Jarin Blaschke

It seems your cloud highlights have more information and separation than your shadows, which are lifted but empty. j

I didn’t see anything in “Hollywood” that looked anything like E6. Even their black and white parts looked like desaturated color neg film.

I still stand by it- 16mm is soft already, but 7222 definitely goes too far for my tastes. Mucky when compared to tri-X. I asked Fotokem to “pull” the tri-X one stop, but I don’t know what that means when you’re supposedly cross-processing. Whatever time and temp they used, it looked very good. I’m salivating to do it in 35mm one day. I do a lot of personal still photography work. I’ve never used Sprint, the classic student darkroom developer. I’d be very curious to see tri-X in Rodinal at 1+49 to 1+74 dilution. Should be very sharp in a distinctly grainy way (unlike the conventional mushy double-X grain in D96) and should straighten out the curve with lots of highlight latitude and separation. Once you dilute it, Rodinal is very very very economical and the concentrate lasts a long time. j

Thanks!!- I too was looking for you David, without luck. Maybe that’s to your benefit; I arrived 4 hours earlier from London, out of my exhausted mind. I have no confidence that my speech made any sense...

Wow - I didn't know they released it in rolls! I've only used it in 4x5 and 8x10. For Ortho+ to match the base shadow detail (the true measure of film speed) of FP4 in my preferred developer (WD2D+), it needs to be rated at ei16. I rate my FP4 at 80 or 64 though. I tend to like a full-range negative paired with a punchier, richer paper. I found that ei80 gives overly high contrast results with thin shadows under normal conditions. It's probably nice and rich for overcast days and front lighting though. This ignoramus hasn't seen any of those films.

Ha - yes! During prep, I passed around the Hemingway photo (and a couple others) to show people what our custom filter would do to skin tones before it was made. The Hemingway photo was made with real orthochromatic film, back when it was still popular for photographing certain male subjects. It would have been a much sharper than Double-X, even if it wasn't an 8x10 or 11x14" negative. Ilford (and Adox and Rollei, I think) still makes true orthochromatic film, but only in sheet sizes on a polyester base. It's very high contrast, so I find I have to rate it at ei16 and give very gentle development. Thanks for the positivity! -Jarin

Thanks for saying so! If you're shooting 16mm, I'd highly suggest Tri-X instead of Double X, which was sloppy and soft by comparison in 16mm. Rate it at 100, develop as a negative, and give it softer development . At "Normal", double-X seems to have a gigantic shoulder and does a poor job separating highlights from midtones, which your video reinforces. Better to develop less and then "print" with higher contrast. The shorter development time will straighten the characteristic curve. Or, again, just use Tri-X and develop as a negative.

Man, if you ever have a proper scan, put it up. I love the effort, but I can't tell if it's 16 or 8mm from this video. I'm glad somebody's doing this. What tank did you use? J

Well Panavision has all of them now. At least four 6x6s and four 4x5.6 filters, enough to outfit a movie. j

Well, except for the corners of the image, those mid to late 19th century photographs are actually incredibly, incredibly sharp. They were recorded onto full plate (6.5x8.5 inch) or larger glass negatives. Group photos were often made with 7x17, 8x20 or 12x20 inch “banquet” cameras. Carleton Watkins shot thousands of custom “mammoth plates” of 18x22 inches and contact printed onto sharp, glossy albumen-coated paper. Our film feels much more early 20th century to me.

Yes, the black plate is mandatory and of course we used it. The plate is also ridged, so if you use the chrome version, you get striped halation with black and white film.

Schneider custom made it to my specs, and was able to make it within a month. Panavision owns them now. It’s over 95 percent transmittance for wavelengths shorter than 570nm and then on a dime plummets to zero for everything longer. It has a hot mirror baked in so can be used digitally too.

I would love to see a Rodinal-developed moving image.

Indeed, the reason was primarily for altered skin tones/texture and exterior atmosphere/sky effects.

