Item 7

Item 1

This is a perforating machine. It was owned by the late Tony Scott of Film and Photo. It was  apparently made during World War II.

Item 2

Picture printed onto aluminium base.

This is an article from 'Home Movies and Home Talkies June 1939

The system was patented in 1925 by Robert W Carter here is his patent CA249966A

A French PhD thesis by Philippe Rouyer   www.uk-us.fr/agedor.pdf covered the process.

Here is a translation of the section

kindly provided by Mikael Barnard and Boris Curwen

Item 3, 4, 5, 6. 7.

Item 3. This is a piece of two colour additive film. The film is sepia toned and alternate frames coloured red. It is possibly an early test by G Albert Smith, inventor of Kinemacolor. I have recently come across the picture on the right  Item 4 which is Biocolor so the left hand picture is probably a test by Freise-Green and not Smith

Item 5. This is a device used by Claude Friese Green to colour film with dye and a paintbrush. Made by William Vinten.

Item 6 is a digital composition from Item 1 frames made with Photoshop 7 and  Item 7 is  from Item 4.

Item 10

Item 11

Item 13

Item 16

Item 14

This sample is an early version of '2 perf' print.  The images are 2 perforations high but alternate images are upside-down.  The film was produced to project first one way showing every other frame through a 2 perf mask in the centre of the normal 35mm academy mask. 

The film was then shown from the other end to project the second set of pictures. The two sound tracks correspond to the two sets of pictures.  This all enabled a normal reel of film projected at 24 frames a second to last twice as long.

Item 15

Francitacolor process. Three frames on 35mm width film.  A normal B/W print was projected using a projector with three objectives through red, green and blue filters. The main problem was the usual one with additive systems - lack of picture brightness. A feature was made using this system in France and exhibited in July 1935 in Paris

Item 16

This is a digital composition from the frames made with Photoshop 7.

Item 19

Item 17

16mm Lawley clip inserter.  Lawley clips were nickel-silver staples inserted in the perforations.  The strips were punched from a roll of nickel silver.(see below)

Further Information on Lawley clips

Item 18

A Kodak logo found on some Ektachrome 16mm print film. It appears to be the EKC logo. I believe that it was printed by Kodak when processing Kodachrome film.

Itm 19

Dunning Colour from The National News issued on October 12th 1937. There doesn't seem to be much technical information on this process. Dunning Process was an early forerunner of travelling mattes and used for B/W.  The print is single -sided and has an Iron tone blue and an orange dye. Humphries Film Labs carried out Dunning Colour.

Items 20, 22 and 24

From a London collection.  It appears to be someone's experiments with two colour.

Items 21, 23 and 25

Digital compositions using Photoshop 7.

Note the fringing caused by time-parallax error.  The objects have moved between the two frames

17.5 mm with 2 Central Perforations.  Duoscope introduced in 1912

Item 32

Items 29, 30 and 31

Unknown three colour separation tests.  The colours are labelled in French

Item 32

Digital Reconstruction using Photoshop 7

Item 35

Three Cinerama Images

Item 36

This is two colour Technicolor, you can see traces of the orange/red and green images on the edges of the frames. I have been informed  by Nicolay Sharkanov that this frame comes from   "Gold diggers of Broadway" (1929) and Winnie Lightner and Albert Gran appear in the frame.

Item 43

Item 49

Item 44. 2 3/8 inch film and a 35mm film for comparison.  It was shot by the Bioscope Co of the Corbett-Fitzsimmons Boxing match on 17th March 1897.

Item 45 A 2 colour (Red and Green Tinted ) 17.5mm 

Item 46 a Photoshop 7 Digital reconstruction from Item 45

Item 47 is a piece of film from the Edison Home Kinetoscope

Item 48 A box of Lawley nickle silver strip for making Lawley Clips

Item 49 A Technicolor Matrix Joining Clip.

Year symbols used on products with 8mm perforations up to 31 December 1964

Information on 8mm date codes for Kodak Park and Kodak Ltd 1932-1941

Please click images to see larger image

Item 7

Please click images above to see larger image

1. Kelly's Herts 1894  

2. Herts 1899

3. London 1899

4. Sussex 1905

5. Sussex 19056.

6. Sussex 1911

7. Wardour Street 1915

Item 51

Item50 and 51Sample of Brewstercolor.  Note that this is a duplex system with emulsions on both sides of the film. Emulsion has been removed from each side to show  magenta and green images. Invented by P D Brewster the camera had a rotating mirror to capture the three colours.  The negatives were printed onto duplex stock, the red negative on one side which was then dye toned cyan and the green image printed onto the other side and dye toned magenta.  The blue image was printed in yellow by imbibition on top of the red toned image. You can see where the emulsion has been removed leaving either a magenta or green image (yellow plus cyan).  Close examination of the image shows registration problems due to time parallax errors and printing difficulties.

