What color film for stills most closely resembles motion picture film?

[thisneumann]

I realize an answer to my question requires far more experience than I want to spend years gaining, so I figured I would register and ask more experienced people. Heh. I hope you'll excuse my laziness.

For stills photography, is there a particular color film and process/acquisition result that *most closely* resembles the tonality and color of motion picture film after it's been printed to a positive print? I'm particularly interested in the look of Vision negative to Vision Print. I even love the look of Vision negative to Vision Premier print as well.

I ask because in wanting to simply shoot cassettes using vision 3 film, I discovered that no company anywhere (even photo labs) will take that negative and reprint it to vision print on a cassette basis. What is that, 1.5 seconds to a motion picture lab company? So unconventional, heh. The demand for that is so incredibly low. Heck, even the demand for processing the negative alone is super low, on a cassette basis. And I'm not interested in the look of the negative film on it's own. I love the specifically contrasted, somewhat more natural magical movie tonality and saturation that comes with the print to vision print or vision premier.

What I'm having difficulty finding is un-colortimed footage. Pretty much everything on apple trailers is color timed and varied in gamma (as well as any images on the net for that matter). I suppose I'm just being optimistic that someone knows the look I mean... or perhaps knows the math of the contrasts and colors in a way that can be explained to someone less experienced.

...Basically, I'd like an easy answer where there isn't one. I guess subjective answers will work. I will try to give specific examples if my goal still seems obscure. Hoping you experts already have an idea.

 

[Newt_on_Swings]

Easy, shoot your still and splice cassettes together until you have about 100 feet and send out for processing.

Or you can try various color filters and gels until you get that look your after with traditional color film.

 

[Athiril]

I've got both Vision3 and Vision2 film (5201 50D) and Vision Print Film, and the chemistry.. being trying to contact print it for a while now, haven't quite gotten there yet.

Raw scanned footage is well.. once simply colour corrected, pre-colour grading, can look fairly normal. Had some 5201 50D Super16mm done on a Spirit 2K once.

The look is telecine footage -> colour correct -> fiddle with footage until it looks like what you want it to look like -> print (if it's to be released for cinema/projected on print film).

The look will be calibrated to the print film; ie: it looks like exactly what they want it to look like, the look isn't defined by print film itself.

 

[Mustafa Umut Sarac]

I am not going to cinema as 1/10th of 25 years ago and what I see at the latest movies is heavy cyan cast. It looks like anti rain car wax advertisements of old readers digest magazines. If you are after cyan cast , find a blue filter and you are there. I am not finding any interesting color combination at modern films. Da Vinci Code movie was the worst color movie I have ever seen. Cheap film from lomography with LOMO cameras will bring you there. I am happy , only our labs in Istanbul can ruin enough the negatives at this level. If you want bad color , send it to me , our oily fat labman can ruin it as you like it.

 

[MDR]

Here's the link to a homepage comparing Vision 3 with still film Dead Link Removed they also offer ECN-2 processing for photographers. Maybe they can help you.

Meanwhile a few suggestions on how to copy the film yourself
Build your own contact printer or optical mp printer, or try to find one used. At the dawn of moving pictures, movies used to be duplicated by sandwiching the neg and pos and expose them to light. Plans for building an optical printer for 8mm Dead Link Removed maybe you can adapt it to 35mm. You can also use a slide duplicating kit and instead of copying a slide you copy the negative film mounted in a slide mount.

Good luck

Dominik

 

[thisneumann]

Thank you for your responses. But they make me feel I need to be more specific:

If you took a color and values test chart, shot it on vision3 5219, then printed to vision premier 2393, you would get a particular result. There are specific properties to this particular result. There is a look to that particular result. And a photographer using this combo would be shooting/lighting/exposing with that look in mind. It is a particular look. A base. A particular tonality and color that the photographer is aware of. A particular contrast. A particular result. Despite any later manipulations, he is shooting for a base. A result. I want that base look. I want a color print film/photographic paper combination that would produce the closest result to the particular result of 5219+premier, if they were, for instance, both shooting the same test chart under similar exposure conditions. There is a specific tonality and saturation underneath/on top of all possible manipulations, and I'd like to have it because it effects the contrast of things in a particular way from the get-go that gives them a particular look. No matter how much you effect the image later or before, that look is, most likely gonna be a little baked in. And I've noticed that, and I like it. I'm after it. (if any of that made sense... heh.)

