Tweet Nitrate glowing on screen and LCD contrast ratio

Well.. we all know that nitrate prints was pleasant to watch, as people said it had a special looking than not accetate or pollyester film have, since image look like glowing on screen.

Not sure why nitrate it's like that, and I never watched a nitrate film projection. But I know nitrate have better transpasrence. Some people say it's the silver, but accetate B&W also have silver cystals onb emulsion...
Is someone have informations about the glowing effect of nitraten film, please post a reply.


Anyway... I found the best LCD monitor in terma of contrast ratio have contrast ration of 5.000.000 : 1 , when average og monitors have about 100.000 : 1, and the cheap monitors can have only 30.000 : 1.

Cold such high quality contrast ratio enable to produce a special rich video that would look, would glow, like a nitrate film ????

I know it needs a video btter than the actual DVDa and BLU Ray poor signals, since they only have 256 tonalities (a misery) and color video only 256 for each channel (RGB), and the color channel have lower resolution (50%) of the luminance channel. So it's clear that DVD and Blu Ray would never look great even in a perfect super monitor.

I remamber Robert Harris, a film restores who restored a lot of great technicolor films, used to say that was impossible to watch a true technicolor look on DVD, on TV. They6 tried to master a film to remamber a bit, but never would be the same thing.

But let's supose we get a video with very rich signal, like 36000 tonalities per channel, full resolution color channel... Would be possible to recreate nitrate film look ????


And let's think abaout one thing: A original nitrate print, from camera negative, would look great on a screening, but for home video they use to say that a low contrast it's necessary to make a good video (but today, in the last few years, modern telecine machines can extrat better the details in shadowns and highlight of a print and make a option).
This reinforce the idea that the screen device used for video, and poor video signal nature itself, it's a limitation to enjoy a nitrate film.

I have the book The MGM Story.
When it was new, you could hold
the pages at a certain angle under
the light and the photos took on a
nitrate glow.

An app that apes nitrate glow is
needed. With it you can watch any of
your favorite programs sparkly.

Let's not again get into the myth that if it was nitrate it had to be beautiful. There were good and bad nitrate prints, just like there were (and are) good and bad safety prints.
Comparing film projection with video viewing covers two very different technologies. A glowing picture tube (or flat screen) is not the same as film projection.
This subject has been beaten to death, and will always be in the eye of the viewer.

I will search the forum. Sorry, I didn't knew that it was already over debated.

Mr May, what about digital projection technologies, like DLP and DILA ? What's your general opinion about what is called the future of cinema?

Let's not again get into the myth that if it was nitrate it had to be beautiful. There were good and bad nitrate prints, just like there were (and are) good and bad safety prints.
Comparing film projection with video viewing covers two very different technologies. A glowing picture tube (or flat screen) is not the same as film projection.
This subject has been beaten to death, and will always be in the eye of the viewer.

Let's not again get into the myth that if it was nitrate it had to be beautiful. There were good and bad nitrate prints, just like there were (and are) good and bad safety prints.
Comparing film projection with video viewing covers two very different technologies. A glowing picture tube (or flat screen) is not the same as film projection.
This subject has been beaten to death, and will always be in the eye of the viewer.

Amen. There is good craftsmanship and bad craftsmanship in every era, and, while the tools and raw materials do change and influence aspects of the production, there is no substitute for skill and taste; as ephemeral as that can be...

Its like saying "all red cars are bad cars. Only blue cars are good."

As film passes into the great unknown, you should enjoy it while you can, as it will never return, and, no matter our efforts (some of them being pretty darned good), we will never be able to step into that stream again at the same point, so its all a moot point anyway...

Have fun and enjoy what you can.

To All Darc,
Digital projection is here, and nobody should deny it. What I have seen is very good.
My main concern is long term preservation of digitally completed movies, as the technology is much more complicated than film.
Quality of production, whether it be film or digital, is what counts for new movies. Digital is NOT currently a preservation medium.
Just last weekend I saw John Sayles new film, AMIGO. It was shot digitally, and where I saw it, projected on film. If I hadn't read about the digital photography, I wouldn't have known the difference.
Anyway, just like my comments about film stocks, two different things. Encourage quality.

Well.. we all know that nitrate prints was pleasant to watch, as people said it had a special looking than not accetate or pollyester film have, since image look like glowing on screen.

