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Shooting only extreme formats, and foregoing 35mm altogether


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I occasionally watch an episode of Poirot (or Miss Marple), starring David Suchet. Thankfully there are a lot of them, and most are shot on 16mm.

I also recently watched The Girl Who Played With Fire, shot on S16. I only got an HDTV last month, which was a hand-me-down from a neighbour (we all have our priorities!), and I watched it on BluRay. I had no idea what this was filmed on - it looked like maybe pushed 35, I thought. Either way the image was fantastic. I'd describe it as rich, organic, and contrasty. Turns out it was S16. But IMDB doesn't say which stock was used.

Perhaps others feel this way, but I believe that if you're shooting on film, you should go for formats that are close to the extremes. 16mm is one extreme, VV and 65mm are another. With 16mm, you get an obviously grainy image, but it's still sharp. With VV and 65mm, you almost don't notice the grain at all. But with S35... it's sort of there, but not as obvious as with 16mm. So it's this middle ground that does not have the clarity of VV/65 but also has a graininess that is not as raw as 16mm. 35mm doesn't commit to either clarity or rawness. 

It's like a Dutch tilt: there is no "slight" Dutch tilt. If it's slight, it's not a Dutch tilt - there is no spectrum. A slight Dutch tilt is another way of saying that you didn't hold the camera straight. If that analogy makes any sense.

I think that digital cameras change the way we look at film. It's not a competition so much as a set of new paradigms and new ways to reflect on old technology.

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22 hours ago, Uli Meyer said:

Shooting film is not all about the grain.

Agreed. So my hypothesis, to sum it up, is this: shoot S16 for that beautiful raw look, and shoot VV or 65mm for the cleaner, smoother look. Ignore S35 because it is stuck in the middle between the two, offering the best of neither world.

It's a thought experiment, not a prescription.

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3 hours ago, Karim D. Ghantous said:

Agreed. So my hypothesis, to sum it up, is this: shoot S16 for that beautiful raw look, and shoot VV or 65mm for the cleaner, smoother look. Ignore S35 because it is stuck in the middle between the two, offering the best of neither world.

It's a thought experiment, not a prescription.

That's like limiting yourself to thinking that it's either impressionist painting or neo-classicist  epic canvasses. Anything inbetween is stuck in the middle, not offering the best of neither world, which is, of course, nonsense.

 

Edited by Uli Meyer
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3 hours ago, Karim D. Ghantous said:

So my hypothesis, to sum it up, is this: shoot S16 for that beautiful raw look, and shoot VV or 65mm for the cleaner, smoother look. Ignore S35 because it is stuck in the middle between the two, offering the best of neither world.

 

Yea I'd agree with this statement. S35mm is too damn close to digital in many ways. 

With the way colorists these days are manipulating shows to remove a lot of the characteristics which make film look good. 

I don't see much benefit to 35mm outside of shallow depth of field, which CAN be achieved with 16mm if you put the subject closer to the camera. 

Large formats like VV and 65mm do have an entirely different look, but they're so clean, they almost require film projection to work. Watch them on your TV, with most modern color grading, you'll never really see the difference between film and FF digital. You need that extra contrast pop created by the film print, to really spark some magic. It really made films like Joker look great. The squeaky clean look of the Alexa was nearly gone and all that remained was a beautiful contrast popping image with excellent realistic color grade and a tiny bit of grain. 

16mm is the way to go, it has been for a few years now and it will continue to in the future. 

Edited by Tyler Purcell
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5 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

With the way colorists these days are manipulating shows to remove a lot of the characteristics which make film look good. 

Well, just don't "manipulate" and all the wonderful characteristics of 35mm are back. I shoot both Super 16 and 35 and much prefer the latter. There are lots of great examples out there, I'm sure you have seen them, Tyler. 16mm is cheaper, that is a big advantage but not enough to write off 35mm, surely.

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5 hours ago, Uli Meyer said:

That's like limiting yourself to thinking that it's either impressionist painting or neo-classicist  epic canvasses. 

 

Sometimes having a spectrum is helpful. Sometimes, it's clutter. There are too many iPhones. There are also too many bolt head sizes - one for every millimetre, it seems. Unnecessary!

Fujifilm offers only two sensors: APS-C and medium format. Leica offers three and is possibly going to ditch APS-C. But, Leica only offers one variant of the S line, whereas Fujifilm offers four medium format cameras. Red arguably offers too many cameras, too.

