Dirk DeJonghe

I would recommend you use colour negative film. If you put reversal original camera film in a loop, it will wear out after xxx passes and then you have nothing left of your work; If you work on negative you can make as many prints as you like, make serious colour correction, have different prints for tungsten, xenon projectors, backprojection etc. The only way to make prints from a reversal today is to make an internegative. The only current stock available is Kodak 7203 or 7207, 50D and 250D respectively.

I am sorry to rain on your parade, but the 7273 is as close to the 7203 as you can get. I think it is the same emulsion, they give instructions to pull-process and flash in order to get the proper 0.50 gamma required for internegatives. The older 7272 was really designed to make internegatives from low-contrast reversal originals such as 7252 ECO and flashed ME-4 and VNF-1 process films such as the 7242 EFB, 7240 VNF etc. The intermediate 7242 is not going to help you a lot either (it does have fine grain). Since it is designed to be a characterless stock, it would look very bland when used as camera original. All colornegative stocks have a 'character', think of the difference between an 7219 and Vivid500T, some are more pronounced than others, but intermediate stock is 'dead', its sole function is to transfer and retain the character of the original camera negative.

5234 is processed to a gamma of 0.65 which is the same as camera negative. The color intermediate films are designed to come out at gamma 1.0.

We get daily shipments of exposed but unprocessed films from all over the globe. Never had a problem with UPS, FEDEX, and similar carriers. All the X-Ray damage we saw was done to films in checked luggage carried by the crew. Israel is particulary bad but also the major airports in Paris for example.

Right, I still remember receiving the first fresh rolls. It didn't have T-grain yet but had a much improved tonal range compared to 7247. Must be very fogged now.

The first ECN2 (high temperature) stock was 7247. The last ECN stock was 7254. 7291 was the successor to 7247 so definately ECN2. If you would process an ECN stock in ECN2 process the emulsion would not survive the 41.1°C temp of the developer. Kodak sometimes recycles emulsion type numbers but that would be evident from the age of the label.

The polyester stock is still available, it is the acetate stock that is difficult to get.

David, the site is out of date. B&W 5366/2366 Is no longer manufactured at all. We tried to order 7242 (Color Intermediate 16mm single perf, acetate) from the US (still in the US price list). No luck. There may be some rolls floating around in labs still. if you know a lab that can spare a few rolls, we buy. The answer? I haven't done any professional films with effects the last year that weren't done via DI. The films we do via traditional way are artist's films and they don't do vfx, only titles which we record to camera stock.

David, It is unusual but not impossible to run A-B rolls in 35mm. Usually dissolves and effects are AB-rolled and printed to IP/DN. The DN is spliced into the OCN. For large print runs an new IP/DN is made from this composite OCN/VFX-DN. For small productions needing only a few prints, they are made from the OCN (with very high quality). I guess we will be forced to do the digital recording back to low-speed camera stock instead of intermediate stock (I am speaking of simple titles, etc). Intermediate film has much finer grain and a longer straight portion of the curve. There is also an edge-effect that enhances sharpness. My inside information is that the manufacturers prefer to make polyester versions only of low-volume labstocks because acetate shrinks with aging and polyester stocks remain 'in spec' for a longer time. I don't know of any clean way to splice polyester to itself or to acetate. Ultrasonic splices are very crude and not suitable for shot-to-shot splicing.

Just a word of caution maybe, intercutting Intermediate negatives with 35mm OCN just got a lot less interesting since Kodak (the only current manufacturer of Intermediate stock) decided to make only polyester stock available. It is nasty to have to splice acetate original and polyester effects together. In 16mm it is even worse since they decided (in all their wisdom) to manufacture only polyester double-perforated intermediate stock, not very helpful for S16 productions.

A big difference between Aatoncode and Arricode is that only Aatoncode carries man-readable timecode numbers in addition to the bar codes. In a pinch the man-readable numbers might be used by a negative cutter but they are not really designed for this.

I never understood why some labs absolutely wanted to make an IP/DN from a recorded negative losing even more quality on the way. Your recorded negative is not an original and you can make more if you need to. if you sit in a seat in a theatre where you can see the entire image at once, only a few percent of the human population would be able to see the difference between 'good' 2K and 4K. Using this parameter, a professor from Fraunhofer Institute once explained that the human eye is really no more than 3K (someone with very good eyesight).

