Dirk DeJonghe

if the meter looks trough the filter it will "see" it and take into account the 2/3 stop loss in light because of the filter. In your case you overexposed by 2/3 of a stop. Nothing to worry about. Don't ask for a pull process, this will bring down the contrast and will be harder to match with other negatives. 2/3 of a stop is well within the latitude of the negative film and may actually be beneficial for grain and saturation, it depends what your "normal' exposure is.

I am glad you liked the film. 'Calvaire' was shot entirely on Vision 2 7218, some of it pushed one stop. No other film stock was used. it was a very small budget production (are there any other here?). Several minutes of the film were treated digitally because of severe scratch problems in the camera. After making a S16 answerprint (bleach bypass) a Super 35mm blow-up Interpositive was made, then an 35mm squeezed duplicate negative, both on 5242 stock. Finally a bleach bypass print was made on Agfa CP30. The DoP wanted a very gritty look to fit the story. A similar film 'Ultranova' was shown in competition in Berlin this year, bleach-bypass in the Interpositive stage to make the look semi-monochrome. Also S16 to CScope. Last year "25 degrees en Hiver" was shown as closing film at the Berlin festival, also S16 to CScope, this film had a mixture of Standard 16 shot on 800 ASA stock, pushed and with anamorphic lens attachment on the camera for the opening sequence, rest of the film S16 with masked ground glass mainly on 7274 (Vision 1 200T). Very nice cinematography by Walter Vandenende. Two more S16 to CScope feature films are in the pipeline.

I am amazed that the US negative cutters haven't discovered the german Hammann film splicer. We cut all our S16 single strand mostly, only AB rolls for dissolves when needed and then only the dissolving shots. Much easier to grade and to print. No problem at all making fine invisible splices on CScope negatives. It will also allow scenes to be cut together without losing frames or even redoing a splice on top of a splice. When I started my career, in the early 70'ies an old man from NYC gave me his 'personal' B&H hot splicer since he was retiring. He had used it most of his professional life. I think the design is from the mid 20ies. Some people are still using it now apparently.

I would say that Kodachrome is far to contrasty for normal telecine transfers. Strictly for direct projection. Very unlikely you can keep the highlights and shadow details in the same shot at the same time.

Shooting on sound recording film has been done, but it may have some unexpected side effects. One of them is that the sound film doesn't have a black antihalation layer. This means that light rays can penetrate the film and be reflected off the shiny pressure rails on the film pressure plate. Don't ask me how I know. The solution was to remove the film pressure plate entirely. Not good for other issues.

The answer will depend on the hardware used. In my case a telecine from a low contrast print matches the projected film look very closely. IP can be nice but is less film-like but this is very subjective.

I don't think the picture would become any sharper. A full frame 1.37 scan to 2K would be 2048*1536 pixels (3145728 total). A 1.85 frame is 2048*1108 and a pillarboxed 1.37 part of that would have an active picture area of 1518*1108 or 1681944 pixels total or about half. Once you get below 1800 pixels wide, aliasing may become a problem. On the other hand an optical reduction from 1.37 full frame to pillarboxed 1.37 inside a 1.85 would give a very sharp image (but smaller) since you gain resolution in an optical reduction. In digital you only use part of the same 'raster' to make the reduction effectively throwing away pixels and resolution. We are just now doing an optical reduction from Super 35/3 Perf to 1.85 4Perf and it comes out very sharp, also due to the edge effects in the intermediate stock that are enhanced by the optical printing.

May I recommend you read 'The Negative' by Ansel Adams, a classic textbook on B&W exposure, processing and printing (if you include 'The Print'). The 5222/5231 stocks have hardly changed in 50 years so there is no reason you can't get the same results. First, get the processing and exposure right. I am now working with Kodak Chalon to establish the reason for several customers having underexposed B&W negatives even if our development is at the proper gamma. Most likely the given exposure ratings are too optimistic, will know more in a couple weeks. If you do the speed point test as described by Adams everything will fall in place nicely. Second, not many labs still do proper B&W with sensitometric tests for each production, controlling gamma to the final print. Third, learn to "see" in B&W for lighting and composition. I would say that of the B&W short films we do, they seem to win more festival awards than the 'others'.

Inside the can, your film should be in a folded balck plastic bag. If this is the case then there will be no fogging. I hope they didn't use transparent plastic bags.. Seriously if it was a lab doing the splitting of the cans they should have plenty of black bags and know how to fold them.

Why don't more people shoot 2 perf: very simple: there is hardly any infrastructure for that non-standard format. Just providing 3perf facilities is a major undertaking, it took about 18 months before the first productions in 3Perf started to come in due to lack of cameras. Currently two 35/3P S35 productions underway at the same time. Serious lack of information too, some DOP's were convinced that 3Perf could only be digitally postproduced, this is not true we do both optical and digital. 3 perf is probably 10 times more widespread than 2 perf and it is already having a hard time.

To have full effect of pin-registration you need both the camera and the projector movement with pin-registration. The equipment shown belongs in the DIY class of equipment which may be fine for some people but not for a serious lab.