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I have been noticing a lot of content shot on smaller formats that are supposedly beautiful due to their pronounced flaws etc... most of that content would have been laughed at during the film era or at least wouldn't have received such praise. Remember that s8 music video came out a couple of years ago that looked like a camera test but received such a praise. In my opinion, film looks much better lit rather than shooting in available light and relying on DI. In a sense, in my opinion, with film, you really need to know what you are doing to get the look in camera - or at least close to it. You have to be able to look at a lit room and be able to tell how dark or bright it will look on whatever stock you're shooting despite how it may look to your eyes. 

Edited by Giray Izcan
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9 hours ago, Uli Meyer said:

Well, just don't "manipulate" and all the wonderful characteristics of 35mm are back. I shoot both Super 16 and 35 and much prefer the latter. There are lots of great examples out there, I'm sure you have seen them, Tyler. 16mm is cheaper, that is a big advantage but not enough to write off 35mm, surely.

16mm isn't just cheaper in terms of stock, processing and transfer. 

It's cheaper in terms of equipment. Not just the camera, but lenses, support/accessories. Everything about them is lower cost. 

Plus, your crew doesn't need to be specialized. Ya don't need a 2nd assistant or even a loader. 1st assistant can load them the night before and re-load during lunch. On 35mm you need a full-time loader because you burn through way too much film and you also need someone to clean/thread the camera. On 16mm, ya don't really need to check the gate much (maybe after a great take that you have to 100% verify), but on 35mm you're likely to get a hair if ya don't, especially when working with longer loads. So there is a lot more downtime. 

When shot properly, using low ISO stocks, sharp lenses and 4k scanning, you can really get an incredible image out of 16mm. The problem is, nobody really tries. They're so dead set focused on how grainy the format is, they shoot 16mm like 35mm, with higher ISO stocks, in dark situations where the image is broken up and pushing lighting into the realm where even some digital cameras struggle. 

The main reason I shoot 35mm for my narrative work is simply because I'm forced to shoot 16mm on a regular basis, it's kind of my bread and butter. So whenever I get the chance to shoot something of my own, I really like to work with a different format. Otherwise, I wouldn't mind shooting everything on 16mm truthfully and I may be forced to in the future when 35mm becomes more unaccessible. For the time being, I'm getting in as much 35mm shooting as I can before that happens. 

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3 hours ago, David Mullen ASC said:

There are always convincing arguments for both directions — work at the extremes for a distinctive look, or work in the middle and be subtle.

It depends on which subtlety you want to invite into your life. Some love zooms, some shoot on primes only. Some love format choices, some think there are too many. Some love lens options, some think there are way, way too many. Some love film stock options, while others... want even more.

But I'll also make a peripheral point: line extensions are bad for branding, in general. Many business have a problem understanding this concept.

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20 hours ago, David Mullen ASC said:

There are always convincing arguments for both directions — work at the extremes for a distinctive look, or work in the middle and be subtle.

Totally

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13 minutes ago, David Mullen ASC said:

I have the same dilemma shooting still photographs - do I only shoot film if I want to make it look funky and retro? Because clean and sharp is so much easier to do with digital.

Yea exactly! 

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If you need a grainy film look, shoot it on film. Much better than fake grain with digital. Film grain is organic and digital screened grain is not. If you like the softer film look, shoot it on film. Everything has its purpose OP. 

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On 5/4/2022 at 12:11 PM, David Mullen ASC said:

I have the same dilemma shooting still photographs - do I only shoot film if I want to make it look funky and retro? Because clean and sharp is so much easier to do with digital.

 

You can use an open aperture and higher ISO with a ND, if needed, with stills to get a film look.

 

Steeplechase2006DanielD.TeoliJr..jpg

This digital photo has added digital grain.

titty-beads-copyright-2014-dnaiel-d-teol

This is digital photo was shot with an open aperture. Some digital has nice looking grain-like film structure. This is a monochrome sensor. (Don't remember if digital grain is added or not?)

juggalos-project-copyright-2014-daniel-d

You can get some nice, colorful and contrasty stuff with digital that may not work as well with film.

social-documentary-copyright-daniel-d-te

This is digital, open aperture, monochrome sensor. (Don't remember if digital grain is added or not?)

jenny-copyright-1972-daniel-d-teoli-jr-m

This is an old film shot from the 70's. All-natural grain.

campsite-jersey-city-2016-daniel-d-teoli

Some images, no matter what you do, look plasticky and digital. (Jersey City...$80 a day to park your tent when working in NYC.)

LittleDickyLuckyChops2016DanielD.TeoliJr

Digital photo, monochrome sensor, natural grain, wide open f1.4 and high ISO

All photos: D.D.Teoli Jr.

 

 

 

Edited by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
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