edgar_njari

Excuse me , but my Seagull comes with a 4-element lens, and I didn't have any problems with the shutter. The problem comes if you change shutter speed after cocking the shutter, something which is clearly stated NOT to do in the user manual

My advice to anyone looking to buy cheap MF gear. Ignore anything you hear about Seagulls unless it comes from a customer that bought a new one in the last 5 years.

Why? Because its pure junk, and is of no use to you (the advice, not the gear)

Most of these people either never had a Seagull, or had an old one with a 3-piece lens and made 10-20 years ago.

Post 2001 Seagulls with a 1/500 shutter and 4-element Tessar-clone lens are decent cameras to have either as a cheaper new camera, or as a backup. Image quality is comparable to a 4-element Yashica. (its almost the same lens anyway)

O hope It's the same. There was nothing wrong with the old one for what it was usually used for. No need to fix it.

It's film, not an electronic machine.

I assume he ment Ektachrome 100D (5285), thats the motion picture Ektachrome right now in 16mm.

It's very similar to E100VS. Highly saturated colors, and strong contrast. I love its blue colors. Specially the color of the sky on a spring day. Really deep glowing blue, when underexposed a bit.

Ron

That SW frame you have, is not a very good example of motion pictures.

I assume the one you are talking about is Episode 1, from Mos Espa, right?

Anything coming from George Lucas is not a good example of imagery.

That frame has been butchered by low res scanning recording, and then on top of that printed from a thin internegative.

Those people working on Episode 1 have done such a poor job, that it's almost as if they advertised how crappy film can be before switching to video shooting on episode2.

If it looks good, great, but, my advice is get another frame to use as an example, one that trully represents the potential of a modern Kodak movie stock.

Considering that the plate for that shot was done on Eastman 5245, which is supose to be colorful and punchy, that frame ended up looking subdued in color and had sickly-looking contrast.

It seems that my brain is calibrated towards colder side, so what most people see as neutral I see as a bit warm.

So I always felt E100G to be neutral and I see GX as warm.

Its not really standard practice, though more and more films get a digital intermediate process every year.

The answer to your question is yes, and no.

Yes, because, as you assumed, there is less copying going on if you don't count scanning and recording (though you should really because it not perfect). So the image is one step less faded, has one step more shadow and highlights detail etc.

And NO, because DI process has its own problems.

Usually a recorded positive doesn't really look like the original. And doesn't even look like an optical copy either. It has a look of its own.

The tones across the scale look a bit distorted.

Best example I can think of is Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy.

That specific look is even visible on the DVD. Because the DVD is transfered from recorded film, not the original negatives.

Without going into fancy words, you can tell its a DI, the blacks are usually a telltale sign, you have to observe it to see what I'm talking about.

And of course most DI jobs are done at 2K resolution. So the recorded film doesn't hold much information from the original frame.

So you have yourself a slightly blurry "original" to go from, which when copied further, sort of negates the advantage you had by skipping one step.

It works best with cartoons, animation and HD movies, in which case there are no disadvantages. But it has mixed advantages/disadvantages when you are working with film as your original material.

Its a mixed blessing.

It is a great tool of expression if you want some specific look or something, but its not worth it if you just want to skip a step in printing. After 2K processing, the resulting print is usually reported to be even softer than a good 4 generation optical. Sometimes it is so, sometimes not, depending on the skill of the people preparing those materials.

A 4K DI job would pretty much solve the problem, and show clear advantage over optical printing, as many tests have shows so far, but nobody cares enough yet to do it.

Well some films like Stuart Little 2 did it all in 4K, and some other features.

I think sending film to be printed through complete minilab solutions (scanner+image autodestruct + laserout) is the biggest abuse of

film, second only to throwing it down a trash can or burning it.

Frontier can make really good digital exposures on Crystal paper, but if you have your own file, either from a digital camera or your own dedicated scanner.

Crystal archive is a beautiful paper, works great with digital scans, as much as you can expect from such cheap printing service.

My advice here is:

If you like the slightly "off" look of film compared to strictly realistic digital imagery, you should invest in a dedicated film scanner and stop worrying about someone processing your film images the way you wont' want them to.

If its all the same to you, and you just want good clean realistic image, start saving for a DSLR.

Here is an example of the loss in optical copying process in motion pictures.

This is a comparison test at 4K resolution (that's more than 4200dpi) between an original 5245 negative and an IP copy of the same frame.

