Can I get some advice for digital to film transfers?

[slashmaster]

Need advice on how to do a good digital to film transfer. This is what happened with my first attempt. Found color photo's I wanted to use, then used software to reverse them so they would be positives on my black and white negative film. I used a non reflex 16mm bolex to film at 8 fps at f 4 from a CRT monitor at 1024 x 768 resolution and 60 hertz refresh rate. The results were the blacks were not black enough, contrast wasn't too good and you could see lots of flicker. What shall I try next? Should I even use a CRT or should I use an LCD? I should probably crank up the contrast on the monitor right? When I use the software to reverse the image should I also use it to convert it to black and white first or just let the film itself do that? If I need more light do I get better results cranking up monitor brightness or opening the f stop wider?

[Scotness]

Years ago I transferred the trailer for In My Image from CRT to K40 - it was a bit underexposed as I recall, but not much - I think I did it with my 4008ZMII running at 2fps - and the synch worked out fine, no strobing etc - no audio of course though.

If you go through the archives it was discussed a bit here - but I don't know if it will answer your questions - I think adjusting your display to best suit your film stock is the key

Good luck

Scot

[slashmaster]

Years ago I transferred the trailer for In My Image from CRT to K40 - it was a bit underexposed as I recall, but not much - I think I did it with my 4008ZMII running at 2fps - and the synch worked out fine, no strobing etc - no audio of course though.

If you go through the archives it was discussed a bit here - but I don't know if it will answer your questions - I think adjusting your display to best suit your film stock is the key

Good luck

Scot

Oh yeah? Did you fully crank the contrast and brightness on that monitor? How did you set up to automatically record at 2 fps like that? Slowest playback for digital video I've seen is 1/4th speed.

[Scotness]

I was playing the video back through adobe premiere - so I think I set it to 8% playback speed.

I guess my advice would be - meter the whole clip really well off your monitor first - I don't think I did this properly the first time round - I may have relied on the internal meter in the camera. You may have to average across different brightness levels unless you can adjust the camera apperture on the fly.

Also something I didn't do at the time (because I didn't realise I could!) is set the colour temperature of the monitor so it matches the filmstock.

Pleasingly the grain of the film softened any pixelation (I did a DV clip - this was 11 years ago!)

Here's the original discussion

Though I do remember a few years after I did it someone else did as well and there were extensive discussions about that as well - if you search around you may find that thread

Best of luck

[Scotness]

Re pumping the contrast of the monitor I didn't do that and not sure if I would advise it - it depends on the film stock you are using - since I was using k40 it added heaps of contrast - under those circumstances you don't want to start off with that in there

Scot

[slashmaster]

Re pumping the contrast of the <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_sacat=0 ... tor&_frs=1" target="_blank" class="vglnk"><span>monitor</span></a> I didn't do that and not sure if I would advise it - it depends on the film stock you are using - since I was using k40 it added heaps of contrast - under those circumstances you don't want to start off with that in there

Scot

Yeah, I guess contrast at 100% may not be the way to go. But being that you're going to lose a little going through the lens, maybe turning it up slightly more than you usually have it is the way to go?

[Scotness]

Maybe - I guess it really depends on the film stock - you'll just have to experiment

[richard p. t.]

To avoid flicker, don't use a crt monitor, use anything else.
You won't get acceptable contrast if you are shooting on bw neg and having it developed at a lab in d96. If you are after projection contrast then you will at least have to use a projection contrast developer like d97 (or d95 reversal second dev or d19 or d67 if doing it yourself). You would get projection contrast if you kept the monitor image positive and filmed it on triX. Then you would be well advised to turn the contrast of the monitor down (not up which you were trying with neg). Filming in triX works well. No need toke the image bw first.
Cheers
Richard

[slashmaster]

Thanks Scotness, Thanks Richard p. t.

Richard, was going to try cranking up the refresh rate, but maybe I'll try an lcd now. So I shouldn't use d-76? Can you put all those developers in order of how much contrast they give? Oh yeah, since it's for a black and white film, was thinking about turning down the reds and greens and cranking up the blues because they give better definition. Good idea?