using cine film as still film

OK you have all informed me. And looking at the current prices for 5222 I find that in 35mm it is available ONLY in either 400 feet or 1000 feet. The 1000 feet is $350 so the bargain has just withered away, folks. There really is no savings when you figure that you can buy quality film from Freestyle Photo for as low as about $30 per 100 feet. - David Lyga

Buyng "short ends" is a cheap way to obtain cine film. There are several sites on the web that do this. I used to buy from a company in NYC can't remember the name. I have gotten BW and color negative for 5 to 15 cents per foot. There are a some Kodak color negative films that do not have a remjet backing and are processed in C-41.

georg16nik said:

David,
I use B&W 35mm cine film, decades ago it was ORWO, now is mostly Polypan F - Polyester base, silver rich emulsions, vintage look.
No anti-halation backing on the ones I've used/use but I dont care about anti-halation backing.
I would take that any day, instead of the packed triacetate films that he "big" companies sell for >3 US$ for cartridge.
They screwed themselves, big time.

G

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I just received a 90m roll of this yesterday. The lack of an AH layer (and the price) is what got my interest. But there are precious few examples with processing info available! Do you have some you'd be willing to post? I have a starting point (box... er, can speed + ID11) but am looking for a hint as to how to proceed from there.

flatulent1 said:

I just received a 90m roll of this yesterday. The lack of an AH layer (and the price) is what got my interest. But there are precious few examples with processing info available! Do you have some you'd be willing to post? I have a starting point (box... er, can speed + ID11) but am looking for a hint as to how to proceed from there.

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I can share some Polypan F examples souped in Tetenal Ultrafin liquid, Neofin Blue, Rodinal and A49. I usually shoot it filtered, orange, blue, yellow, green.
Next week when I am back in town and have some time I will pull up some scans and post.
If You are in a hurry, the times given in the Massive Dev Chart are good starting point for the devs I mentioned. I haven't tried in ID11 or D76 but the times looks good to me.

Polypan F got very good latitude, the grain is tight, so its hard to go wrong. When You open the canister, the roll is in a plastic bag and the end of the roll is taped with a very sticky tape, You might wanna cut away the first 20cm.

Good luck and have fun!

Hi georg16nik, can you be more precise with listing of other film manufacturers other than Kodak, Ilford, Fuji, Foma who offer "great materials"? ORWO? Lucky? EFKE? What else is left?
Thank you in advance!

gorbas said:

Hi georg16nik, can you be more precise with listing of other film manufacturers other than Kodak, Ilford, Fuji, Foma who offer "great materials"? ORWO? Lucky? EFKE? What else is left?
Thank you in advance!

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Tasma in Russia. Agfa in Belgium.
We have talked about who is still in the biz in another thread last year.
Tasma are big, if You gather Kodak, Fuji and Ilford, You might come close to the size of Tasma.

Motion Picture Films http://tasma.ru/en/products/22/
Air films and Aerospace films http://tasma.ru/en/products/21/

OK, here are some of the B&W cine films I've been testing...

SO-291 and 2360 Direct MP Film (probably the same thing) - This produces a positive image via normal dev/stop/fix developing! The ISO is something around .5 (yes, meter using ISO 6 on your camera meter, add 3 stops of light, and maybe add a little more...) Red tinted, needs to be washed out in prewash. Base is very thin and very clear, seems to pipe light so maybe no antihalation layer. Tricky to use as a camera film, best to bracket exposures by half stops, but since you're almost certainly using a tripod on fixed subjects because of low speed, not that big a deal. Haven't tried this yet, but should make quite excellent contact-print film to turn negs into slides (which is essentially what it was designed for, after all!) instead of having to reversal-process your original camera film.

SO-379 Fine Grain Release Positive. This is probably the prototype version of what became 5302/2302 release print film. Orthochromatic (really just blue-sensitive, then tails off quickly.) Resulting negatives have grey base, seemingly pretty normal contrast. ISO of around 6. Would seem to have little or no antihalation layer.

SO-331 High Contrast Pan Intermediate, which I believe is the same thing as 2369 High Contrast Panchromatic Film (I have both, and the results were very similar.) An intermediate film intended for making mattes and such. ISO of about 25, relatively panchromatic. Very clear base with little or no antihalation layer. Developed in something like recommended manner and indeed the resulting negatives were fairly high contrast. Have not yet tried lower contrast developing schemes.

