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.

As I said, I don't believe the chemical mix differed in the ECN-1 process to the ECN-2 process. What changed was the temperature and length of time was used in part A of the development phase.

When we talk about Super16's resolving power being lesser than Super35, what precisely are we referring to? The negative's resolution? Its dynamic range? Its color gamut? And if we are in fact referring to those three factors, then WHY exactly is Super16 so different than Super35mm in these ways? Super16 is 12.52mm x 7.41mm, whilst 4-perf Super35 is 24.89mm x 18.67mm. If it's a question of the grain being perceivably larger when shooting on a smaller format medium then why wouldn't simply shooting a slower speed film on Super 16 more closely resemble Super 35 on a faster speed of film? Because I will tell you, it certainly does not from what I have seen. Is part of the answer due to the fact that one would have to shoot in a wider focal length to get the same field of view on a smaller format medium? What are ways that one could manipulate a Super 35 negative in the exposure stage, development stage, or both, to get the resulting negative to hold properties which closer resemble a Super16 image? The obvious answer would be to push the negative, but another interesting idea I have heard would be to have the negative either pre or post-flashed. This would reduce the resolution and dynamic range by the corresponding stop of exposure you decide the have the film flashed at. All and all, I have a lot of questions on this matter, and I would love to hear some feedback from a filmmaker with more experience working with celluloid than I.

More traditional forms of tampering with ones negative in the processing stage include over or under-developing your film, doing a bleach-bypass, or having the film cross processed. Cross processing refers to using a different form of chemical solution and/or pipeline to develop one specific kind of film. I have recently been researching different ways to manipulate the resulting negative in the processing stage, and one idea that had never crossed my mind until now was using the ECN-1 method of development on ECN-2 film. From what I have read, both methods use the exact same chemicals with the same general workflow, only differing in the length of time and temperature used in part A of the process. Wikipedia says that ECN-1... "...involved development at approximately 25 °C for around 7–9 minutes". Firstly, has anyone here ever tried developing ECN-2 film with the ECN-1 processing method? And if so, to what results? Secondly, would anyone be able to gage what this temperature and development time difference would have on the resulting film in terms of resolution, density, dynamic range, contrast, grain, and color? Would ECN-2 film's emulsion even come off with this method, or would that be another potential problem introduced by this workflow?Would the result even be predictable, or is this method so old and unexplored with the new VISION3 stocks that results will end up without a clear pattern of cause and effect? If most people on this page advise me against developing ECN-2 film with the ECN-1 solution then I probably won't take this experiment much further. But I would love to hear your favorite method of cross processing ECN-2 film and what kind of results it ends up having on each VISION3 stock as I am interested in learning more about it. Thank you!

https://share.icloud.com/photos/055l8PmtYj3WWMdHJqUj9mk3Q These stills were all done on a Bell and Howell contact printer with printer lights. Very reminiscent of Eastmacolor to my eye. I am trying to learn more about the color timing process but there are so few still left in use and wokring condition. I found one in Brooklyn. Are there any still being used out in L.A?

This might seem like a rather stupid question considering how concise and clear of an answer you gave to my previous question, but humor me for just a moment. In spite of the fact that the very process of printing a negative is inherently subtractive despite the RGB additive lantern, is there a way to color time your resulting print to bear a more traditionally "subtractive" color tonality? For instance, color grading in DaVinci Resolve is also a process which operates within the RGB framework, yet in that process, there are steps that I usually take in my grade which allow me to do most of the color work by subtracting my RGB color values in either the offset, lift, gamma, or gain to yield a more subtractive color scheme from my resulting grade as opposed to simply manipulating the RGB values in an additive manner. There is work I have seen done with contact printers which has resulted in such a distinctly vivid and film like rendition of color subtraction that I am yet to seem done half as well through the digital process. I just saw Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas on an old worn down 35mm print at my local theatre recently. It looked unlike any color grade or version of the film I have ever seen before and I was really blown away and in love with it. However, as I have seen through other examples, simply utilizing the printer lights system alone is not usually enough to approximate this "subtractive" look that I have in my mind. In short, asking the question "how do you make your color look subtractive" in respect to a process which you've already clearly and helpfully confirmed is in fact subtractive does sound like a rather redundant question, but I'd still like to see if you can approximate what I am trying to get at. Thanks as always David.

I am pretty confused about whether color timing with printer lights is an additive process or a subtractive one. I don't want to post the exact same thing twice, so check out my full question about that in the "post production” topic forum or just as the latest post in my profile. I go pretty in depth about my uncertainty on that subject.