Not sure why nitrate it's like that, and I never watched a nitrate film projection. But I know nitrate have better transpasrence. Some people say it's the silver, but accetate B&W also have silver cystals onb emulsion...
Is someone have informations about the glowing effect of nitraten film, please post a reply.

I think one of the reasons that the look of nitrate was so highly touted in the 1970s and 1980s is that most surviving nitrate prints were printed from original camera negatives, while most theatrical prints in the 1970s and '80s were printed from second generation dupe negatives. Most vintage films were seen in prints made from dupe negatives as well--with prints developed in spray developers (rather than deep tank).

Even Kevin Brownlow would admit that his modern safety print of "The Eagle," printed from the original camera negative likely looks better on screen than any original 1925 nitrate print would have or could have looked.

Also, on the issue of contrast. The wider the range, the subtler the gradation--the less contrast. And to some extent the "snap" one sees in films of the nitrate era is a result of the relatively narrower grey scale higher contrast film stocks in use at the time.

It is very much true with still photography as well. People bemoan the loss of quality from smaller format negatives as opposed to the 8" x10" negs commonly used for film stills in the 1920s and '30s. But, again, they used 8x10 negs for all sorts of reasons--the rlatively poor grain structure of still films at the time, the ease of retouching with pencil, paint and knife directly on the neg, the ability to generate 1st generation contact prints from the original negs, etc. Today's smaller format films produce better images than the 8x10 nrgs of 80 years ago, and have a lot less problems with grain, uneven emilsions, "pinholes" and dirt. The truth is that one can pull more shadow detail out of a digital scan of an old 8x10 still print today than is actually visible in the print itself and you can easily remove imperfections via Photoshop that no pencil artist could ever do.

I share the concern over the long term stability and retrievabilty of digital formats. I also have great concern that the ease of digital manipulation might lead to cultural homicide. I hear, for example, that a test has been made in which the building climb from Safety Last has been colorized and made 3-D. Now, yes, I am actually curious to see this "miracle," but I'm deathly afraid that in the future such "transformations" might become the norm--and become the only versions available. Could we also sample Harold's voice, digitally recreate dialogue and digitally manipulate mouths so that the appropriate words are uttered and have the computer fill in images where frames are lost due to the insertion of subtitles? Undoubtedly such magic will be possible. Will future archivists and rightsholders resist the temptation to meddle based on the notion that the filmamkers would have made it in color and 3-D and breathtaking CinemaScope and stereophonic sound if they could have? I hope so, but I'm not so sure.

Limitations are part of what makes art happen. I remember director Henry King saying that he actually liked movie censorship because it forced him to convey the information he needed to put a story across in more creative ways than he might othewise have chosen.

But these not-so-minor concerns aside, what's not to like about digital projection? No scratches, no printer weave, no density, color or contast shfts from reel to reel, no splices (except those that might be artifacts from the surviving source material.

The brave new world is here. It is an exciting time. But as in past exciting times, it is what we do with the technology rather than the technology itself that presents the challenge--and the opportunity.

[Mike Gebert]

And wasn't it the case that TV prints were deliberately printed without dark dark blacks or bright bright whites? Because TV tended to wash out light grays and turn darker colors to ink anyway. Certainly when you see 16mm TV prints at a film convention they seem tonally kind of in the middle most of the time-- was that deliberate policy or just the way things worked out (but nobody minded and it worked well enough for TV then, so I guess that would sort of make it deliberate policy anyway...)

I agree with Bob, I have no problem with digital projection in your average poorly-run cineplex for all those reasons; it seems to have idiot-proofed the experience to a considerable degree. Which doesn't mean I'm not a big booster of Real Film™ when it's shown with love and care, quite the contrary....

In the past 5 years, there had been a giant leap in home computer technology, a leap that has assisted film buffs. Thanks to faster CPUs and a program called Fairuse Wizard, in say two or three hours I can transcode a 90 minute movie recorded on a DVDR into XviD video format with the 3:2 telecine pulldown removed (inverse telecined to 24 fps speed). The digital file I now have is a data file that only needs a program like VLC media player to playback on my computer. If I store the file on an external hard drive attached by USB cable to a Western Digital media player, that WD player can playback the movie via HDMI cable to my plasma TV, the WD player has built in codecs to play the movie in XviD, mkv, .264 or other formats. I can transfer the digital movie files I now have to another hard drive by a simple copy and paste operation that takes a few minutes for each file, to store as a backup copy if the original hard drive gets corrupted or crashes. For a while, a few weeks ago, Target was clearing out its 1TB Western Digital Elements hard drives for about $36 each.

