Gavin Greenwalt
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Never say never.
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RED / Kodak. The death of B&W film. Help.
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Never say never.
Dan Hudgins
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2D vs. 3D
2D vs. 3D
The emulsion is thick, not a 2D plane like a sensor's microlens array.
You cannot simulate the 3D light ray paths through the emulsion at various f/ stops of the raycone using a 2D sensor and computer processing.
There are not going to be sensors made with pixels suspended in gel in any of our life times. So maybe never is too absolute, but I will not live to see it and why would anyone do it given the cost?
The OLPF needed for digital sensors does not allow the ray paths of light to find the small details that the small grains in older film types could capture.
2D vs. 3D
The emulsion is thick, not a 2D plane like a sensor's microlens array.
You cannot simulate the 3D light ray paths through the emulsion at various f/ stops of the raycone using a 2D sensor and computer processing.
There are not going to be sensors made with pixels suspended in gel in any of our life times. So maybe never is too absolute, but I will not live to see it and why would anyone do it given the cost?
The OLPF needed for digital sensors does not allow the ray paths of light to find the small details that the small grains in older film types could capture.
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Todd Anderson
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Dan, can you elaborate on this? What changed with the color stocks? I can physically and aesthetically see the difference (it is night and day to me), but isn't a good share of that 3D and small detail of light preserved in the small grains of newer color stocks? What changed?
Dan Hudgins
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Silver
Silver
Older film stocks had a think emulsion that was saturated with silver to act as an anti-halation device, there was so much silver that little light made it all the way through and so there was not much to bounce off the back of the film base.
Color negative films use "Jet-Backing" since light goes through the three very thin layers, more so now with color print stocks that have so little silver that you cannot get a good sound track, so Dolby-A and "Cyan" track with red-laser readers are required, you can actualy see through the current color print stocks like 2383.
Agfa was making good black and white films (Agfa 561 and 362), but I was told by a dealer that he could not import them any longer because they had "too much silver" in them! I wonder if Kodak had a hand in getting that silly law pased to keep Agfa products out of the US, if it is indeed true about that law, so if its, it is now illegal to make good black and white film!
Its like saying orange juce can not have more than 10% Orange in it, because the softdrink people don't like their competitors saying their product is 100% juce!
Anyway, as light passed through the older black and white stocks the dyes in the emultion and the silver acted as a filter so the top portion of the thickness captured the shadow details and the bottom the highlights, but not with the same resolution and the recording of fine details and the cone of light was a 3D process through the thickness of the emultion.
When you optically printed you could transfer the 3D aspect of the details from one film to another due to the best focus of the printer lens being in depth planes, and to some extent the when you contact print the shadow details were closer together then the highlight part of the image, or the other way around for the other generations. When projected the projector lens also focused in planes within the emultion giving small details with larger ones around them.
Much of that is lost in thin emultion films of honogeneous grain size, Kodaks Technical Pan is total c**p compaired to Panatomic-X, it may score higher on some test chart but it literally lacks depth...
This link talks about the issue with kodaks black and white IR film,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-halation_backing
The Super Pan-X films of the 1930's also had some of this because the silver bromide its yellowish and stops the blue light easer than red light, so some of the red light gets through deeper making for a glow on warm colors like skin and red subjects... Its sort of like the Foveon sensor where the color of the light is filtered by the thickness of the silicon layers. Also the older films had grains of many sizes, often emultions of various speeds were mixed together to do that so that you would get both shadow detail and fine details in the mid-tones where more light would expose the smaller grains, so light would filter through the emultion and scatter and get recorded on both large and small grains at various depths depending on the f/ stop and brightness and motion because of Reciprocity failure being different for each emultion being mixed together and the dyes added etc.
Color film does not record the image in the silver grains they are washed out with the silver bleach unless you bleach-bypass in processing. Color film records the image in clouds of dye that formed around where the development center was on a silver bromide grain, this dye can run quite a bit and the film-stock maker wants the dye to run and blend together to reduce the grain texture of high-speed color film stocks, they also want homogeneous grain size because of the thin layers they use to increase film speed by making the layers more transparent, so much so that the black jet-backing is needed to keep light under control (Agfa invented a new method in CP-20 that Kodak copied in their newer print stocks like 2383, they may be using jet backing on movie negative stocks still to keep them from being used in C-41 machines where the gunk would clog up the works, since print stock works now without jet backing, negative stocks should also be able to, and that would reduce water use and bring down lab costs...)
