B&W - Negative or Reversal?

[wahiba]

I think that plus-X and tri-X processed as negative tend to be grainier. My efforts seem to be grainer than I would have expected.

On the positive side (unintended pun) negative processing is much easier and electronic reversing after telecine makes life reallysimple.

My experiment with a short length of FOMAPAN suggested that it does not like being processed as a negative, so stick to Kodak. In regular 8 cine-XX which is the same as plus-x develops fine as a negative.

[mattias]

Color negative film has an orange base, mattias. The subject here is b&w film, which either has a clear or light grey base.

i know. but the question explicitly specified "all" film stocks. sorry if i confused anyone. black and white negative can always be reversed.

you can certainly process reversal film as negative

except those that have a backing layer that comes off in the bleach. i've never tried to develop one of those, but it's what i've heard. you probably know more than i do on that subject...

/matt

[christoph]

every negative film can be processed as positive

huh-WHA? is this just technically true, or is it practically true? do I make sense?

sorry, i wanted to point out out the difference between the two processes but forgot to add "b/w" in the second sentence (as others have noted).

but yes, you could process a color negative as positive as well (this is actually an other form of cross processing).. just dont except jolly results ;)

++ christoph ++

[beatnik326]

Hi Andy,

I'm relatively new to Super 8 myself so hopefully others will chime in; however, I have shot about 20 carts over the past several months and did experiment with tri x reversal. I liked the look but I had some problems with getting a jittery image. I later discovered, on this forum, that others were having similar problems and that Kodak had acknowledged that there was a problem with "jittery carts" (this last bit isl second hand info) you can probably search the archives for that.

Steve

Maybe I'm missing it in the archives, but can somebody point me to discussion on the jittering carts? Is this still a problem with Tri-X? How 'bout Plus-x?

I'm pretty certain I'll stick with those reversal stocks, because I'm looking for a grainy b&w image that's a throwback to the silent era. Seems the newer negative stocks are almost "too good" for this purpose.

[ccortez]

Hi Andy,

I'm relatively new to Super 8 myself so hopefully others will chime in; however, I have shot about 20 carts over the past several months and did experiment with tri x reversal. I liked the look but I had some problems with getting a jittery image. I later discovered, on this forum, that others were having similar problems and that Kodak had acknowledged that there was a problem with "jittery carts" (this last bit isl second hand info) you can probably search the archives for that.

Steve

Maybe I'm missing it in the archives, but can somebody point me to discussion on the jittering carts? Is this still a problem with Tri-X? How 'bout Plus-x?

I'm pretty certain I'll stick with those reversal stocks, because I'm looking for a grainy b&w image that's a throwback to the silent era. Seems the newer negative stocks are almost "too good" for this purpose.

I thought the jitteries were all K40, and that it hasn't been a problem for some time now. But maybe I think that b/c I know "In My Image" ended up with a bunch of those carts and they were shooting K40.

I've been shooting a fair amount of Tri-X and Plus-X lately, probably 12 or 15 carts of Tri-X and 5 of Plus-X in the last few months. I haven't had any bad carts AFAIK.

[Dcm]

A side question regarding all this talk of developing B&W film as a negative.... assuming I were going to do the digital transfer myself, what would I use to invert the image back to a positive? I've always gone through Flying Spot, so I don't know the mechanics of other cheaper methods... Do programs like After Effects do this? Or FCP? Or the telecine devices themselves? Pardon my ignorance...

dm

[christoph]

what would I use to invert the image back to a positive?[...]Do programs like After Effects do this? Or FCP? Or the telecine devices themselves?

actually any decent video editing program will do that as will a lot of freeware/shareware utilities. some cameras have a negative conversion effect built in, so you might use that to better judge exposure etc.

++ christoph ++