Super8 print,

[Basstruc]

Hi guys (and girls, thought they seems to be not a lot here),
I'm willing to do a print from a single frame of kodachrome. But I don't want to do it digitaly or make an 35mm enlargement first. I tought about using 8x10 enlargers but minox one's seems to be B&W only. I found no Beseler enlarger in france (only in US on Ebay). Could I just get a put on a normal enlarger a wide angle lens (like zenitar) and cut a gate from opaque paper ? Would it work ? If yes, did anyone used reversible print paper and would advise me on Ilfochrome or Ektachrome ? If I do not have any solution other than 35mm enlargement and suicide, what kind of 24X36 filmstock would you advise me then ?
Thanks,
matt

[MovieStuff]

You can certainly use a normal enlarging lens to print with. As you say, just cut some black paper to mask the image so the light won't leak around the edges. Using the lens from a larger format has its advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that the image will super rectilinear, meaning that there will be zero chance for distortion at the edges because you are using only the very center of the circle of illumination. The disadvantage is that you will not be using the entire resolution of the lens so, unless it's a very good lens, the image may not be as sharp as it could be.

In truth, there really is nothing special about an enlarging lens (other than being flat field) and if you're good with tools, you can make a holder for your super 8 projection lens or, perhaps, use a C mount lens from a 16mm camera. As these lenses are made to accomodate smaller formats, you may find that some offer higher resolution than an enlarging lens meant for a larger format like 35mm. The reason is that the super 8 projection lens or the C mount 16mm format lens are designed to deal with much, much larger images than the enlarging lens is designed to produce and still maintain good resolution.

Roger

[FilmIs4Ever]

If you want to make a print from Kodachrome, its going to get very diffeicult in a short time because certain corporate assholes at both Kodak and Fuji have discontinued all direct positive paper. Soon the only option for positive printing will be to print onto Ilfochrome or make an internegative, which reduces quality significantly from what I've heard.

[MovieStuff]

Soon the only option for positive printing will be to print onto Ilfochrome or make an internegative, which reduces quality significantly from what I've heard.

Actually, an internegative can preserve more quality (if it is large enough) compared to printing from the the original film positive. For instance, a 4x5 internegative of a Kodachrome 35mm transparency will produce a far superior C type print than creating an R type print from the original Kodachrome transparency. The grain of the 4x5 internegative is incidental but printing off a negative can do wonders to control contrast and maintain shadow detail. I would say that, if possible, enlarging the super 8 frame to a 35mm negative would be the best route as long as long as a very, very sharp macro lens or extension tube arraingment were used.

[super8man]

I don't have the technical answer to "How" but I recently watched one of the JFK anniversary shows and the interesting part was how they blew up the 8mm film strip to a series of 4x5 postives, then did a high resolution scan and made a "new" movie from that to get every last ounce of detail and edge information that they could.

Perhaps this is the way you should go - blow up your film to at least the 120 format (positive/slide) and then go from there. Lots of labs have the capability to print from 120.

Otherwise, just scan the film (on a professional level) to a high-res digital format and start printing. That's what I did here:



Cheers,
m

[Wells]

All good ideas and there are a few "workflows" you could use, but watch for these caveats:

Positive film to larger positive film to scan won't really get you anywhere, as there are film scanners that handle any format, and will scan down to the grain. Every generation of duping in your process will lose you a little sharpness, even if the grain is not an issue. Also, unless you use special low contrast duping positive film, the contrast will be too high. To scan directly, try this- mount a strip of film with the image you want into a 35mm slide and mask off the empty areas. Then, get it scanned or scan it with the highest resolution 35mm film scanner you can find. There are an abundance of good ones out there, and many places that scan. Kodak pro photo cd is a good system, and pertty cheap. you could even mount a few frames in the slide and kill more birds with one stone.

Positive orig. to internegative film to print is another route, although I think I remember hearing that kodak recently cut their line of interneg film. If you can do this, try to blow it up to 4x5, this will give you a good negative to work with, the grain of the dupe issue will be eliminated and this offers all the color and exposure control of a color negative.

Direct-printing to ilfochrome is a possibility, but not cheap, and there are contrast issues. Often a contrast reducing negative mask is used...more pain in the butt. That being said, ilfochrome is beautiful stuff if done well.

If it were me (and it will be soon) I would scan it directly with a good 35mm film scanner.

Hope this helps...

Wells

[Wells]

Oh, forgot to mention, do it yourself ilfochrome requires an enlarger with a color head, and it's own set of chemicals. The process is quite touchy if I recall, with many steps and a tight temperature range (1/2 a degree or so i think) That being said, there are some kits out there...Dont forget, no safelight eitherjavascript:emoticon(':D')

Wells

[MovieStuff]

there are film scanners that handle any format

Except 8mm, which is the format in question.