This scanner is not as good as the first example I posted. This was a

cheaper Cintel scan, while the first one is a high-end Kodak cineon scan.

But it is good enough to tell the difference.

Notice how the IP is almost grainless at 4200+dpi.

That's how the new Kodak intermediate stock it, it is very smooth at large magnifications with no grain to speak of, but it does have some of that pepper grain, which is not visible in this case though.

But the copying blurred the negative grain a bit.

You can clearly see how much sharpness is lost in this first generation IP copy. IP's are done under almost perfect copying conditions, unlike release prints.

Now imagine getting one more such pass, for IN, and then passing it through a high-speed printing process. The loss in resolution and sharpness is huge.

http://free-os.t-com.hr/redmist/4Ktest.jpg

Once again, the 50D stock is performing just as well as a still stock grain wise at such high scanning resolution

Bill. Quite a few DP's I've had a chance to talk to actually say that Eterna 500T has slightly finer grain than vision2, which is kind of funny because vision2 was such big news when it came out.

By the way. The "portrait" is a frame from the test footage for 5245.

It was shot for test by Kodak in 1989 when 50D first came out.

Now it serves as the famous D-LAD test image.

Ted, if you had better luck, what can I say, good for you.

The example I posted is an exaggeration, the effect is mild.

This is not something that comes from theory, just a practical observation I had. Not something Kodak says so or something you find in manuals. It's just what I've seen people come up with when using MP film. Allthough I do remember mr. Pytlak did confirm it once on one of the forums. But that's the only Kodak input I ever heard on this issue.

What negative film did you use, and what MP print film was it?

Here is a simulation of how the same frame would have looked like scanned on a still scanner using profiles for still film

http://free-os.t-com.hr/redmist/5245EXR1.jpg

This is just a simulation to illustrate what I usually the case when mixing these two worlds.

Bill

The example I posted is not a good reference of color balance and contrast because, it is a rendering I made myself in photoshop from a log 10-bit cineon file. Since the file was scanned "as is on film" from the negative, without print corrections of contrast, I had to invent print contrast and color myself.

So don't judge color and contrast in that picture, it was more of a reference of resolution and grain

As for the Fuji 500T. Are you sure it wasn't 500D?

Reala 500D has to be the the grainiest motion picture currently in production. Unless you were refering to color and contrast and not grain.

You couldn't really work without either a custom profile or manual adjustment

Most of the scans of motion picture stock on still scanners I've seen so far had twisted colors because of the difference I mentioned a few posts back.

Don't quote me, but I think motion picture film has lower blue-yellow layer contrast producing crossover issues when using still scanners and papers.

For best results one would have to start with a raw scan, capturing the full range then making something out of it in photoshop (removing mask, adjusting contrast etc.)

Making cinema prints, well slide films too, was always a challenge, because you had to keep a balance between getting enough density to make true black on screen (specially big cinema screen) and having the image have reasonable contrast. Mostly getting true black was the priority, so cinema prints always were a bit contrasty.

There was never really a way to get both things: a smoother contrast of video transfers, and bullet proof black on screen.

It's easier on paper, since you don't have to project direct light through it.

Though good projection has always revealed more shadow detail and put the contrast back into perspective, just like you always get more shadow detail from Velvia with a drum scan than with a flatbed.

A grocery-store flatbed with will always give you a crappy faded contrasty scan, while a drum scan is going to reveal a whole new world of detail in those shadows and give life to colors.

"Anyway, I'm not convinced that the Portra of today came entirely from innovations in the Eastman movie film."

I didn't say anything like that.

I said that the new Portra we are all waiting for might have that 2-electron sensitisation technology which was present in motion pictures (but not in still film yet) for some time now which gives visibly finer grain when compared to regular T-grain. (which was used in EXR and Vision stocks)

In reality, R and D is done on both fields and every new invention in one field is carried into the other with some minor delay.

But in the end, both of these films take advantage of the same technologies.

I'm just responding to the uninformed stereotype (though I did seem to have misread Craigs post) that motion picture film is different from still film in quality because its a bit cheaper (though not as cheap as some think) and because cinema prints are grainy and look faded and crapy.

Cinema prints are prepared with the same "care" as food in fast food restoraunts. In other words, you don't wanna know how.

The film doesn't even stop to take an exposure of one frame, it just rolls in a continuous fashion, that reduces sharpness.

Plus its a 4th generation copy. And depends on the quality of the IP and the IN.

For example, someone mentioned Star Wars. Well there is information that the internegatives for Episode 1 were a bit thin (underexposed)

for some reason and that prints lacked saturation and contrast because of that.

