Dirk DeJonghe

Maybe the message was: better to use the 500T stock at proper of slightly overexposure than the 200Tstock with underexposure. Pushing will not help if there is no exposure to begin with. Exterior nights can be very beautiful if properly exposed on 500T. An underexposed night shot cannot be 'slightly downprinted' and will give greyish blacks while a denser negative will give nice blacks, even on a night shot.

I did a speed test with Plus-X and Double-X two weeks ago. I shot a grey chart underexposed at -4 stops and looked for a density of 0.10 above D-Min. This corresponds to a Zone 1. For Plus-X I got 40ASA, for Double-X 80 ASA with standard processing to a gamma of 0.65. This is with shadow detail down to 4 stops under, probably overkill for most subjects but gives a nice full negative. I had some correspondence with Kodak Chalon 3 months ago and it was confirmed that the speed ratings of the B&W negatives are somewhat optimistic. Processing with the ecological hydroquinone-free developer also loses maybe half a stop.

Unless your a good swimmer, traveling with unprocessed film from one developed country to another one is not a good idea since 9/11. Once processed, no X-ray inspection will be able to harm your image. Some inspectors have even insisted on visually seeing that there is real film inside the can. I would buy my stock locally from a reputable source and have it processed at a local lab. Many times cheaper than having to reshoot the lot because of X-ray damage. If you shoot in darkest Africa, then it is another matter.

We push ECN2 negative by running the processor slower (more time in developer) pulling is accomplished by lowering the temperature of the developer only while keeping the speed of the processor standard. Having said this, pushing and pulling only changes the gamma of the negative, very little information is added, even if the printing lights are higher. If there is no exposure on the negative, pushing will add nothing.

Both Laser and CRT recoders would produce output that is barely watchable if it were not for the LUT. A great deal of skill and knowledge goes into these LUTs. How are you going to put a LUT between your HD monitor and the camera?

I saw the first results of 7201 and it looks much more low-con than the 7245. Nice balance between sunlit areas and shadows. Very neutral in shadows. Will shortly do a direct blow-up and 2K scan/shoot to 35mm for Kodak demo film; A LOT of image quality is lost by using high-speed films outdoors, not because of the film but because of the lens and everything in front of it. Same camera, same lens, same stock but why are the interiors and night shots sharper than sunny exteriors? Only one reason: whatever is in front of the lens (including F-stop).

These tanks were used in WW2 to process gun camera film in the field. For that purpose they were fine, they could show the hits if any. I have used a G3 tank in my younger days, I consider it a complete waste of time. Maybe for B&W very short sections, line tests for animations or similar, but nothing you want to show to a public.

I have one in operation since 20 years, that must make it a Dinosaur in video world. However, the machine was far ahead of its time when it came out in the early 1980'ies and still performs very well if properly maintained and equiped with the latest updates. Unfortunately the company Marconi decided to stop its involvement in broadcast equipment quite some time ago and all support is from third parties who do an excellent job. For example we modified our machine to do Super 16, Super 35, 3 perf, all things that were declared impossible by the then chief engineer at Marconi.

Joachim, your reasoning is correct, you do not want to intercut unmasked B&W negative with color negative. It will not give you a neutral gray between the color shots. The method you propose is the cheapest, simplest and safest and you won't have to order extra stock and processing.

I think the smartest move is to buy film stock locally and have it processed locally (if services are available of course). Even if the film stock is more expensive (taxes, VAT etc) it is a lot safer than some stock you carry around with you halfway around the world. Low-dose X-ray exposures may be safe for one exposure, but they add up. I have seen too many rolls wasted to X-ray the last couple years. Never happened ten years ago. Never had a problem with UPS, Fedex etc, all of the problems were with film in checked bagage.

I would add: use the slowest film stock that will do the job. A lot of potential sharpness is lost due to excessive ND filters, lens stopped down too far, combination filter packs, etc. Some people try to shoot everything on one stock (usually 7218) and they end up with very nice and sharp interior night shots (no ND filters, wide open lens, etc) and muddy sunlit exteriors (plenty of filters, lens stopped down too far). You cannot believe what difference in sharpness the same lens and the same film stock can make when used in improper conditions.

I would recommend shooting a Kodak Plus gray chart, with the white and black edges visible and almost full frame. It helps to set up the digital grading more than the color charts. Is is the best tool to get the general gamma right before any artistic color corrections.

if you would work for only one day in a lab, you would understand why it is better to put the core back in. During transportation sometimes the reels get dropped and are oval, not round when they get to the darkroom. Trying to get a core back in is timeconsuming and frustrating even more so when the loader asks to 'save the tail'.

I think in this case 'tapeless' means scanning direct to hard drives. We do it all the time, in fact, my scanner cannot scan direct to tape because it is not real-time but who cares? if there is no tape recorder at the receiving end then the scanner can run at any speed it wishes, in the future this may well be much faster than real time for SD and maybe for HD.