I’m pretty confused on this fact about contact printers, color timing, and printer lights, so hopefully someone will be able to shed a little light on this subject. A number of professionals on this sight have referred to the color timing process done with printer lights as a "subtractive color process”, yet I’ve read quite a few guides and manuals from both Kodak as well as Bell and Howell that explicitly says the opposite. The Bell and Howell Model C manual says that, prior to 1961, contact printers utilized a subtractive lamphouse which required the use of a vast number of ELM (Eastman Lamphouse Modification) filters if one wanted to make scene to scene color corrections. This was a very tedious and time consuming process. A subtractive printer uses a white light source to produce properly balanced prints. Combinations of color filters control the amounts of red, green and blue light. Printing that requires a lot of scene-to-scene color corrections is very difficult on a subtractive printer because a new color-correcting filter pack must be physically inserted between the light source and the printing aperture for every correction. Overall light changes (intensity changes) are made by using a variable aperture or a neutral density filter. This problem was eventually solved with the advent of the additive lamphouse. "Modern additive printers use a set of standard dichroic mirrors to separate or combine the light from a tungsten-halogen bulb into its red, green and blue components. The mirrors have a multilayer coating of dielectric material that reflects a specific wavelength region while transmitting other regions. Adjustments are made to the mirrors to achieve the desired color balance on the final print". Over the decades, subtractive color timing was phased out and eventually went extinct, replaced entirely by the much simpler, speedier, and more direct additive model. From what I’ve seen, all of the contact printers still in use today are built with an additive lamphouse, exclusively utilizing an RGB color model as opposed to a CMY model. From searching I’ve done, I cannot seem to find a single contact printer still in use or operating in 2024 which uses a subtractive lamphouse. Yet even to my eyes, so much of the final print work that I’ve seen timed with a B&H Model C additive lamphouse bears a very strong resemblance to a more traditional subtractive color finish in terms of density, saturation, hue, and tonal rendition. This whole revelation now seems all the more confusing to me as I first learned about printer lights through DaVinci Resolve, and that whole hotkey model operates on seven distinct levels: red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, yellow, and the master. And now I’ve come to learn that actual printer lights only utilize three, red, green, and blue (with the master being controlled by raising or lowering those three values by the exact same amount). Stupid Question: Why couldn't one simply use the additive timing method with the dichroic mirrors, only with CMY taking the place of its corresponding RGB counterparts. I’m not sure if that would require a 4,800K white bulb instead of a 3,200K Tungsten one that additive lamphouses need. What is it about the subtractive timing process that absolutely requires the use of all those filters instead of simply the mirrors and deflectors?

Do either of you have any footage or at least an example that shows the level of softness, contrast, deterioration, or loss of resolution from an optical print? I have the opportunity to use an Oxberry one and I wanna see the extent to which my image will be compromised if I have to print and color time on it instead of a contact printer.

For general use, I understand that the main application of optical printing was for changing the format size from the negative to the print--whether that be from a 35mm negative to a 16mm print or the inverse. I also know that optical printers were used a lot for effects work, title cards, and credits. Contact printers on the other hand were utilized mostly for the color timing process. With all that in mind, I am not too sure of the full extent of one printer's capabilities vs the other. Are you also able to color time on most optical printers? Does one printer generally produce higher "quality"/resolution prints than the other? Which are more commonly found and are still in use? And why would someone exclusively use one over the other?

I think it could be a generational difference coupled with the fact that much of my introduction to and understanding of motion picture celluloid comes from high quality scans transmitted through a digital medium, not projections of the prints themselves. I am sure that if I had lived to see these older negatives used, printed, projected, updated, replaced, refined, and perfected over the decades I would have a different understanding of what differentiates them from how we see modern stocks today. I believe that a significant portion of what I associate with the look of older films is a product of older film prints, less optical resolution in the negative, increased granularity, lack of tonal range, richer color density, the fading and deterioration of these prints over the decades, as well as their subtractive color printing from older dyes and their transfer process. Thus, the way you have come to understand and internalize the qualities of these older negatives may vary greatly from mine. Perhaps many of the characteristics I associate with older films are largely due to the deterioration of the prints that were scanned than the actual qualities of the negatives themselves. I am not certain. Perhaps I am more captivated by the composition and color rendition of print film than I am of the larger latitude and tonal range found in negative stocks. I am not certain. Either way, this thread has given me quite a bit of clarity on this issue, and I highly value all of the advice and insight nonetheless.