K Borowski

At least I don't sit in an armchair staring at a computer screen all day. That Super 8 camera was the joke, not me. You guys need to pull your heads out of your asses! Film is dying right now, and you are doing NOTHING about it but bashing the competition when you come up for air from sticking your heads in the sand! You do not wish to associate with me, more power to you, because I am on your side. I'm brutally honest, and don't entertain other people's grandiose fantasies, or help with mentally getting them off on something that will never happen (mental masterbation, like the other kind, ought to be a one person activity) but I am on your side. And, do you know WHY I am cynical? I work in the industry, hear all this SH__ on here, all the big talk, big ideas, then SEE the total lack of followthrough, friends out of the job, f'in fired, dead, took their own lives, because you guys don't send sh__ into the G"Ded lab, all you do is wear a hole in your armchair you're typing so fast. I'm sick of it. Your IT job that kills my industry by day is NOT offset by your shooting 3 rolls of Super 8 every year. You're KILLING us and I HATE YOU for it. You're deluding students to boot and I resent anyone that corrupts young bright minds with flights of fancy and delusion.

Agreed! 16mm cameras might be cheap, but they are still not "disposable cameras;" those come in cardboard boxes at grocery stores ;-)

If you 're going to be scanning anyway, cross processing in ECN or C-41 will certainly make it easier to capture the full dynamic range (as the gamma in the neg. processes is far lower than E-6). Usually, film scanners can only capture slightly over 3.0 Optical Density (OD) which is less than the full range possible with E-6. VNF was specifically made lower contrast so that more of its range could be transferred into the electronic realm; it may be possible to still get this lower-contrast VNF processing with E-6 at some labs. IIRC, the COLOR developer (2nd one) is the only real modification for lower contrast, although there's a shift of about 30 points on the magenta-green axis ( you'd need an 0.30 magenta filter I think on E-6 processed in VNF). Of course, cross processing, lower contrast processing, also takes away the reversal LOOK, in part. It's not just saturation, the limited dynamic range is part of the look of E-6. Sorry don't have a side-by-side test. Have some reversal examples of Kodachrome, VNF, Foma Reversal I've shot. Have never cross processed my reversal.

Keith, do you have anything useful to report, anything POSITIVE? All you seem to do is bash the Red. I can understand your dislike of digital imaging being PUSHED on every facet of this industry. What are you doing, personally, about it? Do you think these silly posts though, taking personal jabs at industry players, is going to somehow save film or hurt the Red company? You're just wasting bandwidth and our time. Do something about it if you want to fight imaging that is marginal in quality. Go out there and become an advocate, industry rep., famous DP, lab owner, film engineer, camera manufacturer and do something positive, instead of bashing a system that is replacing a system that is currently better than it thanks, in GREAT PART due to all of the "armchair experts" on here and 100-foot a year 16mm enthusiasts.

Charles, I thought everything was from 5- or 6K feet. So four or five 1200s, twelve or fifteen 400s. I just really like the versatility (with the obvious tradeoff of size) of having 20+ minutes shooting. Most documentaries really scream for the ability to keep rolling. *Edit* Even if you can only get, say, 800, 1000 foot lengths of 16mm in an oversized magazine, I feel the extra bulk is worth it except in extreme situations of cramped quarters, areas where a small form factor is essential (a firefight in a war zone, a funeral, a hidden camera). Alec, glad to be of help. Need an experienced AC, DP, gaffer on the East Coast, please feel free to look me up! I've never worked on a 16mm doc. Good for you for sticking with the good stuff. 16mm looks GREAT for this work (watch any Michael Moore doc for what the image quality aesthetic - don't want to start a political argument debating the quality of the content - accepted today has degenerated into. . .)

Even with an extra two generations, that would cost you, what 20-30% resolution extra? That should still provide ample resolution over 4K from an IMAX frame.

