[Konvas] lab accident

[XiaoSu Han]

hi dan,

i read the american cinematographer magazine quite a bit, and in every
second article, the dop of some huge hollywood movie mentions how he
overexposes the negative by half a stop or so and then prints it down
to tighten the grain of the negative and get a denser negative. i
think it's quite common and if you've got the resource for the
lighting, why not.

you can test this with stills, overexpose by half a stop or even a
stop and you can "print" while scanning much better and have a denser
and tless grainy negative as opposed to pull up shadows...

hope my amateurish gibberish and pseudo-knowledge obtained from
american cinematographer (hey at least one famous cinematographer i've
heard of learned his trade by reading this magazine!) helps
understanding why they are doing it :)

regards from vienna,

On Fri, Sep 12, 2008 at 3:19 AM, Dan Cordle <dancordle at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Ole,
>
> As other's have said, one stop off is likely to be okay.
> I've yet to have that kind of lab mix-up with cine film, but recently my still photo lab processed ten 5x7 Black and White negatives in E6 chemicals. That was done even though the order was clearly marked AND even though each piece of film has proper identification notches. As a result, my negatives were completely ruined. When labs screw up, they usually make some kind of amends. Mine offered to reimburse me for the negatives and to offer free processing of an equal number of negs in the future. They were also extremely apologetic.  I'm sure you're lab will make a good offer if you're not happy with the results. Best of luck.
>
> And this brings up a question I've been wondering about. I read on cinematography-dot-com of at least one Cinematographer who (in his own words) habitually overexposes his shots by a half stop as insurance against underexposure. He goes so far as to set his light meter off by half a stop. I find this kind of strange, but he's a rather well known DoP seems to know what he's doing. Is overexposing by a half stop a more or less normal practice these days? I've always tred to be as spot on as possible regardless of whether I'm shooting stills or cine film.
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-- 
XiaoSu "Xax" Han
http://www.stilfabrik.cn