Is anyone familiar with the look to the contrast and color of a 5219+premier 2393 combo, and if so, is there a photographic film+photographic paper combo that mimics it most?



Hey Newt,
I'm actually only wanting a few occasional reference frames to create LUTs, and am hoping for a cheap, somewhat-immeditely-do-able solution, which is why I am currently hoping for an alternative to the sure-fire, though tedious solution. But yes, that might be the only available spot-on way of doing this. And your second suggestion, heh, takes too much time and work! And probably wouldn't reach the level of high similarity I'm hoping for. But without much experience, how can I know that?... Maybe this is just hopeless, and if I really want particular/exact results, I should just go for the 100'...

Hello Athiril,
I enjoy the look of color corrected, raw scanned footage in general. Unfortunately, it's not what I'm after anymore. (At least I think not.) I think my above specifyings were most in response the the 2nd half of your post, actually. The mentality of what you're suggesting is odd, isn't it? Surely the print film adds its share of definition to the look of things, knowing how it will effect the image even in the production stages. And grading manipulations are done mostly when the contrasty result is off in some way, but the expectation is for it to be on. For it to do what it's expected to do, and shoot/light/expose a scene to that. For it to place a certain, expected contrasting effect on the negative's tonality and color. The reason a specific print film takes part in the definition of the look is the way in which it effects natural tonality from the getgo. In the physical world, light's gonna do what it's gonna do. We can only manipulate that in so many ways. There's not so much we can do in natural real life to negate something like the global contrast curves of a print film (and without negating it, it is enforcing an effect to the look). That's why there will always be a look to particular print film. Or any recording medium. There will always be an effect on the look that specifically comes from the film that no matter how much you calibrate, in real life: the exposure, or the type of lighting, etc... Even in non real life... the only way would be the use of extremely specific negating curves within software. Other, more minor adjustments still wouldn't do too much to negate those characteristic curves.

...

What am I even talking about anymore? I bet you we actually see things similarly and have only misunderstood eachother's thoughts.


Mustafa...


Hey MDR,

Was actually looking through their pages before my first post! I will ask their opinion/possibilities on this too, thanks for the suggestion. At the moment, I'm too unlearned and lazy for your second suggestion! I shouldn't be hoping for a fast-food sort of solution, but I still am. Something unrealistically simple like:

"I've always felt Kodak Portra 400 really resembles theatrical print qualities! Especially in the saturation distribution and luminosity! Almost every frame I've taken with that printed on Ilfochrome has the texture, contrast, and color of modern cinema, imho!"

Ha? No... Maybe?
Thanks again y'all.

 

[Athiril]

You wouldn't get a particular result, because you do not print it straight to vision print or vision premier print. The response of vision print and premier print is known and printing is calibrated to that. So what you colour correct and grade and render 3D CG onto etc, will look like on your print as it does on a calibrated monitor.

Also someone mentioned a particular website above, take whatever is on that site with a grain of salt, there is bad information on there. I've already been harassed, insulted, and threatened by the people that are involved with the business on that site in private, so I will leave it at that.

Vision Print film has over 200 lp/mm @ 1.6:1 contrast resolving power, and over 500 lp/mm @ 1000:1 contrast iirc, ultra fine grain, and produces a nice wide gamut of colour, with a high contrast level suitable for projection. The point of all that is to not influence prints, or as little as possible, lose as little resolution as possible from the original, not stack a bunch more grain on top of it, etc.

Nobody goes straight from camera neg to print, to theatre projection. The printing is calibrated so what you see on a calibrated source, you will get on your print.



Vision3 sources are all supposed to match in look as well, so they seamlessly cut together from the same colour correction.

 

[MDR]

Athiril I am sorry to hear that, I simple found this site through google websearch. The only knowledge I have about films processed in ECN-2 chemistry is that I use them in motion picture cameras never used them in still cameras but I thought that site might be helpful to the OP.

Dominik

 

[Athiril]

The point I am making, who has seen contact printed ECN-2 to Vision Print or Premier Print Film? I haven't. Apart from what I have done, but that is nowhere near close to being any good yet.

 

[hrst]

Is anyone familiar with the look to the contrast and color of a 5219+premier 2393 combo, and if so, is there a photographic film+photographic paper combo that mimics it most?

You are looking for full-analog workflow (well, that's what APUG's for), a C-41 film and an RA-4 paper, do I get it right?