DAMIEN: I admit I'm biased. I work in a film lab. I roll 35mm film every day, and I am addicted to it. When 35mm film gets surpassed by digital in resolution, dynamic range, versatility, I will cry, drink a fifth, and convert. Until then I shall passionately fight against any step backwards in quality that we take, regardless of this cost, ease of use BS.

EDIT: You mentioned the 1200 foot mag and I missed it. It is still available, albeit in special order sizes, direct from Eastman Kodak in quantity. Therefore it is obtainable by anyone shooting a decent ratio on a doc. That sounds like a lot of film, but I wouldn't want to shoot on anything less than 800 feet in these situations, even if the stock costs more. Considering that the people at Kodak selling you film are business majors who know nothing about film or coating it, it should be relatively easy to convince them that your buiying 3x as much film, with 2 less cuts (less work on their part), in volume should entail a lower price :-) Considering Kodak makes a whopping FIVE STOCKS now, should be easy to get any of them (except maybe the discount 500T) in 1200's

A, you make a great point: 5 min. versus ten. You going to tell someone in the middle of a long-winded dialogue about how her husband was killed in a war by his own troops you need to reload? Even 10 is tough sometimes. A, one thing I read, forget which model Arri it is but think an SR, is that there is actually a (rediculous looking) 1200 foot coax mag available, looks like half of a "Mickey Mouse ear" almost twice the square size of the camera from a side perspective, but they should still be floating around out there? WIll have to look up the model number in my cameraman's handbook. B-Wind versus A-wind? Should be solved most easily in a rental house darkroom, or your own with a pair of cheap, free second-hand rewinds. I mean, if you know how to wind emulsion out to emulsion in, you are worthy of some second grade paste-up stars. It's not that hard to accomplish, even with the lights off. Noise is DEFINITELY a consideration. I hate to say this, because I am a HUGE film advocate. I will go down rolling 35mm, one of the last rolls at least in color unless I get struck by lightening before I hit the POST button. 16mm is ENDANGERED these days, as is color film of all kinds. I wouldn't count, with certainty, on either of these cameras being color film loadable in a decade, even five years. I blame the 2011 ACVL conference for my outspoken opinion on this matter.

Martin's work in hand processing is seconded by none, at least as far as I can speak for, in the 48 contiguous states. He taught me everything I know about hand-processing, processing control, and motion picture film rewind processing, drying. Here, it's easiest to set up a Photobucket account, then link to the images you upload there, Martin.

What a joke! 4K (12 megapixel) files match IMAX??? Was everyone deprived of their glasses, corrective lenses at the screening? They get them drunk beforehand? IMAX has TWELVE TIMES the resolution of 35mm. Let's say, for safety's sake that due to crummy, slow, large-format optics, you only get an actual 8x increase. At 3.2K, hell, 2.5K with grainy 500T pushed a stop, that is 36 megapixels per frame at the worst, which, at 1.33:1 comes out to just a tad under SEVEN K. So, three times the resolution, at a bare minimum, under the worst circumstances, with the fastest film pushed a stop. I like how the test made sure all the IMAX material was 4th generation; as we are well aware most IMAX content is 2nd generation contact printing.

No John, unfortunately I could not find/hire anyone. That definitely would have been an issue though. Assuming I could've gotten exposure off the landing lights, but maybe not. Guess I have to wait, what another 10 years if I want a chance to shoot film of a [u.S.] space-shot. Probably won't be available from-new, at least in color, so I need to stockpile it. I swore I'd be at the next manned moon launch, rolling 16mm film. At least I haven't missed that. . . [At the rate U.S. Debt ratios are climbing, next people on the moon will probably be speaking Mandarin Chinese.]

