Achieving infrared look for 35mm stock

joaquin del paso · October 12, 2008

Hi everyone, Im a cinematography student at the polish national film school, this year I am making two shorts on 5222 b/w this year and I wish to achieve a similar look to infrared film stock. If this works for the first one I can maybe get a change to an infrared stock for the second one but I dont know if its possible to buy this...

I would really appreciate if you could share your experience achieving this look.

thanks!!

Joaquin del Paso

Simon Wyss · October 19, 2008

Why do you want to imitate the rendering of infrared-sensitised stock with a panchromatic film ? That is not possible. Would you want to make an apple pie with pears ?

joaquin del paso · October 19, 2008

Why do you want to imitate the rendering of infrared-sensitised stock with a panchromatic film ? That is not possible. Would you want to make an apple pie with pears ?

Hey man, you are so helpful...

I've been seeing "I am cuba" and I'm amazed by the cinematography, I want to get this rich images and maybe instead of saying things like Would you want to make an apple pie with pears ? you could give a bit of your experience with 5222 don't you think? Or if you know where to get infrared stock...

Simon Wyss · October 23, 2008

Alright, you demand it. Eastman 5222 Double-X panchromatic negative is a ISO 250 stock that will suit your production when it's about action, news gathering, sports. Cinematography like you're naming it is not only the raw stock in the camera. My goodness, what do you have to show or to tell, is the base. An infrared film image is something artificial, nobody sees in such translation, I mean light leaves, dark sky. So why employ infrared sensitised stock ? Is anyone of the story's characters under drugs, has something strange happened to somebody, will be the question. Apart from the sun, how would you light scenes for IR film ?

Have you once made the calculation on lights and everything to expose lower speed stock ? Ilford Pan F plus is ISO 50. Gigabitfilm is ISO 40. Eastman 5234, a material intended for internegatives, is around ISO 25. Where do you want to be with the iris ? Middle values, 8-5.6-4 or open, 2.8-2-1.4 ? These questions might help to find a visual stile and stile is whether you separate fore- from background in sharpness, eventually supported by longer focal length lenses, or not. Stile is defined whether the picture has more inner structure and less cuts with the danger of overload or is less charged but element of the narrative syntax. You can evoke something with the spectator but know how. Nobody on earth can give you the experience. You alone - and you will always be alone in that - are there up on stage. We sit opposite of you and watch.

I want to get this rich images

I wish I could show you that you begin at the surface but better start with the backbone.

Infrared stock is sold by Eastman-Kodak Company of Rochester NY. They have telephone and internet homesite. Sorry, but it annoys me to tell an adult where to turn to and how and that it could be wise to call them during business hours and to be precise on what you want.

Edited October 23, 2008 by Simon Wyss

October 23, 2008

Alright, you demand it. Eastman 5222 Double-X panchromatic negative is a ISO 250 stock that will suit your production when it's about action, news gathering, sports. Cinematography like you're naming it is not only the raw stock in the camera. My goodness, what do you have to show or to tell, is the base. An infrared film image is something artificial, nobody sees in such translation, I mean light leaves, dark sky. So why employ infrared sensitised stock ? Is anyone of the story's characters under drugs, has something strange happened to somebody, will be the question. Apart from the sun, how would you light scenes for IR film ?

Have you once made the calculation on lights and everything to expose lower speed stock ? Ilford Pan F plus is ISO 50. Gigabitfilm is ISO 40. Eastman 5234, a material intended for internegatives, is around ISO 25. Where do you want to be with the iris ? Middle values, 8-5.6-4 or open, 2.8-2-1.4 ? These questions might help to find a visual stile and stile is whether you separate fore- from background in sharpness, eventually supported by longer focal length lenses, or not. Stile is defined whether the picture has more inner structure and less cuts with the danger of overload or is less charged but element of the narrative syntax. You can evoke something with the spectator but know how. Nobody on earth can give you the experience. You alone - and you will always be alone in that - are there up on stage. We sit opposite of you and watch.

I wish I could show you that you begin at the surface but better start with the backbone.

Infrared stock is sold by Eastman-Kodak Company of Rochester NY. They have telephone and internet homesite. Sorry, but it annoys me to tell an adult where to turn to and how and that it could be wise to call them during business hours and to be precise on what you want.