Now, with not that much expense and with the effort to climb the learning curve, you can put your film archive on one external hard drive. The only thing missing from this equation is the availability of home user digital signal processing (DSP) programs that can filter out speckles, grime and film timing defects. When those DSP programs become available at a reasonable price, if you want your video to have a luminous glow like nitrate film may have had, you are in business.

I agree with Bob, I have no problem with digital projection in your average poorly-run cineplex for all those reasons; it seems to have idiot-proofed the experience to a considerable degree.

To some degree, but not completely. I've seen some pretty messed-up digital shows, too (e.g., the 3D filter being left on a flat film). Until it becomes completely automated, it isn't going to be free of the human error.

[Mike Gebert]

True, I shouldn't completely discount the ingenuity of teenage projectionists and cheap-ass theater chains at defeating even the most automated system.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nfig/

This is a flickr group I came across.
Scanned frames of nitrate film.

Well, one thing is a contrasting image (like anoying photocopy look), and other thing is contrast in relation to how pure is a light intensity and how dark is a tone suposed to be pure black (contrast ratio of a display or of a projection).
Like in monitor, you can have a rich contrast display, and a great tonal range, but load a image file of a contrast image. Or load natural good look dynamic range image image from Photoshop to display in a monitor with crap contrast ratio.

I imagine nitrate had a better relation due nitrate plastic be more transparent. I remamber a film restores who I mnet telling me someting like that, that he enjoyed nitrate a lot anbd it had a great transparency. He showed a nitrate print segment in deterioration, but with more than 60% of frame area still very transparent.

Digital projectors can vary, and not only in resolution, but contrast and many other characteristics, caus edepends of what system it use (DILA,DLP, etc0)

Of course a modern copy from camera negative will look better than a original nitrate print. The resolution of actual print stock today are far better than print stock from the 20's. Today, 21th century, the even the film stock for shot in dark places have low grain. Until the middle 80's color film stock had many crap issues, especially for shot in dark.

Go to watch The Black Swan (2010), shot in 16mm, and you can see that many shots looks almost likea 35mm from the 70's.

With modern film stock, a director can shot a film in 35mm and perfectly realease in 70mm prints. But 70mm it's deads today. The 70mm feeling maybe get back if qualitry 6K or 8K digital projector became a reality.

I imagine nitrate had a better relation due nitrate plastic be more transparent.

This is just the new party line by people who think nitrate is more special than any other kind of base (which is just ridiculous). Clear nitrate film transmits LESS light than mylar, and about the same as triacetate.

Those who think the magic is in the base don't understand that the magic is in the photography and labwork.

Thank you all.

Based in the advice of Mr May, I would like to ask to the moderator if could be possible to merge this topic with other of the same thematic, just to avoid a "salad of similar topics" spread along the forum.

[quote="Kinohead"][quote=
As film passes into the great unknown, you should enjoy it while you can, as it will never return, and, no matter our efforts (some of them being pretty darned good), we will never be able to step into that stream again at the same point, so its all a moot point anyway...

Have fun and enjoy what you can.[/quote]




I can still paint (oil and watercolor).

I can still shoot movies with my consumer betacam
(I found fresh beta tapes!).

I can still buy digital audio tapes for my DAT player.

Film will never die so long as there are instructions
to re-tool for manufacture.

Film can, theoretically, be shot, edited and exhibited without
the use of electricity.

I imagine nitrate had a better relation due nitrate plastic be more transparent.

This is just the new party line by people who think nitrate is more special than any other kind of base (which is just ridiculous). Clear nitrate film transmits LESS light than mylar, and about the same as triacetate.

Those who think the magic is in the base don't understand that the magic is in the photography and labwork.

Jack,

Can you give me a citation for this? I ask because I have a hard time finding hard data on these topics and have to rely on what I hear from people more knowledgeable than myself.

Since I haven't seen anyone here list the pros and cons that I've heard about the different film stocks, I'll list them:

1. Nitrate film is more transparent. I know Jack disagrees, but this is what I've heard. And I believe nitrate and acetate have different binding agents securing the emulsion to the base, so maybe it's a layer other than the nitrocellulose base itself that causes a net increase in transparency.

