Kodak 250D (7207) Color Accuracy

[Zachariah C. Bensel]

Im am curious to gather some opinions. I plan on shooting a short in the near future on 16mm. Naturally my choice of stocks are limited to Kodak, and for production purposes 250D would be my best option. Now, really hate doing color correction and DI. I dont like doing it myself, and I dont want to pay to get a colorist to do it for me. I am wondering, how accurate are the colors of 250D, raw out of the stock? What sort of work would I have to do in post to make them accurate. Are there options for me in filtration to normalize the stock?

 

My thought process is, that I want the stock to have an accurate color baseline for me to modify to fit my story. I am looking for a warm, medium contrast, and slightly diffused look. Something in between George Washington (2000) and The Long Goodbye (1973). For this, my idea of was to shoot with some TLS Rehoused Super Baltars, and apply a Tiffen Warm Black Pro-Mist 1/4. What do you think?

[Michael Rodin]

You can't get away without any color correction - even with impractically tight control of exposure and color temperature on set you'll see color/contrast variations on uncorrected scans with just a print emulation LUT applied. At least, you need an equivalent of optical printer lights - which are exposure/offsets in DI - to level them out. And you'll need to adjust contrast for your "print stock" - the output medium - at least on per-emulsion basis if you're shooting "for print" like in the optical days. Unless you're shooting expired film, you aren't correcting for inaccuracies of stock's color reproduction (maybe only if you were shooting under weird discharge lamps etc...) - Vision 3 color is neutral, slightly on the warm side, and very subjectively natural under any full-spectrum light. Much more color errors come from the scanner, from how it subtracts the mask in particular.

[Zachariah C. Bensel]

I am not nessisarily going for “absolute accuracy”. I really just want to know th color characteristcs. Uncorrected in daylight, is it going to run blue or green? Is the color balance in a “normal” range. I’m okay with having to tap some levels one way or another. I’m just asking wether straight out of camera, are the colors and contrast of 250D natural or skewed one way or another?

[Zachariah C. Bensel]

I’m planning on getting the processing and scan done from CineLab in Massachusetts, with a 2k data scan with a flat pass to ProRes444.

[Zachariah C. Bensel]

I come from a photography background. However I have shot almost exclusively on black and white stocks, and have only used color stocks a handful of times, and during those times used Fuji, not Kodak. I’m have no issue with filtering a stock, but I don’t like the DI color grading process, as I find it feels very artificial. If someone could maybe put up some uncorrected stills so I can see how the stock looks without being messed about, it could help me out a lot.

[David Mullen ASC]

Its a COLOR NEGATIVE stock with a typical orange color mask, so it needs to be converted into a positive either electronically or by making a print, and at either step the image color balance is usually set. The stock is daylight balanced so if you shoot a grey card under direct sunlight at the head of the roll, the image would need minimal adjustment for a neutral balance.

[Zachariah C. Bensel]

Yeah, white balancing in post I can do myself. I doubt that will be an issue at all, as when CineLab runs a scan on its Xena 5K, they do a Single Color Pass grade. After that pass is completed however, will any additional DI be nessesary in order to adjust colors? Does the stock run blue heavy in daylight? Is the contrast level close to eyeball?

[Zachariah C. Bensel]

Besides, I dont want to overcorrect in post, as I want to retain the warming effects of the Super Baltar glass and the Tiffen Warm Black Pro-Mist. If I shoot daylight with the 250D, the colors should remain accurate, not accounting for glass and filter, right?

[Will Montgomery]

Seems like the actual color rendition of stocks these days is a sort of moving target in the sense that any scan, even as "flat" as possible will put a moderate spin on the "color". Part of what I love about film is the fact that you have no choice but to pay attention and adjust the color.

 

With our limited choices these days it's more about matching grain structure through film and lighting choice; color an be infinitely adjusted.

[David Mullen ASC]

Think of it this way, if you directly looked at your processed color negative could you tell whether it had accurately kept the subtle warmth of an old lens? To see a normal positive color image there is always a transformative step that has to take place.