You obviously have no creativity as why someone would want to use a non-standard cinema stock.

Original poster, keep to the look you want, people like this are really unenlightened.

I'm in H'wood and wanted a particular look and feel, everyone said it can't be done, bullshit. I did it with a non-cinematic stock, I calculated all the lighting and my timed dailies looking fcuking great!

Kodak does not sell HEI stock anymore, at least 2 years now. Maybe if you order 100,000 feet or have a ton of cash they will make a special run.

Sam Wells · October 23, 2008

Even when they did sell it, it wasn't through their Motion Picture division like other stocks but through Instrumentation Marketing (I think it was called then) dealers. It took a round of phone calls to to find someone who could even sold it in 16mm, which was what I needed - and was not a stocked item (short shelf life) I couldn't swing the minimum which would have cost me $8,000 IIRC.

Joaquin, are you doing a film or digital finish ?

-Sam

Brian Pritchard · October 24, 2008

Hi everyone, Im a cinematography student at the polish national film school, this year I am making two shorts on 5222 b/w this year and I wish to achieve a similar look to infrared film stock. If this works for the first one I can maybe get a change to an infrared stock for the second one but I dont know if its possible to buy this...

I would really appreciate if you could share your experience achieving this look.

thanks!!

Joaquin del Paso

The main problem in achieving an infra-red look is that fact that panchromatic films and infra-red films see the scene differently. Panchromatic films have their sensitivity to colour adjusted so that a black and white image shows all of the colours with their 'correct' density; that is colours that are dark to the eye such as reds appear dark and colours that appear light to the eye such as yellow, appear light. Many years ago when colour was not in common use cameramen went round with a pan glass around their neck. This was a dark green filter which when you looked through it you could get an idea of how the scene would look in black and white.

Infra-red stock is recording the way the scenes reflect or absorb infra-red light. For example leaves reflect infra-red strongly so that they will look white in the print. You could get something of this result by using a green filter on the camera but this would distort the rendition of other colours; reds and blues would look dark. As I mentioned the tonal reproduction would entirely depend on the infra-red reflectivity of the objects in the scene. The only slightly helpful suggestion I can make is to try various colour filters and see what the result is.

Incidentally around the time of the Vietnam war Kodak produced Infra-red Ektachrome. The layer that produced the cyan dye was sensitive to infra-red. This meant that if you photographed the jungle any camouflage that was not made out of trees stood out as magenta while fabrics that were green and brown stayed their normal colour. It was used by directors who wanted psychedelic colour and produced some fantastic results.

Brian

Richardson Leao · October 24, 2008

Hi,

dunno which camera you have but my konvas can take 35mm still film perfs. I bought a 30m roll of maco infrared film and i am planning to use it soon. I took some still photos with it to test using a red filter (r25). Didn't get good results with an infrared filter but the deep red was fantastic! I will probably also buy a r29 or a r70 film to use during the shooting.

this is the film:

http://www.mahn.net/TAIRe.htm

I will scan the stills tonite to show u

i will use 30m rolls because it was easily available, but maco is a small cozy photo company and i believe, depending on the amount u need, they could sell it in longer rolls.

Another option (also if u use a camera with no reg pin or a russian cam not converted to kodak perf) would be getting ilford sfx 200 in 30m bulk rolls. This film is actually closer to the soy cuba stock (a pan film with extended sensitivity to 820nm) but i'm not sure if they sell the sfx in bulk loads.

The main problem in achieving an infra-red look is that fact that panchromatic films and infra-red films see the scene differently. Panchromatic films have their sensitivity to colour adjusted so that a black and white image shows all of the colours with their 'correct' density; that is colours that are dark to the eye such as reds appear dark and colours that appear light to the eye such as yellow, appear light. Many years ago when colour was not in common use cameramen went round with a pan glass around their neck. This was a dark green filter which when you looked through it you could get an idea of how the scene would look in black and white.

Infra-red stock is recording the way the scenes reflect or absorb infra-red light. For example leaves reflect infra-red strongly so that they will look white in the print. You could get something of this result by using a green filter on the camera but this would distort the rendition of other colours; reds and blues would look dark. As I mentioned the tonal reproduction would entirely depend on the infra-red reflectivity of the objects in the scene. The only slightly helpful suggestion I can make is to try various colour filters and see what the result is.

