Technical cinematography/photography post here.

in cinematography •  3 years ago 

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So, since I was formally trained in cinematography rather than photography, I didn't respect digital image capture until much later than most people and most of my training was on celluloid film. I still only shoot celluloid film on any photography gig on which I have creative control.

Still, one of the supposed drawbacks of film is that you can't change the color balanced of the film on a whim. Film is either daylight or tungsten balanced and, for those of us who are trained, shooting daylight under tungsten or tungsten under daylight is technically wrong.

As a result, even in my still photography, I spent years using 80A correction filters on daylight film when I was shooting under tungsten lights and 85B filters when shooting tungsten film under daylight sources.

After having shot several rolls of tungsten film under sunlight without color correction filters, I'm pretty convinced that I've been duped. I'm also convinced that most people who shoot stills on film have been duped.

Cinematographers mostly work with tungsten balanced film whereas still photographers barely have any tungsten films to work with.

Daylight films are much harder to correct for color when shooting under tungsten sources and 80A filters take away two stops of light. Tungsten balanced films are easily corrected for daylight sources in post and, even if you do use an 85B filter when shooting under daylight conditions, it only kills 2/3rds of a stop.

Most flash lighting is daylight balanced which is the only reason why I can imagine that most still photo films are balanced for daylight. Aside from that, honestly, I would never buy another daylight balanced film again except for daylight balanced slide film. It's hard for me to even imagine having a daylight balanced motion picture film stock on a shoot.

No matter how you feel about the film The Tree of Life, it's fucking beautiful. That was all shot with tungsten film and there was no filtration used under daylight conditions.

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