2. The emulsion on older films (both nitrate and acetate) contained more photo-reactive silver halide, resulting in better contrast. Studios started printing on stock with less silver to save money, resulting in an inferior image. I've also heard that studios intentionally destroyed their old films to save money by recapturing the silver in their emulsions.

3. Three strip technicolor reproduces a broader portion of the color spectrum than the color processes modern film. Again, studios opted for inferior color processes because they were cheaper. Additionally, dye imbibation technicolor films never lose their color, so older technicolor prints will look far superior to newer prints that didn't hold their color, especially before Eastman adopted low fade stock in the 80's. Eastman color started eating into Technicolor's market share shortly after the transition from nitrate to diacetate in 1951, so that coincidence may fuel the "nitrate is better" narrative.

4. Carbon arc projectors are a better light source than xenon bulbs, particularly because they produce consistent white light, while xenon bulbs change color temperature as they age. Again, xenon bulbs replaced arc carbons because they were cheaper and less labor intensive to operate (this time we can blame the theaters and not the studios). Consequently, the films (nitrate or acetate) that older viewers saw in back in the day looked better.

All of these factors point to a decline in image you see on the screen. Whether it was the base, the emulsion, the color process, or the light source, as this narrative portrays it they all got worse over time. I'm not a chemist or a physicist, so I'll believe these possibly apocryphal "facts" until someone provides me good evidence to the contrary.

That being said, I stand by the quality of original Technicolor prints from personal observation. I haven't seen enough nitrate projected to venture an opinion of my own, but I will say that one of the nicest looking prints I've ever seen on the screen is the 1936 cartoon "I'm A Big Shot Now" on nitrate stock and in Technicolor. I will also say that the modern prints of films originally printed on nitrate look terrible (I usually handle prints from the 1980's on for our repertoire screenings). They're all mid-tones without and opaque blacks or transparent whites. Whether this is due to the duplication process or the sliver content, I'm not qualified to say.

I'm afraid we will need a time machine to solve this puzzle.

The restorer who told me nitrate was nicer, was a film restoer who had restored many nitrate films, and work in the better film lab of my country. I think this give hin credit.

About duplication, I repeat, the finest duplication B&W film stock have a incredible definition and incredible dynamic range when very well developed, rendering a internegative that can rival the original negative.

B&W grading it's a lost art, said Kevin Brollow. I suspect in old days they were more familiart with this, but also making use of some few advantages of nitrate.

But likje said Mr May, there are good and bad prints in all eras, good and bad labs in all eras, so a given nitrater and a given actual print can't ber always fairly compared.

I should also say I've handled and projected a large quantity of archival acetate prints, and the old black and white is almost always vastly superior to any modern black and white. Even schlocky low budget sexploitation and horror films look stunning. I can think of a couple vintage trailers and promo clips that lacked contrast, but everything else I've run (much of it from the 50's) is breathtaking if you're used to the low quality they're putting put now.

I should also say I've handled and projected a large quantity of archival acetate prints, and the old black and white is almost always vastly superior to any modern black and white. Even schlocky low budget sexploitation and horror films look stunning. I can think of a couple vintage trailers and promo clips that lacked contrast, but everything else I've run (much of it from the 50's) is breathtaking if you're used to the low quality they're putting put now.

And who is this "they" you speak of?

This thread would be funny if it weren't so insulting and chock full of recycled Internet Mythological "film lore" crap.

Not worth the effort to respond because I've spent the last 30 years responding to this same exact crap and someone rolls it out like a brand-new garbage scow every 5 years or so.

Go ahead, revel in your assumptions; I don't care to debate it anymore.

I should also say I've handled and projected a large quantity of archival acetate prints, and the old black and white is almost always vastly superior to any modern black and white. Even schlocky low budget sexploitation and horror films look stunning. I can think of a couple vintage trailers and promo clips that lacked contrast, but everything else I've run (much of it from the 50's) is breathtaking if you're used to the low quality they're putting put now.

And who is this "they" you speak of?

This thread would be funny if it weren't so insulting and chock full of recycled Internet Mythological "film lore" crap.

Not worth the effort to respond because I've spent the last 30 years responding to this same exact crap and someone rolls it out like a brand-new garbage scow every 5 years or so.

