Mark Dunn

6 hours ago, Edith blazek said:

modern movies like , A Star is Born

Eh?

1937, 1954, 1976 or..........?

Really, decades ago there probably wasn't this modern fixation on lens types. I wonder if, 'Scope aside, whether they could have made much difference when the entire film-to-print process was completely standardised, with one OCN, one process and one print stock.

I also wonder if it's now because, with the uniformity of digital imaging, the only way to get any differentiation is with the choice of glass.

dead link

22 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

No, you can't work out 'how long' with any of my tests. The fade and archival tests are not proper, anal tests like a laboratory would do. The sun in the N.E. USA is puny and spotty. To do any concrete results you would need some type of meter that gives you total light received. For instance, if you did the tests in the Mojave Desert you would get different results than I do. 

But I don't really care about all that. For instance. AZO DVD's die after about 3 weeks of sun. Whether it is 3 weeks +1 day or 2 weeks + 5 days; is variable upon the strength of the sun at the time of the tests. I'm just looking at the test results in generalities. 

If I put a M-Disc in the sun for a year and it is fine, that tells me what I need to know. If I put an inkjet print in the sun for a year and no fading results from the year of sun, that tells me something. Now, maybe this year's sun strength was less or more than last year's sun; but it still says something about an item's archival qualities versus something that dies after 3 weeks of sun. 

Interesting about your film work. How did you do it in the old days, just work with a dupe neg? Even if scanned, they should take care of their OCN. It is all security. 

Make some videos of you at work with the Steenbecks / etc.

It's a good "ball-park" figure though, as I think you folks say.

I was never in the business in the film era, only a student. You'd never put neg on any sort of machine, only workprints. I had a client recently who was revisiting a 1996 BBC project for a new show. He needed to shoot his original Tx print being run on the Steenbeck. Unfortunately the BBC had disposed of it and archived the workprint instead in error. It even had the burnt- in timecode. It suited the aesthetic of the new show, but unfortunately the footage didn't make picture lock. The casualty rate of the scenes featuring the Steenbeck on shows I'm hired for is pretty high, about 75%. But I just think of the money- poor editing decisions aren't my problem?. But I have my revenge: I'm actually on screen in my latest show.

I have instructional videos on the Steenbeck for clients on my Youtube channel,

tinyurl.com/londonsteenbeck

but they're pretty utilitarian. I'll think about some more now you mention it.

Well the odd white speck's bound to be there with neg, it was always more noticeable than black dust on reversal. And of course it's bigger on S-8.

A bigger quibble is that there was (I think) a shutter problem with the camera they used outside, causing a bit of flicker, and the occasional frame jump. That slightly luminous (read: flare) was always a Super-8 thing. Good primes could have helped with it, but I don't know if many were made, let alone used.

Jack's problem may be the XL shutter. I noticed with my XL that it could be pretty blurry at 18.

I'm sure someone knowledgeable here will chip in with a procedure if it's possible. If they don't you should probably conclude that it's not a good idea.

I wonder if it would be worth pointing out that it can't possibly be "processed locally" because no lab in NZ actually does it. But considering the ignorant tone of the email, probably not.

Looks like you'll have to ship it.

7 hours ago, Maxim Lequeux said:

"I'm afraid the Film Preservation Laboratory is not providing services for rushes/dailies processing as it has a specialised set-up for preservation copying only." Maybe I can try again when I'm in NZ and call, it would be the best outcome to get it done in a place like that. 

I think duplication stocks are ECP process, so it's quite possible they don't have an ECN line at all. But if they hadn't, you'd think they'd just say so outright.

So you can work out how long it will last indoors by figuring the ratio of light levels. Artificial light is far dimmer than sunlight, so it should be good for quite some decades.

Very useful test btw. I have some cans I've labelled just with masking tape, and some has lost its "stick" after less than 5 years near a window So I've moved the cans to a shadier spot. Of course the Sharpie writing is going too but they're all marked on the top of the can as well, and that's in the stack, so out of the light.

