I really enjoying reading industry info written by photo agency owners even if it’s just a creative snippet… more of you should do it, you’d be amazed at how much publicity it gets you!
Spotted this from StormStock photo library owner Martin Lisius expanding on the beauty of film.
‘Film allows me to get a beautifully unique image like nothing else, even if it’s not always convenient. A 35mm camera is heavy and requires an even heavier tripod. And, the 400’ film magazines I use will only capture about 5-minutes of content each. When one runs out, it takes up to 2-minutes to un-mount, mount and thread a new one. That’s a long time when Mother Nature is going bananas around you. Then there’s the cost of developing the exposed film and transferring it to a video format. All of this is required to get the spectacular “film look.”
Besides the aesthetic value, film offers some technical advantages. Exposure latitude is the obvious benefit, but there is another. There are no “rolling shutter” issues with film like there are with most video cameras. It can capture a bolt of lightning as you see it, without a horizontal band across the frame. And, I can do some fun things with a film camera like shooting lightning at night by exposing the same load of film two to three times. The end result is less dark and more bolts.
I began shooting storms on Super 35mm in 1997 in order to prepare for the coming of HD video using a rugged, “shoot anywhere” Arriflex 35-3 II supplied by Mark Beasley at MPS Studios in Dallas. I added a Nikon lens mount to allow for the use of lighter lenses. As soon as HD video and film scanners arrived in 2003, I was able to transfer that content to HD. And, with the help of colorist Steve Franko, it looked great. This year, I pulled those same 35mm negatives from the vault and transferred them to 4K video at Colorlab in Maryland. Now, we have some amazing film-originated tornadoes, lightning, and storm clouds, and the world’s only Hurricane Katrina footage on 4K. Just another example of film’s flexibility.’