Dirk DeJonghe

Dennis, the reason people still shoot film is because it looks different from digital (in a good way). You could argue why some artists still use oil or watercolors for painting while photography has been around for 150 years or more and digital pictures can be taken with most phones now. As a lab owner/colorist I have to balance between science and art. There are a few customers that want 'the full story' but most of them are interested in getting the images they want in the easiest possible way. I just got a fresh batch of 7222 and it comes to a gamma of 0.72 with our standard process, it will probably drop with aging. I have a feeling that Kodak may now bring it to market sooner after manufacturing, letting it 'age' less than before. If someone would come in with a major production, we would process this emulsion differently to get a gamma of 0.65 (unless agreed otherwise).

I have never processed 7266, but plenty of reversal 7242,7241,7256,7252, 7250,7251,7239 (in order of appearance). A couple of years ago I had an interesting technical conversation with the tech guys at Kodak Chalons about the true speed of 7222. After exchanging many sensitograms (they expose, they process, we expose, we process and then all change), we came to the conclusion that yes, the 7222 does not have its rated speed and secondly and most importantly, every decent cinematographer should test before production and establish his own look and speed with his own equipment. So, unless you have a blind faith in Kodak, lab processes, lens stops, exposure meters, filter factors etc, etc, please do some real-life testing before starting.

Since he is using an 85N6 he is using 'tungsten light' (as seen by the film) so the basic starting speed would be 160 ISO. With a setup like this I would really recommend a test beforehand. Unknown light meter + unknown camera + unknown lens + reversal stock = LOTS of room for error.

The Bolex shutter is 130°, combined with the semi-transparant mirror gives you 2/3 of a stop loss for the camera. The 85N6 will give you tungsten light filtration and 2 stops density, total of 2 of ND plus 2/3 for 85. This makes a grand total of 3 1/3 stop loss or indeed 16 ISO as Satsuki mentions. I would suggest to do an exposure test beforehand because the reversal stock has very little latitude. Nothing looks worse than an underexposed or overexposed reversal film;

We get daily shipments from all over the globe, mostly by Fedex. Never had a X-ray problem with them. Plenty of X-ray problems with people who carry their stock in checked luggage. Mixing 7222 and 7266 is not a good idea, avoid it unless you want the effect. Speak to your lab first and test first. Most of my customers expose 7222 around 125 ISO to start.

The development time went from 7-9 minutes at 25°C in ECN1 to 3'15" at 41.1°C in ECN2. So an identical machine could run twice as fast. I never worked with ECN1, I started ECN2 in 1980, before that only ME4, VNF1 and ECO3.

"What was the purpose of changing the processing speed/temperature?" Decent labs process at the official process temperature (for ECN2 it is 41.1 +- .1C). Push processing is done by reducing the speed of the machine, increasing time in developer. Pull process by reducing developer temperature. Maybe they refer to the old ECN1 process that was low temperature for non-prehardened films, similar to photographic process C22 evolving into C41 'hot process'. If the chemistry gets out of balance, grain and sensitometric qualities will suffer; very important is the bromide level in the developer, it is given off by the film, and needs to be in a close range. It acts as a restrainer and for example would show an increase in Blue D-Min if too low in ECN2. Since blue is the most grainy layer, it would quickly become disturbing on smaller formats.

You are right David, but the blue layer is already the most grainy one to start with. To me a 250D looks similar to a 100T as far as grain is concerned (subjectively),

Daylight stock is always less grainy than the equivalent tungsten stock.

The advantage of AnotherGui is that you can easily do batch processing where entire directories are converted overnight. Once the proper command-line is established, it is stored as a preset and an non-technical person can do the job. It takes a bit of learning but is well worth it.

ffmbc will do what you want. Test on a small sample first. There is a front-end that makes it much easier to work, I believe it is called AnotherGUI. Both ffmpeg and ffmbc are excellent tools. You will need to put some effort in learning the command line, but with AnotherGUI you can tweak the command line and store for future use.

Getting a B&W film print from a color negative is by making a color IP 2242 first and then a B&W dupeneg 2234 to be printed on B&W positive stock. You need to adjust RGB color balance going from color IP to B&W dupeneg in order to get a correct B&W rendition. So you will need, in addition to the B&W camera negative, 65mm 2242 and 2234 if you follow this route.

I have had productions shooting that much footage on Super16. Only one production on 35mm used this little. Talking about typical 90 minute feature films here.

ME4 was the current Ektachrome process when I started in 1973. The first two steps were a prehardener and a neutralizer before the first developer. The ME4 films (7242, 7241 and 7256) were unable to withstand high temperatures without the prehardener bath; about 6 years later came the VNF1 process which was the same as ME4 but without the prehardener and neutralizer first steps. The corresponding films (7240, 7239, 7250 and 7251) were hardended during film manufacture and could be processed at high temperatures. If you still have an old roll of ME4 stock, it is very likely to be very fogged due to age. There is a rather nasty component in the color developer chemistry (RA-1 for chemical re-exposure) that is certainly no longer available. You can still process it as a black and white negative, probably of very poor quality.

