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Which Kodak color 16mm film stock to use


Lee Robinson

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Hey everyone,

 

Looking for a bit of advice on which 16mm Kodak film stock to use from the options below:

KODAK VISION3 50D Color Negative Film 7203

KODAK VISION3 250D Color Negative Film 7207

KODAK VISION3 200T Color Negative Film 7213

 

KODAK VISION3 500T Color Negative Film 7219

 

The conditions im shooting in are a little up in the air, so i should be prepared to shoot both interior and exterior, although i will say that id expect most of the indoor shots to be during the day and with natural light filtering in.. as opposed to using tungsten. The interiors may still be darker in terms of how much natural light there is. There could be some mixed lighting situations, but some with no tungsten as well.

The exterior conditions could be from bright sunlight to overcast but would be during the day regardless (no night time shooting).

 

I'll be shooting people with darker skin tones (black and darker brown shades) in a straight forward documentary style and would prefer the look to be sharp, clean and less grainy.. The darker skin tones are probably my biggest concern.. I want the tones to be balanced, not too cool and not too warm..

 

As im guessing it will mostly be daylight as the light source, is 250D the safest option?

 

Thanks!

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If your settings are all daytime, then I'd recommend 7207 250D for your interiors and 7203 50D for your exteriors.

50D is pretty important for outdoors, as it prevents you having to stack unholy amounts of ND in front of the lens (which can make using the viewfinder pretty difficult).

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sounds like you prolly want most of your stuff to be 250d and maybe a bit of 50d for exteriors if need be. otherwise just make sure you got a matte box and a full ND set.

 

depending on the subject matter you can also shoot on the tungsten stocks and do a post color correct, will give you an overall cooler look with tighter grain on the 200t than the 50d. but if you can have only 1 stock it sounds like 250d is your winner

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If you had to use only one stock in mixed daylight conditions from interior to exterior, then 250D, but if you can use two stocks, then use 50D whenever you can.

 

Vision-3 stocks are all matched pretty closely in terms of contrast and saturation. It used to be that the daylight stocks were a bit more contrasty but that isn't really true anymore.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks for the responses everyone! Really appreciate it. Im going to be shooting the whole thing on 250D due to some constraints.

 

One other question i have, and i apologize if i should make a new thread out of this.. but just to make sure im understanding correctly..

 

If im shooting 250D outside in bright sunlight, is it just a given that i should also be using a ND filter?

 

And for example, if im using a ND0.2 (which cuts one stop), would i just be rating the asa on my light meter to 125ASA?

And for a ND0.9 filter (cutting 3 stops), would i be rating the ASA on my light meter to 30ASA?

 

Im using an Aaton xtr prod - does this mean the internal light-meter should give the same reading as the lightmeter (with adjusted asa)?

 

Are there any other adjustments im missing? If i adjust the ASA on the lightmeter than i would be getting the correct exposure to set?

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Aaton give some detail in the manual. For the XTR Prod the reading is from the averaged frame, the emulsion surface in fact. So the averaging is like an early SLR stills camera like a K1000. So, a reflected reading, not a spot reading. Compris...?

To me, any metering done through the lens is "spot" because it's not seeing what's outside of frame.

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To me, any metering done through the lens is "spot" because it's not seeing what's outside of frame.

This doesn't take into account that the frame could be very wide or very tight. Generally a dedicated spotmeter reads a 1 degree angle of view, which is considerably tighter than all but the longest lenses.

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This doesn't take into account that the frame could be very wide or very tight. Generally a dedicated spotmeter reads a 1 degree angle of view, which is considerably tighter than all but the longest lenses.

That's true, but it's still only referencing a small portion of a given scene in MOST cases.

 

Take an incident meter and put it at the camera, you will get an entirely different reading.

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I understand, but the internal camera reading should in theory match the lightmeter taking an incident reading from the same location as camera facing subject, with the aaton set to the true ASA with the ND filter attached, and the lightmeter ASA changed to reflect the amount of stops cut by the ND filters.

Is that right?

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Regardless of the type of meter in use, ones eye tries to read the tonal range in the frame. There is a composition of light and dark areas. Patterns or relationships. The spot meter allows a very fast evaluation that is objective. In comparison, the incident meter completely ignores the object.

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I understand, but the internal camera reading should in theory match the lightmeter taking an incident reading from the same location as camera facing subject, with the aaton set to the true ASA with the ND filter attached, and the lightmeter ASA changed to reflect the amount of stops cut by the ND filters.

Is that right?

Yes.

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I understand, but the internal camera reading should in theory match the lightmeter taking an incident reading from the same location as camera facing subject, with the aaton set to the true ASA with the ND filter attached, and the lightmeter ASA changed to reflect the amount of stops cut by the ND filters.

Is that right?

One can separate this into two problems. First, how to reconcile incident and reflected readings, using separate light meters, and second, how to use the TTL meters of the film cameras.

 

The first issue has been commented on by many good photographers, and you will find ideas on this if you search the forum archives.

 

Hopefully I don't muddy the water here... For an incident reading to match a reflected reading averaged over the frame you would need a grey card for the reflected reading, covering the field of view, illuminated the same as the object. This used to be an 18% grey card that you could get from Kodak. I think it was A4 sized, so ones experiments were confined to a small scale...

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I understand, but the internal camera reading should in theory match the lightmeter taking an incident reading from the same location as camera facing subject, with the aaton set to the true ASA with the ND filter attached, and the lightmeter ASA changed to reflect the amount of stops cut by the ND filters.

Is that right?

 

 

Yes.

Actually, it's a little more complicated than that.

 

The internal meter is measuring light reflected from the subject, whereas the incident meter is measuring light falling on the subject. Regardless of the subject, an incident meter will always return a reading for 18% gray, whereas a reflected reading will depend on the subject. A reflected reading from a black wall, will be very different to a reading from a white wall, but to an incident meter, they are both the same.

 

In practice, a reflected reading with a wide enough angle of view will average out all of the different tones and give you a reading which should fairly closely match an incident reading. However, this is only true for an 'average' scene, that is to say a scene with equal amounts of light and shade, and an even distribution of tones. If you have a scene with large amounts of shadow, or very hot highlights, it can fool a reflected meter into thinking that the scene is brighter or darker than it actually is, and then the reading will not match an incident reading.

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