Sprocket hole light bleed and gate flare. ARRICAM LT/Zeiss Ultra primes

[Aike N. Lindhagen]

Hi everyone, 

I just received back a telecine transfer of some film stock test i did at Panavision in Poland and developed at WFdiF in Warsaw. I still did not receive the negatives back yet.

Link to a couple of clips > 

 

I was trying out some expired 5219(4 years old) and some fresh 5207, and most of the clips came out as expected BUT on a few clips the sprocket holes seem to bleed into the image in very bright light, the orange burn on the side aligned with the sprocket hole orientation 

This was evident on all rolls of film in specifically very bright overexposed scenes, so it cant just be the expired films fault. 

It's also mostly noticeable on the right side of the frame (of the scan). 

We used an Arricam LT (Handheld mags and Indiecam hd assist) with Zeiss ultra primes, fitted with MB19 matte box together with the snap-on collar for the ultra's but without any flags as i wanted to see if the gate flared or had any other reflection anomalies. 

The roll of 5219 was shot with the 28mm for all shots and the camera was never opened after the first threading. And this only happened on the fourth or fifth take on that roll (as i can see atleast).

This happened subsequently on the other roll of 5207 i had also, but in a much subtler manner, and here we tested out the whole set of Ultras.

To me it could be several things:

- Bad handling of the negatives.

- Bad development (looks like over-agitation)

- bad telecine (Light bleed through the edge of the negative during telecine)

- Leaky mags/throat on mags

- Gate reflection related? Rear element reflection?

- Reflection of the negative itself? 

- Leaky door on the Arricam LT? 

 

 

 

[John Rizzo]

I would say this is more of a scanner issue than a camera issue.

What brand film scanner was used to scan this film? We call this sprocket flare and I have seen this happen on different scanners. Did you shoot this footage in 35mm academy aperture? If you did that is why you see the sprocket flare  mostly on the right side because the picture is exposed right up to the right edge of the film (next to the sprockets) on left side (if you shot in academy aperture) there would be unexposed space between the left side sprockets and the picture (sound track area for 35mm) that is why  they don't show up on the left side.

Also if you used expired stock and it has some built in base fog that makes the base darker than  normal, the darker the base is, it will make the scanner light source reflect and make the sprocket flare more pronounced.   

 

 

[Aike N. Lindhagen]

Thank you John for the Info, this makes sense. The scanner was a spirit DataCine HD and i shot 3-perf/super 35

I got in contact with another DP today who had received an equally bad telecine from this place. A shame since its the only option we have in Poland to use.

I have always gone direct to full 2k/4k scan(arriscan) but wanted to try the telecine as it literally cost 20 euro and had half a day turnaround. Never again. Atleast i know more about the telecine process and its quirks.

[Giray Izcan]

Telecine is fine. TV shows were doing telecine.. I believe the Walking Dead was transferred on Spirits for example.

[Tyler Purcell]

I too have seen this phenomena with scanners whose light source also hits the sprockets. 

I can't imagine it coming from the camera, LT's have sealed pulldown areas. A light leak that bad would not just be seen on the sprockets. 

 

[Robert Houllahan]

It is likely that the Spirit operator set the lamp output higher for those scenes with bright hilites (i.e. very dense) and as jack said you get some bleed into the scan from the sprocket area with that higher lamp setting.

Not bad for 20 Euro but no Arriscan either.