To scan directly, try this- mount a strip of film with the image you want into a 35mm slide and mask off the empty areas. Then, get it scanned or scan it with the highest resolution 35mm film scanner you can find. There are an abundance of good ones out there, and many places that scan. Kodak pro photo cd is a good system, and pertty cheap. you could even mount a few frames in the slide and kill more birds with one stone.

It won't be good enough (compared to optically printing) as it won't any different than cropping into an 8mm section of a 35mm transparency. There is a limit to how high a resolution you can go using even a commercial scanner and a huge loss of resolution with a consumer scanner. Anyone that's tried scanning 8mm frames directly has found that out.

Positive orig. to internegative film to print is another route, although I think I remember hearing that kodak recently cut their line of interneg film. If you can do this, try to blow it up to 4x5, this will give you a good negative to work with, the grain of the dupe issue will be eliminated and this offers all the color and exposure control of a color negative.

Agreed, though you don't really have to have "internegative" stock to create a good internegative. Most labs don't even use internegative stock when bumping up to 4x5, which is one of the reasons that Kodak cut their internegative line.

[Basstruc]

The reason why I want to do a direct print from Super8 is that I'm attempting to a high photo engeneer school entrie contest. They are asking for 5 photographies using differents types of technics (either on shoot and on lab) of each of those. If I want to impress them, I don't want to fall into facility.

use a C mount lens from a 16mm camera.

I might have troubles with collimation. No ?
Did you ever used a shooting lens for enlarging ? Is there the same collimation parameters ?

The reason I want to use wide angle lens is that with a 50mm lens, I will not be able to do a large print.

I only used enlarger with M42 mount. Is it a standart ?

Thanks,
Matt

[Actor]

You can certainly use a normal enlarging lens to print with. As you say, just cut some black paper to mask the image so the light won't leak around the edges. Using the lens from a larger format has its advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that the image will super rectilinear, meaning that there will be zero chance for distortion at the edges because you are using only the very center of the circle of illumination. The disadvantage is that you will not be using the entire resolution of the lens so, unless it's a very good lens, the image may not be as sharp as it could be.

This last sentence does not make sense to me. Resolution is determined by the wavelength of light, the distance from the object plane to the lens and the diameter of the lens. If memory serves the formula for resolution is

s = LD/d

where s is the smallest distance that can be resolved on the object plane (i.e., on the negative),
L is the wavelength of the light,
D is the distance from the object plane to the lens and
d is the diameter of the lens.

There is nothing in this formula about the size of the image, i.e., the effect of a mask at the negative. A mask at the lens would stop down the lens and thus reduce d. But a mask at the lens would not be effective for the purpose intended.

Any light radiating from a point on the negative passes through all of the lens and then converges to a point in the focal plane. As long as the lens itself is not stopped down the full size of the lens is used and the resolution is not effected.

I am also unclear on what you mean by "circle of illumination." The only place I have heard this term before is in large format photography where it refers to vignetting.

[MovieStuff]

The disadvantage is that you will not be using the entire resolution of the lens so, unless it's a very good lens, the image may not be as sharp as it could be.

This last sentence does not make sense to me.

Perhaps a poor choice of wording on my part. Let me try to explain....

There is nothing in this formula about the size of the image, i.e., the effect of a mask at the negative. A mask at the lens would stop down the lens and thus reduce d. But a mask at the lens would not be effective for the purpose intended.

I wasn't implying that masking had any effect on anything and particularly not resolution. I was simply saying that he could do as he suggested and mask the gate so that the light would not bleed around the edges of the film, that's all.

Regarding resolution, a so-so lens meant for a larger format will produce lackluster results if used on a smaller format because the smaller format uses only the very center of the circle of illumination and, when the final image is enlarged, the crummy resolution of the lens is more noticable than it would if used on the larger format where the image won't have to be enlarged as much to achieve the same final size.

I am also unclear on what you mean by "circle of illumination." The only place I have heard this term before is in large format photography where it refers to vignetting.

All lenses produce a circle of illumination (COI). If you look on rather cheap telephoto lenses, they simply produce a huge COI and let the image spill and bounce all around the film chamber while the film only records what is in the center, thus creating a telephoto effect. This is what happens when putting a 12mm fisheye lens from a Nikon on a super 8 camera. The Nikon will see it as super wide angle because it corners out at the edges of the COI (which is why there's distortion) but the super 8 format will only use the very center of the image and, as such, will avoid any distortion and be rectilinear (where the horizon is straight across). If the lens is sharp (like a Nikon), then this works okay, even if the final projected film image is enlarged quite a bit. If the lens is very cheap (like an old Spiratone), then the image will be soft because, as noted before, the resolution of any lens is more critical the more the image is enlarged.

Make sense?

[Wells]

I would have to respectfully disagree...

It won't be good enough (compared to optically printing) as it won't any different than cropping into an 8mm section of a 35mm transparency. There is a limit to how high a resolution you can go using even a commercial scanner and a huge loss of resolution with a consumer scanner. Anyone that's tried scanning 8mm frames directly has found that out.