What's the matter ZBig A, you get burned buying another 4,000 feet that the seller thought movie film didn't need to be handled in complete darkness? Didn't the pictures of the film out in the open tip you off? ;-) Actually saw, think it was color photographic paper being sold this way once. I sent the seller a biting, sarcastic note, asking what the pinkish color was good for now that he'd turned it into scrap silver, paper base, and pink-colored inkjet paper, and you wouldn't BELIEVE how fast that auction disappeared. Unfortunately, 16mm ends are hard to come by these days. Make friends with the Dominos camera crew! Is Friday Night Lights still on the air, still S16? If you are in the US Cristiaan, I MIGHT be able to track down some phone numbers of loaders, ACs you might be able to call and acquire "waste" from. Might be a minute or less, and have all the hassles associated therewith, but free is free, right?

Inverseely proportional? Orange? I don't observe teh density of the neg. mask going DOWN when exposed images go up. And what are we talking about orange for? I read cyan, yellow, magenta dye. I can understand the green layer (magenta) generating yellow dye and blue layer (yellow) generating what magenta, magenta and yellow. But if we were to see this cancelled out with exposure, wouldn't we run into a point where the density would go DOWN? The average reading for ECN neg in Status M densitometry is something like 20 Cyan ® 65 Magenta (G) 90 Yellow (B) With a gamma of 0.6, that is 4-1/2 stops roughly of yellow that would suddenly disappear with that layer being exposed? Or the other layer or layers being exposed? Sorry, thought I'd posted this yesterday, must have not clicked the send button.

There's no doubt this is a scary time to be in the lab industry. I'll be God-damned if I'm not the last one to pull the plug on ECN/ECP processing though. Still rolling 35mm film every single day at work. Frankly, I HOPE the volume shrinks. When the likes of cinemark get out of the print industry, the prices may go up, but maybe a smaller lab can compete for print runs, and run at a slower speed, with better quality control and good, consistent colors, density, and sharp, steady contacts. 2,500 print runs aren't good for quality, aren't good for consistency, aren't good for the viewer, therefore aren't good for FILM. I'm hoping we can help the small theatres hang on. The studios want them to die. If smaller labs can position themselves when Technicolor, Deluxe are done (looks like Technicolor already is, basically, as far as release printing goes), and offer a price model that a small theatre can afford when the studios stop providing free $1500 prints, I think there is a chance to give the small theatres a HIGHER quality product than the Wal-marts of the industry. I've seen 4K put onto 35mm print stock. That makes it a viable means of getting content on the screen superior to every single digital screen by a factor of four in my geographic area.

@Charles You're right of course. IDK about over-bleaching, over-fixing though, the latter is probably fine for dyes, is bad for B&W. Bleach, just by its rather harsh chemical composition, I wouldn't want to have the film in there double for. Probably lowering the temperature would have a similar effect as lowering time. I guess someone would need to do some stability tests. Those wack-jobs at Wilhelm imaging don't give a flying f___ about any sort of imaging that isn't done with a mouse and ink cartridges anymore. They're probably wondering why we aren't "all digital!" yet. @Daniel Are you arguing semantics with me? Or is there a point you're trying to make I'm not getting? I'd think it IS uniform in density, as it develops out in B&W, E-6, RA-4 chemistry as well. I measured it once, and the colors were about the same in Dektol as they are in C-41. Not sure about ECN-2, but i'd assume it'd behave similarly. Used still film to avoid the hassle of the rem-jet backing. Something like 0.20 Cyan, 0.65 Magenta, 0.90 Yellow Status M if I recall correctly, so the dyes in the different layers vary by about two and a half stops from one another (at a gamma of 0.6 or so. But the values are constant. I wouldn't think the base would somehow vary with exposure so that it compounds itself, although the colors do shift due to other factors. In any case, I know what it is there for, OPTICALLY. The sort of color pollution you would get printing a clear-base film like X-processed E-6, could be corrected out quite easily in the digital realm. What I want to know is how it's formed. I know the film itself is clear, it's in the dye layers, so are they fogged selectively? I'm sorry, but I don't catch the drift of your last sentence. Could you restate please?