Incidentally around the time of the Vietnam war Kodak produced Infra-red Ektachrome. The layer that produced the cyan dye was sensitive to infra-red. This meant that if you photographed the jungle any camouflage that was not made out of trees stood out as magenta while fabrics that were green and brown stayed their normal colour. It was used by directors who wanted psychedelic colour and produced some fantastic results.

Brian

Simon Wyss · October 25, 2008

You obviously have no creativity as why someone would want to use a non-standard cinema stock.

Original poster, keep to the look you want, people like this are really unenlightened.

My friend, who came up with the question ? People like this, of course you mean me, are bored by people who want to know everything about nothing. I am pretty sure the original poster smells high costs with IR stock, so he's beatin' around the bush. If he knew some black and white he'd not fuss about theory.

Sam Wells · October 25, 2008

. If he knew some black and white he'd not fuss about theory.

Well he'll learn some B&W by shooting it. He did say cinematography student.

To the OP, I think getting aggressive with filtration on 5222 (probably a good choice given the filter factors of things like a #25 might produce results that are satisfying altho not true monochrome IR as per Brian's good and informative post.

http://www.schneiderkreuznach.com/tipps/sw_fotografie_e.htm

If you were going a digital post route there are some interesting possibilities with using a color original in camera but likely another subject entirely. (And drives the purists here crazy !)

-Sam

Richardson Leao · October 25, 2008

Well he'll learn some B&W by shooting it. He did say cinematography student.

To the OP, I think getting aggressive with filtration on 5222 (probably a good choice given the filter factors of things like a #25 might produce results that are satisfying altho not true monochrome IR as per Brian's good and informative post.

http://www.schneiderkreuznach.com/tipps/sw_fotografie_e.htm

If you were going a digital post route there are some interesting possibilities with using a color original in camera but likely another subject entirely. (And drives the purists here crazy !)

-Sam

another option, would be resensitise the film with IR dye. I had some notes from someone (very scientific... but i do have a them piled up somewhere) saying that he/she was able to resensitise tri-x with IR dye. Last year I tried to buy the dye last year without success (i remember that the dye name started with neo and the recipe suggested dunking the film in a dye+methanol solution). OK... this is too elusive and i should not continue, but I will post the results of the maco filme as soon as i have them and some stills of my tests as soon as i can figure out how to make my scanner to work in linux.

Simon Wyss · October 26, 2008

Well he'll learn some B&W by shooting it. He did say cinematography student.

(And drives the purists here crazy !)

No one can drive me crazy. I am not a purist. What bothers me is that so many participants jump onto something in the forum without reading the whole topic.

I know he is a student. He is right now learning that this forum is a forum with opinions. When he's up to collecting information, valuable bits and pieces from many directions, all the better, but he knows already that infrared stock is not on the dealers' shelves. That's why he wanted to imitate the infrared look. He is not after the infrared film picture, only its look. I tried to help. To come into practice is alone his job.

K Borowski · October 26, 2008

Hey everyone. I think some of the arguments here have to do with some ESL issues. Simon isn't arguing that IR is a total waste of time, just correctly pointing out that it is very expensive and will require a custom run to get hold of any.

I'd actually recommend approaching Kodak about their color aerial infrared films, or another aerial provider, I know Agfa still makes aerial film, maybe Fuji?

Anyway, it is color aerial film, but you could desaturate it. There's also a Maco film that is maybe rebranded old-stock aerial film itself that you can get the IR look out of, but only with a very heavy density IR filter and a very low ISO, 25 or 50 if I recall correctly.

Good luck!

Simon Wyss · October 27, 2008

Efke IR 820. Ef-ke stands for Fotokemika, Dionicko Drustvo za Proizvodnju i Promet Fotomaterijala i Opreme, Hondlova 2, Post Office Box 02-55, 10001 Zagreb, Hrvatska; Mrs. Neda Vidovic, export, telephone 003851-336-7789 and -7793; FAX -2961. Founded in 1947. Try to get 100-foot portions.

All the best !