What I meant by "handle any format" is that many decent film scanners (even consumer models) scan at or above the level of resolution of the film itself (don't confuse these with flatbed scanners, which certainly won't be able to see grain, and are useless for anything smaller than 4x5 in.). Any format can be scanned, as long as it can be positioned in the scanner, which may take a little more rigging for some than for others, but it isn't rocket science. A friend does fantastic work scanning Minox B&W images and blowing them up to 30x40. The grain looks huge, giving the pics a nice pontillistic quality. Minox frames are about half of a 35 frame, and he simply inserts them into a slide, masks the empty holes, and scans them with a nikon slide scanner.

...However, I can't yet upload the picture I have prepared to defend my case. It is an 8mm sized crop of a 35mm original, scanned via kodak pro-photo cd (approx. 10 dollars per scan,) you can clearly see the gobs of grain, and can even begin to make out the shapes of the pieces of grain if you zoom in. The original was taken on fuji Velvia, which is a very fine grained film, and sharp--comparable to K40. Since you can see the grain clearly, wouldn't you assume that the scanner's ability to see detail exceeds that of the film's ability to capture it? Any more resolution would just yield the grain-shape more clearly, and would produce no new information. The kodak pro-photo cd process is pretty nice for the price, but there are consumer 35mm film scanners that have similar quality, and high end drum scans greatly exceed the resolution and d-max of the kodak scans. In fact, most drum scanners are not used to their potential because after a certain point, you have exceeded the film's information-gathering ability, and all you have is a larger file with the same amount of info as a smaller one.

Optical printing and then scanning would still give a pretty good result, and you would still be able to see the grain (assuming all of the optics in the workflow were of good quality) but that would be two generations of reproduction, whereas a direct scan would be only one. The grain pattern tends to get softer and softer with each dupe generation, even with good optics.

BTW, both of the labs I use quit offering interneg service because Kodak discontinued the interneg film. Using regular neg film will produce an image, but for color fidelity and the ability to capture detail in the shadows and highlights, and for a result resembling the original chrome, the interneg film was much better. the regular stuff is just too contrasty, and you begin to see color shifts, cross-curves, etc.

I have been meaning to use a friend's Nikon 35mm scanner for some 8mm frames, As soon as I do that I will post the scans as well as the crcopped 35mm frame mentioned above. (I need to set up a website first...)

Cheers,

Wells

[MovieStuff]

I would have to respectfully disagree...

It won't be good enough (compared to optically printing) as it won't any different than cropping into an 8mm section of a 35mm transparency. There is a limit to how high a resolution you can go using even a commercial scanner and a huge loss of resolution with a consumer scanner. Anyone that's tried scanning 8mm frames directly has found that out.

What I meant by "handle any format" is that many decent film scanners (even consumer models) scan at or above the level of resolution of the film itself (don't confuse these with flatbed scanners, which certainly won't be able to see grain, and are useless for anything smaller than 4x5 in.).

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on certain points. My wife and I are both photographers, as well:

http://www.afterimagephoto.tv

We have a high end Epson flatbed scanner that will handle up to 4x5 and it handles 35mm as well as the Kodak scanner that you are mentioning (my wife was a colorist in charge of using that very Kodak scanner in her old job). We've also used commercial grade scans and I have never seen an 8mm section of a 35mm that would blow up worth spit off of a scan unless you get into really, really high resolution commercial $cans. I assumed in your previous post that you were talking about using a common pesonal scanner.

BTW, both of the labs I use quit offering interneg service because Kodak discontinued the interneg film. Using regular neg film will produce an image, but for color fidelity and the ability to capture detail in the shadows and highlights, and for a result resembling the original chrome, the interneg film was much better. the regular stuff is just too contrasty, and you begin to see color shifts, cross-curves, etc.

Printing to 4x5 will hold a tremendous amount of detail, even on regular neg. We use to do it all the time ourselves under an enlarger. We never saw any of the problems you've mentioned. It was very practical and the image was great. Certainly the interneg material was better but, again, one of the reasons that the Kodak interneg material was phased out is because so many labs simply didn't use it that often, even before scans became popular enough to supplant the need for internegs. I'm not doubting your experiences with the labs in your area but, around here, most of the labs stopped using the film before it was discontinued, not because it was discontinued.

At any rate, if good optics are used, he should be able to blow his 8mm up to a 35mm interneg of some kind and get great results, even using regular neg.

[kentbulza]

If you want to make a print from Kodachrome, its going to get very diffeicult in a short time because certain corporate assholes at both Kodak and Fuji have discontinued all direct positive paper. Soon the only option for positive printing will be to print onto Ilfochrome or make an internegative, which reduces quality significantly from what I've heard.

I think the blame is to be placed not on Kodak, but on professional photographers/cinematographers that have decided to settle for less because it's easier. People have forgotten that art is hard.