Pryo also made dye clouds when used right, and gave smoother tones, but modern photographers do not seem to understand how pryo shold be used to do that ONLY in relation to the silver density, it is not a general stain when done right, it is a local stain that varies with density, you can tell if you use Pryo right if you bleach the silver out of your negative and still see a good an printable image on the film, although less dense and brownish-orange, if you see a washed out or solarized image in the "stain" you did not use pryo in the right way. Pryo was used for some early motion picture processing maybe, later replaced by glycin and M-Q developers because of the 120 gallon vats needing to withstand aeration.
Kodachrome worked like Pryo development, but PPD derivatives with phenol derivatives were used to get colors other than orange-brown, in fact closer to yellow, cyan, and magenta. Since there were no dye coupler globules in Kodachrome it could be sharper. Later versions of ECN gave up on the dye coupler globules and benzol alcohol needed to release the phenol type derivatives as dye couplers, in favor for the high Molecular Weight dye couplers that GAF/Ansco (?) and Agfa used. The dye forms when a pink dye is formed by silver development like in pryo processing but PPD derivatives make a pink dye, that pink dye is converted into various colors of yello, cyan, and magenta when it reacts with the dye couplers. In Kodachrome the dye couplers were in the developer solution so could act at a short radius to the silver formation, in tri-pack films there is/was some distance between the dye coupler globules and the silver formation on the development centers of the grains.
Technicolor IB prints were better than tri-pack color films or Kodachrome prints because the dyes were made in a factory and not limited to what dye couplers could produce when reacted in developing film developed in just PPD derivatives like CD-1 etc. The dyes used in Technicolor IB prints were more pure and longer lasting, you cannot see what they looked like from a "restored" print like the recent "Red Shoes" its just a fact, if you did not see the original IB print when it was fresh, you cannot understand the difference.
Silver
Older film stocks had a think emulsion that was saturated with silver to act as an anti-halation device, there was so much silver that little light made it all the way through and so there was not much to bounce off the back of the film base.
Color negative films use "Jet-Backing" since light goes through the three very thin layers, more so now with color print stocks that have so little silver that you cannot get a good sound track, so Dolby-A and "Cyan" track with red-laser readers are required, you can actualy see through the current color print stocks like 2383.
Agfa was making good black and white films (Agfa 561 and 362), but I was told by a dealer that he could not import them any longer because they had "too much silver" in them! I wonder if Kodak had a hand in getting that silly law pased to keep Agfa products out of the US, if it is indeed true about that law, so if its, it is now illegal to make good black and white film!
Its like saying orange juce can not have more than 10% Orange in it, because the softdrink people don't like their competitors saying their product is 100% juce!
Anyway, as light passed through the older black and white stocks the dyes in the emultion and the silver acted as a filter so the top portion of the thickness captured the shadow details and the bottom the highlights, but not with the same resolution and the recording of fine details and the cone of light was a 3D process through the thickness of the emultion.
When you optically printed you could transfer the 3D aspect of the details from one film to another due to the best focus of the printer lens being in depth planes, and to some extent the when you contact print the shadow details were closer together then the highlight part of the image, or the other way around for the other generations. When projected the projector lens also focused in planes within the emultion giving small details with larger ones around them.
Much of that is lost in thin emultion films of honogeneous grain size, Kodaks Technical Pan is total c**p compaired to Panatomic-X, it may score higher on some test chart but it literally lacks depth...
This link talks about the issue with kodaks black and white IR film,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-halation_backing
The Super Pan-X films of the 1930's also had some of this because the silver bromide its yellowish and stops the blue light easer than red light, so some of the red light gets through deeper making for a glow on warm colors like skin and red subjects... Its sort of like the Foveon sensor where the color of the light is filtered by the thickness of the silicon layers. Also the older films had grains of many sizes, often emultions of various speeds were mixed together to do that so that you would get both shadow detail and fine details in the mid-tones where more light would expose the smaller grains, so light would filter through the emultion and scatter and get recorded on both large and small grains at various depths depending on the f/ stop and brightness and motion because of Reciprocity failure being different for each emultion being mixed together and the dyes added etc.
Color film does not record the image in the silver grains they are washed out with the silver bleach unless you bleach-bypass in processing. Color film records the image in clouds of dye that formed around where the development center was on a silver bromide grain, this dye can run quite a bit and the film-stock maker wants the dye to run and blend together to reduce the grain texture of high-speed color film stocks, they also want homogeneous grain size because of the thin layers they use to increase film speed by making the layers more transparent, so much so that the black jet-backing is needed to keep light under control (Agfa invented a new method in CP-20 that Kodak copied in their newer print stocks like 2383, they may be using jet backing on movie negative stocks still to keep them from being used in C-41 machines where the gunk would clog up the works, since print stock works now without jet backing, negative stocks should also be able to, and that would reduce water use and bring down lab costs...)
