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Tungsten Stock + 85/85B vs. Daylight Stock


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Whilst one might purchase a roll of 250D and 200T and test this out as I would, as it happens, I have been wrung out of all my money the past three months. So, rather than try to self hypothesize in my head, I may as well put the proverbial nail in the coffin in an attempt to suppress my ADHD and OCD. Which leads me to my questions...

A) Color-wise, what can one expect when using a tungsten balanced stock with an 85 or 85B filter, rather than simply daylight stock aside from the two-third stop of light? 

B) To further elaborate on question A, normally how significant is this color change?

C) Lastly, For a pre eighties era film style, do you recommend using daylight balanced stock for all exterior daytime scenes, or go as far as to strictly use tungsten stock with an 85/85B filter for all exterior daytime scenes, a very common practice of a tungsten dominant era?

Until of course I actually go out and test this myself I won't really have an answer I can be one hundred percent satisfied with, but rather one I can at least accept for a short while. And yes, I am aware of the 200 kelvin difference of the 85 vs 85B filter and will be putting this to the test as well once I can economically prioritize doing a film test.

 

 

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The Vision-3 sticks have been designed to match each other fairly closely so color and contrast-wise, I don't think you'd see much difference, nothing that isn't correctable. 250 ASA is faster than 200 ASA so is slightly grainier.

In the days of EXR, 50D and 250D were more contrasty than the tungsten stocks.

For me, the decision whether to use tungsten stocks outdoors or for day interiors was a matter of (1) how many stocks did I want to carry, considering that some scenes would be tungsten-lit, (2) whether I'd want to pull the 85 filter for a blue cast outdoors or indoors, and how often.  So roughly speaking, my tendency was to use daylight stocks (plus tungsten for night interiors and exteriors) in a generally warm-toned movie and tungsten stocks for a generally cool-toned movie (sometimes not even shooting with an 85 filter and just correcting it halfway back).  Plus it also depended on whether I was keen to use 50D stock, like for a desert movie.

The other issue was day interiors -- if I wanted a warm-to-neutral look and didn't want to pull the 85 filter, then the choice was 250D rated at 200 ASA for me, or 200T + 85, so rated at 100 ASA for me, a stop difference in practical speed.  But sometimes I used the LLD filter instead of an 85 filter to help gain back more speed with the 200T stock.

For example, I shot "Seven Days in Utopia" in Texas and "Astronaut Farmer" in New Mexico on daylight stocks (Kodak 50D and 250D for the first, Fuji 64D and 250D for the second) other than the 500T shots... but when I went to Vancouver to shoot "Jennifer's Body" I just used 200T and 500T.  And when I did "Northfork", a winter landscape movie, I shot most of it on Fuji 125T without the 85 filter outside, with a few interiors on 400T.  That movie actually only had one single night interior scene in tungsten lighting.

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