I am trying to make prints from 16mm movie film. What I tried was shooting frames of the film on a light table with a bellows unit on my 35mm SLR. The results were crumby. Too contrasty. Any suggestions.

-- Steve Scott (scottse@etown.edu), March 04, 2002

Answers

Try making a 16mm negative carrier for your enlarger so you can enlarge the movie film. I would suggest enlarging onto Arista APH Ortho/Litho film (available from Freestyle in L.A.), and developing in a print developer like Dektol. You can contact print the resulting negative. You will definitely have problems taming contrast, since black and white movie film is produced by a reversal process which is not kind to shadow detail. You could also enlarge onto conventional film such as T-Max, Tri-X, HP-5+, etc., but the Arista would be cheaper.

-- Ed Buffaloe (edb@unblinkingeye.com), March 04, 2002.

Back in those thrilling days of yesteryear (the 1950s), there were two versions of a product called a "Cinelarger". One was for regular 8MM movie to negative the other was for 16MM. They sold for about $20.00 in the 50's. They show up from time to time on E-bay for from $10.00 to $20.00. They take 620 film (which can be re-rolled from 120). I have one of each and they work great (color or B&W). If you find one with out instructions, Start with a photoflood (3200 K.) no less than 12 inches from the Cinelarger.

-- Howard Anderson (howardanderson40@yahoo.coom), March 05, 2002.