Pryo also made dye clouds when used right, and gave smoother tones, but modern photographers do not seem to understand how pryo shold be used to do that ONLY in relation to the silver density, it is not a general stain when done right, it is a local stain that varies with density, you can tell if you use Pryo right if you bleach the silver out of your negative and still see a good an printable image on the film, although less dense and brownish-orange, if you see a washed out or solarized image in the "stain" you did not use pryo in the right way. Pryo was used for some early motion picture processing maybe, later replaced by glycin and M-Q developers because of the 120 gallon vats needing to withstand aeration.
Kodachrome worked like Pryo development, but PPD derivatives with phenol derivatives were used to get colors other than orange-brown, in fact closer to yellow, cyan, and magenta. Since there were no dye coupler globules in Kodachrome it could be sharper. Later versions of ECN gave up on the dye coupler globules and benzol alcohol needed to release the phenol type derivatives as dye couplers, in favor for the high Molecular Weight dye couplers that GAF/Ansco (?) and Agfa used. The dye forms when a pink dye is formed by silver development like in pryo processing but PPD derivatives make a pink dye, that pink dye is converted into various colors of yello, cyan, and magenta when it reacts with the dye couplers. In Kodachrome the dye couplers were in the developer solution so could act at a short radius to the silver formation, in tri-pack films there is/was some distance between the dye coupler globules and the silver formation on the development centers of the grains.
Technicolor IB prints were better than tri-pack color films or Kodachrome prints because the dyes were made in a factory and not limited to what dye couplers could produce when reacted in developing film developed in just PPD derivatives like CD-1 etc. The dyes used in Technicolor IB prints were more pure and longer lasting, you cannot see what they looked like from a "restored" print like the recent "Red Shoes" its just a fact, if you did not see the original IB print when it was fresh, you cannot understand the difference.
Wolfgang Woehl
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Dan, you're simply awesome! Thanks for sharing lots of what you know.
Say, I once saw portions of a 1st generation print made from the re-discovered parts of one of Metropolis' camera negatives. And I remember thinking that I had never seen anything like it -- texture, depth, gestalt. Is what you explain above part of that or was I seeing things?
Say, I once saw portions of a 1st generation print made from the re-discovered parts of one of Metropolis' camera negatives. And I remember thinking that I had never seen anything like it -- texture, depth, gestalt. Is what you explain above part of that or was I seeing things?
Peter Hodgins
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Instead of signing a petition ... why not buy hundreds of feet of film, that's what would have gotten Kodak's attention. Film is on it's last legs. Film is dying. Maybe Tarantino and guys like that can buy enough now to last their lifetime, but the other logistics will be insurmountable. When Tarantino makes a film on digital .... film will be officially dead. Watch for it. Get on the digital train now. I was an ardent large format B&W Zone System photographer ... but as much as I hated to see it happen ... I must admit the craft is dead. Likewise Motion Picture Film will soon be totally obsolete, both B&W and Color.
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Todd Anderson
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Dan,
Thanks for the wonderful in depth dissertation on the negative. I was pretty saddened when Agfa Scala was no more. I actually went a few months back to the last remaining shop that processes it (a few miles from me in Santa Ana, Ca), and it looked like the shop had been sold to a Spanish gentleman. And I think his business was mostly wedding prints and stuff for a niche Spanish market crowd. Anyhow, he showed me the machine to develop and process the Scala, and it was the size of a room. And of course, there was no way he was changing out the chemicals everyday. And I think his young daughters were running the machine... so needless to say, quality control was down a bit. Anyhow, but there is nothing... nothing like holding a black and white transparency in your hand like that and looking at the incredible depth. Looking at something on a computer screen, or a digital print... 25% of the experience.
And the digital train will always be there. And It is advantageous to get up to speed. And if you are making a living in the commercial field, you have no other choice. I'm in print advertising. So I have seen the still film transition. But what can I say? It is much easier to be passionate about film in many ways. I hope there continues to be a choice.
And well, I just drove down to Los Angeles and bought 1,200 feet of B&W film... I suppose that is a start. I suppose I'll stock up on some more as the months go by. I think as long as the the Hollywood crowd continues to shoot film (and I think there are enough artist to fight for awhile if the accountants don't get in the way), there is a chance for motion film to keep its delicate infrastructure in place for a while. I would say two years minimum. Five years likely. And ten years possible.
