Your Favorite 16mm Stocks

[Jonathan Bryant]

What are your favorite 16mm stocks and why? What stocks are the finest grained? What conditions would you use y stock over x stock?

[A.Oliver]

favourite filmstock, no doubt about that one, kodachrome 25 offered no grain images, amazingly accurate colours, outstanding archival qualities, a 16mm film that has not been beat in the above fields. Not sure whether the stock holds the gong for the highest ever resolving power of a 16mm film.Try and shoot on sunny days only. Now sadly deleted from the kodak range of films. On the neg side,7245 but to my eyes this has more grain than k25. Again try and shoot on sunny days only.

[Jonathan Bryant]

I guess your screen name K25 explains your passion for the film. Man I hope more people will post an answer to this question. It seems like the last 2 or 3 questions I put up before this one nobody wants to answer.

 

Back to film stocks it seems as though there are limited choices available now. Is there still Agfa 16mm stock available?

[David Mullen ASC]

Because your question was very broad and somewhat misguided. The best stock to use is whatever creates the look you need for a scene. It may be some outdated high-speed film that went grainy, milky and blue in the blacks!

 

Someone could say "EXR 50D 5245", a great stock, but if their whole feature is set at night, that doesn't help them much.

 

The slowest-speed stocks are the finest-grained. The fastest stocks are the grainiest. Newer emulsions tend to be less grainy than older emulsions, so some of the new 500 ASA stocks have the graininess of old 250-to-320 ASA stocks.

 

Some stocks are more contrasty than others. Some projects need contrast, some don't. Some may be adding contrast by using skip-bleach for the print so want a stock that is very low contrast.

 

No, Agfa doesn't make MP color neg any more. One of my favorite stocks was XTR-250, their replacement to XT-320. It was only out for a year before Agfa pulled the plug on their whole MP neg line, almost a decade ago. Low-con Fuji Eterna 400T is probably the closest to that look, or Expression 500T, but neither have the brown-yellow bias that Agfa had.

[Jonathan Bryant]

In reply to "Because your question was very broad and somewhat misguided." Ok I understand now I will try to be more to the point next time. For example I was hoping for everyone to say something like" I like to use Fuji LowCon for people shot in: insert conditions here. And I like Kodak rxr d50 for: insert conditions here. Hope that helps. So does only Kodak and Fuji make MP film now? I think Robin Hood Prince of Theives with Kevin Costner was shot on AGFA but in the credits it give credit to Eastman Film. I liked the aged film look.

[David Mullen ASC]

Trouble is that for features, these decisions are story-based (hopefully). So for one story, a landscape shot on 5245 might be better while for another story, it may be Expression 500T shot without the 85 filter. Same with faces.

 

"Cast Away" used 5245 for the early island scenes and 5248 for the later scenes for a subtle change in saturation.

 

Lots of great work done on Agfa, from "Out of Africa", to Zefirelli's "Hamlet", "Memphis Belle" (all of these shot by David Watkin), "Mountains of the Moon" (Roger Deakins), parts of "The Mission", "Gorillas in the Mist", etc. I was sorry to see it go.

 

With D.I.'s, for better or worse, digital color-correction sort of trumps the subtleties of Fuji versus Kodak, etc. in terms of color; what matters more is the stock's graininess, latitude, and sharpness when doing a D.I. because a minor difference in how a shade of red or blue is rendered, or how warm or color the shadows look, etc. can be so heavily altered by digital color-correction tools.

[Sam Wells]

For example I was hoping for everyone to say something like" I like to use Fuji LowCon for people shot in: insert conditions here. And I like Kodak rxr d50 for: insert conditions here.

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But it's rarely that formulaic.

 

Admittedly, a lot of my work is more "abstract" than conventional narrative but still even in drama, as David points out, it's not always a simple equation.

 

True, one rarely uses 50D in an available light dark alley etc. I use 50D in the conditions where I want the look texture color of 50D. :D

 

One thing I'm liking a lot lately, as I'm cutting it is a bunch of 7274 I pushed one & essentially did not compensate for the push.

Sharp and snappy. Less polite than Vision 2, more acidic color.

 

-Sam