Go ahead, revel in your assumptions; I don't care to debate it anymore.

The new prints I'm referring to are reprints of black and white films intended for theatrical release. I'm a projectionist at a theater that runs a lot of repertoire films so I've screened countless new (that is, post 1980) prints of black and white films from every major distributor. This is not an assumption but an informed observation. As you'll see in my post about the "nitrate is better" mythos I try to distinguish between opinions I have from experience and theories I've heard but lack the expertise to confirm or deny.

I also don't don't get my information from "internet mythology" but from experienced people who have spent decades in this field, like the preservationist whose films I work on and our booth techs (extremely knowledgeable professionals who installed the new LOC nitrate projection system in Culpeper. Maybe you know them too?). If you have some good reference material to counter any of theories I posited I'd be thrilled to see it. Are there any books or.other references you'd like to recommend?

[Christopher Jacobs]

Print quality, black-and-white or color, depends heavily upon the lab work, and can be good or bad from any era. That said, it's been my observation that lab work for theatrical release prints became progressively sloppier in the 1970s (coinciding with the increased practice of wide releases and rapid decline in black-and-white filmmaking), while specialized lab work for small indie film and artcinema distributors usually remained high. I remember seeing PAPER MOON theatrically when it came out and was blown away by its stunning black-and-white textures. I went back to a reissue a few years later and was bitterly disappointed at the black "halo" effects and muddy look of the print, this from a major studio. A 1970s 35mm black-and-white reissue print of THE MASK OF FU MANCHU was not only duped from another print rather than struck off the original negative, but it had a printed-through out-of-frame splice in one reel (naturally, during a climactic scene)! In 1998 I was involved with an independent film noir shot in 35mm black and white, in which the director wanted a gritty and grainy, hand-held 16mm look, but the test reel from the lab looked so crisp and luminous that the cinematographer convinced him not to degrade the quality, and the few prints struck looked as good as any 1950s noir classic. (Ironically a major reason it was not picked up for distribution was the fact that it was in black and white!) A major director like Spielberg could get gorgeous black-and-white prints of SCHINDLER'S LIST distributed with color sequences painstakingly spliced in by hand, but the same film was also printed on more readily-available color stock for most mall theatres with mediocre-looking results.

So few labs do black and white anymore that I expect the number of answer prints necessary for the best results makes it too costly for any but the best-funded films and restorations. Printing black and white onto color stock is just easier and cheaper, and while when done well it may come close to replicating true B/W tones but is never quite the same. I'll look forward to seeing what THE ARTIST looks like theatrically if and when it ever gets a local playdate (and on real film rather than DCI hard-drive file). And of course one reason that digital projection so often rivals and sometimes exceeds theatrical film projection these days is the way labs have to grind out thousands of prints in a very short time for their wide releases, using high-speed contact printers rather than quality-controlled step-printers. Perhaps it's studio policies and lab collusion to accelerate the switch to digital by making digital versions appear to look better than typical film prints, even though film could look vastly superior with a little more time and effort (that is, until a poorly trained theatre employee scratches up the print by improper platter threading and grinds up chunks during brain-wraps -- which also tend to occur most often in the first reel of a film due to both improper threading and inadequate double-checking after the machine has started running, and later in a print due to inadequate trimming of sticky splices).

There have been many attempts to recreate nitrate, but believe me, they'll never get it right. I've seen many nitrate prints (including "One Week" and an un-decomposed sequences of The General) in person and shown with an original 1905 carbon arc projector. It's like watching a whole new film. No matter what people say, seeing nitrate projected in person is miles ahead of any Blu-ray. I remember that when I saw the nitrate segment of the General bathed in carbon arc light, I noticed things there that I didn't before. They were little things like Busters make-up creasing in his wrinkles or the eye liner under Marion Mack's eyes. However, no matter how little the difference was, they still made me marvel at the detail. Archivist can try and try, but there will never be another nitrate. Nitrate was in operation for 60 years, and quite frankly, the few fires that have surfaced during that period were caused by careless hands and not always by nitrate itself.

Also, I should comment on how thick nitrate was. About a year ago when I was thirteen years old, I was given the oppourtunity to handle nitrate film. After cranking it throught the projector, however, it ran much noisier than the Estar prints. I checked all my loops and so forth, until I couldn't help but notice how thick it was (therefor causing more noise in the gate). And 'ya know what it reminded me of...sfumato, the painting technique used by Leonardo Da Vinci. What Da Vinci used to do was build up the paint thickly, which is why people who have seen the Mona Lisa in person comment on how the light bounces off of it and reflects back onto the object viewing it. Nitrate works in a similar way. That is probably the reason for it's glowing effect.