The first picture was scanned from a frame in the middle of a pan, the frame on the right is much sharper.

Item 52 & 53

A piece of 35mm combined Black and White Positive with 4 small holes at each perforation.  Close examination shows that there is a unilateral variable Area track. (see second picture)

Item 54

A sample of 16mm from the 1930s.  There is a track each side and alternate frames are upside down and also alternate single and double perforations. The film had a note with it saying that the system was designed to run at 4/5 the speed of 35mm rather than the 2/5 of normal 16mm and thus increase the sound quality.

Item 55

An unopened roll of unexposed film supplied by the Fuerst Brothers.  The label says 'Negative Film Lumiere Perforations - Open in Darkroom only'

Fuerst Brothers started trading in 1884. They were operating from the address on the can in 1899 and still there in 1915.

Itm56 & 5

A sample of three row 9.5mm Stencil colour. The frame on the right is an enlargement.  Note also the faulty perforation second row from the bottom of the main image.

Print made about Mar 29th 1895 from negative taken in a camera made by R W Paul and operated by Birt Acres at “Clovelly Cottage”, Park Road, Barnet in front of the premises as a test piece 40 ft long and believed to be the first film produced in England for the Kinetoscope.  The film was made by G Blair at Foot’s Cray Kent.

B.A 7/7/26

Note typed out.

Tinting is carried out by dyeing the film emulsion or, in the past, by buying film stock where the film base was coloured.  All the major manufacturers supplied a range of coloured base stocks.

Click images to see larger image.

Amber Tint

A selection of pre-tinted stocks

When sound arrived some tint colours caused a drop in sound volume because of the colour sensitivity of the track reader so stock was produced where the area for the sound track was not tinted.

Most stock manufacturers produced booklets that contained samples of tinting and toning.

 'All the Colours of The World' produced by the Gamma Group and published by Edizioni Diabasis, 1998 contains illustrations from Agfa, Gevaert and Pathe.

Johnsons & Sons, Cross Street, Finsbury, London produced a sample book for their Kinocolor Film Dyes.

When sound was introduced tinting caused problems with the reproduction of the sound track; different colours caused changes to the sound level, various methods were used to solve this problem. Kodak Ltd  patented the following method. Improvements in or relating to the Tinting of Combination Kinematograph and Sound record Films This is Patent GB 348372 May 13 1929 and appears by kind permission of the Director of the European Patent Office

EPA/EPO/OEB , 80298 Munchen, Deutschland

Toning is carried out by converting the black and white silver image to another, usually metallic, element to change the colour. 

Iron gives blue

Copper gives red to brown

Vanadium gives green

Uranium gives black to red

Selenium gives red-brown

Sulphide gives sepia. 

It can also be achieved by replacing the silver image by a dye image using a dye mordant.  This gives an almost infinite range of colours and was used in many of the early colour systems. 

Film known as duplex film was made which had emulsion on both sides.  One side could be toned iron blue and the other side could be dye toned orange.  Dascolor used such a system. Dascolor:  Duplex film, One side toned Iron Blue, The other dye-toned Orange. The two colours can be seen, the orange between the perfs and the blue green on the left edge of the picture frame.

Click images to see larger image.

Dascolor

Tinted and Toned Film: Tinting and toning was used to give a combination of colours. The first image ranges from Yellow to Green.  This is a yellow tint with a green tone added.  The second sample is a blue tone and a rose tint.  The blue is Iron toning.

Stencil colour: The colours were added by painting over stencils which masked out the areas of the frame that did not need the colour being applied. The right hand frame is the Pathecolor stencil cutter and next to it a stencil  - these  images were kindly supplied by the Cinémathèque française 

MOTION PICTURE PHOTOGRAPHY by Carl Lewis Gregory, F.R.P.S. Second Edition published by Falk Publishing Co. Inc New York City in 1927. Chapter XI: TINTING and TONING MOTION PICTURE FILMS. This information was kindly supplied by Mr David Cleveland.

Click Link to view the PDF.

This is a sample from Kinocolor Dyes and has been tinted Sap Green.