Thanks for the wonderful in depth dissertation on the negative. I was pretty saddened when Agfa Scala was no more. I actually went a few months back to the last remaining shop that processes it (a few miles from me in Santa Ana, Ca), and it looked like the shop had been sold to a Spanish gentleman. And I think his business was mostly wedding prints and stuff for a niche Spanish market crowd. Anyhow, he showed me the machine to develop and process the Scala, and it was the size of a room. And of course, there was no way he was changing out the chemicals everyday. And I think his young daughters were running the machine... so needless to say, quality control was down a bit. Anyhow, but there is nothing... nothing like holding a black and white transparency in your hand like that and looking at the incredible depth. Looking at something on a computer screen, or a digital print... 25% of the experience.
And the digital train will always be there. And It is advantageous to get up to speed. And if you are making a living in the commercial field, you have no other choice. I'm in print advertising. So I have seen the still film transition. But what can I say? It is much easier to be passionate about film in many ways. I hope there continues to be a choice.
And well, I just drove down to Los Angeles and bought 1,200 feet of B&W film... I suppose that is a start. I suppose I'll stock up on some more as the months go by. I think as long as the the Hollywood crowd continues to shoot film (and I think there are enough artist to fight for awhile if the accountants don't get in the way), there is a chance for motion film to keep its delicate infrastructure in place for a while. I would say two years minimum. Five years likely. And ten years possible.
Dan Hudgins
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The look...
The look...
There are several things that go into the classic film look.
1) Some movie camera lenses before pan film were corrected for visual peak (yellow green) and actinic light (deep violet to blue). Actinic light is what would expose film that did not have dyes added to make it Ortho (blue and green peak) or Pan (blue to orange) or Super Pan (blue to near IR). Because the lenses only needed to focus two points rather than all colors it could be made sharper that todays lenses in some ways.
2) The film being limited to Actinic light did not expose for parts of the image that were rainbow fringes or Chromatic Aberation.
3) Mercury Vapor lights without phosphor have narrow spectral bands almost like a laser, so even if the lens had some Chromatic Aberation only narrow bands of the spectrim passed though it and so made the image sharper.
4) The thick film emulsion was only about EI/ISO 3 and fine grain, today we see Nth generation copies, but as you said if you see a print off the original camera negative you can see that 35mm full aperture images of the day were up to a standard not far from what people sit through today with T500 film stocks, the amount of grain people will stand for is about the same, just the number of lights needed has gone down.
5) Art direction and costumes play a large role, as do make up. Often sets were painted to expand the tonal range with false shadows and such because thet could not get a key light bright enough over the near daylight fill lights needed to shot at f/3.5. We have an Astro Berlin lens 50mm f/1.8 from the 1920's, it has a look that todays lenses do not in the out of focus parts, sometimes you see that look in closeups of female stars, the face is sharp but everything in the background is bright points with rings around them, some times they would put metal cloth or other shiny things in the background like candle stick holders to make that "Bokeh". The Astro is a 4 element lens of high speed based on the triplet a little like a Zeiss Tessar which is also 4 elements but the Tessar was made at f/3.5 in those days, so the Astro was "super speed" for that time. Sometimes people use the old "D-G" hydrogen spectral line (if I remember right) corrected lenses on Pan film and think they were not sharp, but they were never ment to be used on film that could see yellow through far red.
6) Also just using 50KW of arc light from 30 fixtures gives you a look you cannot get with a LED light on top of a camcorder, its just a truth.
7) Although color blind film does render light skin a little dark, many of the people that needed makup for those films were of more Mediterranean complexion and did not want to seem extra dark. I have shot 2302 and Ortho film and it does not become a big issue for shooting if you give enough exposure, if you under-expose than redish colors will go dark first. The Mercury lights were a bigger issue, since they put out UV and Violet light if you have freckles of blemishes they will look darker than normal, but if you have good light skin its less of an issue. Anyway, makup was used quite a bit in those days, and that is part of the look, unlike today were people shoot without lights or makeup or theatre craft...
==
My Brother went to a gallery show of old photographs, the kind made with glass plates 16x20 of trains that show every detail of some bridge and such, and they had some plates there, and on one the emultion did not coat up to the corner, he said the emulsion was over 1mm thick, todays films have maybe 1/50 that much silver per square cm so something is lost when you cut down that much, but taking $10 out of each 1000' of film is more profit for the share holders....
==
When I was in high school I had one of those small Minolta 16mm still cameras, and shot Tri-X reversal for Black and White still slides, I would process it myself using D-76 for 30 minutes as the first developer, sometimes D-23 also. It was much better than the standard process since the highlights did not break though, much finer grain and longer scale that normal labs could make.
My Brother was making paper photographic prints some time ago, and was wondering what he could go to see all that was in his 4x5 negatives, I suggested making positives on pan film and mounting them on light boxes, you get a much longer scale than from a paper print since you can be in the straight line part of the curve between density one and three.