Anyone with any amount of film is an archivist now. Till I was on a 16mm. music shoot a few weeks ago I hadn't seen film under 25 years old for 30 years. But the relative importance of the actual material is presumably much less now- the directors actually let me run freshly developed colour neg on the Steenbeck, because it had already been scanned and was no longer important to them except as a prop. That would have been a no-no back in the day- Steenbecks are famous for being gentle on film, but it's a relative term. In fact we never saw our neg as students, it was always filed at the lab.

I think the "Video Tachometer" app (Iphone only) would be suitable for this- I've used it this week to check the Steenbeck speed.

It uses a variable frame rate rather than the phone's LED. Assuming you can see the claw, or shutter, you'd shine a light on it (or through the lens as per Martin's method) then adjust the frame rate on the app until the part was stationary. That would be the running speed.

Incidentally it's just told me that my K3 speed is off. Easier to see the shutter with the lens off, of course. But it works.

Braniff.........

believe it?

A shame 16mm. (well, film) is so staggeringly expensive. About £120 stock and processing for 100'.

I occasionally hanker after using my proper made-of-metal-in actual-Japan camera (Canon A1) but FIFTY PENCE just for the privilege of releasing the shutter is too much.

When 16mm. K40 bowed out it was £30 process-paid, and that's not much over a decade ago.

One of the stupidest things I did was not use a roll of 120 K40 before K14 went away. (Kodachrome was always process-paid outside the US, if you recall). It's still in the freezer, useless.

Back in the day when 16mm. was used for news where the light was unpredictable, a built-in meter made some sense. But if you have some control over when and how you shoot, and the system needed an exposure meter anyway, unless you really need the feature as you say, forget it. If you need to move between areas with different light levels, rehearse the shot and change the aperture manually.. You would have had to do that with the ACL anyway.

18 minutes ago, Frederick Knauf said:

"X = 64" speed.

This figures in well with the doubling of ASA speeds in the early 60s when the safety margin was removed- so "X" then became 125? 4x125=500 as you note. Although in stills, Panatomic-X stayed at 32. Hmm.

Incidentally, what a great forum when someone asks for a Kodak historian......and we have one. Talk about the horse's mouth.

Hopefully you will get a better answer than this, but it's possible that the electronics are out of spec due to age. Capacitors are particularly prone to deterioration after 40 or 50 years.

What comes my ways isn't archive as such, just sources to be mined for new shows, but I've only had material going back to the early 60s on the Steenbeck so no cement splices, except the odd lab splice. But quite a few early 70s tape splices have dried out. Fortunately they're easy to remake with the CIR. My late 70s Super-8 ones have all held up. As, actually, have the cement ones I made before I got the CIR. But at 18fps they are a real mess on the screen. Most of my magnetic stripe has detached, but I've remade my soundtracks (not lip-sync) on CD, hand-cued, then much more recently  on computer in Audacity.

I assume that with sensors and feedback and whatever modern scanners apply the absolute minimum of tension necessary to ensure a good wind-up.

On a similar note I've never handled anything more recent than 1995. But the Steenbeck was hired recently for a music video shot on 16mm. I "star" in that in a small way as a film editor.

I hadn't seen an Arriflex for 30 years and I'm ashamed to say that when I first saw the 416 without its mag but with its video tap, follow-focus leads and handling cage I thought I was looking at an Alexa Mini. I should probably be slightly shot for that. Great to hear "turn over" and "cut" when it actually means something.

In my book, left in, as long as the unsteadiness isn't too distracting. You can't really do anything about a cement splice without losing frames, and in any case you've already done the scan.

The imperfections in an amateur film are part of it. And it's not GWTW. It doesn't need studio polish.

Besides, if you take them out you might be depriving some future academic of the opportunity to write a PhD about it.

In you example, the flare lasts about 2 seconds. I think it was a creative choice by Kubrick- if he hadn't liked it in the rushes he would certainly have re-shot or used a different take. He would have known, or Alcott would have told him, that lights so close to the frame edge would probably flare. He wouldn't just accept that it was unavoidable- he'd spend thousands on a detail like that.