You can also find two further booklets here:

Tinting and Toning of Eastman Positive Motion Picture Film 3rd Edition 1922

Tinting and Toning of Eastman Positive Motion Picture Film 4th Edition 1927

According to the Online Computer Library Center 3 Copies of the First Edition, 7 copies of the Second and Third Editions and 4 copies of the Fourth Edition exist.

Kodak Edge Markings 2008-2012

You will see from above that Kodak changes the edge marking when they have published a date range to a new date.  Sound Negatives and colour print stocks no longer have edge printing because it would cause problems with digital sound tracks that are positioned on the outside of the perforations. need to take care when identifying film date codes. Also some of the early symbols vary and can be difficult to identify.

The samples below show the difference betweeb the 1st and 3rd Quarter.  Also the samples show an edge code that often causes problems.  Without looking closely it appears to be two circles US  1919, 1939 0r 1959, looking closer it is actually a circle and a cross US 1931, 1951 or 1971.

3rd Quarter datecode Circle and Cross

Kodak Nitrate Frameline Markings. Note these are vertical to the film edge.

Eastman Edge Code 1913-1914

Debrie Matipo Printer Light 20

These 3 frames were printed at Lt 5, 15 and 20 on a Debrie Matipo.

All modern printers use the Bell and Howell printer point system and usually have a range of lights from 1 to 50.  They also have a trim control calibrated from 1 to 22.  This allows the whole scale to shift by up to 22 points.  The trims are usually used to compensate for the different speeds of the different stocks.

The method by which the grader communicates with the printing machine is called a cue.  As well as telling the printing machine where the light change is wanted it has to be told the value of the exposure or the printing light.  This is done by a band or chart.

The simple definition of correct exposure is the result on the screen that the customer likes.  However a more scientifically useful definition is that the picture being viewed has the maximum detail in both the shadows and highlights and is of the correct contrast, of course, the customer is paying the bill so this might not be what he wants and what he wants has to be produced.  If we are dealing with colour then the colour must be correct.  We are trying to reproduce, within the limits of the photographic process, the original scene.  As with everything in grading this needs to be qualified.  There are occasions when the customer does not want an exact reproduction of the original scene.  For example when a scene is shot Day-for-Night, that is a scene is photographed during the day and needs to look like night.

The shadows are the darkest areas of the scene; they will appear lightest in a negative.  The highlights are the lightest areas in the scenes, the darkest in the negative.  A dark suit would be a good example of a shadow area and a white shirt a highlight area.

The contrast of a film determines the number of grey tones between white and black.  High contrast film will not have any grey tones, just black and white.  A low contrast film will have a large number of grey tones.

The general principles of grading apply to sight or VCA grading.  So in the following the principles of sight grading are discussed but it can be assumed that they will apply to analyser grading particularly as many graders make corrections on an analyser-graded first print by sight grading.

It should be a guiding principle for graders to keep the amount of grading to a minimum.  It is tempting for inexperienced graders to want to change the light for every scene.  To some extent this has been brought about by the practice of laboratories having the negative preparation department pre-notch or cue every scene before giving the negative to the grader.  This was so that the grader can concentrated on grading and not worry about notching the scene with the possibility of damaging the film.  The inexperienced grader then assumes that because there is a notch that a different light is required for every scene.

Grading is carried out by mentally comparing the scene in front of you with a standard scene that will print at the middle of the printer scale.  Some laboratories have their standard setting at a point below the midpoint of the scale because the grader is more likely to require high lights for overexposed scenes than low lights for underexposed scenes.  If a scene is underexposed then the resultant negative will have loss of detail in the shadows.  No matter how low a light you use you can never bring out detail that is not there.  Using a low light will give a print that is washed out and thin without a good black.  Unless we are dealing with a technical film or a newsreel where information from the image is more important than picture quality we will get a more pleasing result by keeping the blacks black and perhaps sacrificing a little shadow detail.  The cameraman produces day-for-night by deliberately underexposing to lose shadow detail and the grader keeping the print dark.  He has to be careful not to include the sun!

The grader has to keep his mental image of the standard scene in his mind all the time he is grading.  He also has to assume that the control is keeping the printers and process on aim.  It is impossible for a grader to get a good result if he is not sure that a particular light will always give the same result. 

