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Usually in the world of film gear things tend to move pretty quickly. Every year
there’s a new camera, lens set or piece of lighting kit which
is released that DPs flock to try out. Movie technology always advances forward.
That’s why it’s strange that there’s one piece of filmmaking tech which has remained completely
unchanged since the late 1950s and still continues to be used on productions to this day.
That technology is Kodak, formerly Eastman Kodak’s Double-X 5222 black and white negative film stock.
Let’s take a deeper look at this film stock by unpacking what black and white film does,
looking at two different types of black and white film, identifying Double-X’s
characteristics and in doing so look at some examples of modern movies shot on the stock.
“Black and white negative just looks different than colour negative too. It just has its own
physical presence. It’s chunks of silver, you know, embedded in an emulsion.”
Film is created by taking a cellulose triacetate base - basically plastic - and adding layers of
chemicals to it so that when it is exposed to light and then developed it produces an image.
Colour negative film is coated in at least three different layers of colour sensitive dyes, mainly:
red, green and blue. These three layers when combined represent a full spectrum of colour.
When this film is developed and processed it creates a negative - where the inverse
of each colour is reflected. This can later be scanned and turned back to a positive.
Black and white film on the other hand usually contains one layer of silver
halide crystals. Rather than being sensitive to a particular colour spectrum of light,
black and white film is affected by luminance only. So negative film renders dark shadows
as white and bright highlights as black. Like colour negative film, this is then scanned and
inverted to produce an image in black, white and shades of grey for exposure values in between.
This means that cinematographer’s don’t need to worry about the colour
temperatures of lights when shooting black and white film and can instead
focus purely on contrast or how bright or dark each area of the image is.
Black and white film also requires a different development process to
colour negative or colour reversal film.
When black and white film was initially developed it was only sensitive to blue and
green light rays on the colour spectrum. This is called orthochromatic film.
Because orthochromatic film wasn’t sensitive to red tones in an image,
and there tends to be a lot of red in skin tones, this meant that skin tones captured on
this film appeared darker and that blemishes, shadows and lines on faces were accentuated.
On the other hand, orthochromatic film is much more sensitive to areas in the image
with lots of blue, such as skies - which is why they would read very bright and overexposed.
A great example of orthochromatic film can be seen in the photographic
portraits taken by Yusuf Karsh. His subjects often would be photographed
with orthochromatic film that made their skin appear darkened, textured and more weathered.
Eastman Double-X is different. It was created in 1959 as a panchromatic film.
This means that instead of capturing blue and green tones it responded
to all colours depending on their level of brightness. This allowed redder skin
tones to be captured and meant that faces were less harshly represented.
Since the introduction of panchromatic film,
black and white orthochromatic stocks ceased to be widely manufactured.
Interestingly, on The Lighthouse, cinematographer Jarin Blaschke wanted to recreate the weathered,
old look of orthochromatic film, even though panchromatic film was
the only choice available, by shooting with a custom filter.
“We came up with a filter also to emphasise texture. It’s a cyan filter that Schneider
made for us. It replicates very early emulsions that were insensitive to red.
It tends to heighten local contrast too, especially on skin tones which are mostly
red of course. So any little variation of red is further amplified. So any blemishes, pores,
you know, if you’re hungover and your cheeks are red, you know it all gets amplified.”
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“I think this stock was created in the end of 50s early 60s so this is the same
stock they shot those movies on. If we’re paying kind of an homage to a certain 60s
Hollywood style. So using this exact stock was a good decision I guess.”
Eastman Double-X comes in two different gauges:
16mm and 35mm. The 16mm version is called 7222 and can be purchased in
100 or 400 foot rolls. The 35mm variant, 5222, comes in 400 or 1000 foot rolls.
The stock has a very specific look. It contains large amounts of thick, dancing grain which is
especially noticeable in the grey mid tones and makes footage look unapologetically old fashioned.
5222 produces different pockets of contrast. So skin tones, which may
be rendered in a similar contrast range by other stocks or cameras,
contain more difference between shadows and highlights on Double-X.
This emphasises textures and makes images feel slightly more dimensional and less flat.
Because it’s so old, 5222 doesn’t have a big dynamic range. It has a
steep gamma curve which means it reacts a bit more like slide film even though it's
a negative film. This limited latitude means that cinematographers need to be
careful when exposing it. Overexposure will quickly blow out the highlights to white,
while underexposure will muddy up the blacks so that they aren’t pure and crisp.
It also has relatively low sharpness compared to more modern stocks at 100 lines per mm in perfect
conditions. However, that slight softness can actually be nice for capturing people and skin
tones as it provides a more gentle roll off that subtly smooths out how skin is rendered.
Kodak presents two different exposure indexes for different lighting conditions,
like an iso on a digital camera.
If you’re shooting the film under tungsten light sources then it is
recommended to expose at 200 EI. If instead the shot is lit by a source
with a daylight colour temperature then it can be shot at 250 EI.
The reason for this difference can be found in the film’s spectral sensitivity data curve.
Basically this shows how the film is more sensitive to light at cooler colour
temperatures - such as HMIs or daylight - and less sensitive to light at warm colour
temperatures such as tungsten sources. Hence the reason for their different sensitivity rating.
Back when this stock was first released it was considered a highly sensitive stock for lower
lighting conditions - since it was around in an era when shooting on 50ASA stocks was the norm.
However, in the modern era, where shooting with an EI of at least 800
on digital cinema cameras has become the norm, this is no longer the case.
“We were shooting on film. The Double-X black and white stock so we were around 250. I underexposed
it a little bit just to protect the highlights because they can blow out pretty easily.
I would lie if I’d say I wasn’t scared of the low sensitivity.
And it goes to Fotokem to develop and then you won’t see it for two days.”
One disadvantage of shooting on such a niche film stock is that there are relatively few
film laboratories that can process this film in motion picture quantities. It is still possible
but shooting in North America requires shipping the stock to a lab like Fotokem where it will be
processed, scanned and then delivered as rushes, usually in a digital file, a few days later.
Another disadvantage is that shooting night scenes with a film that is rated
at 200 means that large light sources are required to reach exposure,
which also means that these scenes will tend to have a more old world feeling
to the lighting with actors illuminated by strong, hard sources, rather than the soft,
dark, ambient lighting style that can be more easily achieved by using digital cameras.
“This is more limited. You have a certain kind of contrast built into the stock that you have
to embrace. I think if that clicks with the project then it can really benefit from it.”
So, while it may be easier to shoot digitally and try to arrive at a vintage looking black and white
image in post, for some productions who have the right budget and access, shooting on a 60 plus
year old film stock which still holds a textured, grainy, contrast laden, classically Hollywood
look that is very difficult to accurately create otherwise is the best way to go.
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