Filip Plesha

How would you review these images? If you print them on paper optically by yourself you wouldn't get the right idea because the papers aren't calibrated for such film, you'd probably get wierd contrast and color casts or something like that. And if you gave it to a minilab, the digital corrections would give you a compleatly different look, usually with too much contrast and saturated colors. Minilab machines blow out highlights, gives too much contrast, makes ugly edge artefacts, blocks grain, and screws up the color crossover. And the crowd loves it! The only usefull thing would be if someone could make you slides on motion picture print stock that you can project (or look at on a lighttable), otherwise any such test is useless. Otherwise the only esthetical difference between a still image and an image in motion is grain. Grain somehow feels more natural when in motion, while when you look at it in still it can look like garbage. Plus any image feels sharper and higher in resolution when it is in motion because your brain blends information from different frames into one.

I think Ektachrome 100D is already a very saturated and contrasty film, almost like Velvia. In fact it's the second most saturated and contrasty film in E6 world, so you might want to test to see how it looks processed in normal E6 before you decide you want even more contrast and saturation

I don't get are you all complicating this with new processes, special stocks etc. There are low con E6 stocks out there, it's just that they don't cut them to super8. Fuji makes Astia, and Kodak makes EPN. And if that is not low con enough, you can flash a bit or pull

Well, thanks for the explanation. From what you say, it seems that print films have higher relative gamma than photo papers since they sort of blow out the extremes of the range on the negative. I'm not saying that no papers do that, sure some consumer papers can blow out highlights or block up colors, but the finest of papers, usually increase only the midtone gamma, thus compressing the shadows and highlights relative to the midtones, and making a really soft clip, where information is compressed rather than cut off. Same goes for scanners. Some scanning software/profiles clip highlights and shadows, while others apply a soft clip retaining all of the information on the negative. One of the main reasons why it is smart to scan negatives as positives then do it yourself in photoshop. With that kind of soft clipping S curve method you can have best of both worlds: high-contrast and use the entire range of the negative all at once.

double post

David I don't know how things are with print stock, but if they behave anything like papers, then they are not supose to clip highlights or shadows, but instead apply a strong S curve which gives as much contrast as you like, while compressing highlights and shadows without cliping anything. But maybe print stocks behaves in a different way, I wouldn't know

f1 is not "as fast a you'll find" but as fast as it can get, because f1 is a full opening, you can't open it more than the size of your glass is.

I think film can also be quite real when presented in a certain way I think what gives this distance from reality with film is the use of such small image area (35mm), which gives grain and affects colors in a certain way (doesn't look smooth like say a 4x5 negative), plus the print gives it its own character, not to mention telecine gives it a whole different twist etc. But a MF or LF transperency on a lighttable can give you that same feeling or in-your-face realism, though in a different way than a video camera of course, but still things are so clear and 3d that you can almost touch them

A generation of non-printable grainless flat-looking DI-only films perhapse? If they can't make HD like film, they'll make film like HD :)

No Kodachrome has that much saturated colors as Velvia, or should I said exagerated colors. Though K25 was pretty saturated, Kodachrome films have always kept the colors on the leash, exept for maybe reds, but with taste

100UC could be compared to Gold 100, due to golds dynamics, but the 100UC wins in what it is designed for: rich colors, sharp images, fine grain. I find that Gold 100 is a bit grainy, though not much grainier than Portra 160VC. 400UC is still considered by a mass of photographers to be Kodaks best C41 film I really haven't tried the new HD consumer film, or those high-speed max films, because I simply have no need The general difference is storage. Pro films ment to be processed right away, while consumer films can be kept undeveloped for months, or longer. Another difference is consistancy. A consumer film will have variations between batches and rolls in terms of color. On the E6 field things are quite different. For one thing, you can say that there is NO consumer E6 market anymore. Kodak makes a few "consumer" E6 films, but even they now label it as processional, even though they aren't quite that either. They are Elite chrome films, which are clones of Ektachrome films E100G, E100VS etc.. Again, you can expect more predictability and reliability from Ektachrome films. But this is a field where you could shoot a roll of E100G and EB-3 and not notice much difference. Though Kodak does not make any consumer equvalents of E6 films that would be suitable for fashion or portraiture, like EPN. EPN looks flat and washed out compared to any consumer E6 film, but that's the whole idea anyway.

