Owen A. Davies

I just spoke with Fotokem yesterday. They do not offer E-6 development for 35mm film.

I know of Cinelab Boston, and that's about it. Is that the only option on the market for development of E-6 35mm motion picture film?

It is definitely not the date in which they were shot. These are just three examples of shorts from the past five years that I found on YouTube. All of which were shot on 16mm with Kodak 7222. I think that ones personal preference and subjective opinions play an important role, but these three clips are prime examples of footage that has what I would consider to be a distracting level of grain.

I am shooting a short film on Super 16 this June. The entire thing will take place during the night, with 70% being interiors. Low-key, hard lighting, tungsten lighting, with plans for use of haze as well as lens diffusion. The film will be black and white, so naturally, the obvious instinct was to use Kodak's only black and white negative film, Eastman Double-X. However, after further review, I am beginning to have my doubts. In the lead up to the shoot, I have been reviewing a lot of 16mm work shot on 7222, both on YouTube and Vimeo, and one aspect that is giving me a great deal of apprehension is the sheer level of granularity present in this stock at this format size. From much of what I have seen from the 7222, the grain is just far too intense for what I feel comfortable with, and I can see it being a big distraction in the frame. I had the idea of simply shooting on Kodak 7203 VISION3 50D and taking out the saturation in post. The downside to this is of course that we would lose two stops of exposure, and have to light night interiors for 50 ISO. More lights, brighter lights, hotter lights, more electricity, more output, higher budget. Whether or not this change is practical and worthwhile over something such as grain structure and granularity, I am not certain. I am unable to escape my feeling that the 7222’s grain is just way too overpowering, so I wanted to reach out for some advice regarding the extent to which shooting on a lower speed film stock will complicate things. Am I too in my head regarding 7222's grain? It should be noted that shooting the film on a larger format such as 35mm is out of the question for budgetary reasons, and I am also entirely opposed to using any kind of DNR in Resolve. Any input is appreciated. Thank you.

Would you say there's any significant gap in quality between the 4k Director and the 10/13k Director? I always thought pumping a gratuitous amount of extra resolution into scans to be unnecessary and counterproductive. In my experience, all it really does at 10k is serve to sharpen and exemplify the film's grain structure without really adding any increase to the resolvable detail in the image.

Do you know if the Director 4k also uses the true RGB monochrome sensor? Or do only the 10k and 13k have that feature built in?

Thanks for the information. Do you have any more details about the Xena 9.4k as a scanner? I can't seem to find very much information at all about this scanner online.

I have got a pretty dense film print that I am looking to have digitized, and I wanted to take advantage of the LaserGraphics Director "3-flash HDR" feature to extract as much visual fidelity from print as I possibly can. I don’t believe I have seen many labs or post-production studios which offer will-call or consumer scanning services. Anybody here know of a place which scans with the Director that is currently accepting non-studio requests for scanning services? Thank you.

I am gonna be test shooting some 35mm motion picture Ektachrome soon and bracketing its exposure with some additional variations in push/pull development to see how the stock holds up for printing. I know that cross processing will undoubtedly increase the density of the film to a certain extent (what that extent is, however, I am not sure). And then on top of that, printing the negative onto 2383 stock is going to increase the final image's density even further. Is there some kind of general rule of thumb that is typically take when exposing E6 type film to be developed in ECN-II chemicals? A friend of mine had told me that typically the highlights tend to suffer the most in the cross process and that it would be wise to underexpose by a bit or at least meter for the highlights to maintain a more well rounded image. It is an experiment for a reason, and obviously I will get some extreme and unusable results from playing around with cross processing AND pushing slide film. I am willing to venture into more risky territory when bracketing my shots. However, I would still like some pointers--particularly on exposing color reversal film that is to be cross processed.

I just don't know why they would do two focal lengths so close to each other with only three lens choices. I'd rather just save the money and get the 40 and the 75. Some directors are able to shoot entire productions and get wide, medium, and closeup shots with just one focal length. I just don't see what the incentive is on a big production to swap between 40 and 50 if you're only using three lenses.

I'll keep this brief because I believe I have asked a similar question to this one before a few months ago and I simply cannot find the chat. Kodak 2383/3383 is a negative film. When a fully developed VISION3 negative is printed onto projection film, the two negative stocks in combination yield a positive projection print once the 2383 is fully developed. If someone were to shoot a film on lets say Kodak 5294 Ektachrome 100D 35mm, how would they then go about printing that developed positive onto print film? Would they have to essentially double-print the film in order to yield an eventual positive projection print? Are films that are shot on Ektachrome so rarely projected that this scenario is simply not all that common of an issue? Thank you in advance for the insight!

The Panavision Auto-Panatar, Kowa Cine Prominar, Zeiss Ultrascope, and Lomo Roundfront sets of lenses are all examples of vintage anamorphic glass that I’ve noticed follow a strange trend. In respect to their original release, all of their sets were comprised of lenses ranging from 40mm at their very widest followed by a 50mm above it, and then jumping to something like a 75mm or 85mm. The Panavisions go "40, 50, 75”, whereas the Kowas and Ultrascopes both go "40, 50, 85”. I’ve always found this to be a really perplexing manufacturing decision, as I can’t see how many cinematographers of filmmakers would prefer this much narrower range of focal lengths followed by this huge jump making two lenses much wider than their third installment. Was there a practical reason for this during the era they were manufactured in?

I would say that you're right on many fronts here, but I still disagree quite strongly that the majority of what gives these older films their look (in my eyes at least) is due to the mise en scen as much as it is due to the older photochemical finish. Whether is be the old dye-coupling method of color in the late fifties and early sixties or other physical methods of finishing, there were aspects to the color and visual rendition of these older films that undeniably came down to the stocks they were shot on and how they were finished in post. If you have the time, take a look at 2:52 - 3:24 from the opening of West Side Story. I think you will be tempted to attribute such an older look to set design, wardrobe coloring, or other factors in play with the mise en scen. And do doubt all those things are integral in creating this final look. But so much of that sequence strikes me as such a unique photochemical finish which portrays a very different tonal rendition of the sidewalk, the highlights in the hair, the deep and shiny blacks, the blue sky, and the overall look of the image.

Ultimately, what I am trying to do is be able to get modern VISION3 on 4-perf Super35 to better resemble older Kodak stocks from the 1960s in respect to latitude, detail, dynamic range, resolution, and other aspects. I was exploring this question further by trying to come up with some concrete answers as to what separates Super16 and Super35 visually, as I believe that modern 16mm still possesses many of those visual qualities that I associate with 1960s Super35. This can come down to the black detail, the thinner highlights, the lower resolution image, the smaller color gamut, and many more. I am looking for ways to give specifically Kodak VISION3 5219 500T certain qualities to make it appear lower fidelity.

I read all of that loud and clear, but lets talk about the two formats strictly at a photochemical level as opposed to an optical one. If I wanted to try and emulate the texture, latitude, contrast, dynamic range, and color gamut of the typical Super16 frame on the Super35 format, how would you go about doing this from the method of manipulating the film stock. Shoot fastest speed possible, check (5219 500T). But after that, would you suggest pushing the film to get it looking more like Super16? This would increase the grain, change the color gamut, lower the resolution, and lower the dynamic range, but also increase the contrast. Is the smaller format inertly higher contrast than larger format film? I have also heard of another method of going about this would be to pre/post flash the film and combine that with having it pushed. That way you would really be taking away from the negative's overall usable latitude, resolution, and dynamic range whilst having some of the higher contrast effects from pushing counterbalanced.