I used the filter for every shot in the film, save for one mermaid close-up and one shot toward the end of the film. The short pass filter is very efficient for what it does. It is a 1-stop loss filter that gave test results not far from a 47B blue filter, which has a 4-stop loss (in tungsten light). It gave noticeably stronger results than a 58 green filter which is a 3 stop loss. It went in the matte box and we were done. And the set didn’t have to be a weird strong cyan color. Additionally, theres no way I could have gelled that phenomenally hot halogen bulb in the table lantern. White LEDs didn’t come close to requisite light levels in a small lantern, let alone a green\blue diode version. I also didn’t have to gel with safe distance and manage the gel kick-back and peripheral white light leak of six 9kHMIs bouncing outside the windows for day interior scenes.

Aside from saving money, a big part of the appeal of home processing would be the option of NOT having to use a typical solvent-type developer (high-sulfite D96, D76 and others) and open it up to experiment with staining developers (pyrogallol or catechol), acutance developers (Rodinal & co.), etc. Does the tank develop evenly or is there flicker in the moving image? -Jarin

I’m pretty sure it has an anti-halation back later (like still films) but no rem-jet. But David probably knows definitively. Thanks for your compliments, David. Did you see it here at Camerimage or in a normal theater? I pulled the whole film 1/2 stop except for the gloomiest, flattest exteriors and never opened up beyond 2.8, so that also helps a tiny bit with sharpness.

That’s where we did it, yes. j

I didn't test Tri-X as a negative versus Tri-X as a positive. All I know is that Tri-X as a negative (with -1 processing) compared superlatively versus Double-X processed as a negative normally. Latitude was similar, with superior grain, tonality and sharpness. -Jarin

Actually Kodak does have a cleaner stock available: TriX. Process as a negative, rating at 100 and pull one stop. It’s far superior to Double X, which I find intolerable in 16mm. I’ve tested side by side. Kodak also stated that they can special order TriX for 35mm, but the per foot charge is very high. I don’t know what the minimum would be. Tmax emulsions don’t have enough flexibility and forgiveness for motion picture use. If a mom and pop lab overdevelops TMax 100, the highlights are fried. It is also more finicky for exposure. Jarin

The tech sheets seem to indicate that 250D is grainier, but also sharper than 50D. It also looks to have more of a toe in its characteristic curve, so more forgiving to underexposure while having less shadow separation. I sure miss the XTR Prod. What a handheld camera. Jarin

Stand development is very trendy these days but it distorts the curve in adverse ways. Personally I only use it for high contrast night photography with a lot of low values and a few extreme highlights in frame that need taming. Otherwise it can look a bit dead. I had great success having Fotokem process 7266 as a negative. I rated it at 100 and had them process -1. Superior to "normal" 7222 in every way.

We shot "The Lighthouse" on 5222 and its an old, soft, finicky stock. Whether it's worth a 4k scan depends on how you treat the film and the lenses you use. I mostly processed it at "-1/2" with 2/3 stops extra exposure. This sharpens it up and increases dynamic range. Even then, a gray tone would already be black at -4 1/2 stops incident. Highlights fare much better, but still, latitude is still not great. Neither is resolution - I'm not so sure 5222 achieves 4k when I see the our untouched 4k scanned footage next to the 2k VFX footage. However, HDR might be worth it. Personally, I like more contrast in black and white and more subtlety in color. 5222 did have one superior trait. From my tests 5222 has much more "local" or "micro" contrast and separation than either 35mm color film or Alexa footage. Even while being softer and grainier. In that way, it is irreplaceable. Jarin ps: 7222 is much too soft. I wouldn't shoot it. In 16mm I'd shoot TriX instead and process as a negative. A very pretty stock. If only they made it in 35mm! Just pull a stop to get the right contrast!

This is a rather nice music video. Thanks for sharing. Although the grain is smoother than it would be in a "normal" regime, a lot of highlight information and separation is lost by exposing so high on the h+d curve, despite the pull process. In other words, some parts of the frame (sunlit backgrounds) are exposed beyond return. Heavy pull and push processes distort the curve progression in general, affecting the tonal separation adversely. Nonetheless, creatively, this was interesting to see. Jarin

Dunno. We used a an early generation Alexa with a Panavision-modified 1960's Super Baltar at T/2. It turned out alright. The critical key is triple-wick candles and hiding additional tea-lights in the right places. Jarin