Single Frame Art Photography with Regular 8 Bolex Camera, Advise for Highest Quality

[Mustafa Umut Sarac]

I bought an C8 with Paillard 13mm f :1.9 and wanting to take single frame photographs with that camera. I want small digital frame from the frame and I need to learn what is the way to get lowest grain and highest latitude with these lens and FOMA Film. I watched many videos at youtube and there are mountain high gap between the qualities of videos. Some kodachrome shots are breathtaking and there is no grain but Leica like smooth transition , powerful colors , excellent 50s skin tones , glow on the skin edges , wonderful. And I watched horrible bw movies , hell of grain , no sharpness , detail loss , like someone crossed a truck on the camera.

 

I will take may be 2000 frames with that camera and want a kodachrome movie quality and magic from the camera.

 

What is the best processing facility in the world who will test my film for processing before dip the all and get real sharp real black , legendary real grey and white and damm sharpness from the film.

 

Umut

 

[Zac Fettig]

To reduce grain, throw as much light as you can and stop the lens down. Latitude is really a function of the film you're using. Sadly, the only film available these days, in R8, tends to be B&W reversal. It's B&W, and tends to have very little latitude. Then again, neither did Kodachrome.

 

Most of the quality issues were related to people winging it. The C8 doesn't have a built in light meter. It did have a chart on the side to help guestimate the exposure. A good light meter will solve most of those problems, but was not commonly available back then.

 

For what you want, it sounds like you'd be a lot better off with a Super 8 camera. More choices of film stock and it's a lot easier to pull single frames with S8 than R8 cameras in general. A fair number of them were designed for animation work.

[Joel Pierre]

I bought an C8 with Paillard 13mm f :1.9 and wanting to take single frame photographs with that camera.

 

If I understand correctly, it is to take pictures with a camera and not a movie? To do this, it would be better to use a 16 mm camera (or 35 mm) to get a decent picture. But even with a 35mm camera used in still images, the result will not be good. The cameras are made for cinema whose rapid succession of images hides the flaws of the film.

[Richard Hadfield]

I bought an C8 with Paillard 13mm f :1.9 and wanting to take single frame photographs with that camera. I want small digital frame from the frame and I need to learn what is the way to get lowest grain and highest latitude with these lens and FOMA Film. I watched many videos at youtube and there are mountain high gap between the qualities of videos. Some kodachrome shots are breathtaking and there is no grain but Leica like smooth transition , powerful colors , excellent 50s skin tones , glow on the skin edges , wonderful. And I watched horrible bw movies , hell of grain , no sharpness , detail loss , like someone crossed a truck on the camera.

 

I will take may be 2000 frames with that camera and want a kodachrome movie quality and magic from the camera.

 

What is the best processing facility in the world who will test my film for processing before dip the all and get real sharp real black , legendary real grey and white and damm sharpness from the film.

 

Umut

 

Here's a lab in the USA that will process Foma using the dr5 process:

 

http://www.dr5.com/blackandwhiteslide/cine.html

 

This lab discusses some issues with recent batches of Foma film:

 

http://www.dr5.com/blackandwhiteslide/fomar.html