A worse problem might be that the negative may be notched. A small shape may be cut out on the side of the film to trigger the scene-to-scene correction on the printer. This practice was later (mid 1970'ies) replaced by metallic foil patches and still later (1980'ies) with FCC ( computerized frame count cueing). When this notch passes the telecine gate it will give a noticeable sideways jump. Easiest but not cheapest would be to strike a low contrast 35mm print and transfer this to video. You could even do a separate print from the A and B-roll, transfer to video and make the final color correction and dissolves on a digital color grading system such as Baselight.

Most of it was done on a flatbed table like a Steenbeck, with the sound transfered to 16mm SEPMAG. In a way this kind of editing was much superior to the then current linear video editing. You could extract a scene from anywhere in the film and move it, or shorten or lengthen it, it was already some form of non-linear editing but without the instant access that we are used to now. The negative was conformed on a synchronizer with the edgenumbers as a guide (machine readable keykode numbers were not yet invented). From the cut negative a blow-up was made (direct or via IP/DN). Some film schools still teach this editing method and I think it is valuable to have had physical contact with pieces of film at least once in a carreer before jumping into cyberediting.

My scanner is like an optical printer, with the projector movement (XY adjustments) on one side, a lens carrier (adjustable in XY axis) and a camera on an optical bench type mount. Very easy to zoom in to whatever framing desired on whatever pixel size desired, mechanical autofocus, camera can be tilted. If I wanted I could extract a frame smaller than 16mm from anywhere in a 35mm frame and scan it to 2K. To set up a 1:1 scan/recording I scan a 35mm ruler film (marked in mm/inches) and then record it back to film. I record maybe a hundred frames of this film at slightly different magnifications and then select the one that comes closest to the real mm/inches. This particular frame is then put in the scanner and while looking at a split-screen I zoom in or out on the original ruler film until it matches within one pixel usually. Can't do half-pixels yet.

I just received digital images scanned on a Spirit from S35/3P for output to Cscope on my Lasergraphics recorder. Compared to my own scanner, the Spirit has noticeably more grain in blue skies etc. I feel that for S35/CScope 2K is not enough vertical resolution, HD is even less. In this case 817 pixels high are resized to 1742 high (2048 wide). Just last week I finished another job also on S35 (4P) for optical blow up to Cscope. FX were scanned in-house to 3K and resized to 2K for filmout (1850 pixels high to 1742 high). Very big difference in quality and practically undistiguishable from the optical blow up parts (80% of the film). I always use the full 2048 pixel width even for Academy framing.

David, there is a contradiction here, 3Perf 35 is Super 35 by definition, no sound track involved, so the full picture width would be 2048 pixels wide, not 1820. In my lab 2K S35 is scanned at 2048*1157 pixels if 3Perf (1.77) format.

Since the original is 16mm and the final print also, some of the solutions proposed use stocks only available in 35mm. My suggestion is to do a 2K scan from 16mm and a digital recording to 16mm. Would come close to the 16mm to 35 blow up Pan IP and reduction to 16mm 7242 DupNeg. For about one minute we usually try to match the price of our optical printer work since it is much easier to do and doesn't tie up the optical printers for several days doing blow-up and reduction. I have a S16 gate for my film recorder and it comes in real handy for these jobs.

I think professional negative cutters are some of the least appreciated jobs in the industry with a very high responsibility. I know that producers pay more per hour for labor to get their kitchen painted than to cut their precious negative that may be worth ten times their entire house. It is a job with no glory if all goes well but with plenty of room for errors if it doesn't.

John, you are quite right about the Kodak stocks giving very neutral and natural color reproduction especially flesh to neutral balance, difficult to achieve when starting with a Fuji negative. However, it is good to have choices of looks. The world wouldn't be the same if Van Gogh would have painted his sunflowers in natural colors. On the older Agfa stocks, prior to the CP20, I was not so happy with the reds, they tended to turn to orange, no deep reds possible even if you wanted. The current CP30 is so close to the Kodak look it could have been made in Rochester by someone who mixed half an emulsion of Vision with half an emulsion of Premier (just kidding of course but you get the idea).

We use three stocks in our lab (excepting Kodak low-con and Fuji for special orders). They are the Kodak Vision , Kodak Premier and Agfa CP30. When a customer hesitates or asks our advice about which stock to use, we print a section of his film on all three stocks and show him the result as A, B and C. The customer doesn't know which stock he is watching (this comes with experience) and makes a selection based upon look. In 90% of the cases the CP30 is the preferred stock. It sits nicely between the Vision and Premier in contrast and saturation. I think it is more stable in processing and printing. The Vision is nice for high contrast originals where you have too much contrast to start with, Premier is for special effects, and the CP30 is just right for a look with just a little extra punch without overdoing it.

Probabaly the Canada balsam used to glue glass element together yellowing. Quite common in older lenses. I don't know if the glue can be unglued and redone. You need to talk to a qualified lens technician.

The decision is also influenced by the shooting ratio, 35mm runs 2.5 more footage per minute than S16 and is about twice as expensive to buy. Some items are charged by the footage (processing, printing, etc) while others are by the minute (telecine transfers). The whole production must be taken into account: actors, crew, equipment, etc. I know of several productions that wanted to shoot 35mm at all cost with the result that there was not enough money to finish the film. Might as well throw away the money.