While, technically, you are riht John, taht the lab is part of post (just like a DI needs film in film out), most people mean [digital] post. As far as pushing goes, you can even turn the speed down right as the last of the film leaves the stop bath, but it's more a matter of being undermanned, needing someone to catch it right as this happens (being undermanned, or being apathetic) that prevents this. Like today, I just ran a push two 15 minutes past our normal shutdown time, and got it out the door at 5. . . I really cheated on the secondaries, but it was print stock, in a non-critical application. If a push two is only giving you 2/3 stop true speed gain (sounds about right), then a push one has to be giving you less than that, at most 1/2 stop. I'd say in most situations a push one is worth it, even with a grain penality. Push two, honestly, you're gaining mostly contrast (can be added as well, better digitally) and little to no speed. And again, the d-max is getting up past the point a lot of neg. film scanners are set for (again the operator can adjust for it, but most of the time it never is), so you may be loosing some information at the other end to see that extra sixth of a stop of true speed into the shadows ( 0.03-4 on a densitometer). Pushing is still designed with optical printing in mind. No one (including myself, I'm making educated guesses here about optimal combinations of developer increase and analog gain adjustment on the scanner), has bothered to actually sit down and examine the effects of one versus the other side by side. (You're right a lot of times digital adjustment is done after-the-fact; that is not what I am talking about though, I'm talking about scanner corrections as the film is goiing through). Look at 5299 scan film. That is Kodak's second (and probably final) attempt at a digital-optimized film with a super-low gamma, super-wide latitude. People wanted the orange base (needless with digital equipment) instead so they axed it. Looking at the characteristic curve (if I could find some old stock I'd love to test it out myself. . .) it is far more versatile that 5219 in terms of latitude. I think this is more a case of old habits dying hard. I'd love to hear Rob's opinion on this, or Dominic's. Have been too busy myself to conduct that test of all the films against one another and scanned with different analog gains and exposure modifications. If Kodak keeps discontinuing filmstocks though, it is going to get a lot easier soon! ;-/

You're going to get some horrendous grain for those extra 2/3 of a stop, and those are 2/3 of a stop under the already large latitude range. I'd only push 16mm in an extreme emergency, it's already quite grainy in the '19. YOu might be able to get something to REGISTER at 8 stops under, but it is not going to be normal enough looking to be USABLE. It's going to be extremely grainy, flat, and milky with extreme underexposure. With neg. film I like to keep everything within a -1 to +5 stop range that I want to be able to "recover" without it starting to become distorted, grainy.

I'd say about 100% of the time in the "pros" it's done chemically (actually an increase in developer TIME not special chemicals). Ultimately, though it is a bit of a holdout from the pre-DI days. What a push does is increase contrast and highlight speed (NOT shadow speed, therefore increase in contrast is casused by detail lost in the shadows) Without a push, straight optical or contact printing, you could correct it back but your image started to get milky and flat. A push would add contrast (and then some) that would give it more of a normal look, although you'd have pitch-black shadows and an increase in grain. Digitally, you can tweak the contrast easily, but you'll get digital noise instead of grain if you overdo it. You'd have to test one against the other. For a simple one-stop push I'd definitely just do it at the lab. Only in an extreme situation maybe with a push two, would I contemplate not doing things traditionally. Cinematographers used to underexpose 100ASA neg. back in the '70s when that's all there was, two stops, push one and pirnt up the other one so as not to get too much grain and contrast. I'd contemplate doing something similar with a two stop underexposure, one stop push and correcting the rest digitally. Problem is, a bad telecine or scan session, if they don't adjust the ANALOG gain on the scanner to scan the shadows at the correct intensity you can run into a tun of, in my opinion far more objectionable digital noise. One further disadvantage that David Mullen often mentioned on here with both skip bleach and pushing is that the 2ndary solutions get their times extended as well, harming image longevity. I can tell you the machine I run film on is guilty of this. We can speed the film up again immediately after it has cleared developer, but often times we aren't there right when it clears. Over-bleaching film probably doesn't aid image permanence of the dyes any, and probably increases reddish stain (shows up cyan) on the negative. And, with pushing, you get to a point where the true film speed increase goes to zero and you start to get highlight speed increases at the expense of image quality on what IS developed in the shadows, your base fog goes WAY up past a certain point and you get some ugly milky grainy shadows. With a good scanner and scanner operator,in the DI world, a one stop push is almost unnecessary, as you're not even getting a full stop of detail bak in terms of the speed increase. But there are plenty of bad habits, lazy operators who "know better" than the instructions sometimes. You'd be surprised how reluctant some labs are to turn up the intensity of the scan head to see into severe overexposure. With pushing, if not properly adjusted, you can gain grain and get jet-black shadows and have the scanner intensity not increased to punch through the denser highlights, getting blowouts.