Thick emulsion is like stacking positve slides up, you get layers of density.
I've been trying multi-exposures with different gamma, contrast and brightness settings to overlap exposures from a LCD coomputer monitor onto 2302 and 2383 print stocks for filmout, it seems to give a more "film like" and less digital result. I can use heavy dithering to overcome the limits of the video board DAC and get more tones that you can see with your eye on the monitor, so that gets past the "digital limit" and lets all the Subtle Detail hidden in the like digital frames get onto the film, even though you can never see it on the monitor with your eyes since you eyes cannot sum many dithered exposures like film can when you "double expose" it. I have some more work to do, but I was able to push the blacks way down to get a better black than is normal without getting too much contrast in mid-tones or highlights. It's too bad uncompressed film projection will end in a few years, with the right tools digital can make it better that it ever was in some ways... The current version of DANCINEL.EXE (tm) is up for download, but when I get done with the de-Bayer program I am working on and do some other things I hope to get back to it and add some new features to get even better results.
The look...
There are several things that go into the classic film look.
1) Some movie camera lenses before pan film were corrected for visual peak (yellow green) and actinic light (deep violet to blue). Actinic light is what would expose film that did not have dyes added to make it Ortho (blue and green peak) or Pan (blue to orange) or Super Pan (blue to near IR). Because the lenses only needed to focus two points rather than all colors it could be made sharper that todays lenses in some ways.
2) The film being limited to Actinic light did not expose for parts of the image that were rainbow fringes or Chromatic Aberation.
3) Mercury Vapor lights without phosphor have narrow spectral bands almost like a laser, so even if the lens had some Chromatic Aberation only narrow bands of the spectrim passed though it and so made the image sharper.
4) The thick film emulsion was only about EI/ISO 3 and fine grain, today we see Nth generation copies, but as you said if you see a print off the original camera negative you can see that 35mm full aperture images of the day were up to a standard not far from what people sit through today with T500 film stocks, the amount of grain people will stand for is about the same, just the number of lights needed has gone down.
5) Art direction and costumes play a large role, as do make up. Often sets were painted to expand the tonal range with false shadows and such because thet could not get a key light bright enough over the near daylight fill lights needed to shot at f/3.5. We have an Astro Berlin lens 50mm f/1.8 from the 1920's, it has a look that todays lenses do not in the out of focus parts, sometimes you see that look in closeups of female stars, the face is sharp but everything in the background is bright points with rings around them, some times they would put metal cloth or other shiny things in the background like candle stick holders to make that "Bokeh". The Astro is a 4 element lens of high speed based on the triplet a little like a Zeiss Tessar which is also 4 elements but the Tessar was made at f/3.5 in those days, so the Astro was "super speed" for that time. Sometimes people use the old "D-G" hydrogen spectral line (if I remember right) corrected lenses on Pan film and think they were not sharp, but they were never ment to be used on film that could see yellow through far red.
6) Also just using 50KW of arc light from 30 fixtures gives you a look you cannot get with a LED light on top of a camcorder, its just a truth.
7) Although color blind film does render light skin a little dark, many of the people that needed makup for those films were of more Mediterranean complexion and did not want to seem extra dark. I have shot 2302 and Ortho film and it does not become a big issue for shooting if you give enough exposure, if you under-expose than redish colors will go dark first. The Mercury lights were a bigger issue, since they put out UV and Violet light if you have freckles of blemishes they will look darker than normal, but if you have good light skin its less of an issue. Anyway, makup was used quite a bit in those days, and that is part of the look, unlike today were people shoot without lights or makeup or theatre craft...
==
My Brother went to a gallery show of old photographs, the kind made with glass plates 16x20 of trains that show every detail of some bridge and such, and they had some plates there, and on one the emultion did not coat up to the corner, he said the emulsion was over 1mm thick, todays films have maybe 1/50 that much silver per square cm so something is lost when you cut down that much, but taking $10 out of each 1000' of film is more profit for the share holders....
==
When I was in high school I had one of those small Minolta 16mm still cameras, and shot Tri-X reversal for Black and White still slides, I would process it myself using D-76 for 30 minutes as the first developer, sometimes D-23 also. It was much better than the standard process since the highlights did not break though, much finer grain and longer scale that normal labs could make.
My Brother was making paper photographic prints some time ago, and was wondering what he could go to see all that was in his 4x5 negatives, I suggested making positives on pan film and mounting them on light boxes, you get a much longer scale than from a paper print since you can be in the straight line part of the curve between density one and three.
Thick emulsion is like stacking positve slides up, you get layers of density.
