice. Thanks.

[Tony Sarandrea]

hmm, sorry the initial post of this thread is so choppy to read. The sentences weren't oddly fragmented like that when I wrote it..

[Charles MacDonald]

So you shot 250D in Bright sunlight, and had to overexpose by one stop to get a reading that your camera could support?

 

and your question is basically if folks would ask fro a one stop Pull, or if the film latitude will let you get away with Normal processing? (with a slight Financial Bias to avoid the lab charges for Pull process?

 

Am I interpreting your question correctly?

[Adrian Sierkowski]

Film has a lot of room on the highlights, and V-3 especially. In truth, if it was just 1 stop, I'd not pull @ all in processing as you should be fine, though not nearly as grainy as you'd hope (no worries, you can up grain later on). As point of order, I often over-expose by 2/3rds of a stop on most stocks.

[Brian Drysdale]

Film has a lot of room on the highlights, and V-3 especially. In truth, if it was just 1 stop, I'd not pull @ all in processing as you should be fine, though not nearly as grainy as you'd hope (no worries, you can up grain later on). As point of order, I often over-expose by 2/3rds of a stop on most stocks.

 

On a short I was DPing the 1st Assist Cam forgot to put on the ND filter using 100T and because we had other shots that could be used instead and time pressures, we didn't reshoot. In the edit the shot didn't look that bad, so it got used. The film was being blown from Super 16 to 35mm and we then discovered that the shot needed correcting through both the stage to the interneg and then onto the final print because they didn't have enough printer lights to do the correction in one go. In the final 35mm print you wouldn't notice it being different. I was rather impressed with that, although I'd have preferred if we didn't need to do all that correcting.

 

BTW There was a grad over the sky, which protected that part and the rest was pretty much in the mid tonal range.

[Dirk DeJonghe]

Apart from exposure problems that the negative handles quite well (on the overexposed side), there is another issue, much more damaging to the image: when stopped down to 16-22-32, the lens looses most of its quality and images become soft. On a Bolex there is also the issue that any dirt on the semi-transparent mirror will be more visible as the lens is stopped down.

Best to have suitable speed film stock or a suitable ND filter at hand. Having too much ND filtration will also do more harm than good.