Karim D. Ghantous Posted February 11, 2022 Share Posted February 11, 2022 (edited) Recently, I shot a roll of 5207 repackaged into a 35mm cassette. There is a lab in Brunswick (a suburb in the Melbourne Metro) that sells and develops VISION3 film for photographers. (Remjet intact). It was worth a try, but so far I'm disappointed. I asked for 24Mpx TIFF scans and they just look too grainy to me. The film can't be this grainy so it has to be the Noritsu scanner, I'm sure. Or their development process? See the attached 400px 1:1 crop of a section of blue sky. If anyone can do the same from a frame of 5207 that you have shot, please post it below. I'd like to compare. I am certain that my camera, a Canon P rangefinder, works fine. I shot most of the frames at 1/500 sec, and all of them were at f/8, and there is no evidence that the camera has underexposed the film. I metered for ISO 200, FWIW. I used an iPhone app to do that and pointed it straight up at the sky, which is how I usually meter if I am not using a camera with live view. BTW I decided to not have the negatives returned as I'm just in a testing process right now. It's just more money and the cost of 35mm is approaching AU$2 per frame, in total. I'm not against the cost per se, but I expect better image quality than this. I've seen beautiful 16mm frames from pushed 7219 so something is not right. Also, TIFF is probably not as good as DPX. Edited February 11, 2022 by Karim D. Ghantous Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Tyler Purcell Posted February 11, 2022 Premium Member Share Posted February 11, 2022 Who are you buying film from? I sell super old stock to this guy in China all the time. He re-packs it into nice containers that look professional, but its 10 year old stock. I think you've just run into a situation of old stock and misrepresentation. If you let film sit for more than 6 months, it will start to degrade like this. My guess is, this is some 5207 I sold that guy 3 years ago from a batch of film from 2017. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karim D. Ghantous Posted February 11, 2022 Author Share Posted February 11, 2022 3 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said: Who are you buying film from? https://www.b2scan.net/ I'm amazed that movie film only lasts 6 months. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member David Sekanina Posted February 11, 2022 Premium Member Share Posted February 11, 2022 I find it hard to judge just from a 1:1 400 pixel crop. A 24Mpixel image is about 6000 pixels wide, so the one to one crop of your 400 pixel wide square is 1/15 of the thole image width. Given that, I don't think it's that grainy for a 250D film. Maybe they sharpened the scan a bit aggressively, and you could ask them not to sharpen them in the future. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member David Sekanina Posted February 11, 2022 Premium Member Share Posted February 11, 2022 (edited) Here's a 1:1 400x400 pixel crop of an Ektachrome 100 VS scan, which has finer grain than the 250D Vision 3 Edited February 11, 2022 by David Sekanina Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member David Sekanina Posted February 11, 2022 Premium Member Share Posted February 11, 2022 and another with an exposure closer to yours Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Posted February 11, 2022 Share Posted February 11, 2022 OP...a sucky scanner does not give you sharp grain. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member David Sekanina Posted February 11, 2022 Premium Member Share Posted February 11, 2022 Despite their age, the Noritsu scanners are very nice, and better than the flatbed scanner I used for my samples. They might just have sharpened the image a bit too much. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Tyler Purcell Posted February 11, 2022 Premium Member Share Posted February 11, 2022 7 hours ago, Karim D. Ghantous said: I'm amazed that movie film only lasts 6 months. Film is film, we've done plenty of testing and you'd be shocked how much noise difference there is between a brand new 2 month old fresh roll that's only seen a refrigerator and processed the day after shooting vs a roll over 6 months old, that hasn't been necessarily refrigerated and processed days or even weeks after being shot. With 35mm stills, it's not such a big deal, but you will notice it if its old film. Heck, when we were in Colorado on a shoot, we ran out of 35mm still film, bought some from Walmart and it was gross, grain the size of my pinky! It was well within expiration date tho. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karim D. Ghantous Posted February 12, 2022 Author Share Posted February 12, 2022 13 hours ago, David Sekanina said: Here's a 1:1 400x400 pixel crop of an Ektachrome 100 VS scan, which has finer grain than the 250D Vision 3 That looks somewhat better overall. The shadow areas look better in particular. I'd love to see a comparison between a Noritsu and a Northlight or Spirit. 10 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said: OP...a sucky scanner does not give you sharp grain. I've seen a lot of Pakon scans of 5222 and they are too grainy. But sharp grain, yeah, different story. Maybe I'll try another lab with Portra or Ektachrome and see how I go. This experiment just happened to be a dud. Live and learn. Maybe part of my problem is that I've seen so much really nice S16 scans that I have miscalibrated expectations. BTW I want to state for the record that sharpening is an amateur move. Never done it, never will. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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