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Correct procedure for a clip/strip test?


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With the purchase of a camera the seller threw in a large amount of film stock. Mostly 50D/250D but there are a few cans of 500T and 320T that concern me, All film was stored in a refrigerator and doesn't look very old... how old he didn't know though. I don't mind some fogging or artifacts of age as I can use those for experiments and tests... I just need to now which stock is OK and how much to push to get a usable image. So that leads me to my question

 

Can someone walk me through the correct method of submitting film for a strip/clip test?

 

I have several rolls of several types of 16mm film and don't know how to submit the film for testing.

 

I've read that 2 ft from can. One strip for each batch of film cans.

 

How do you label these strips and how do you package them?

 

Stocks Some numbers may indicate age... I'll start researching that now.

 

50D 7245

50D 7201

250D 7205

250D 7246

500T 7279

TRI-X 7278

320T 7277

 

Also, on a side note is there any way of reading the numbers on a can of Kodak film that will tell you the year it was manufactured?

 

Thanks

 

Kip

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Or just send us five feet each, and refrigerate, safely store the rest of your film!

 

Send me five feet each, and I'd be happy to run it for you for $5 ea. That's the cost of processing only, not anything for my time, if you are in the U.S.

 

 

What we do is shoot them in a still camera, a grey card and change exposure up and down in 1/2 stop increments. We also shoot a bright blue (yellow patch) but that is more for our own internal testing to make sure all the silver is removed from the film in processing.

 

So start grey, you need clear (D-min), D-max ( just take the lens off the camera point at the sun or bright light, and open the shutter for a couple seconds, and I like to go in half stops a range from -3 to +5 or 6.

 

You can shoot a Gretag McBeth, but it isn't necessary, the grey card tells us just about everything. A lot of labs just read base fog on the film too without exposing a grey card or usually a step wedge onto it. That tells you a lot as well.

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  • 2 years later...

I saw your other post while combing through the archives. If you look at the photos of the box from ebay, you can clearly see that it says "ECN" on the box cover, not ECN-2. In support of that, if you look at the wiki entry for Kodak Motion stocks, 52/7291 is listed as an Eastman Negative stock, which is ECN process. When they moved to EXR in 89, they changed to ECN-2. But we all know how inaccurate a wiki page can be, so I can't say that is 100% certain.

We need someone who works for a lab to chime in. Actually, I'm going to Fotokem tomorrow, I can talk to Walt Rose about it and see what he says. He dealt with USC 16mm projects from the very early 80's on, so he probably knows all of these stocks and what they are (or are not) capable of being processed in.

All the same, PM me and get my email address, so you can email me photos of the cans and I can show them to Walt and see what gives.

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