Color reversal intermediate (CRI) transfer

[kmlevine]

Color reversal intermediate (CRI) transfer

 

I?m about to transfer a 20 year old 16mm PBS program that seems to only have Color reversal intermediate (CRI) printing elements and I was wondering if anyone has had experience transferring CRI?s to DVcam or DigiBeta. Any advise is appreciated.

 

Thanks,

 

Ken

[David Mullen ASC]

A CRI off of a negative will look like the negative, only a little more contrasty; the same with a CRI of a reversal original. Being a positive picture of a negative, creating another negative, I assume that it carries the same color mask.

 

Your main problem will be how far this CRI has faded, degraded, or color shifted over the years because CRI's were not very archival it turned out, hence why they were discontinued. The CRI's done for "Star Wars" were so aged that they all had to be redone.

[Dominic Case]

CRIs were notoriously difficult in every respect. Apparently Kodak threw away more stock than they sold as it failed one QC test or another. In the lab it was hard to process uniformly: you are likely to see the edges of the film printing up a lot bluer than the middle (or you will see a yellow band down the middle, dependng on how the print or transfer has been graded). That uneveness seems to be worse after a number of years, so I guess the fading might be differential across the width of the film.

 

When it was first introduced it seemed great: one stage duplication instead of the two-stage IP/IN. And it was much better than the intermediate stock of the time, but when Kodak introduced 5243 (around 1980 at a guess) it was in turn much better than the CRI stock, which wasn't ever upgraded.

 

Also, CRI dupes, if printed on a contact printer, were the reverse geometry to an original or a normal dupe neg, and so resulted in non-standard prints (i.e they had to be projected emulsion facing the lens rather than facing the lamp.)

 

If that's the case with your 16mm CRI, you may need to refocus the telecine. Or, if the neg is double perf, you could run normally and flip the image electronically.

[kmlevine]

I was afraid of this. Thanks for the info and advice.

 

Ken

[John Pytlak RIP]

In the days of EASTMAN Color Intermediate Film 5253/7253, EASTMAN Color Reversal Intermediate Film 5249/7249 (CRI) was a godsend. A CRI duplicate negative made directly from the original negative had much better sharpness and less grain than going through the master positive and duplicate negative printing system.

 

But as Dominic notes, CRI was a complex film that was a "bear" to manufacture, and very sensitive to processing variations in the CRI-1 process, especially with regards to process agitation (uniformity of development). Developed before the availability of Arrhenius prediction of image stability, CRI unfortunately does not have a good reputation for image stability, especially if stored improperly. The orientation issue required either printing through the base or using an optical printer to maintain proper orientation in 35mm, but for 16mm, the orientation was the preferred orientation.

 

CRI was on the market from 1968 until the early 1980's, and won a Class 1 Academy Technical Award of Merit. The introduction of new negative/positive intermediate films like 5243, 5244, and now KODAK VISION Color Intermediate Film 5242/2242 allow the production of excellent master positives and duplicate negatives that maintain image quality very close to that of a direct print.