Vision 3 Characteristics

[Valter Jaakkola]

Hello,

 

I was wondering, how close the Vision 3 films are to each other? Of course the sensitivity and grain differ, but are there much if any differences in terms of colour, contrast and perhaps sharpness too? After all they are being advertised as being intercuttable. If the obvious things like grain are not taken into consideration, would it be impossible to distinguish the different Vision 3 stocks from each other?

 

To a slighty other thing, if the Vision 3 films are very similar, does it make a lot of sense to have 4 stocks that practically look the same? It shouldn't be a big thing to add an extra stop of ND or an 85 filter.

 

 

Kind regards,

Valter

[David Mullen ASC]

They are all rather similar in look, which was Kodak's intent. Even more so than EXR stocks were -- the daylight EXR stocks were a bit more contrasty than the tungsten versions but I find that the Vision-3 line is pretty consistent, with just slight variations across speeds. Of course, you'll find some differences if you look hard enough.

[Heikki Repo]

Well, there are differences in both sharpness and grain -- of which especially the latter is quite a good reason for four stocks.

 

If I need the speed, I can use 500T. If I have lots of light but want to have near grainless image, 50D is my choice. All the other stocks have their place as well.

 

These differences become very evident in smaller formats. Compare 50D to 500T in super-8 and you can't mistake one for another. Also, adding lots of NDs isn't that convenient either. :)

[David Mullen ASC]

Sure, grain levels change with the stock speeds, but color saturation and contrast are not that different between the stocks, though some find that the faster the stock gets, the "flatter" it looks.

 

I did shoot a comparison between 250D and 200T for "Love Witch" that I can post, but I found that most of the color difference was mainly due to lighting with an HMI versus a tungsten lamp.