The Kodak legacy: shooting with Kodak Vision 3 500T

Kodak have made a some decisions in the past few years that have upset many photographers and film-makers alike. The demise of Kodachrome in 2009, with processing being discontinued in December 2010. The end of Kodak Ektachrome production in 2013 and numerous other film stocks going the way of the Dodo. Then bankruptcy in 2012. Not really a decision that last one, but depressing none-the-less. 

The writing (it seemed), was on the wall. Add to the mix Fuji's exit from motion picture film manufacturing, the death of Polaroid manufactured Instant film and it would be fair to say that this has not been a happy period for devotees of analogue photography and film-making. The march of the digital monster was inevitable and unstoppable. It seemed all we could do was watch from the sidelines muttering (with gritted teeth) 'that doesn't look as good as film...'

Though this has certainly been a disquieting few years, it has also been a time to re-evaluate analogue film, it's unique qualities and it's paradoxical reinvention in the digital era as a medium of superior quality, highly evocative with a proven heritage. The reasons for films continued popularity are many and varied, but not least is our predilection for nostalgia and the desire for the colours and images from the past to be recreated in the most authentic way possible. Take a quick look at any episode of 'Mad Men' if you want some convincing of this. Suffice to say there's a visual language tied-up in analogue film, somewhat illusive, intangible, and now 'reassuringly expensive'. Film, it seems, is experiencing a renaissance that (we believe) mimics the vinyl record.

So, in light of this, how apt is our sample scan featured in this post. This film was shot on Kodak Vision 3 500T, using a Canon 1014 xls in Summer 2014 and is part of larger piece about the Vinyl Factory; a UK based vinyl record pressing plant, and record lable. Who would have thought that vinyl records would be the only physical music format with a growth in sales in 2015, some 33 years after the introduction of the CD? 

As a film scanning bureau we LOVE Kodak Vision 3 film (and the vinyl LP as it goes). Kodak Vision 3 film is a truly magic material, with hidden depths of colour tonality and dynamic range, unsurpassed by any other current movie film stocks (our opinion).

As a telecine operator, there’s something very special about that first moment of colour inversion, pulling the white balance controls into position to reduce the negative film's blue cast, under which live an array of subtle colours, hues, details in shadow and 'unburnable' whites. Colour negative film wins every time when up against colour reversal (our opinion again). It has all the information you'll ever need to grade as you see fit, incredible latitude (meaning you can over or under expose pretty heavily and still retain large amounts of image information), and the grain structure is incredible.

Considering that the above example is shot on 500 ASA film, under fluorescent factory lighting, and is a piece of film under 10mm wide, the grain is incredibly low. The above footage is also slightly under exposed (so the grain is accentuated as result), and was shot under fluorescent lights. The inevitable green cast from the fluorescent lighting was colour corrected during the scan. No attempt has been made to remove the grain or sharpen the image, we felt the 'raw' results were perfect for the subject matter. Kodak Vision 3 500T is the perfect super 8 film for low light situations, and it's high speed in daylight situations means you get superb sharpness and depth of field from the closed down iris.

All hail Kodak!

Thus endeth the lesson.

SUPER 8 SCANNING. WHATS IN A SUPER 8 FILM TRANSFER?

Super 8 film scanning. It’s what we do. Our core service is scanning (aka digital transfer or telecine) of super 8 and standard 8 film. We also do 9.5mm and 16mm telecine, but that’s for another blog post. So what’s in a good scan we hear you ask?

Many companies offer transfer of your super 8 film to a digital format and do a pretty good job. Many offer transfer to DVD or Blu Ray, using some pretty high-end gear along with scanning to 1080p resolution files. In checking out our competitors we’ve noted a few things. Not least the tendency of some to claim that all other super 8 scanning services are nothing better than a projector fired at a wall with a HD video camera (which as we all know doesn’t work anyway). One UK provider we’ve read is suggesting that some competitors are hiding behind false UK business addresses, whilst in reality, are probably being run from bedrooms, in other countries! If so, is that a mortal sin? Others target 8mm scanning services who design and build their own machines as being inferior quality to machines purchased at cost of £20000 and upwards. Not really provable without a lot of data analysis, and actually not strictly true. There are many parameters that come in to play in delivering the great scan. The cost of the machine doesn’t really come into it.