I've been trying multi-exposures with different gamma, contrast and brightness settings to overlap exposures from a LCD coomputer monitor onto 2302 and 2383 print stocks for filmout, it seems to give a more "film like" and less digital result. I can use heavy dithering to overcome the limits of the video board DAC and get more tones that you can see with your eye on the monitor, so that gets past the "digital limit" and lets all the Subtle Detail hidden in the like digital frames get onto the film, even though you can never see it on the monitor with your eyes since you eyes cannot sum many dithered exposures like film can when you "double expose" it. I have some more work to do, but I was able to push the blacks way down to get a better black than is normal without getting too much contrast in mid-tones or highlights. It's too bad uncompressed film projection will end in a few years, with the right tools digital can make it better that it ever was in some ways... The current version of DANCINEL.EXE (tm) is up for download, but when I get done with the de-Bayer program I am working on and do some other things I hope to get back to it and add some new features to get even better results.
Sean R.
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Dan,
Thank you for taking your time to elaborate. Interesting read.
(edit for my brilliant grammar
Sean
Thank you for taking your time to elaborate. Interesting read.
(edit for my brilliant grammar
Sean
Last edited:
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Todd Anderson
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Dan, I'm not sure how old you are, but I hope you are leaving a lot of detailed notes in your estate 
But seriously, this information seems invaluable and worthy of of a beautiful book on the subject.
Next time I am in San Francisco I may need to stop by and see your film out and film scanning experiments.
Thanks again for all the information. "50kw arcs and ISO 3 stock." Something tells me that they had a few more grips on set. And probably some serious electrical and fire accidents at times! I wonder if any of the people exposed to all that light on a daily basis had any health complications.
Best,
Todd
But seriously, this information seems invaluable and worthy of of a beautiful book on the subject. Next time I am in San Francisco I may need to stop by and see your film out and film scanning experiments.
Thanks again for all the information. "50kw arcs and ISO 3 stock." Something tells me that they had a few more grips on set. And probably some serious electrical and fire accidents at times! I wonder if any of the people exposed to all that light on a daily basis had any health complications.
Best,
Todd
Dan Hudgins
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Seeing is...
Seeing is...
I think the old Mercury vapor lights were not made to cut UV in particular, the ones they make today are, back then they WANTED as much light as they could get. My Brother says the Mercury bulbs we were using hirt his eye, they do tend to cause "dazzle" if you look at them. We found we could put the Mercury bulbs into a Mole scoop and put a edison to plug adapter in the Mercury fixture without issues. The Balast does make maybe 1kv when turned on, but the wire for the Mole is rated at 660AC I think and held up so far.
We did a test on 2302 and it worked well, but it costs 4x about what 2383 costs, so most people print on color print stock, 2302 looks better for printing black and white movies, and has a yellow dye in it so looks better than 5302, it has less black blooming.
UV light may cause cataracts and skin cancer, maybe they got a tan from the lights also and needed more makeup?
Ozone from the arc lights and fine carbon dust can mess your lungs up. Come carbons had a rare earth core for color shooting and those minerals are toxic, so carbons are not used in lights or projectors any more.
==
You can see an early scan from our Oxberry conversion at my Web site, I scanned a frame from an old Kodak LAD negative. Its soft because the image on the film is soft. If you have a 6" of a good in focus outtake I can scan it and grade it in my DANCAD87.EXE (tm) program and send you back a 2K or 4K TIF. I am working on DPX conversion now for my de-Bayer program, it will be able to do batch CC for DPX to DPX or TIF to DPX etc as well.
I would like to shoot more, but my Brother is draging his feet the last few years. I've been talking to people about making a 35mm feature in B&W on 2383, it works well since each layer gets a part of the tonal range, I adjust the curve for each layer in my grading them mix them down to monochrome.
Our scanner software is setup to do color seperations and multi-exposure to reduce digital artifacts.
=
As far as the filmout I was trying to get my film recorder all put together, when I had to switch to working on my de-Bayer program for a while, so the tests I have done so far are just with the backlight in the 1600x1200 monitor. The code supports 2048x1536 on GeForce 6200 and CRT monitors, but the LCD can be taken apart and used with a 2K backlight to get higher printing speeds.
Anyway, I found that just one exposure was not enough to get good results because I was printing negative image on the screen, so I added three exposure mode using "gamma spread" and that made a huge improvement. In future versions I may buffer the frames in memory to flip onto the screen in rapid succession, that with dithering overcomes the tonal limits of the DAC and LCD for the most part.
The tests were done on 2302 and 2383. The color tests were not adjusted down to single light balance because I could see what was working and the need to increase the LCD backlight. The 2302 tests were closer to what would be end use, and I could see that using more exposures and some other changes would get it where it needs to be.
