Josh Gladstone

If I'm not mistaken, I believe they used two or three Panavision Super 70s plus the same time lapse camera they custom built for Chronos. They also switched from Todd AO lenses to Panavision from Baraka to Samsara.

For timelapse/motion control shots they used a custom made camera. Here's all the info I could find on it:

For what purpose? To test the light meter to see how the camera responds to different notch settings?

I remembered reading this about them shooting IMAX on The Dark Knight

"One of three Imax technicians — Wayne Baker, Doug Lavender or Stuart MacFarlane — was always on set to assist Pfister’s camera crew with troubleshooting and occasional repairs. “The MSM is like any other camera in terms of the threading and operation,” says Hall, “but a lot of things can happen during a reload that will result in a jam, and if the jam is severe enough, it will slip the timing belt. When that happens, you have to strip the camera down on a bench to reset the belt. The MSM tolerances are so tight that a single snowflake can cause the film to swell and jam the camera, and at the end of the shoot, we had to film on location on Wall Street with an enormous number of extras in the middle of a snowstorm. People were holding bags over the camera while I reloaded, but every once in a while, a flake would get on the film. On that day, all three bodies were in constant rotation! Wayne would be replacing the timing belt on one, and another would be waiting for repairs while we were shooting with the third, hoping a backup would be ready before we needed it. Fortunately, our crew was so prepared we were able to shoot 65mm as fast as we shot 35mm.”

http://www.theasc.com/ac_magazine/August2012/DarkKnightRises/page1.php

I assume it means they will no longer repair/maintain the cameras. Or possibly rent them out.

It's actually much simpler than you expect. You need one of these tools. They come up on ebay every now and then.

It's absolutely much easier to send your film into a lab, and you will get much more "correct" results. That said, it is not difficult to process your film at home and get a negative out of it. Doing the full reversal process is a little more difficult because, as you said, there's a bleach step in the middle, and the bleach is hard to come by. There are a couple of reversal kits that give you pre-measured amounts, but in most cases the bleach has to be mixed from raw chemicals. If you're comfortable working with caustic materials, and storing reasonable amounts of dangerous chemicals around your house, then more power to you!

Now first, you'll need a tank to put the film and chemicals in. This can be as complex as a Soviet Lomo tank (look it up on ebay), which holds the film in a spiral making sure the chemistry is evenly distributed. Or you can use a bucket from the hardware store. Of course throwing your film and chemicals in a bucket is going to make them stick together, and there will be spots that are undeveloped, dirt, etc. But that adds texture, and maybe you like that.

Okay so lets say you have your tank (or bucket or bathtub or whatever you're using). You're going to need to take the exposed film out of the super 8 cartridge in a darkroom or changing bag, and load it into the tank. You can either pull the film out through the gate portion of the cartridge, or you can break the cartridge open. I used to pull my film out, but I'm pretty convinced it sometimes scratches your film, so I recommend breaking them open. I use a bottle opener. Now if you're using a light-tight tank, you can do the rest in normal lighting. If your tank isn't light tight, the whole thing has to be done in the dark.

Okay, so now chemistry. I mentioned processing kits before. Here is one kit, meant to be used on T-max still film: http://www.freestylephoto.biz/010600-Formulary-TMAX-Reversal-Process-Kit

And here's the datasheet which has the all the chemical mixing information: www.freestylephoto.biz/pdf/product_pdfs/formulary/FormularyReversalTmax_010600.pdf

Here's their bleach recipe:

BLEACH STOCK SOLUTION A

Potassium Permanganate 4 g

Water to make 1 liter

BLEACH STOCK SOLUTION B

Chemical Amount Sodium Bisulfate 34.5 g

Water to make 1 liter

You mix those together in equal parts. And it has to be mixed fresh before each batch because it doesn't last long. Then you'll need this clearing bath:

Sodium Metabisulfite 30 g

Water to make 1 liter

If you google Tri-x Potassium Permanganate bleach, you'll see some people have had success with it. I haven't tried it yet, but I've got most of the chemicals, so I plan to soon.

You can use any developer for the first and second developers, but people recommend D-19 for the first developer because it is higher contrast which gives much better results in reversal.

I used D-76 all the time to get negatives, and that works great. Negatives are much simpler, btw. Developer, wash, fix, wash, (photoflo,) dry. Also, you asked about Caffenol. Caffenol is great, and gives great negatives, but doesn't work for reversal. It's super easy to make with fairly readily available products. Here's the recipe I like:

1 Liter of water

Stir in 54g Washing soda until mostly dissolved.

Stri in 15g Vitamin C Powder. It should foam up a tiny bit.

40g Instant Coffee. The cheaper the better. You want robusta beans, not arabica.

Process film for 15 minutes at 20ºC, agitating gently.

And here's some youtube stuff so you can get an sort of an idea of the results of these different processes. (Keep in mind these were all scanned on a home-made machine that was continually improving, so some scans are better than others. And the hand-processed stuff was all done in a Lomo tank.)

This one was processed in Caffenol

Also Caffenol

This one was in D-76

And this was lab-processed as reversal. Even though this is an older scan and it may not be as sharp, you can still tell it's less grainy and there's more tonal range.

Hope that helps!

Wow. Ambitious. Best of luck!!

Yeah, it's crazy that it just sits there in disrepair. Interesting to read that they still own it. It's a prime piece of real estate, so I'm surprised nobody has purchased it yet. Of course, I think they should just hire someone to work there and sell some film! But that's probably not going to happen.