[Christopher Jacobs]

There have been many attempts to recreate nitrate, but believe me, they'll never get it right. I've seen many nitrate prints (including "One Week" and an un-decomposed sequences of The General) in person and shown with an original 1905 carbon arc projector. It's like watching a whole new film. No matter what people say, seeing nitrate projected in person is miles ahead of any Blu-ray. I remember that when I saw the nitrate segment of the General bathed in carbon arc light, I noticed things there that I didn't before. They were little things like Busters make-up creasing in his wrinkles or the eye liner under Marion Mack's eyes. However, no matter how little the difference was, they still made me marvel at the detail. Archivist can try and try, but there will never be another nitrate. Nitrate was in operation for 60 years, and quite frankly, the few fires that have surfaced during that period were caused by careless hands and not always by nitrate itself.

Also, I should comment on how thick nitrate was. About a year ago when I was thirteen years old, I was given the oppourtunity to handle nitrate film. After cranking it throught the projector, however, it ran much noisier than the Estar prints. I checked all my loops and so forth, until I couldn't help but notice how thick it was (therefor causing more noise in the gate). And 'ya know what it reminded me of...sfumato, the painting technique used by Leonardo Da Vinci. What Da Vinci used to do was build up the paint thickly, which is why people who have seen the Mona Lisa in person comment on how the light bounces off of it and reflects back onto the object viewing it. Nitrate works in a similar way. That is probably the reason for it's glowing effect.

Nitrate looks very good indeed projected on a big screen with carbon-arc lamps. SCARLET EMPRESS and A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM look truly spectacular in nitrate. (Nitrate film stock also feels nicer in your hands, compared to acetate or polyester, when working with it!) However, I believe most of its extra-vivid "look" comes from the higher silver content in the image compared with later black-and-white safety-film prints. Old acetate B&W prints made from the camera negatives, when there was still a substantial silver content in the emulsion, generally look just as good as nitrate prints. By the mid to late 1970s, B&W prints were typically hit-or-miss, depending on the labs and film stocks.

I didn't see this until this thread was bumped up, so I'm going to quickly address these point-by-point. I'm also going to preface this by stating that I have run dozens of nitrate prints with both Xenon and Carbon Arc illumination (more on this below), and I've also compared original nitrate and safety prints side-by-side.

1. Nitrate film is more transparent. I know Jack disagrees, but this is what I've heard. And I believe nitrate and acetate have different binding agents securing the emulsion to the base, so maybe it's a layer other than the nitrocellulose base itself that causes a net increase in transparency.

This is wrong. The transmission factor of nitrate, particularly of celluloid produced in the silent era when contamination standards were much lower, is far below that of mylar stocks, and even acetate. But even then, the levels of transmission are so slight that I would really dare someone to try to eyeball it and tell me the difference. It's imperceptible.

2. The emulsion on older films (both nitrate and acetate) contained more photo-reactive silver halide, resulting in better contrast. Studios started printing on stock with less silver to save money, resulting in an inferior image. I've also heard that studios intentionally destroyed their old films to save money by recapturing the silver in their emulsions.

I'd love to know what the source of this is, because it's wrong-headed on a number of levels. The retrieval of silver from stock is standard to this day, but is not the only reason the studios ditched their old negatives which, considering the amount of silver in each negative vs. the selling value of the actual films when they were printed up, was negligible. Where it made sense in the long-run was the disposal of prints after the general run, since the prints were no longer needed and could be recycled for profit.

3. Three strip technicolor reproduces a broader portion of the color spectrum than the color processes modern film. Again, studios opted for inferior color processes because they were cheaper. Additionally, dye imbibation technicolor films never lose their color, so older technicolor prints will look far superior to newer prints that didn't hold their color, especially before Eastman adopted low fade stock in the 80's. Eastman color started eating into Technicolor's market share shortly after the transition from nitrate to diacetate in 1951, so that coincidence may fuel the "nitrate is better" narrative.

What is your source for this? I suppose I could agree that the range of three-strip photography could be greater simply because there is more surface area, but at what point is it perceptible that Eastman color is any less superior than dye-transfer prints?