Sometimes customers will talk about TV grading or theatrical grading; there is no such thing.  A film can only be correctly graded.  A print for TV is sometimes required slightly lighter and with lower contrast.  If the print is required slightly lighter then the correction is made on the printing machine.  It is extremely difficult when you are grading to look at a scene and decide on light 22 and then make a mental calculation that the right light is 20.  It would also mean that a second set of grading would have to be kept for theatrical grading.  Eventually the wrong grading will be used.  We produce the lower contrast by shortening the processing time.

The first decision to be made is which printing machine to use and whether to print the film forwards or backwards.  If the film is single perforated 16mm then we do not have a choice because the film will only run one way on the printer just as in a projector.  35mm can be printed either way.

Which printing machine is used will depend on the type of work being done. Is a negative or a print or a duplicating positive being made?  In some laboratories different machines are used for different stocks.  The condition of the film will also help to inform the decision about the appropriate machine.  Some machines are not able to handle shrunken film.

The direction is decided upon by checking a number of factors.  The type of cues we are using has to be selected.  This will depend on the systems available on each printer; some laboratories use only one type of cueing, for example FCC.

If RF Cues are used and the film is already cued for a backwards run then it is sensible to print the film backwards.  The condition of the film is also a deciding factor.  If the film is badly shrunken then it might have to be printed forward to avoid the shrunken picture appearing in the sound track area.

Most 35mm printing machines have adjustable or interchangeable gates usually known as masks.  The usual gate is a five-way gate; full aperture or silent mask, forwards-picture mask, backwards-picture mask, forwards-sound mask and backwards-sound mask.  The grader must specify which mask to use and that depends on what we are printing.

The first light on a film is usually the Academy Leader and often has one or more grey scales or step wedges cut in to it.  Many laboratories have their own wedge that they cut into each film.  This can be measured on a densitometer to ascertain whether the print density is right this assumes that the wedge has been given a known standard light.  If the process or printer varies then this wedge will be wrong.  It is good practise to always give the leader a standard light even if your laboratory does not use a wedge.

Click image to see larger Image.

We can now commence to grade the film.  The first scenes are likely to be title or even a censor.  Both of these are often shot on clear base high contrastfilm stock.  We have to judge the exposure so that the white are white and the blacks are black.  Because we are dealing with high contrast material the exposure is quite critical.  Too much exposure and the whites will ‘fill-in’ and too little and the blacks will be grey.  A couple of lights less than the mid light should be about right for normally exposed titles.  If they are super-imposed titles then we also have to consider the background. Superimposed titles will be on duplicate negative stock and will have a normal contrast so we have more latitude.  Duplicate negatives are almost always heavier than a camera negative.  This is because the duplicate negative must produce the same tonal range as a camera negative.  A camera negative is exposed so that the shadows are on the toe of the curve. When a print is made and the shadows then appear on the shoulder of the print stock the final result is a close reproduction of the brightness range of the original scene.  In order to retain the close reproduction the duplicates must be printed on the straight-line portion of the curve.

As we make our way through the film we must examine each scene to determine how much detail we want in the highlights or shadows.  We will always check the scene in several places in case the shot involves a pan or tracking shot and the exposure varies through the shot.  We also keep in mind the previous scene so that we can maintain an even balance through the film. It is often said that you should grade for flesh tones. From a colour viewpoint this might be true but in general you must grade for the highlights and shadows and largely ignore the skin densities.  Obviously there are shots for example where the director wanted the face in silhouette then we ignore the shadow detail and make sure the face is as the director wanted.  A great difficulty for a grader working in the archive field is that the director’s instructions for grading are no longer available and most likely neither is the director!  We then have to interpret the film as we hope the director wanted, although we usually have a client who is going to decide how he wants the film graded.

Once we have completed the grading for the film or reel then we have to produce the appropriate bands for it.  We can then send the film to be cleaned and printed.

It is essential for a grader to see as much of his work on the screen as is possible.  He can then learn where he is making errors and to equate his view of the negative over the bench with a picture on the screen.  The only way to become and stay a good grader is to have lots of practice with a continual self-appraisal by viewing as much of your work as possible.

During the late 1960's Bell and Howell introduced the Video Colour Analyser.  The grader ran the film throuh it looking at a television screen and turned colour controls to get easch scene the required colour balance.

Kodak introduced their own colour analyser which worked on a completely different system to the Bell and Howell Analyser which used a colour television system.  Kodak use a black and white television with a rotating  wheel with red, green and blue filters. It was very noisy and mostly unpopular with graders. It tended to be more stable because it was a black and white video system.

Once garading was complete a punched tape was produced to var

Click image to see larger Image.