4 hours ago, Robert Houllahan said:

 

I see you are in Boston if you want to come to the lab we can probably give you some actual kit mixed ECN2 liquids to try.

Good on you. What a generous offer. One of the reasons this forum has such a good reputation. Posts are one thing but practical help like this is something else.

No need to look up the definition of "professional" here.

1 hour ago, Doug Palmer said:

I may have this wrong.  Didn't somebody in US use S8 for news-gathering ?   I know 16 was used a lot.

There was an attempt to professionalise S-8 in the US in the 70s (Super-8 Sound comes to mind, with location mag film recorders and pulse-sync Nizos, and there were a few Super-8 Steenbecks) but there was never a proper lab infrastructure to back it up, with neg and print stocks, and I think S-8 was just too fragile to stand up to the rigours of cutting news. Although there was a dedicated reversal stock, 7244, with its own compact dry-to-dry processor, but as noted, the stock on its own wasn't enough. There was no ecosystem.

16mm. was used for pretty much everything outside the studio for decades, though news went to tape in the late 70s, when the unions allowed it, and finishing on film stopped in the 90s.  UK film dramas were shooting on film into the 2010s. A good piece of "The Blue Planet" documentary (2001) was shot on 35mm.

Obviously if you change a processing chemical there can be differences in colour, but if you are sure of your processing I don't think the mask colour is significant.

You might expect the 35mm. and 65mm. stocks to look different if they are different ages and have been stored differently- I assume the 65mm is much older.

I know nothing about MP scanning, but I think what matters is not that the scans are different, but that the colour can be corrected.

Could you have lost something from inside the hole, a ball bearing or spring or something, that did the actual jjob of locking?

Would blackening the pressure plates fix it- and can it even be done? Anodising?

11 hours ago, Dan Finlayson said:

The page you linked doesn't say that it's natively C-41 - just that the example photos were processed that way.  Have you seen it confirmed elsewhere that it's a C-41 stock?

Here

https://www.orwo.wtf/blog/an-update-wolfen-photo-shipping-new-samples-and-colour-cine-release

NC500. Intended for C41 but can be processed ECN2 with a change of contrast. No remjet.

Reading between the lines implies it's made in China and only packed in Wolfen.

I'm sure it's b/w. I don't think it's a camera film- that would have the ISO on the can as above. I think it's a laboratory film for making contact prints.

The difference in speed ratings may just be down to differences in development. You are better off starting at the lower figure if you're using an ordinary fine-grain developer. It is likely to have lost quite a bit of speed. I would tend to assume at least 2 stops, which may make it inconvenient as a camera film.

I think "Tasma" is probably just a brand of Svema (also Ukraine).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svema

Edit: This about a company that took over Svema's manufacturing. They have a film rated at ISO 3 to 6 which I'm sure is a print film.

http://www.astrum-ltd.com/en/kino-foto-materialy.html

mentions a b/w positive film. (It's still negative-working though despite the name).

On 10/14/2022 at 12:18 AM, Sean Cheung said:

Wonder if any of you could weigh in on my question. I have what I believed to be an Aaton LTR7 (early model 440) which after being overhauled is running beautifully. I was told by the tech that it does up to all its speeds up to 32fps and only sync at 25fps (fine with that being in Europe).

However I noticed that on the fps dial there appears to be a 54fps setting (the only speed setting engraving not filled with paint) and I wonder whether it's just there because that's how they made the part originally or whether my camera will actually run at 54fps.

It does turn on that speed and it's definitely the loudest one of all, whether it's running at 54fps I have no idea, and I also don't want to damage the camera if it's not got film in it and/or indeed set up to run at that speed.

I'll be running my first test roll soon so I guess I'll try it sparingly, but would love to know if anyone has any insight into this.

Thanks in advance!

There's an app called "video tachometer" that would get you the frame rate by freezing the mirror or claw movement. But I'm not sure you should run that fast without film. Maybe a loading/scratch test roll? I sell them!