Converting a color ECN2 machine to a B&W neg/pos machine is a major undertaking. I have done it and have the scars to show. Heating the baths is easier than cooling, the processing times for B&W are variable and standard is around 7 minutes for 5222 (variable to attain the requested gamma). So your machine will run at half the speed of color given the same footage in the bath (color is 3'15" developing time). You will need lots more of washing time (countercurrent tanks, at least four to five). Compared to a 35mm machine, 70mm rollers take up more space in the same tank, reducing machine speed by half again. So, compared to a 35mm ECN machine, a B&W 70mm processor would run at 1/4 of the speed in the best case. This means more turbulator bars in the developer with heavy pumps because you want the film to pass a turbulator with fresh developer every few seconds. Despite the lower cost of B&W chemicals, I would say the B&W processing is much more expensive, there is less footage to process, there are differents processing times for each emulsion type (5222/5231/5234/5366/DN21/DP2 etc only for negative process), and you have to constantly switch between neg and pos processing (I have two developer tanks in the machine). 65/70mm quality is certainly a wet dream for many directors, but as one of my previous customers found out, the highest image quality is not a sure road to success. There are only a few places in the world left that can properly show 70mm prints.

Printing B&W negative onto color positive is not a good choice. Real B&W is much better. Good luck finding a lab that can handle this. The last 70mm lab in Europe closed a couple months ago.

Color negative is far sharper than B&W negative. Plus-X has some 'snap' probably due to edge effect. Double-X or Orwo don't have that. We don't see much Plus-X anymore, but when some comes out of the processing, it really stands out among the Double-X and Orwo. B&W negative is a different medium from color negative, just like water colors are different from oil colors and a digital photo is different from a pencil drawing.

You need to adjust the light on telecine/scanner to accommodate shadow detail. If you need to give much light the highlights may suffer or halo may appear (sensor overload, lens or prism flare). What really matters is the density difference between the brightest and darkest parts of the image. Low contrast reversal 7252 is much easier to scan. Negatives or IP are low contrast by design. You want rich shadow details with sufficient detail in the highlights at the same time.

If you scan reversal film you have a large dynamic range to cope with; Pushing the whites up will cause flare in the system (a bit in the lens, a bit in the prism, some in the sensor). For example the perforations have the highest possible white level, no film density at all. The scan will be a lot easier from negative film since everything is more compressed by the film gamma of 0.55. Slightly overexposing the reversal stock may also help.

The FPN function will filter out the lamp and lens shading not horizontal noise. If the noise pattern is horizontal, check if it is within one color only (RGB). If so there might be a problem with the sensor since that is a line-array; If it is on all three color channels, it might be power supply or something common to the three channels. A rescan is definitely required.

I don't think the Spirit has anything to do with this scratch. Could be camera loop or processing.

The faster the film, the more gamma-ray fogging will accumulate even if stored at -18°C as we do with sensitometric control strips. At six months after exposure we see a marked increase in blue fog level on 200 ISO. 50 ISO would be much more stable, 500 ISO much less. Process your film as soon as practical, keeping it cool in the meantime.

If the can is sealed, the film may start to decompose and ignite spontaneously. You cannot extinguish a nitrate fire, it will continue to burn even under water. Nitrate film was last manufactured in the early 1950s so it will be fogged, shrunk and brittle. Will make a spectacular bonfire on NewYear's eve (stand well clear).

If printing from color negative to positive, you need 6 printer points to compensate 1 stop on the negative, if printing to reversal or intermediate, it would be 12 points as Dennis pointed out.

An Intermediate Positive is the step between the Original Color Negative and the Duplicate Negative. Color Intermediate Stock is used. Its qualities are a very long straight middle portion of the HD curve, very fine grain and high sharpness and a gamma close to 1.0. In the color process, the same stock is used for both IP and DN. From one IP many DNs can be made and from each DN many thousands of prints could be made. During the 1980s there was also a Color Reversal Intermediate stock which was processed in a modified ME4/ECO3 type of process but with much higher agitation. Using this stock, you could make a copy negative in one step instead of two. Just today I received an old 35mm B&W negative where the original timing sheets were still in the cans. It is a simple list of numbers with a value of 1 to 4 next to it, the nitrate negatives (Pathé Vincennes with a few feet of Kodak) were notched. So the printer operator would follow the chart and preposition the printer to the next aperture (1 to 4), the notch in the film would trigger the exact change to the new setting; Later this system was improved with a 35mm black paper tape in which holes of various sizes were puched according to the amount of light needed on the shot. After the introduction of color, initially gelatin filters were glued to the punched 35mm paper tape. All these systems were substractive color. In the 1960s Bell and Howell perfected the additive lighthouse where three light valves modulate white light that is split into the three primary colors RGB by dichroic filters and after modulation recombined into colored light by mirrors. A punched paper tape was used to control the three light valves with values from 0 to 50. One step is about 1/6 of a stop or 0.025D. Initially notches or metal foil was used on the film to trigger light changes but later Frame Count Cueing was used making changes much easier. I will write more about the way the film grader works later if anyone is interested.