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35mm Fuji 250T in Daylight


Jay Young

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  https://vimeo.com/364382616

Prepping for a period piece which will be shot outside, in daylight.  Fuji 8553 35mm test shoot here.  I sent clip tests to the lab which reported two different shifts in the two different batches.

The first half of the video shows the first batch which is noticeably better than the second batch in the second half of the video.  There is a high blue shift, but no more so than I can judge Tungsten film shot in daylight.  I have corrected the blue shift, and have found that this particular film should probably be rate about 160 or 125.   The ND filter did not help the image, and I will likely refrain from using it during the shoot.  Either I did my math wrong, or the stock really needs more light.  Some test shots out doors, in full sun, clear day were rather underexposed at T16 with ND.9.  This is proven again by the shot of the flowers which was shot at T5.6 with ND.9 filter, and the shot of my face which was T16 with ND.9. 

Thoughts?

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I've shot a bit with the Eterna 160 and it's pretty noisy, even when over-exposed. I'm not sure why honestly, the rolls I got were brand new and were from the last batch, stored properly and processed right away. I just think it's a noisy stock for some reason. 

In terms of your film, yea you just did the math wrong that's all. My meter does all the math for me and when in doubt, I always lean towards over-expose rather than under expose. 

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It is really best to shoot tungsten film in daylight using an 85 filter to create a color balanced negative. Under exposing without using an 85 filter will create a quite noisy result with any tungsten film in daylight.

It's easy to make a balanced negative blue in post if you desire.  It's much more difficult to create a neutral color correction from an unbalanced negative that is also underexposed.

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4 hours ago, Charles MacDonald said:

your Fuji is at least a couple of years old, so you should expect some loss of speed and colour shift.

No doubt! I had the lab do a clip test, and while there was a significant blue shift, it really didn’t seem all that severe. 

Still working with the footage. I believe a DPX log scan will produce the best result here, instead of trying to deal with ProRes in this situation.

Happy shooting! 

As for the 85 filter, I will likely forgo. There are plenty of others who do not use the filter and correct the blue shift at the lab.  Not saying either is correct, just personal observations. 

 

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2 hours ago, Jay Young said:

As for the 85 filter, I will likely forgo. There are plenty of others who do not use the filter and correct the blue shift at the lab.  Not saying either is correct, just personal observations. 

 

When you forgo the 85 filter you are essentially underexposing the red and green sensitive layers of the film.  So that, even metering correctly, you will be underexposing your film.  I think, if you insist on not using the 85 filter you should add maybe 1/2 stop of exposure to compensate for better results.

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Bruce is correct, I have tested this on various colour scenery and also colour charts. When adding the 85 in the telecine, (or even later in post) you are just adding gain to an underexposed layer. The red and green layers in the emulsion do not get "activated" as much when shooting without an 85, and so you will get grainy results and an odd balance of exposure & saturation between the R,G,B layers. Think about it as if you are boosting shadow detail that just isn't there. You can make that dark grey into a middle grey, but it isn't going to contain much detail or subtlety.

 

Basically, don't do it unless you have to. Even if you are really pushed for exposure, I would still always rather underexpose by 2/3 of a stop with the 85, than go clean to get ideal exposure.

81EF also works nicely for mixed lighting situations. Probably just get enough from the Red and Green layers, but the correction is less.

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Just depends on the look you want -- a 2/3-stop underexposure in two layers is not extreme (or if you rate the stock 2/3-stop faster, then you have one layer that is 2/3-stop over and the other two are normal.) It's within a correctable range especially for printing.

I've done a number of features in 35mm using tungsten stock without an 85 correction filter, but my attitude is to use that technique for movies that I want on the cold side in terms of color-correction, i.e. I'm not completely correcting back to neutral.  So winter movies in particular.

But in 16mm where grain is more pronounced, you have less flexibility to push color channels around so it becomes more advisable to get the balance correct on the original.

You could use a partial correction like the 81EF or the even milder Tiffen LL-D (low-light daylight), which is somewhat of a super skylight filter, correcting out the excess UV (because the 85 filter is also a UV filter) and keeping your blue channel from getting quite as dense relative to the rest.

Keep in mind that with old stock, the sensitivity of the layers is becoming less even.  I find that when I shoot outdated stock, I tend to get blue in the blacks, which perhaps is another reason to not go for a blue-biased image on the negative. On the other hand, I think overall density matters the most so if you can overexpose the stock by skipping the 85, I would tend to do that.

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