Judging MP film by looking at prints is like judging still film by looking at minilab prints.

The quality of both are on the same level in their own domains.

The myth was born in 70's when people used 5254 and printed it on ECP print film then complained how it fades.

ECP print film was never ment to last more than a couple of years, unless you freeze it. Its no wonder all their slides turned magenta.

And there is one more important thing in the end.

There is some crossover "mismatch" between still negatives and MP negatives, meaning that the contrast of different color layers is not the same, which might results in crossover issues in prints, when you print still film to MP print film or when you print MP negative to still papers.

There is some blue-yellow offset in shadows and highlights because of that.

I don't know why is there a difference, but both still papers and cinema print films are calibrated to compensate for that, and are not easily mixed.

To get perfect crossover and color balance without using a scanner and photoshop it is best to use still film with papers and MP film with MP print film. But of course if you are scanning you can easily correct it.

I think that the result of that is that when you print a MP stock on paper you get yellowish highlights and blueish shadows. And its vice-versa when you use still film for motion picture printing.

But just so you don't have to believe my word

Here is a frame blowup from a frame of footage shot in 1989, on Kodak 5245 50D motion picture film.

The area blown up here is ONLY about 15mm wide (its a crop), so don't compare it to a 35mm still frame which is many times larger.

I've seen 36x24 frames that look like that or worse.

Consider that, and also consider that this is almost 18 years old film technology and that modern motion picture stock (the new 5201) is

finer in grain and sharper than this one and has cleaner colors and crossover.

http://free-os.t-com.hr/redmist/5245EXR.jpg

Sorry but what Craig said is not true.

A frame of cinema print really tells you nothing about motion picture film. It usually holds about 20% of sharpness and resolution of the original negative because its a 4th generation copy, and is very grainy. Has really bad colors, and contrast etc. Usually its a piece of crap, but its good enough for Hollywood.

Original negative on the other hand is just as high quality as still film. And the latest generation of motion picture films has actually been better than still film, but now new Portra films will be updated to the same technology that was used in motion pictures for about 5 years or so providing the same fine grain as the vision2 line of motion picture films.

I don't know why people keep asking others about what THEY should shoot with. Only you know what you like better.

But I always say, if you have to ask what to use in the first place, go for digital, its more practical.

Film is for people who find it irreplaceable either for aesthetics

or its analogue/physical nature.

I find it irreplaceable for both reasons. I find that films "faults" and distortions of the image, are not something you can emulate with digital (which looks a bit cleaner and more accurate) , plus I always considered art as something simple, natural, analog and intuitive, and electronics are something rigid and artificial.

For me digital photography is like robots playing symphony.

I don't even like digital printing from film. Feels like I've taken away the random mistery of crystals of the emulsion and dumbed it down to simple ones and zeroes.

Same way I prefer real painting to digital painting. A digital brush can't make mistakes, can't leave random variations in paint. Even the simulated randomness of Corel Painter is not like the real thing.

As ridiculous as they are, these are valid reasons to shoot film.

The whole amateur photography thing is one big psychosis anyway, so any reason to do anything is a good one. No rules here. Because in the end it really serves no other purpuse but to please your own mind, so that same mind is the only thing setting standards.

Use film if you really want to

If you are thinking professionally, well that's a different story, use what pays off better, of course.

Oh and, while I certainly do see advantage in slide film when it comes to grain, I wouldn't recommend any slide film for anything but a more stylized photograph where you need the extra punch or a nature shot where its more difficult to judge contrast.

Even Astia just doesn't have enough latitude to make an image appear natural as the way eye sees it. It increases contrast.

But so do most prints from minilabs from negatives.

Careful printing from a negative can make a print have a natural contrast true to the way eye sees things.

Though I've seen my fair share of prints from negs with blown out highlights and crushed shadows.

Leszek

Surely you can think of a few reasons why not.

There are no such small formats as 8mm in still photography, and I don't feel like ruining entire slides just to extract a tiny peace.

Also, it doesn't help understanding how films works, what makes it tick.

Robert lee

I believe you are on to something there.

I guess in more technical terms, I'd like to find a way to apply a certain kind of image blur that would emulate MTF behaviour of film on the far end of the curve.

And also try and emulate what film does with high contrast areas, like between two colors or around bright spots, the kind of bleeding characteristics of film emulsion.

All the stuff you can see on 8mm film or when you scan at 4000dpi or more.