Provia 100 results

[blackangus1]

Okay, I just got the Provia 100 roll back from MovieStuff, transferred on the DV8. It looks pretty nice, good color, low grain, all looks good...

...except for the horrible JITTER!

The film is plagued by a significant image jitter. I didn't notice it looking like this during projection, but during the transfer it jitters dramatically. I thought perhaps it was my cheapo projector that caused the problem, but Roger did a registration test and the frameline varies in thickness, which could only have happened in-camera.

The sprocket holes are also quite ragged, not clean & crisp like K40 sprocket holes. Again, could this have been caused by the projector? I don't know.

Furthermore, my test results are inconclusive because while I used two different cameras to shoot the roll, I had never used either camera before -- so it is possible (although unlikely) that both cameras are faulty. Instead I think it's perhaps an issue with pulling a nonstandard filmstock through the cartridge. Pro8mm used to recommend that their films only be used in Beaulieu cameras. Maybe they had good reason to suggest so.

In any case, if anyone else has shot a roll of the custom Fuji stocks, it would be good to hear a report back. Even Chas, with your ruined processing -- can you examine the frame line to see if it varies in thickness, and can you examine the sprocket holes under a magnifying glass to see if they're clean & sharp?

As for the film results themselves, Provia 100 was overall pretty comparable to K40. As a faster daylight-balanced stock it proved to be somewhat interesting, but not compelling. It will be interesting indeed to see clips/hear reports on the Velvia 50 and Provia 400 stocks. Best of luck all, and I sincerely hope you have better results than I did.

[Matt Pacini]

Barry, I'm just curious.
What cameras do you use for Super 8?
It's too bad this happened. I was really interested in seeing how that looked.
To be able to shoot ASA100 with comparable grain to K40 is quite compelling.
Is the latittude any different than K40, in your opinion?
But of course, someone would have to figure out a way to go around Super 8 sound for it to be economical.
Let's start a letter writing campaign to Fuji to start making this stuff in S8 cartridges!

Matt Pacini

[TA 152]

A possible technical issue on the jitter - only film related.

As far as I understand the Fuji film does have a Polyester base while the Kodaks has a Acetate? base.

Now, if the perforating machinery at PRO8 is optimized for the Kodak base it may not perforate the Fuji/Polyester film as good as the Kodak stuff.

I believe that the Fuji is different and that this may cause bad perforation?

In the old days of the Agfa film which was, as far as I know, Polyester based. Itwas possible to actualy "hear" a different sound when the Agfa ran through the projector from that of the Kodak. It appeared as if the perforating was actually a little different. The Agfa ran somewhat less noisy than the Kodak on the German Bauer T610 projector.


R

[TA 152]

Just examined the brand new unused Provia 400F cart and the prefs are definately somewhat distorted in the perforations especialy when compared to a K40. I also examined a PRO8 V500T (kodak film) from Pro8 and this was much better than the P400F, closer to the K40 but not exactly as good.

I think this strengthern my suspicion towards the PRO8mm perofrating machinery not beeing optimized to the Fuji Polyester base.

Post some scans of it later.

R

[MovieStuff]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><table border="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#333333" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FF9900"><tr><td width="100%" bgcolor="#DDDDDD"><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by S8 Booster:
As far as I understand the Fuji film does have a Polyester base while the Kodaks has a Acetate? base. Now, if the perforating machinery at PRO8 is optimized for the Kodak base it may not perforate the Fuji/Polyester film as good as the Kodak stuff. I believe that the Fuji is different and that this may cause bad perforation?
</font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>

I think you may be right. Here are side by side closeups of the Pro8mm hole and the Eastmand hole.



The Pro8mm was punched through Fuji Provia and is pretty gnarly on the edges. The Eastman film is super clean on the edges. The polyester based stock of the Fuji may be just too tough for the perforator to chew through. The irregular edges combined with the difference in film thickness may have caused the shifting frame lines and jitter.

[TA 152]

That is exactly the same stuff that I can see on the unused P400F.

Even the outer film edges seem to have been not perfectly cut in the splitting.

I will post my scans for compare as soon as I can get that D.... ADSL thing going again.

R

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ October 27, 2002 11:55 PM: Message edited by: S8 Booster ]</font>

[TA 152]

Posting scans:

F400:Fuji
[img]ftp://ftp.filmshooting.com/upload/pictures/F400X2.jpg[/img]

K40 / Kodak
[img]ftp://ftp.filmshooting.com/upload/pictures/K40.jpg[/img]

PRO8 V500T/Kodak
[img]ftp://ftp.filmshooting.com/upload/pictures/V500T48.jpg[/img]

R

[TA 152]

Perforating polyester S8 film is obviously, a well known problem of the past.

Found this very intersting article at http://www.super8.de/news.htm
which explains how the super8 and single8 came around trigged by an attempt to turn R8 into a cartridge format.

As we all know they failed and Fuji got their systema and the others more or less went with Kodak.

At first Agfa tried to use a polyester based film in their S8 carts.

However, they did not manage to perforate the polyester film properly!

So they went for the actetace as well.

Now, if Agfa did not make it how can PRO8mm do it?
No way I believe.

Seem that only Fuji can do this job properly on 8mm films?

So I guess all of us stuck with the Fuji Provias will have to expect jitter, unfortunately.

R

[TA 152]

Targeting the jitter poblem.

Now, with all the reports around on jitters varying from the jittery cartridges to this Provia "experimental" batch jitter I decided to "save" my 3 Provia cartridges by investing in a Nikon R10.

The reason is that the R10 uses double pin registration and thereby I hope to eliminate any jitter problem.

I am going to shoot one of the P400F cartridges with 3 different cameras; The Canon 1014 XL-S, Elmo 1012 S-XL and the Nikon R10 to see if there are any differences between them.

Previously, at least in Germany, there were reports that the Ektachrome 125 and the Vision200T cartridges would cause jitter due to a thicker film base but I do not know if this was back in the days of the bad cartridges.

I do have a V200T under shoot and will interchange the cartridge between the R10 and the other cameras to see if there are any differences in image stability.

Worst case, the Nikon may be the cam of the future if Kodak "converts" to Polyester base.

I do no expect the results before the end of this year and will post them immediately after.

R

[MovieStuff]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><table border="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#333333" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FF9900"><tr><td width="100%" bgcolor="#DDDDDD"><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by S8 Booster:
I decided to "save" my 3 Provia cartridges by investing in a Nikon R10. The reason is that the R10 uses double pin registration </font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>

You must mean double advance claw. There is no pin registered super 8 camera in existence that I am aware of.