What the heck is a 16mm negative film for?

[ppppenguin]

Thanks for digging out those references.

I wonder who had a need for 35mm reversal movie film. If you had the budget to shoot movies on 35mm you would have wanted to do grading and more before going to a release print. Hence you would have shot negative and gone through a conventional workflow. Reversal 35mm film was routine for shooting colour slides. Kodachrome and Ektachome being the best known processes.

I can certainly understand the utility of shooting 16mm news film on reversal stock. The telecine operator would be doing grading "on the fly".

[Telecolor 3007]

The good thing about reveresal (positive) film is that it can be project directly.
Dizavantages: it have a lower exposure latitude then a negative film.
But since a reversal film can be directly project... it comes down to costs. When you shoot something with a great variety of scenes (movie, extended documentary) you will need some editing, maybe more scenes that need to be copy... so probably if you had money you would use negative - positive process or positive - negative - positive process. Lot of money, but the colours of olf films are somthing that can't be reproduced by digital and they have charm.
I would like to try 16 m.m. one day.

[old_tv_nut]

You would have to get the spec sheets for the special version and matching reversal print film. It's possible that the taking film was low contrast, with the wide latitude of a negative, so it could be printed on high contrast reversal print material with a range of exposure adjustment.

At one time, Kodak produced a special low contrast 35mm print film for video use. The shadow density would be restored electronically. This gave better shadow detail than could be obtained with regular contrast film and the telecine cameras of the time, which had limited dynamic range in the shadows.

Edit: I also wonder who had a need for 35mm motion picture reversal film. Could it be that the 35mm version was not sold in movie rolls, and only used for slide (still) duplication?

[kf4rca]

It was a negative color film marketed in the early 70's to readers of popular photography magazines of the time. It was a negative film for positive slides.
I used it a lot. I believe it was remnants of 35 mm motion picture stock.
The advantage was that you had a negative that you could color correct from when making slides (or prints). With positive slides, you are stuck with the color that you get.
The lab was in Hollywood which was an added plus. Photographers would say, "I send my film to Hollywood for processing."

[old_tv_nut]

Found a wiki article with a comprehensive list of motion picture film stocks and dates, which may lead to more info:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...5%E2%80%931977)

[ppppenguin]

It is possible to reversal process some negative films. I don't know if this was ever done as a routine professional process. An example:

http://www.mr-alvandi.com/technique/...ite-films.html

[old_tv_nut]

Large labs offered reversal processing of black and white film. I did this once to try making color separations and projecting them through filters to reconstitute a color picture. I didn't have the resources to get really good results, which would have involved doing Ansel-Adams like testing of exposure and development time to get all three primaries to the proper exposure and contrast.

[old_tv_nut]

By the way, reversal processing of black and white to make slides is a usable but not high quality technique, because the negative film is designed to have a low contrast and a large overexposure latitude. This means that there is a lot of unexposed silver left in the highlights of the negative, resulting in a lot of re-exposed silver in those highlights of the reversed image - in other words, a low contrast and dark positive image. This may not have been crucial when the main goal was just to produce a recognizable projection image for a talk, but a film designed for reversal would have most of the silver exposed in the highlights, resulting in very little silver in the reversed highlights; in otherwords, a brighter and more contrasty image. This is the reason why films designed for reversal have very little overexposure latitude compared to negative films.

[Telecolor 3007]

I know that copying a image from a black and white negative to another black and white negative will produce a positive image. How good is this process?

[ppppenguin]

That's the normal way of doing it. Both for B&W and colour. Shoot negative film in the camera and print to similar film to make the final copy.

[old_tv_nut]

Originally Posted by Telecolor 3007

I know that copying a image from a black and white negative to another black and white negative will produce a positive image. How good is this process?

Negative material is designed to have low contrast (gamma = 0.5, if you know what that means) and print material is designed to have high contrast to restore the original scene contrast (gamma about 2.0, or often more to compensate for visual loss of apparent contrast). Ansel Adams developed the "Zone" technique to control the negative contrast.

If you copy a negative film onto another negative film, the contrast will be too low unless you modify the development of one or the other to increase it.

On the other hand, reversal transparency film is designed to have high contrast; thus, copying onto another transparency results in too-high contrast unless the original or copy film is specifically designed for duplicating (lower contrast).

The efffect of excess contrast is seen in the early View Master 3D reels, which were originated and copied on Kodachrome. It was quite commercially acceptable to the public, but a knowledgable photographer would recognize the excess contrast.

[old_tv_nut]

If you want a deep understanding of film contrast issues, the best way is to study the Jones four-quadrant plot.
Here is an example of a color negative/positive process:
https://theasc.com/magazine/april05/...m2/image9.html

[Adlershof]

Originally Posted by TV-collector

May I can turn the video signal of this film after it comes out of the film player (Fernseh GmbH) to watch this film?

It is not as simple as reversing the video signal, because newer negative film stocks had a corrective orange mask.

Originally Posted by TV-collector

Until now I am not clear about the sound of the film, magnetic line or light sound.

Either an optical soundtrack or a magnetic strip would be immediately visible. If neither is present the sound will be on a separate magnetic film ("Sepmag"), and this will likely be the case for such material from a TV station, in particular if this is 16mm film.

Originally Posted by ppppenguin

As far as I know, all 16m film in the camera was negative.

In Germany it was indeed the usual practice to shoot news and other non-fictional stuff on reversal film, the same material as also sold for amateur use. At least at DDR-F no one bothered for any kind of grading in this use, they let the automatics of the telecine machine doing it. Thus often after a cut the picture went almost dark, then after a second or so the machine cranked it up. Not always, but too often these broadcasts of 16mm footage looked gawdawful.

Originally Posted by old_tv_nut

At one time, Kodak produced a special low contrast 35mm print film for video use.

Orwo made one special colour film stock for TV use, a reversal duplicate film, called UF 1. In black-and-white they had various stocks of reversal camera film in various speeds and special kinescope film dedicated to TV use.

Originally Posted by old_tv_nut

Edit: I also wonder who had a need for 35mm motion picture reversal film. Could it be that the 35mm version was not sold in movie rolls, and only used for slide (still) duplication?

The dividing lines appear to be a bit blurred anyway. At Orwo, considering colour stocks only, reversal duplicating film UD 1 / UD 2 as well as print film PC 7 were officially dedicated to both still photography and cinematography. Beyond this some guys sweared on using NC 3 motion picture film for still photography, of course in the proper fashion with a correction filter under daylight.