You can email me about when you are going to be in town and I can ask my Brother where the test strips went, sometimes he uses them for leader on other reels.
If you have a stop motion camera and a 1600x1200 LCD monitor and some 2302 you can try making some prints yourself, it just takes connecting a few wires from the parallel port of a PC to a solid state relay wired across the run button of an ACME or other single frame motor, for the ACME motor you may need a relay since it uses a DPDT push button maybe... You can do the reverse switch and move the belt from takeup to supply manually, for bi-directional printing mode, three exposures, forward, backward, forward.
Seeing is...
Dan, I'm not sure how old you are, but I hope you are leaving a lot of detailed notes in your estate
Next time I am in San Francisco I may need to stop by and see your film out and film scanning experiments.
Thanks again for all the information. "50kw arcs and ISO 3 stock." Something tells me that they had a few more grips on set. And probably some serious electrical and fire accidents at times! I wonder if any of the people exposed to all that light on a daily basis had any health complications.
Best,
Todd
I think the old Mercury vapor lights were not made to cut UV in particular, the ones they make today are, back then they WANTED as much light as they could get. My Brother says the Mercury bulbs we were using hirt his eye, they do tend to cause "dazzle" if you look at them. We found we could put the Mercury bulbs into a Mole scoop and put a edison to plug adapter in the Mercury fixture without issues. The Balast does make maybe 1kv when turned on, but the wire for the Mole is rated at 660AC I think and held up so far.
We did a test on 2302 and it worked well, but it costs 4x about what 2383 costs, so most people print on color print stock, 2302 looks better for printing black and white movies, and has a yellow dye in it so looks better than 5302, it has less black blooming.
UV light may cause cataracts and skin cancer, maybe they got a tan from the lights also and needed more makeup?
Ozone from the arc lights and fine carbon dust can mess your lungs up. Come carbons had a rare earth core for color shooting and those minerals are toxic, so carbons are not used in lights or projectors any more.
==
You can see an early scan from our Oxberry conversion at my Web site, I scanned a frame from an old Kodak LAD negative. Its soft because the image on the film is soft. If you have a 6" of a good in focus outtake I can scan it and grade it in my DANCAD87.EXE (tm) program and send you back a 2K or 4K TIF. I am working on DPX conversion now for my de-Bayer program, it will be able to do batch CC for DPX to DPX or TIF to DPX etc as well.
I would like to shoot more, but my Brother is draging his feet the last few years. I've been talking to people about making a 35mm feature in B&W on 2383, it works well since each layer gets a part of the tonal range, I adjust the curve for each layer in my grading them mix them down to monochrome.
Our scanner software is setup to do color seperations and multi-exposure to reduce digital artifacts.
=
As far as the filmout I was trying to get my film recorder all put together, when I had to switch to working on my de-Bayer program for a while, so the tests I have done so far are just with the backlight in the 1600x1200 monitor. The code supports 2048x1536 on GeForce 6200 and CRT monitors, but the LCD can be taken apart and used with a 2K backlight to get higher printing speeds.
Anyway, I found that just one exposure was not enough to get good results because I was printing negative image on the screen, so I added three exposure mode using "gamma spread" and that made a huge improvement. In future versions I may buffer the frames in memory to flip onto the screen in rapid succession, that with dithering overcomes the tonal limits of the DAC and LCD for the most part.
The tests were done on 2302 and 2383. The color tests were not adjusted down to single light balance because I could see what was working and the need to increase the LCD backlight. The 2302 tests were closer to what would be end use, and I could see that using more exposures and some other changes would get it where it needs to be.
You can email me about when you are going to be in town and I can ask my Brother where the test strips went, sometimes he uses them for leader on other reels.
If you have a stop motion camera and a 1600x1200 LCD monitor and some 2302 you can try making some prints yourself, it just takes connecting a few wires from the parallel port of a PC to a solid state relay wired across the run button of an ACME or other single frame motor, for the ACME motor you may need a relay since it uses a DPDT push button maybe... You can do the reverse switch and move the belt from takeup to supply manually, for bi-directional printing mode, three exposures, forward, backward, forward.
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Todd Anderson
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Thanks again, Dan. I'm trying to digest everything you have mentioned. I will certainly give you a call if I am out that way and the timing was right. I'll also keep and eye on your website.
Best,
Todd
Best,
Todd
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Andrew Thomas
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My brain am hurt after reading Dan's post. Very densely packed posts are really tough to read when the clock strikes midnight, but I'll definitely give it a read again in the morning.