As an aside, when I did a film festival some years back, we ran a dual-strip 3D show with a new print made from the camera negative matched to a mint, original 1953 IB print. NO one could tell me which eye was the original, and which one was the Kodak, and that's a situation where you can look at them side-by-side.

4. Carbon arc projectors are a better light source than xenon bulbs, particularly because they produce consistent white light, while xenon bulbs change color temperature as they age. Again, xenon bulbs replaced arc carbons because they were cheaper and less labor intensive to operate (this time we can blame the theaters and not the studios). Consequently, the films (nitrate or acetate) that older viewers saw in back in the day looked better.

This is incorrect, and lacks the understanding of how color temperature in modern Xenon bulbs and carbon arcs work, and how much is dependent upon the reflector (and the difference between condenser and reflective lamphouses).

Nitrocellulose wrote:
"Carbon arc projectors are a better light source than xenon bulbs, particularly because they produce consistent white light, while xenon bulbs change color temperature as they age. Again, xenon bulbs replaced arc carbons because they were cheaper and less labor intensive to operate (this time we can blame the theaters and not the studios). Consequently, the films (nitrate or acetate) that older viewers saw in back in the day looked better."

I was always under the impression (and please correct me on this) that carbon rods age too. I have talked to a few film techs and projectionists who worked with arcs over a long period of time. The carbons that had been bought in bulk and used later on (after sitting around for years) produced a slightly greenish light. However the ones that were used when factory new produced the average white or slightly blue light that we usualy see in a carbon arc.

That is incorrect. Good carbons (such as those produced by National) can last indefinitely. Most of the "new old" stock my theater uses blasts the newly-manufactured stuff out of the water.

If the carbons in an arc lamphouse were not adjusted precisely the color of the light would change. If the motor advancing the carbons as they were consumed was not at the right speed, the light would change within a reel.
Xenon is much, much more consisitent, staying the same for thousands of hours, and requiring almost no maintenance.
As with any photographic process, there was (and is) considerable inconsistency with lab processing of prints. Different labs, studios, supervisors, etc. caused prints to look different.
I don't think it is possible to generalize about any of the film base "looks".

And wasn't it the case that TV prints were deliberately printed without dark dark blacks or bright bright whites? Because TV tended to wash out light grays and turn darker colors to ink anyway. Certainly when you see 16mm TV prints at a film convention they seem tonally kind of in the middle most of the time-- was that deliberate policy or just the way things worked out (but nobody minded and it worked well enough for TV then, so I guess that would sort of make it deliberate policy anyway...)

Just to clarify - Yes, that was the case with prints made for television, which were widely circulated among collectors.

I had access to several 16mm prints from various sources from a couple of library collections. One of the collections included a bunch of prints of classic movies that were printed up for television from a private collector and they always were low contrast when compared to prints sold especially to libraries.

I wish I'd had a scanner then because one library's print of "Golddigers of 1933" included a print down of the original leader on reel one with separate cues for the "sound on film" and "Vitaphone" versions of the film.

As far as the "nitrate glow", I don't think we'll ever know for sure - we can never duplicate all of the different factors that went into projecting the original films (the projection lens, type of screen and typical screen size, light source). I tend to agree with another comment that this was a myth that developed at a time when prints were struck from dupe negatives or other prints and not from the original camera negatives.

[Christopher Jacobs]

Also, I should comment on how thick nitrate was. About a year ago when I was thirteen years old, I was given the oppourtunity to handle nitrate film. After cranking it throught the projector, however, it ran much noisier than the Estar prints. I checked all my loops and so forth, until I couldn't help but notice how thick it was (therefor causing more noise in the gate).

It's possible that the noisier chatter of the film in the projector was due as much or more to how much it had shrunk beyond the standard sprocket-hole size and distance specs than to the thickness of the film stock. Nitrate film as well as acetate film definitely shrinks slightly with age, even during the typical expected life of a release print. A properly maintained projector with the right sprockets can handle somewhat shrunken film, but it does run louder through the gate. The smaller CinemaScope sprocket teeth can be easier on shrunken film than full-size sprocket teeth, but make sure they haven't become hooked from too much wear. A good 35mm guillotine splicer has adjustable registration pins so that shrunken film won't be torn up when trying to splice it.