neagtive vs reversal

What will be the most important differences in working with negative film compared to working with reversal film?

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latitude. it's harder to keep details in the shadows and highlights with reversal, but also a lot easier to get good blacks. the other major difference is that overexposure increases saturation and contrast with negative, and decreases it with reversal, and vice versa for underexposure.

/matt

There's also a "psychological" difference that may or may not play a part in your choice. Reversal of any kind was never meant for duplication. As such, it has what is known as "projection density" or "projection contrast" where the blacks are deep and the whites are snappy and bright. Negative was never meant for projection but the prints that are often pulled from negative are and they, too, have "projection density". As a result, any print derived from a negative that is then transferred to video will be contrasty, just like reversal. In that sense, reversal will always look much like a print transferred to video, since reversal and prints from negatives both share some common characteristics.

The difference to the story can be fairly compelling. A modern story might benefit from a more "now" look that transferring directly from a negative will give you. A story set in the 40's might be better suited to the "then" look that reversal or prints transferred to video provides.

However, all this is fairly moot as it is my opinion that the only negative worth shooting in super 8 is the 50 asa, which is still grainier than the K40. So, in that sense, the grain of the neg may defeat the "now" look normally associated with neg to video transfers.

My two cents....

Roger

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Roger Evans
MovieStuff
http://www.afterimagephoto.tv/moviestuff.html

If you fancy developing it yourself then obtaining a negative is easier than getting the positive. Transferring the film directly to the computer means the reversal is electronic.

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keep the shutter going and check out MZ and Railways at http://www.siltec.co.uk

Thanks guys,

"the other major difference is that overexposure increases saturation and contrast with negative, and decreases it with reversal, and vice versa for underexposure."


So this means that if I want a caucausian in daylight overexposed one or two stops to get his face whiter; in reversal (as I always do) i will have to open the aperture one or two stops, but in negative I have to shut the aperture down one or two stops, to get that result? This would be also a major difference, if 'm correct.

Also wonder when talking about OVERexposure, one exposes over the exposure one gets when using a grey card (zone 5). So for to get saturated colours one always has to expose for that zone and close the aperture half a stop (in reversal). This mean saturated recording will always look a bit dark (since exposing for zone 5 means a bit dark recordings). I'm also thinking of "Mulholland Drive" here of David Lynch, I saw yesterday (great!). he uses a lot of saturated colours in his films, but most of his shots (at least a lot) are a bit dark, twilight shots.
Hope I'm making sense here.

thirdly, I always get confused about the term "contrasty" or when people talk about a film having "rich contrast". When going from black to white, there are many grey shades which cover that area. If I'm correct "contrasty" films leave a lot of those grey shades out, while "contrast rich" films cover most of those shades and are more ralistic or "now" because of that 9as roger says)

Hope I've got this right

Thanks

Paul



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one more thing:

So "increasing the contrast" means more contrast and so...less shades of grey included.

Hope I don't look like a fool here.

Paul

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Paul:

The first thing I learned when entering amateur filmmaking long was:

There is no such thing as foolish questions other than,
bad replies

Which still is valid to me.



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FW 190

well, overexposure is still overexposure, and vice versa. the difference is how the film reacts to it. overexposing negative will still make the result brighter, but it will also result in a denser negative, which means less grain, more contrast and more saturated colors. and it's kind of obvious that underexposure creates a denser film in reversal, creating the same effect.

and yes, saturated reversal obtained with this method will look a little dark, but i think that's ok. and since negative is always printed or telecined, you can always time it back to normal.

as for the contrasty/contrast rich thing, you're basically right, even though i'm not sure about the terminology. i'd say contrast rich was the same as contrasty for example.

finally, increasing contrast means pushing the grayscale towards the extremes, yes. it doesn't necessarily mean that there are less midtones though. theoretically they get darker and darker (or brighter and brighter) as the contrast increases, but they never become completely black.

Ok Thanks Mattias,

I forgot, when shooting negative one should think in terms of prints, be it film or video prints. So on negative one will get darker images when overexposing but in prints, wherein the negative is reversed, this means brighter images as well. The only important difference will be the density of the image which will be responsible for saturated images and more contrast and is acquired differently in reversal and negative, as you said. I've got it now.

thanks

Paul

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So is this how you get those contrasty flashback sequences in many films of today? Take "Resident Evil" which just came out- are the flashback sequences in the graveyard done by just overexposing a bit on a negative film? Or is that achieved by cross processing or adding the contrast in an NLE program? I must say it looks killer and I really would like to try some stuff like that on film, but am wondering how the big guys do it before trying a half assed approach.

Thanks

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