5246 Direct Positive Panchromatic. Despite the name, develops as a negative film under normal processing. (You're supposed to reversal-process it to make it live up to its name.) ISO of 80. I'm not so sure this was really a cinema film, since it has X/XA frame number markings on edge! Grey base. Unlike all those lower speed films above, you can actually see some grain with this, though it's still quite fine grained. Grey base, seems to have normal antihalation layer. Normal contrast negs.

2238 Panchromatic Separation Film. ISO 25, panchromatic, fairly normal contrast. Fine grained, though it's no Tech Pan. See my other thread on this for more info.

5222 (aka Double-X) - This is supposed to be a camera negative film so nothing tricky here. ISO 250 though my tests for some reason indicate it was behaving more like ISO 400 (or maybe I was just somehow overdeveloping it a bit.) Normal contrast, fairly grainy, seems like a good film.

And that brings up an answer to "why mess with these films when they aren't supposed to be camera films?" Slow speed and insanely fine grain - surely there's a place for that in the world! Now that Tech Pan is no longer made. And heck, even Tech Pan was not intended to be a normal contrast pictorial film; photographers have had to do a lot of experimenting to use it in that fashion, and put up with the slow speed and strange developing regimen. So my tests with these intermediate and print films have been along those lines - trying to come up with a new use for something beyond what it was designed for.

If anyone wants a 100'-ish roll of any of the above films (other than 5222) to play with let me know. I'll send one in the US, including shipping, for $40-$50 depending on the exact film and how much it cost me.

I have also shot a whole pile of ECN-2 color cinema negative films but those tests are ongoing. That's a whole different ballgame - using films that were intended as camera negative films, but then dealing with processing and printing them in still film lengths and such. I'll definitely be selling 100' rolls of those once I complete my tests and make sure they're all still good... since a lot of them I got as short ends and from unknown storage conditions.... and there's just no way I'll ever personally need the thousands and thousands of feet of those that I have.

Duncan

Hi georg16nik,
Thank you for Tasma link! Heard of them many years ago. How good their films are? Are you using any of them?
In the past I used few rolls of soviet Svema 65 film and definitely it was one of the worst films I ever tried.

hi gorbas,
Back in the days when Tasma was relatively easy to be had in EU, yes I used it on occasions. It was very good film. There are some cinematographers around, who sneak some roll from time to time but I haven't had a chance to try their recent stuff.
Svema film was different beer, very thick base, the only exception was their FN 32.. most of the times it was OK. We used to joke about the thick base, that You could use it to lug a tank with it
In recent years, its mostly ORWO or Polypan F, since thats whats readily available in EU.

OK, some quick examples from one test shoot...

2369, which is the same as SO-331, which is a high contrast panchromatic intermediate film:






OK, just for comparison sake, here is some Tech Pan just developed in ID-11, i.e. you'd expect it to be relatively high contrast because I didn't use Technidol or take any special care in agitating it or anything. Just 7 minutes in 1:1 ID-11... and it's not nearly as contrasty as that high contrast stock!






Here's the SO-379. These results should be similar to the 2302 print film that the original post in this thread was pondering because it's the same concept in film... or may actually be the exact same emulsion in its earlier name (I can't tell for sure.)







Here's the 5246, processed as a negative film:







And here's good old Double-X 5222. Grainy but reliable!






The Direct MP films were vastly underdeveloped from that day's tests, so no results to show you there, but you can see examples from further tests at another location, in the other thread I linked to about them.


Duncan

Very well done Duncan! Thank you very much for this samples! Very informative!

georg16nik, as kid growing up in socialism I was regular ORWO customer. I was very lucky to see their films again this time from ORWO North America.
How do you like UN-54? Are you using it for still or cine applications? Did you enlarge anything bigger than 18x24cm (8x10")? You can see some tests at my Flickr.
Goran

flatulent1 said:

I just received a 90m roll of this yesterday. The lack of an AH layer (and the price) is what got my interest. But there are precious few examples with processing info available! Do you have some you'd be willing to post? I have a starting point (box... er, can speed + ID11) but am looking for a hint as to how to proceed from there.