By the way, that demo image has really pumped-up colors UC is saturated, but not that saturated, and it doesn't quite block up yellows that much

Just a few years. Ektar 25 vs. EPN or Astia 100F That's what made Ektar 25 a great landscape film, while Astia 100F is a great fashion/portrait film, and a poor landscape film due to its lower contrast.

No such thing Though, some will probably tell you right away that no color negative can have as much contrast as reversal, I'd just like to point out that there were negative films in history that had less latitude and more contrast than some E6 films (within its D range of course).

so :) Are you cinematographers also picky about the bokeh of your lenses? What kind of bokeh do you like most? What is considered "beautifull" among your kind? I must confess that I don't like what is considered to be a "perfect" bokeh (round smooth falloff with bright center), it just looks like photoshop gaussian blur to me, which is boring, at least to me.

Well you'd pretty much get killer scans, even from reversal and prints, but the registration would probably be bad.

Do they still make print stock (AGFA)? I've never really seen an Agfa print that I know of (maybe I did but wasn't aware), how does it look like? How are the colors? I never liked papers, hope their cinema print stock is better than their paper emulsions.

All you can do with saturation in processing is lose it. I don't know about ECN2, but in E6 and C41 an overused developer can reduce saturation is some films, as well as give you a color cast. Also a lousy bleach can reduce saturation too. (sometimes done on purpuse) As as for contrast, naturally, overdeveloped film will have more contrast. So, really, if you get more saturation in one lab then you got in your previous lab , that means your previous lab was not doing a good job. But you can't get more saturation than you'd get if you had a fresh soupe specially for that roll (which is the ideal condition). Printing is another story of course, but I was talking about the negative itself.

Wouldn't be easier to give it a full stop more? I mean, just for the ease of setting the aperture. There isn't much difference between 2/3 stops and one stop, in fact it probably wouldn't even show in the print, or maybe these motion picture films work differently...

Pushing film doesn't REALLY give you an extra stop of speed. It is a sort of an amplifying technique which boosts every recorded density by one stop, including the fog level and grain. So what you get is no more than you would have if you exposed it normally, but it's not amplified. If something is not recorded on film at all under normal exposure it can't be recorded when pushing either.

And I assume Eterna stocks are even more pasted and softer than vision2 line?

Are any of the other Fuji films actually saturated, or are they all like vision2, subdued and lower con? I think the new Portra 800 uses it. The new version was introduced a few months ago (or was it end of last year). Though I haven't used it myself, people say it has nice grain for such a fast film.

The advantage of imrpoved latitude is mostly visible in overexposure. That's where the big headroom is, and that's where you "trust" latitude to take care of the problem. Modern films have certainly filled shadows with details, but the improvement is not such that you can underexpose film by two stops and pretend that nothing happened.

Yea but in case of such strong directional light, exposing for highlights will result in everything else being pretty dark. You probably had several stops difference between your main light, and the bounce in the rest of the room. If you expose for the brightest part, the rest of the room is supose to be several stops below your mid gray, which in case of film (even negative) is pretty dark. Did you see the film? IF this is how you metered the dark parts should be pretty thin, or pure base Your eyes always avarage out the difference. Your eyes for example can see "in one take" both the interrior of a dark room with one window and the exterior after dusk drrn though a window. Both parts are within the range of the eye, and seem almost equally lit, but the difference is between 5 and 6 stops of light (I just metered it) and that is way more than any film can handle, the underexposure latitude is usually about 2 stops

1991 was still screaming 80's You can't get rid of a decade that easily.