Guy, thanks for the excellent info. Width of the screen is irrelevant, IMO, when such excellent information is presented. Guy should make money with such a well-written piece, and someone lay it out for him in the book! I'm glad to hear it from you rather than getting burned by LED lights myself! I thought these lights were spectrally pure, solving a lot of the problems with common CFLs. Disappointing to see they have a lot of maturing to do as well. This has to do with the peak responses being off from where film, HD sensitivities lie? Don't have time to disseminate your post in full, but I'd supposit that, since there aren't gaps in the spectrum, there ought to be exposure compensations that should make it a simple matter to pull information back out. In Okada's case, he must have severely underexposed the green layer to the point that it didn't develop to a usable density above D-min of the film. Like shooting tungsten film in daylight conditions, or vice versa without filtration, as long as there is adequate red, green blue exposures to render decent dye density on the neg., it should be correctable. My understanding was that only commercial fluoros (with the exception of Fuji Films with the cyan inter-layer) or spectrally deficient light like mercury vapor sodium vapor were completely uncorrectable even with overexposure.

Would it be better in some way than the current options we gave you? Would it be of a comparable price?

Even with DLP becoming ubiquitous, I assume you can still show up with a timed interpositive or the master positive and say "Here, your problem now, this is timed perfectly." David Mullen said that there are still some variances in a finish, timed, master positive, but *most* of the look can be locked in photochemically. And, it's funny, they managed to use master positives or teleprints just fine on all of these "obsolescent, grainy" pre-DI movies. BTW, the compression algorithms are a hell of a lot more bothersome to everyone, not just me, on HDTV than grain :-D

Optical printer instead? I know S35 looks better through a DI, but that is blowing a smaller format up. Generally you lose about 1/2 of the resolution whenever you go through a lens. 65mm 5-perf. might still come out the winner in that situation. I wouldn't be comfortable going through just a 4K with 70 unless I wanted to sacrifice the resolution I went through all that trouble, extra money for. 6.4 or 8K is probably adequate for this format.

Thanks for that info Rob. As an aside, once they pry my last CRT out of my cold, dead, hands, what, if anything would you recommend on a shoestring budget? ANy off-the-shelf monitors that are very good? I remember LaCie used to be a higher end prosumer manufacturer back in the day. Dolby is throwing 35mm under the bus like it's their job, were busy talking about how Dolby 7.1 would NOT be supported on their legacy film systems, would frankly rather not buy a thing from them. They seem to have a lot of their money into DCI and plastic sunglasses instead of sound and color improvement and calibration. Are D24s and 32s scarce, or available cheaply now? I use a Sony, couldn't tell you the model number, an older SD version, have a couple of them actually. Of course, I do an embarassing amount of personal work at home on probably the WORST LCD monitor ever made, in terms of color shift. The 2003 Apple iMac stalk LCD monitor :-/

Rich, glad you' aren't in "what the market will bear" camp on this one. I walk the line between employer, employee, white collar/blue collar worker myself. But WalMart is everything wrong with the "market" all rolled into one; so is cinemark. Does WalMart have its own bank yet to charge its employees interest on thier own paychecks? cinemark does. . .