Dan Hudgins
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Color print stock as B&W negative
Color print stock as B&W negative
As far as I know the only films Agfa makes now are:
CP-30 color print stock
ST-8.D Ortho sound recording film
ST-9 Pan sound recording film
http://www.agfa.com/en/sp/solutions/cine/agfasoundst8d/index.jsp
http://www.agfa.com/en/sp/solutions/cine/agfasoundst9/index.jsp
I asked the Agfa sales if the ST-9 had anything printed in the normal picture area but did not get a clear answer, Kodak prints the word Kodak in the image area of their Pan sound recording film, so you cannot use Kodak's as Pan negative stock for shooting a movie on, as far as I can make out from their web site's statement on that issue.
http://motion.kodak.com/US/en/motion/Products/Lab_And_Post_Production/2374.htm
http://motion.kodak.com/US/en/motion/Products/Lab_And_Post_Production/2378.htm
Sound recording film can be shot if processed in this formula,
6g Phenidone A
0.1g Sodium Sulfite
WTM 1000ml at 95F
Filter before use and keep at 95F after mixing and before use. If your water is acid you may need a little more Sodium Sulfite, the solution does not keep and should be made up just before use. Replenish at about 4000 ml per 100' processed.
The Development time is about 8min at 95F, you adjust the time for a fog level of about 0.1 density above base, and the exposure for highlight detail being being too blocked up. Kodak 2378 works well. With more contrast you can add Vitamin-C and Baking Soda U.S.P. to get maybe EI 25 to 40, with the formula above the exposure is about EI 6 to 12 maybe, the Agfa stocks seemed about a stop slower maybe, but it depends on the time and temp used.
If the Agfa pan does not have printing in the image area, you should be able to do it reversal to make black and white slides, most reversal films are thin emultion to get clear highlights.
I have figured that color print stock will be the last motion picture film stock to be discontinued, although some people here thought that negative would go last.
Anyway, if you shoot color print stock, bleach bypass and pull process works best, then do a DI and make it monochrome, you can print it as black and white on the same color print stock to make a black and white movie with, so that may be the last choice. last time I checked Kodak still stocked print stock with B&H perfs, otherwise you need to use a claw camera like a Konvas, Eyemo, or ARRI 2C to shoot KS perf stocks.
Color print stock as B&W negative
As far as I know the only films Agfa makes now are:
CP-30 color print stock
ST-8.D Ortho sound recording film
ST-9 Pan sound recording film
http://www.agfa.com/en/sp/solutions/cine/agfasoundst8d/index.jsp
http://www.agfa.com/en/sp/solutions/cine/agfasoundst9/index.jsp
I asked the Agfa sales if the ST-9 had anything printed in the normal picture area but did not get a clear answer, Kodak prints the word Kodak in the image area of their Pan sound recording film, so you cannot use Kodak's as Pan negative stock for shooting a movie on, as far as I can make out from their web site's statement on that issue.
http://motion.kodak.com/US/en/motion/Products/Lab_And_Post_Production/2374.htm
http://motion.kodak.com/US/en/motion/Products/Lab_And_Post_Production/2378.htm
Sound recording film can be shot if processed in this formula,
6g Phenidone A
0.1g Sodium Sulfite
WTM 1000ml at 95F
Filter before use and keep at 95F after mixing and before use. If your water is acid you may need a little more Sodium Sulfite, the solution does not keep and should be made up just before use. Replenish at about 4000 ml per 100' processed.
The Development time is about 8min at 95F, you adjust the time for a fog level of about 0.1 density above base, and the exposure for highlight detail being being too blocked up. Kodak 2378 works well. With more contrast you can add Vitamin-C and Baking Soda U.S.P. to get maybe EI 25 to 40, with the formula above the exposure is about EI 6 to 12 maybe, the Agfa stocks seemed about a stop slower maybe, but it depends on the time and temp used.
If the Agfa pan does not have printing in the image area, you should be able to do it reversal to make black and white slides, most reversal films are thin emultion to get clear highlights.
I have figured that color print stock will be the last motion picture film stock to be discontinued, although some people here thought that negative would go last.
Anyway, if you shoot color print stock, bleach bypass and pull process works best, then do a DI and make it monochrome, you can print it as black and white on the same color print stock to make a black and white movie with, so that may be the last choice. last time I checked Kodak still stocked print stock with B&H perfs, otherwise you need to use a claw camera like a Konvas, Eyemo, or ARRI 2C to shoot KS perf stocks.
Jay Gannon
Well-known member
Seriously Dan I may have giggled a bit when I read you still use Windows 95 but some of the information you have is incredible. Write a book, your breadth of knowledge on the subject is amazing.