Your Preference for Shooting S16 Daytime Outdoors - 50D or 250D?

Karl Lee · March 17, 2014

I've been watching a number of different YouTube and vimeo clips trying to get a feel for the 7203 (50D) and 7207 (250D) film stocks. As it's difficult to pick up on the nuances of each film stock by viewing clips online that may be of decent quality but are nonetheless compressed, I thought I'd see if anyone might be able to share their thoughts and opinions comparing Kodak's two daylight balanced color negative film stocks. In my case, I would be shooting S16.

From the few S16 examples I've seen, the 50D obviously has pretty fine grain and looks great, but in some examples it was as if the grain was so fine that the transfer almost had the appearance of HD video (albeit very good quality HD video) as opposed to film.

I suppose shooting 200T with an 85 filter is also an option, and I'd be curious if, for some reason, someone has a preference for shooting a tungsten stock with a filter vs. using a daylight stock. As I'd likely be doing most of my filming outdoors with plenty of daylight, so far I've been primarily comparing 50D and 250D.

Thanks!

Adrian Sierkowski · March 17, 2014

I prefer to use 200T with an 85 because if I start to loose light I can pull the 85 and still shoot for a long while. Also when shooting I'll often just use the same stock throughout-- to keep grain roughly the same. I may or may not overexpose '13 by a stop (rating it at 100) for day exts, or keep it a stop under for night ints-- or push if I feel dangerous, though a 1 stop push isn't too much.

Personally I was never a fan of the 50D stocks because they're too fine grained, and the 250D is just an odd number, though I had used it before often when in deep shade as opposed to any direct sunlight (forrest, city streets shaded from the direct sun day ints where we photoflood all the practicals ect.)

it is a matter of taste, really but all the stocks will cut together very well these days. Most of the nuances are a combination of lenses, operator,production design, stock, processing, and colorist so it's hard to make any objective assessments.

Try them all when you can till you land on which one you like the mot. They'll all make beautiful images (and talk to kodak/the lab see if you can get a 100' load of each to do a quick test for your project).

Chris Burke · March 18, 2014

Check out the footage at www.Logmar.dk. That is pin registered Super 8, with a 2k scan on 7203. It is crazy sharp and extremely fine grained. If super 8 looks that way, imagine s16. Kodak claims that S16 7203 is sharper and finer grained than 35mm 5213. I wouldn't hesitate to use either though, they both are phenomenal in their own right. 250D has immense highlight latitude and color latitude. It holds the skin tones very well. An amazing thing about 7203 is the shadow detail it captures, you can use it in darker scenes than you might think. Granted it is ultra fine grained, but if you embrace that, it is an incredible tool to work with. With a 4k scan you can zoom in a great deal. Of the two, obviously the 250D is the most filmic. Odd that we are using that term to describe film itself, but the 50D is very digital in it's appearance.

Adrian Sierkowski · March 18, 2014

I think a lot of the v-3 stocks got a little "tamer," or "optimized' for our world today. I love, for example, the '19, but it's often not grainy enough (the 2 stop push we did to make it grainier made the director of my last outing on 7219, but I was still blown away by how fine grained it looked!) I really miss the '79, the '29, and the '60. I had a affinity for that short lived stock.

Will Barber · March 18, 2014

I'll always be a fan of the look of 50D. If I were to make a choice for just a regular outdoor scene, that would be it. I'm pretty sure they used it for a lot of interiors in There Will Be Blood as well, using motivated light from outside the buildings.

Bill DiPietra · March 18, 2014

Agreed. I know what Adrian is saying about the fine-grained structure, but the color saturation of 50D blows me away every time.

Adrian Sierkowski · March 19, 2014

50D does always give great colors-- but then again I'm often a wierdo when it comes to shooting things and would probably shy away from it, or throw a low-con filter on, or god only knows what else-- flash ect.

It all comes down to taste and look with film for me. Well I guess it all comes down to taste and look for all things.

Prashantt Rai · March 27, 2014

I shot a low budget roadie feature last november and I used only two stocks - 50D for ext and 200T for interiors and night (without 85). We had no lighting package except for some naked halogen bulbs / china lamps fired from a small genset.

50D performed excellent in exterior harsh daylights of Goa, India. The Vision3 50D has a superb shadow detail too. and you will not believe I used the 50D to even capture some montages during sunset and even 15 min after sunset. and every information was there when i was watching the rushes during telecine. It was an experiment that worked. and Underexposed 50D in twilight looks very cinematic.

and that bloody 200T has so much information (just like Vision3 500T) that during night bonfire sequence it captured everything. I mean everything. It literally **(obscenity removed)**ed my happiness. All through out during the night exteriors shoot I kept cursing myself for the lack of lights. but when the results came even elements that were 3 stops underexposed were right there on the screen. superb information detail in that negative. Now I know not to panic when doing moody low lit shots in the night.

cheers

Prashantt

Matthew B Clark · April 5, 2014

Same here. I accidentally shot a 50D load (I thought it was 500T) metered at 400!!!! Indoors. With a 300 watt key light. Well, I loved the takes enough to defy conventional wisdom and went ahead and pushed the processing 2 stops. What I found blew my mind. Not only did it come out, but it came out beautifully, and retained the best color information while ADDING some aesthetic ( minimal/nice looking) grain to an otherwise grainless stock. I'd recommend this workflow to anyone who wants to crush blacks in camera. The rest looks really nice.