Of the whole Kodak negative range, I think 7245 is the one with the least tolerance for underexposure. In bright sunny conditions, no better stock can be found. I can show you helicopter shots in the high Alps, amazing detail in the sunlit snow, yet shadows look neutral and not blocked. Interior with tungsten lighting? Forget it! Waste of money on good stock.

I have Baselight since version 1. One big advantage is that it removes the pressure from the telecine suite. It is much more comfortable to do disk-to-disk grading than a direct feed from a telecine. The images already on disk are just zeros and ones and won't change unless ordered to. The work on a Baselight can be resumed anytime, in six months .. the images will be identical, try that on a telecine. Also I can jump instantly to the first or the last frame of the show, put 9 different parts simultaneously on the screen side by side, etc.. The future of telecine is as a pure technical scanner where D-min is measured and set to Cineon values of 95 with no further intervention of the operator.

Just another datapoint: to be able to do 3 perf in my lab was an investment of about 35000?, not including the testing we did, just to allow our customers to save money on stock. We charge a small fee for any work in 3perf that requires special adapted equipment. On the other hand, 3Perf is really taking off for feature films here, of 4 productions currently shooting we have two on 3 perf, one in CScope and one in 1.85 4 Perf as well as one S16. ALL are shot on Aaton.

You cannot use a C-mount lens on a Aaton. One exception: I have seen a very early Aaton without exposure meter with a C-mount to Aaton adapter. No way on modern Aatons.

The main reason optical printing is much more expensive than contact printing is that there is a much greater chance of having to redo the whole job even if nobody made a mistake. If even the slightest bit of microscopic dirt attaches itself to the inside of the glass in the liquid gate you get a stationary white spot on the screen (going from neg to pos/IP). This can happen on startup of the printer or in the middle of a roll. If direct blowup, this is only seen after adding optical sound and masking to the print on another (contact) printer. It takes about a day to set up an optical printer to change from one format to another. Printing is at 4/8/16/24 fps depending on format and filmstock. If you can do one 2000ft roll of 5242 per day then you are very lucky.

For sync rushes more and more productions are using the new Aaton Cantar. At the end of the day the sound recordist makes a two-track temp mixdown (WAV or BWF format) and burns it to a CD or DVD. This CD is inserted in the Keylink with audio option (Keydaw) or in the Indaw (Aaton audio workstation). The audio files are copied to the internal hard disk and the telecine session can begin. Much faster than copying a DAT in real time.

I am sure Dominic will join in as well, but I can tell you there are not many places in a film lab where you can cut corners. Sure, i can hire cheap labor, use old equipment, never invest in new technology and let things run until the place burns down, sinks in the mud or closes down for lack of customers. Please realize that the lab is one of the places where your entire film can be ruined in a few seconds. Improperly threaded cleaning machine or printer, misplaced reels etc. I am all for charging a fair price for a fair product.

by far the cheapest way to 35mm from S16 negative is to make a single strand (A-roll) direct blow up to 35mm positive. Your EDL and a 25fps video output from the offline system is the starting point. There is no need to do an AB roll unless you have dissolves. If you need no more than a few prints initially then direct blow up is the way to go. if the film catches on an IP /DN can still be made for release prints. Doing a 2K scan (from EDL), digital grading and filmout to 35mm is at least three times more expensive (made the calculations yesterday for a Dutch film). not many labs are specialized in making direct blow-ups from S16 (fully graded after S16 answerprint). if you contact the website below, we would be glad to make a quotation and show samples of work done.

It can be a deliberate choice to get a certain look, it can also be imposed by one of the coproducing TV stations that did not believe in the B&W look. It happened to a film we did several years ago. "Le nain rouge" or "The red dwarf" won the European cinematography award. Danny Elsen was the DOP. It was shot on Super 16 7293. Initially all tests were done for a blow up to B&W IP, then to color DN going to a sepia tint on color positive final. For mixing purposes the director needed a contact S16 print. We proposed to do it on sound recording film to get a B&W print without going DP/DN first. Normal B&W positive stock is blue-sensitive only and not suitable for printing from color negative. He instantly liked it so much that the planned tests were abondoned and the film released on sound recording stock. Very sharp, non-linear sensitometric curve. Special look that even Hollywood labs could not duplicate since the american distributor ordered prints from us after having made a new DN in Hollywood.

Studio Gamma in Liège Belgium has a Super 8 wet-gate for his Oxberry optical printer and he has made blow-ups from Super 8 negative to 35mm IP; not direct blow up to positive because he cannot color correct scene-by-scene. From this 35mm IP, a 35mm Dupeneg was made and this was color corrected as usual.

The A-Minima exposure meter is really to be considered an 'external meter' even if it is build-in. It does not read through the lens but is a standard incident light meter. So if you keep the camera on the tripod if will just read the light falling on your right shoulder. If used hand-held the camera needs to be held with the plastic dome on the right hand side of the camera at the subjects position facing the camera position.

Just do like everybody else in PALland and output to 25fps. Harmonize the sound if you want.

One important issue to consider is how will the negative be shown; via direct print on film, via telecine on video or via scanner to recorder to print? The negative has far more latitude than any of these routes is able to reproduce. In making a print the DOP and the grader really decide which portion of the negative information will be used and which portion will be discarded.

Both are very good lenses of classical design. If I had to choose only one lens, I would take the modern technology Canon 7-63 anyday.