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Some Polypan F shots @50 in Rodinal 1+50, developed as Ilford Pan F+
#1 - Russar MR-2 wide open, yellow filter
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#2 - Russar MR-2 wide open, yellow filter
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#3 - Russar MR-2 wide open, yellow filter
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#4 - Summar, green filter, hood
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#5 - Summar, yellow filter, hood
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#6 - Summar, orange filter, hood
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#7 - Summar, green filter, hood
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#8 - Summar, green filter, hood
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#9 - Summar, green filter, hood
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gorbas said:

Very well done Duncan! Thank you very much for this samples! Very informative!

georg16nik, as kid growing up in socialism I was regular ORWO customer. I was very lucky to see their films again this time from ORWO North America.
How do you like UN-54? Are you using it for still or cine applications? Did you enlarge anything bigger than 18x24cm (8x10")? You can see some tests at my Flickr.
Goran

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Duncan, Thanks!

gorbas, UN-54 is great, still applications is what I used it for, back in the days, ORWO NP15 was my fav
I usually print 35mm up to whatever number it feels good but frankly Medium format is my main format and I contact print it most of the time, thou I always carry a Leica with me, so some shots I can sometimes stretch to 1 meter on a ORWO fabric pane with a silver emulsion on it, looks very organic.

georg16nik said:

Some Polypan F shots @50 in Rodinal 1+50, developed as Ilford Pan F+
#1 - Russar MR-2 wide open, yellow filter

#2 - Russar MR-2 wide open, yellow filter

#3 - Russar MR-2 wide open, yellow filter

#4 - Summar, green filter, hood

#5 - Summar, yellow filter, hood

#6 - Summar, orange filter, hood

#7 - Summar, green filter, hood

#8 - Summar, green filter, hood

#9 - Summar, green filter, hood

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wow... Very nice. I can see I have my work cut out for me.

Good to see it performs well at 50, I was thinking I'd have to shoot at 25 and under-process.

Thanks for posting!

You are welcome!
Polypan F holds reasonably well to at least 200 when the developer is right and You want to go there.

Good Luck!

frobozz said:

Sadly, my testing is going slower than Kodak's march towards obsoleting all of these films. By the time I figure out which ones I really want to concentrate on, odds are they won't be for sale any more

Duncan

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obsoleting!!!

Which wormhole in the dung heap of Amerikan abused English language did that slither from?

John

gorbas said:

Hi georg16nik,
Thank you for Tasma link! Heard of them many years ago. How good their films are? Are you using any of them?
In the past I used few rolls of soviet Svema 65 film and definitely it was one of the worst films I ever tried.

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Worst, is that interesting worst, or bad worst? - Some worst film is actually fun and if it is for 35mm use quality does not matter anyway - However, Svema sounds like something nasty

John

frobozz said:

Oh yeah, other caveats:
-- I get the impression that quality control on the lab films is not quite as strict - after all if one frame has a tiny defect you'll never see it as the movie spins by at 24fps, whereas that could ruin your Pulitzer-prize-winning photo if it's used as still film. Duncan

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I've been making my way through a 400' roll of b/w cine film for a few years now (I shan't mention the manufacturer as it's only an unsupported opinion and the film was never intended for still use).
I've sometimes found myself wondering whether the QC standard is as high as for the equivalent still stock, as seem to find small blemishes and imperfections in the emulsion more often than I'd expect to.
The difference in the perf holes shape seems to give a slight variation in frame spacing that I don't get with still film.

Steve

Grumpy Old Man said:

obsoleting!!!

Which wormhole in the dung heap of Amerikan abused English language did that slither from?

John

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Dunno - shows up as a verb in every online reference I look at.

Duncan

This is OT; but in modern English, with its lack of inflection, many nouns can be used as verbs. In this respect English grammer is closer to chinese than other western european languages.

Eastman 5222 is nice stuff. I'm still working on my 400' spool. Delicious. I rate mine at 250 and do it in D-76 1:1. No time yet to try it in PMK, but I'm thinking it will work well with pyrogallol.

I posted some 100' spooled-down rolls of SO-331 and SO-379 in the for sale classifieds, if anyone else wants to play with them.

Duncan