Keeping super 8 alive

We say fair game to anyone making efforts to keep analogue film and super 8 film-making alive. From your bedroom, with a machine you’ve built, atop a melting ice cap, if you like. It makes no odds. The question remains what makes a successful super 8 / standard 8 scanning service? Once you have the frame by frame scanning, the HD camera and the ability to output to a file format of choice, what’s between competitors offering super 8 and standard 8 film transfers?

Haters of film grain need not apply

We believe there is one key principle in good 8mm film scanning that is frequently overlooked. This will sound obvious, but we believe the foundation of a great movie film scan is a genuine appreciation of the film aesthetic and it’s structure. A total passion for film grain is essential! With some super 8 transfer services we’ve noticed a tendency to leverage the super 8 film scan into something that ‘shouts’ from the screen. This comes in the form of over-saturation of the film colours, attempts to over sharpen the sometimes soft 8mm film image and a tendency to over expose scans in an attempt to compensate for poor exposure. In the latter instance, compensating for poor exposure is key to a successful best light scan, but great care needs to be taken in not burning the whites and highlights in the scanned footage. Over exposing the scan results in a loss of film data and unless the client has explicitly requested this, it’s big no, no. If we can’t see some hint of film structure in the whites of a scanned frame, then this is very likely over-exposure and should be corrected before the telecine proceeds.

To sharpen or not to sharpen…

By the same token, we believe that digital sharpening should be used very conservatively, if at all. Fundamentally it’s a distortion of the data coming from the film, and whereas it can enhance the details of a soft image, bringing super 8 scans to a near HD video aesthetic, when over-used, or set incorrectly it can look really nasty, creating an ugly sharpening border artefacts around all contrasting edges within the image. We’ve had scans done in the past where sharpening has been used during the film scan by default, without any consultation with the client. In our book this is not acceptable practice.

In-scan grading

Grading is of course essential in 8mm film transfers, especially in the light of the fact that many super 8 scans are now from Kodak Vision 3 negative film, which of course requires that the image be inverted and the orange film base (which turns blue on inversion) be corrected in order that the image looks like something based in reality (and not from another planet). But once again we’ve feel some super 8 scans suffer from over interference from the scanning operator at this stage. The tendency is sometimes to crank up the colour saturation, perhaps to compensate for the flat colours that negative film produces, but also to re-invigorate aged reversal (chrome) film. Again if this has not been explicitly requested by the client prior to the scan, we do our best to steer clear of this practice. Bear in mind, any amount of grading can be carried out to a Pro Res super 8 scan (or image sequence), once the essential film data has been captured successfully. In the case of Kodak Vision 3 emulsions, the flat colour palette is a gift to the grader / editor, as any amount of colour grading, saturation and enhancements can be achieved from that glorious Vision 3 colour depth. Truly magic stuff that film!

And for the record…

On8mil (Analogue Image Ltd) is based in north London UK, from an office near Kentish Town, using a variety of machines we have designed and built ourselves, employing genuine frame by frame scanning utilising a variety of machine vision cameras which deliver between 2K – 4K super 8 and standard 8 scans.

Why Shoot Super 8?

Good question

What’s the appeal? It’s expensive, takes ages to see the results, the gear is old and my iPhone can do pretty much anything an 8mm camera can. Let’s deal with that blow by blow.

Expense

Yes it is a pricey game. In all a cart of super 8 film is roughly £21 these days. Processing around £15 and telecine around another £15 (generally speaking – although our prices are much better than that). So in all, the damage can be around £50 for 3 minutes 20 seconds (at 18 frames per second) and around 2 and half minutes (at 24 frames per second).

