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Kodak Vision 3 50D 16mm Question


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Hi,

 

This is a bit of a peculiar question and one that I've been tying myself in knots over, so please be gentle with me!!

 

I have an ongoing battle with my Bolex H16's very dim viewfinder - I cannot afford a camera upgrade or to get it laser brightened due to the huge carriage costs from UK to USA.

 

So, I pose this question to see if it allows me to open up the lens a bit to give me a brighter viewfinder image. As follows......

 

So, say I am shooting Kodak Vision 3 50d and my meter says an f stop of f8 in bright sunshine. If I rate the ISO on the meter at ISO 25 (instead of 50), and it gives me an f stop of f4 - how will this affect the results on the film, and what should I tell the lab to process it at ISO 25 for the correct exposure? Is this push or pull processing?

 

Has anyone done this before at ISO 25?

 

Your help would be much appreciated.

 

Thanks

Julian

Edited by Julian Fletcher
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If you rate your ISO one stop slower, then your meter should tell you open up one stop, so in your case that would be f/5.6, not f/4. Overexposing color negative by one stop should be fine. If your frame has a lot of bright areas to begin with, then those areas could get a little noisy when you scan the film. If you are making a contact print, then you'll be totally fine.

 

If you decide to overexpose by two stops, then it might be a good idea to have the lab pull process your film by 1 stop so the negative doesn't get too dense. Overly dense negatives generally lead to noisy scans because the digital sensor in the scanner isn't getting enough light.

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Labs don't process films differently for different ISO ratings -- after all, 50 ASA and 500 ASA color negative MP film get processed the same way, it's the standard ECN-2 processing. All you can do is push-process, pull-process, or process normally. Usually you can order a pull or push process in one-stop increments.

 

So in your case, if you shot 50 ASA film and overexposed it one stop by rating it at 25 ASA, then you could order a 1-stop pull-process, which basically shortens the development time so that the density of the developed negative doesn't get as high as it would if you processed an overexposed negative normally. However, it is non-standard and push and pull processing have effects on contrast, grain, etc. Overexposed and pull-processed negative tends to get a little more pastel and lower in contrast, with finer grain (mainly from the overexposing, not the pull-processing.)

 

Or you could just process normally and correct for the 1-stop overexposure in the video transfer color-correction, or when making a print.

 

Some labs don't offer pull-processing for 16mm film however.

 

It seems a weird reason to overexpose and pull-process, just to compensate for a dim viewfinder.

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One other thing to add is that non-standard processing costs more. So you'll be paying extra for that one stop pull when you may not really need it.

 

I can sympathize with the dim viewfinder, having used the old Bolex back in film school. Might as well be looking through a muddy hole in the ground.

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