If so, there aren't too many alternatives available. You could just test everything that is available now.

Kodak has a high-contrast RA-4 paper optimized for digital exposure. Fuji Crystal Archive might be a bit less contrasy, it should match the now discontinued Kodak Supra Endura. You could try both of them.

Then, for the film, go with new Portra 160 or 400. They should be as close to your "look" as possible. If you find having too much contrast, then cut the C-41 dev time by 15 to 30 seconds and overexpose a bit.

Please note that all C-41 products are daylight balanced whereas those ECN-2 products are more usually tungsten-balanced. That is definitely one factor in the "look".

Anyhow, it's quite difficult to compare projected print film to a paper. Or did I misunderstand something? If you would like to have a projectable slide from a negative, you don't have any other choices than those ECP-2 MP print films. Maybe you should go on with that 5219+2393 combo and either try to find a lab that does short clips or start to develop & contact print by yourself.

Best of luck!

 

[newcan1]

you could shoot Vision3 film and develop ECN-2 yourself, then print to RA4, adding varying amounts of H202 to the developer for a contrast boost (start with say 5ml/l and go up to maybe 20 or 30). It will also increase sensitivity and maybe base fog if any in the paper, but it would give you quite a bit of control over the contrast you get.

 

[hrst]

With only relatively high-contrast RA-4 papers available today, the most probable case would probably be lowering the contrast. That can be achieved by adding some sodium or potassium sulfite at about 0.5 g/l to the developer. This won't affect the shelf-life. OTOH, H2O2 will make the developer practically one-shot as far as I know.

But maybe when using ECN-2 films, a contrast boost might be needed as they are designed for a bit lower contrast whereas RA-4 papers are designed for C-41 films. Or, you could just push process ECN-2 film to the typical C-41 gamma. The difference isn't that big.

 

[newcan1]

In my experience, when printing ECN-2 negatives, a contrast boost is typically necessary, I think the target gamma for ECN-2 is 0.5 vs something like 0.65 for C-41. At any event, the above two comments indicate that in trying to replicate the desired "look," it is possible to adjust the contrast of the printed result up or down within reason.

 

[thisneumann]

Thanks for your responses!

Athiril,
Ah, I think I know what's missing between us. When I say print film adds a particular contrast, I mean print film versus a negative that is simply inverted digitally, no calibration, no lut... Which is just so flat, holding the unaffected contrast of the original negative. Should've said that, forgot we were on an analogue-only forum. I was wondering why you thought that looked fairly normal. When you said "colour corrected" I thought you meant "colour balanced."

MDR,
Still appreciated it!

Hi hrst,
So comprehensive! Exactly the type of info I was looking for. Thanks! And yeah... it is difficult to compare. Didn't realize it while I was posting, but despite looking for an analogue material/process, I actually find myself imagining my comparisons in a more digital way... thinking more of comparisons of the scans of each respective material on a monitor-- scan of the print film vs scan of the paper... even vs the scan of the negative with the print film lut applied. If only accurate versions of those luts were easy to find or less costly to purchase. In actually, even if I could find or purchase them, I'm just paranoid of the accuracy of these luts, as well as my ability to correctly interpret the postings of the characteristic curves of these films found all over the net. I would like to make my own based on images I take and the tests I do myself, you know? Heh, I say all that about "accuracy" and whatnot, and yet I'm not willing to go through the trouble of "simply" shooting and printing on the actual material the look of which I am after. But, yes, thanks again. Looking at the tonality and color from reference images of the Portra films and Fuji Crystal Archive paper already makes me feel like I've found the simple combo I'm looking for. (Your second post becomes more complex than the level of standardization I irrationally hope for in a solution for all this; still noting it though.)

Hey newcan1,
I lazily want a less technical solution. One where I don't have to build my non-existent film development skills, heh. But in the event I have to down the line, I'm still noting down your suggestions. Thank you. Ah, and with your final post, I agree. It is a contrast adjustment issue. I'd like most, however, to find some sort of easy standardization of whatever contrast solution I end up with, whether it be a specific paper, which would be ideal, or something else simple and standardized and very easily accessible.


While I feel I very well may have found my "modern motion picture 'look'" in Portra+Fuji Crystal Archive, I'd still appreciate any other suggestions anyone might want to throw out there. If not, thanks for the help everyone!