Jump to content

Super 16mm stock advice


Recommended Posts

Hey all -

 

shooting a short in a few weeks, with no time or budget to test stocks. Shooting mostly exterior days, mostly available light, mostly woods, farmland, and a run down movie theater exterior. looking for medium tight grain, medium to high contrast but dont wan the colors to pop. Director's influenced alot by the Dardenne brothers.

 

any thoughts on an ideal stock and what to rate it at? Been shooting mostly Hi-def lately and could use some advice.

 

thanks,

cv

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey all -

 

shooting a short in a few weeks, with no time or budget to test stocks. Shooting mostly exterior days, mostly available light, mostly woods, farmland, and a run down movie theater exterior. looking for medium tight grain, medium to high contrast but dont wan the colors to pop. Director's influenced alot by the Dardenne brothers.

 

any thoughts on an ideal stock and what to rate it at? Been shooting mostly Hi-def lately and could use some advice.

 

thanks,

cv

 

If you are shooting exterior day, you can only shoot slow stock (unless you want to ND the daylight [quite litterally] out of fast stock). Kodak 7205 (50D) and 7212 (100T 64D with appropriate color correction filter) rated normal will p'bly be your best bets.

 

If you are used to video, you could use 7219 (500T) rated 320 and treat it just like video, putting a lot of ND for day exterior filming, using color correcting filters, etc. The grain will be evident in low light, but should be OK on daylight scenes. BUT your viewfinder will be REALLY dark.

 

I would just use slow stock, maybe 7217 or 7205 (200T / 250D AS) you need low light versatility.

 

Are you finishing on video?

Edited by Saul Rodgar
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey Saul,

 

thanks. yes. Finishing to HD. Rather stay away from to much ND. Any thoughts on how to rate the 7205 - rather do i need to overexpose a little or is the grain structure already pretty smooth?

 

7205 is fine grained but like most faster stocks, it benefits from 2/3's stop overexposure, especially when used in shadowier scenes _it'll lift you shadows giving you a bit more detail there too.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey all -

 

shooting a short in a few weeks, with no time or budget to test stocks. Shooting mostly exterior days, mostly available light, mostly woods, farmland, and a run down movie theater exterior. looking for medium tight grain, medium to high contrast but dont wan the colors to pop. Director's influenced alot by the Dardenne brothers.

 

any thoughts on an ideal stock and what to rate it at? Been shooting mostly Hi-def lately and could use some advice.

 

thanks,

cv

 

 

try the 7201 as well as the 05. Both are daylight and the 01 is a 50 ASA. They cut together well. 7212 is also a safe bet all around. I might choose that as my one and only stock.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey Saul,

 

thanks. yes. Finishing to HD. Rather stay away from to much ND. Any thoughts on how to rate the 7205 - rather do i need to overexpose a little or is the grain structure already pretty smooth?

 

 

Even if you rate it at 125 in a brightly lit scene, you still will have to use ND. I would use a 50 or 64 speed stock as your main stock and have some 250D on hand. Rate either one, one stop over. The Fuji 64D is a lovely stock, kinda grainy for its speed, but look more like the 7245. You could push it a stop for darker shots. If you want to avoid that much ND, I don't blame you, then the slowest stocks are the way to go.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The new Kodak Vision 3 250D will be out soon. I've just shot a test roll yesterday and Kodak (Denmark) told me that they will have it in stock within next week. I'm scanning it on monday, so I can't tell you anything about the results yet, but I assume that it will cut well with the Vision 3 500T. I shot some exterior shots with it, and yes you will have to use loads of ND if you're shooting in daylight. The viewfinder gets really dark and it's hard to tell if it's in focus. I'll write more when I've seen the results.

 

Adam Wallensten

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'd certainly got for 50D and 250D for your short. 50D for bright sunlight, 250D for your less than bright sunlight scenes. Just my opinion!

 

It may just be your opinion, but it's very good advice. Unless one doesn't mind severe graininess (a lot of viewers do), one cannot take a casual attitude to needlessly shooting the higher-speed stocks.

 

On that same line of thinking, faster stocks are also generally MORE EXPENSIVE STOCKS. So if you are paying for the extra speed, but not using it, then why do it?

 

The smaller amount of waste and sell-backs from having too much of one speed stock probably still aren't going to offset the extra money you're paying to just shoot with one, faster, film.

 

Remember too that "Vision3" is just a name and a number. It is still a grainy 500-speed film. It's the grainiest film Kodak currently makes in ECN-2. So if you're using a film with grain probably not much better than, say, Kodak Gold 800 you get in the grocery store (Remember, tungsten films are always grainier than their daylight-balanced counterparts, because silver halides are natively most sensitive to the blue end of the spectrum, not the red (tungsten) end.), and the image area is about 1/8 the area of a 35mm still frame, how do you think the grain is going to look?

 

Don't get me wrong, '19 is a fine film, but remember you're shooting S16.

 

One more analogy. EXR 50D, 5245, was almost old enough to drink when Kodak obsoleted it in favor of the new '01, and '01 is better, but '45 still SMOKED 5279 and 5218.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I second the 7212 recommendation. It is fantastic! But if you want "medium tight grain" as you mentioned, then 7217 will give you that. You can desaturate in the Grade to prevent the colors from popping as you also mentioned.

 

Karl, of course 45 'smoked' 79 & 18... one is 50iso while the others are 500iso... they can not compete as far as delivering a silky smooth image.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Karl, of course 45 'smoked' 79 & 18... one is 50iso while the others are 500iso... they can not compete as far as delivering a silky smooth image.

 

Right, it makes intuitive sense, but I swear, there are filmmakers that don't get that higher ISO = bigger grain.

 

The only exception, maybe would be Double-X B&W neg. compared with '19. XX is so old, the 500T stock will probably still win. I think I heard Dave Mullen say that somewhere on here.

 

So unless you have a 30+ year technology differential, that's a pretty standard rule, that a lot of people on here don't get.

 

I mean, I can understand wanting to shoot with the latest and greatest. When V2 came out I didn't want to shoot Vision anymore, but when you're talking about ~3 1/3 stops (not taking into account the different color balances), yeah, it could be 20 years old and it would still be the better choice for the slower film.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you are shooting Super 16 and finishing in HD 1080P, I would highly recommend the Kodak 7201. Its by far the cleanest color negative stock with the highest MTF rating. 7205 is great as well, but you will see an increase in grain, but it could save you when you need the two extra stops of exposure.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...