So it would seem only insane people shoot super 8? Well, maybe. But it really depends on a number of variables and your criteria for shooting. Firstly there’s the aesthetic. Super 8 (8mm film) is a beautiful format. It’s been set apart as such from it’s inception. Some of my earliest memories are recorded on 8mm film and as I grew up watching them occasionally projected onto a screen in the dark, it was a real thrill. Video never held that allure. The 8mm aesthetic combines a very real looking image with a curious detachment. It’s over-saturation, shakiness and fragility, reflects wonderfully the human condition, (far more accurately than video and HD digital).

Have you noticed how obsessed we are in making digital imagery look analogue?

My iPhone is packed full of presets, the likes of ‘Instagram’, the ’8mm Vintage Camera’ and countless other apps too numerous to mention. Digital, it seems, really wants to look analogue. Huge budget films, dramas and advertisements shot digitally, lean heavily on an array of analogue emulators, such as cross-processing, bleach-out, light-leaks, artificial grain (to name but a few) and to great effect. It seems we don’t really enjoy having a pinpoint accurate mirror held up to us. There’s no denying, these digital effects work well – they generate an emotive response. But with repeated use, these effects are becoming tired, over-calculated, generic, cynical even and (it’s a cliché I know) cold.

So why not shoot the real thing? Photochemical film still holds greater depth of colour and has greater latitude than it’s digital counterpart and with super 8 it’s relatively cheap and a powerful discipline. You have 3 minutes 20 seconds to shoot your moments – make the most of it, feel exhilarated and happy accidents will undoubtedly happen. These days £50 is a cheap night out with a friend or two. Or it could be an excellent day out with a super cool, super 8 camera. Without the headache the following morning.

The gear is really old…

Another harsh truth for the super 8 filmmaker. Many of the cameras are easily 30 to 40 years old. Pick up a beautiful looking piece off Ebay, for say £40, run some film through it and there’s a chance the camera needs adjustment or worse still, just doesn’t work. More expense and disappointment. Speaking as a person who’s bought a few too many super 8 cameras, however, you’ll be surprised at the rate of success in using the old gear. Another cliché, ‘they don’t make them like they used to’. This is actually true. These days, cameras and similar recording devices (aka phones) tend to be designed with in-built obsolescence. Part of the incredibly dynamic technological curve we find ourselves in – there’s very little call for consumer electronics to survive beyond five years, as they will have been superseded by higher pixel counts, improved sensors, faster chip sets and new operating systems. No bad thing for the manufactures, and I guess exhilarating for the consumer who likes the latest gadget.

My experience in buying credible super 8 cameras is that, by and large, they work. Amazingly well. The lenses tend to be fixed on most models, so as a sealed unit there is little chance that it’s got really dirty on the inner lens elements and film interface. That is of course unless there is dreaded fungus – in which case avoid (unless you’re really into the look of the camera and would like an attractive ornament). On the non-fixed lens cameras (such as Beaulieu, Leicina, Pathe, Nalcolm etc), there’s the added pleasure of being able to seek out alternative lenses, if you suspect the existing lens has had a hard life. Add to this that there are a good number of engineers who will gladly still work on these cameras. Part of our ‘raison d’être’ is to bring awareness of this fact to 8mm film-makers. We’ll soon have a full repair section on this site, but in the mean-time, if you’d like a very competitive quote for camera lubrication, lens collimating (i.e. resetting the lens to it’s optimum optical performance), general cleaning and repair, please get in touch.

My iPhone can do pretty much everything an 8mm camera can

Can it? An iPhone can do many, many things and create environments that are, by and large, useful and fun. But there it ends. At best an iPhone can create an emulation of film based on a limited number of algorithms and assumed 8mm film behaviours. Which is fun, but certainly not the real thing. It’s a programme running a predictable and very limited emulation, with very little pre or postproduction flexibility.

The bottom line; if you want the 8mm film look – shoot 8mm film.

And where’s the fun in shooting ‘film’ with a phone?!