Cinelab is great. Spectra offers all of those services as well.

I'm not sure if you're interested in this lead, but I just bought an Eclair ACL a few months ago, so I don't mind giving it up. So there's a super16 Aaton LTR with TWO LENSES on ebay for $900. Really nice lenses, too. I'm not sure what kind of LTR it is, and I know that getting LTRs repaired is more difficult than getting an Arri or Bolex, or even an Eclair repaired, so definitely keep that in mind. But still, I think that's an amazing deal. The glass alone seems worth it.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Aaton-LTR-Zeiss-2-8-10-100mm-Angenieux-f10-150-lenses-2-mags-remote-case-/151587592166?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item234b5317e6

Very interesting.

As far as I'm aware, all b/w stocks are able to be processed as negative or reversal.

I made a mistake in my head with the filters because obviously you need more light not less. Half a stop sounds like the place to start. Definitely.

I'm like 90% sure this is correct, but for double exposure, you underexpose one stop for each pass because that's half as much light each pass. Two stops under would be a quarter of the light as a "correct" exposure, so you would need four passes to get the proper exposure. So for three passes, I'd underexpose 1.5 stops, that should leave you with 33% as much light as a "correct" exposure. Is that right? Somebody correct me, please!

As for the filters, they should tell you how much more to stop down. Usually it's about 2/3 of a stop. So in all I would probably try underexposing about 2 stops for starters. That should get you near the correct exposure.

Right, but wouldn't you be underexposing a stop if you rated it at 1000?

Well that is exceedingly confusing. The short answer is no. If you look up the technical information for 250D (http://motion.kodak.com/motion/uploadedFiles/Kodak/motion/Products/Camera_Films/Color_Negative/tech_data/TI5207.pdf), under Exposure it reads:

Exposure Indexes

Daylight (5500K): 250

Tungsten (3200K): 64 (with 80A filter)

Use these indexes with incident- or reflected-light exposure meters and cameras marked for ISO or ASA speeds or exposure indexes. These indexes apply for meter readings of average subjects made from the camera position or for readings made from a gray card of 18-percent reflectance held close to and in front of the subject. For unusually light- or dark-colored subjects, decrease or increase the exposure indicated by the meter accordingly.

 

Further down it has a table of exposure corrections for color balance and clearly lists the Exposure Index at 250. So I don't know! I do know that box speed for 250D is 250, but hopefully someone else has an idea about what the deal with everything else is.

It's an old trick to overexpose a little when shooting negatives. It just gives you a bit of a "thicker" negative, i.e. more silver left on the film = more information recorded = less grain. That's the idea anyway. Some people prefer to shoot at box speed -- I mean that is what the manufacturer recommends, so that's probably a pretty safe bet. Some people like to overexpose. It's up to preference really. Personally, I do like to overexpose a bit. Just how I was taught.

Do post some updates when you get some footage back!

Kodak, sadly, is totally old school on customer service and ordering, preferring to do everything over the phone - why they haven't set up proper online ordering is beyond me. It would save them money and it would be a hell of a lot more convenient for most people. I would recommend getting the name of a CSR who is helpful, and make sure to ask for them whenever you call so that you're dealing with the same person every time - it'll make resolving issues like this easier. Get their email address, too.

They used to have online ordering!! Just a couple years ago! Why they got rid of it is beyond me, it seemed way easier than taking orders over the phone. Even on their side.

Nicholas, I'm sorry you're having such a terrible experience with them. I've only ever had good experiences with Kodak, but I always bought my film in-person in Hollywood. But now that that's closed, when I have to get more film I'll have to be ordering over the phone, so your experience definitely has me concerned. Hopefully they sort everything out for you, but even still, you'll probably hesitate to shoot film in the future, which is unfortunate and totally on Kodak.

Also, holydamn, those student discounts are amazing! I forgot it was discounted that much.

Okay, so here's a quick question. According to the Kodak price catalog, 7222 is $35.43 for 100' and $118.10 for 400', so 40 rolls should either cost you $1417.2 or $4724. You said your total was $3540? I know there's tax and shipping, but all of those numbers seem confusing.

Even the 13 rolls doesn't make sense. I'm not sure where the 27 rolls came from either (except that 40-13=27), but 27 x $118.10 = $3188.70, which plus tax and shipping seems like it would be close to your total. Which if that's the case, it seems like you paid for 27 rolls of 7222, and then somehow convinced them to send you 13 rolls of tri-x for free? I'm confused. Do you have a receipt or invoice we can look at?

Wow, that's terrible. I don't even know what to tell you. They should definitely make it right.

Just for reference, the famous desert shot in Lawrence of Arabia with all the atmospheric distortion was shot using a 482mm lens. I believe the lens was made special for that one shot, and is still available for rent at Panavision, although it's never been used on a single shot in a single movie since.

Well first, it has to be hot enough that you actually see the distortion. If not you're going to have to accomplish the effect in post.

But anyway, if you're looking to photograph it for real and not do it in post, the longer the focal length of the lens, the more pronounced is the atmospheric distortion. So get the most telephoto lens you can find, or if you're using a zoom, zoom in all the way.

You might want to consider getting a Canon 310xl in addition to another professional camera. The 310xl will only allow you to shoot 18fps, which might exclude it for you, but it does have an f/1.0 which will get you a couple stops more than almost all other cameras (plus the lower frame rate gives you more exposure time as well). They're tiny, so you can just throw one in your bag just in case, and they're pretty inexpensive too. Just a thought!