Little old ladies call in to complain they don't get the whole picture since there is black on the top and bottom. Once I worked on a big budget film with Peter O'Toole in a small part, it was beautifully shot in 2.35 and a certain North American broadcasting company demanded a 4/3 panscan version. A nightmare if you ask me.

The Dolby license is not the problem here, but you have to make a physical SEPOPT negative, of course you can make many prints from this negative. I just wanted to make it clear that for a single print it is a fair percentage of the total lab cost.

Mark, No, it wasn't us, but working on it. It was another UK artist where we did some serious repair work.

Cutting the negative is still an option, but to remind you of the limitations: on 35mm dissolves are usually prepared as separate A-B rolls to interpositive/dupneg to be spliced in the OCN. Similar with superimposed titles. You still have to make an optical sound negative (usually Dolby SR-D) and have a proper Dolby mix for that; SD telecine for offline editing is a good choice, Keykodes should be burnt-in as double-check with the EDL conversion to Keykode output. You don't cut a negative twice. Since you are in PAL country, SD telecine is best to 25fps even if you shoot at 24 fps. This is order to retain a 1:1 relationship between film frames and video frames. Direct prints from 35mm OCN are as good as it gets, the limitation is you can only do RGB grading on the entire frame, no secondaries or masks. No reframing, or speed changes, etc.

Having 10-14 stops on the negative will not mean you can show this much in the final product (print/DCP/Bluray, etc). At one stage you will have to make a choice which part you will show to the public; It is nice to have the choice.

One major item to consider: Most if not all negative (except special order Estar base) is on acetate base, can be spliced with cement, tape or ultrasonic (horrible). All current color print stocks are on polyester base, can only be spliced with tape or ultrasonic, certainly not cement. Splicing acetate to polyester can only be done with tape splices. In an editing situation (flatbed editing or similar) a tape splicer would be preferred. In a negative conforming, cement splices are mandatory. In prepping for TK, cement splices are best but tape is acceptable. In the cinema, tape splices are the norm for assembling the reels.

We have been using Hammann film splicers (with film cement for acetate negatives) for many years, both in S16 and 35mm. The splices have almost no perceptible added thickness and pass both the telecine gate, the scanner gate and the optical printer gate with absolute steadiness. Ultrasonic cleaning will not affect the splices (tape splices get elongated at each pass). If you want the best, this is it. http://www.hammann-filmtechnik.de/html/film-cleaver.html

Just keep in mind that film shrinks when aging. The manufacturer may aim for slightly longer pitch so that it will remain useable over a longer period.

Kodak cat 1079326 unused in original carton, fits 5.5in diameter darkroom lamp (round). 20 € each, can be shipped by mail. Several available. For use with infrared goggles or infrared cameras in complete darkness. Send PM for details.

The 2994 short perforation pitch is used for negatives that will be printed on a contact printer, the print stock being 3000. Since the printing sprocket wheel on the printer has a circumference of one foot, the difference in pitch will compensate for the thickness of the film layers, the print stock being the outer layer; the great majority of professional films have always been short pitch (16+35mm). Most cameras will run fine with 3000 pitch, maybe make more noise (XTR/SR types). Most of the Kodachrome reversal films shot on Bolexes was 3000 pitch. Film on triacetate will shrink due to aging. That is the reason some manufacturers prefer to supply polyester stock for little used lab films. Even if the emulsion keeps for many years (low speed lab stocks) the acetate base will shrink and make the product worthless. Short of lubricating the unexposed film, which should be done at the factory, you could try to polish and wax the film pressure plate in the camera.

If you want to make it a B-Wind, you need to rewind it ONCE in the darkroom, emulsion in, to a small camera core.

50 ISO daylight stock on Polyester base, similar emulsion to 7201.

After Spielberg had made "Schindler's List", everybody wanted to shoot B&W again. Modern cameras are made to be as noiseless as possible. Modern color stocks have black remjet backing which is very efficient as antihalation but also contains a lubricant. This remjet backing is removed in color processing during the prebath and rinse. Since B&W process has no provision for this remjet removal; Kodak applied some kind of lubrication to the B&W negatives to make them run smoother in modern cameras (XTR/SR2 etc). I have found that Orwo may not have applied this lubricant and this would mean that older generation cameras would not have problems but newer generation would.