Colour or B/W film to shoot B/W Stills?

joachim · October 8, 2005

I´m doing some research for an upcomming project.

The director wants a sequence of B/W stills, simmilar to La Jetee.

Rest of the film is in colour. He wants to shoot the stills with a still camera, NOT grabbing frames from a movie camera.

After some thought and reading around here and elswhere.

My idea is to shoot B/W stills, make 8*10 prints and photoraph those with a movie camera.

So I´m wondering if I should use colour film or B/W film when shooting the stills?

It will be a print of the film, and I thought it would make life easier only to use colour negative film for shooting.

Any thoughts on this will be appreciated

Joachim

Dirk DeJonghe · October 9, 2005

Joachim,

your reasoning is correct, you do not want to intercut unmasked B&W negative with color negative. It will not give you a neutral gray between the color shots.

The method you propose is the cheapest, simplest and safest and you won't have to order extra stock and processing.

joachim · October 9, 2005

Thanks Dirk.

I really think this will be the way to go. Do I have any other options you think?

Joachim

Edited October 9, 2005 by joachim

Gareth Munden · October 9, 2005

Dirk is right , use neg and film the print under even "copy" style lighting . You may have to filter to get the right "colour" in your B&W print ( Warm or Cold Greys ) .

Dimitrios Koukas · October 9, 2005

I´m doing some research for an upcomming project.
The director wants a sequence of B/W stills, simmilar to La Jetee.

Rest of the film is in colour. He wants to shoot the stills with a still camera, NOT grabbing frames from a movie camera.

After some thought and reading around here and elswhere.

My idea is to shoot B/W stills, make 8*10 prints and photoraph those with a movie camera.

So I´m wondering if I should use colour film or B/W film when shooting the stills?

It will be a print of the film, and I thought it would make life easier only to use colour negative film for shooting.

Any thoughts on this will be appreciated

Joachim

Joachim,

My opinion is to shoot B+W stills and then take them to an optical printer to give you the length you want.

U see colour negative cannot be degraded (colourwise) to complete black and white tones (greyscale).

Only if you do a DI from it.

SO in my humble opinion always, I would go with the B+W photos.And as u said, shoot them in a frame, with your negative that you are using, so no need to go for optical printing.

Dimitrios Koukas

joachim · October 9, 2005

Thanks guys, so it seems the best way to do it is to shoot the B/W prints with a movie camera using the same colour negative as I will use for the rest of the shoot?

But I risk getting "warm" or "cold" greys, any suggestion for filters to avoid this?

PS I don´t think we will do a DI

John Pytlak RIP · October 10, 2005

Printing a silver-image camera negative film onto color print film will require considerable orange-colored filration during printing, so it can't be intercut directly with color negative film. Some have used your technique, or the B&W film sections could be printed as a separate roll, allowing the proper printer setup.

Even when printed to a fairly neutral image on a color print, a B&W silver image negative will typically have a very slight amount of coloration in the highlights and shadows, as the color print film tone scale is optimized for printing from a color negative. Typically, the shadows will be slightly cool, and the highlights slightly warm. The lab will have to carefully control the printing and processing, as even one printer point off from a neutral balance will have visible coloration when compared directly to a silver image B&W print.

Robert Hughes · October 10, 2005

John, could you bipack that b&w negative with some clear color negative and get a usable result?

John Pytlak RIP · October 10, 2005

John, could you bipack that b&w negative with some clear color negative and get a usable result?

Usually, the lab would use a special printer setup (quite orange in light output). As mentioned, if you need to intercut B&W neg with color neg, consider using multiple rolls to allow the printer setup change.