 Yo what up, welcome back to another episode that seems a little different for some reason. Well, I'm in the middle of an explosive colon cleanse right now, so I figured why not just do a film review. So let's take a moment to stop thinking about entropy and the inevitable heat death of the universe, to instead think about motion picture film, more specifically, Sobersaults 35. Motion picture film has been making a lot of waves in the film photography community lately with more and more shops able to process it popping up all around the globe or flat disc, depending on your IQ. Just one of the biggest to enter the game in recent memory is Sobersaults, which translates to Silver Salt in German. But before you get too excited about cocaine, Sobersault is actually a reference to the silver light sensitive halide crystals that coat a strip of film. Sobersaults has already kind of made a name for itself, offering photochemical services to major motion pictures in the European region. In fact, their German office took their entire motion picture workflow and made the process compatible for still photography. I had a chance to hop on a call with Thomas Bergman, who is a managing director over in Germany to clear up some things about the pipeline and verify that they weren't actually running a meth lab. This image that's on screen right now kind of looks like the TV show Breaking Bad. Have you ever watched that? This was, to be honest, the inspiration a little bit. This is what our lab looks like. Basically, we use this sensor machine. It's a motion picture scanner that scans 4K HDR. And this we use for our motion picture customers and for our open projects and for you guys. Bergman goes on to describe this custom one of a kind machine that they built to process all these roles of film. We had a little cooperation going on with a very old guy. He had a lab. He was running a lab for like 30 years. He did never buy anything. He just constructed everything himself. We collaborated on coming up with this processor. The quality is very high and we are very proud that it does not touch air at all. So chemistry stays fresh very long in there. I found it kind of interesting that in order to develop multiple roles of still photography in a machine that processes mainly motion picture film, they have to tape one end of the role to another to feed it through the system as one long piece of film, just like the human centipede. So what you're getting with Silversols is the exact motion picture process, but for still photography. What that means is if for some reason you really liked the last Jedi and wanted to steal their film look of the movie, this is your chance. You can now shoot the exact same motion picture stock that that cinematographer used in the scene where Luke Skywalker jerks off a space cow. But enough technical crap, you're a smart, savvy, business-minded individual who just wants to see some goddamn results already. We finally had a sunny day here in LA, so we hit the streets. Just kidding. Every day is sunny here. It's paradise. When half the state isn't burning to the ground. I met up with Caleb and handed over one of the roles to be used in his Canon 1N. I handed over the 50D to be specific. I was sent four roles and frankly I have a hard enough time getting through one role, so definitely gonna need some backup. When it came to choosing a camera to use with cine film, I figured what's more cinematic than the X-Pan, or in this case the TX-1. And don't worry, not every video from now on is gonna feature the TX-1. I'm just in the honeymoon phase with this camera. We headed down to Echo Park Lake, because it was still too early in the day to shoot gas stations at night. One thing to note here is that SilverSales actually recommends shooting all of its film one stop overexposed. In fact all the cartridges that you get from them will have a DX code rating that is one stop overexposed. So 500T will read as 250, 50D will read as 25, etc etc. If you like sun flares that blow out your photo and make you embarrassed to call yourself a photographer, so you cut all ties, sell your cameras, move to another state and change your name, then boy oh boy is this the photo for you. Photo of Caleb in his power stance, always ready for battle. So what is the whole process like? SilverSales generally sends you four roles of your choosing at a time in these cool little cartridges with a bunch of swag and instructions on how to send it back for processing. I had one role of every stock that they offer, which is Vision 3, 50D, 200T, 250D, and of course the infamous 500T. Once you've sent your film back they process it all in about a week's time, sometimes less, and they send you high-res scans as well as preview scans via Dropbox, but more on that in a bit. Additionally you can request that your film be returned to you for home scanning, storage, autoerotic film strip asphyxiation, etc. This photo is an interesting case study in photos that you took, but you're not quite sure why. I think the day shots ended up looking pretty nice, but I was a little more excited to see what the nighttime photos would look like. So Caleb and I headed out at night in search of greatness in the form of neon signs, a staple of night photography. I started off with some 500T. I suppose the camera should be on. I shot doubles of the scene and I'm not sure which one I like more. I think this shot is more to the point and simple, which is pleasant to look at, but this one has this badass streak, which reminds me I need to wash my underwear. Bro you did it. You did it bro! We eventually came upon a restaurant that was perfectly lit for some interesting compositions, except that there was a stupid billboard right next to it. I guess I could just shop it out, but would you think less of me if I did? Sometime around this point I got yelled at by a lady threatening to stab me. I think it's important to suffer for your art. Okay, so speaking of motion picture film, what about Cinestill? Did we just forget that exists? No, of course not, but it's different. What makes a cine film a cine film at the end of the day has a lot to do with the developing process. The secret is really in the sauce. Here's a crude and quick comparison between SilverSalls and Cinestill. Both film stocks start out as Vision 3 motion picture stock, but the problem is it needs to be developed in ECN 2 chemicals, which are the tastiest, but they fuck you up the most if you ask me. ECN 2 chemicals are hard to come by, in fact most photo labs won't even go near this stuff. So one day Cinestill said fuck the rules and chemically castrated the Vision 3 motion picture stock to remove a layer called the Remjet layer before the film is exposed. With the Remjet layer out of the way, it opens up the cine film to be easily developed in standard C41 chemicals, which just about all photo labs do process. However, there are a few problems that arise. Most notably these orange sh** stains around the highlights of the image. These are called halations, and if you think they look cool, you're not alone. If you think that they look distracting and ugly, you're also not alone. The Remjet layer that was on the film that Cinestill removed was there to crush any halations from appearing, or God forbid unionizing. The ECN 2 process as a whole renders a finer grained and flatter image compared to C41. A flatter image helps arrest any extra detail in the highlights and shadows, and is designed to be flat, so cinematographers and colorists have a bunch of latitude to play with if they want to design a look in post. Basically cinematographers 20 years ago, they were taking like 16 stops of dynamic range to bring as much as possible latitude home, and then decide about contrasts later. If you have trouble learning anything unless it's in meme form, think of it this way. So that's it. Basically it boils down to the process. Soversalls uses the entire pipeline that Kodak recommends for its Vision 3 motion picture stock, and Cinestill throws the rulebook out the window completely. I'm not saying one's better than the other because honestly there is no right answer. Straight up, it all depends on the look that you're going for with your work, and that's the simple truth of it. What you see here is called densitometry. This is happening every morning before we process. So basically Kodak sending test strips, we process them, and then we can compare our chemistry to the official Kodak stand that, for example, here we were pushing the film for one stop. Basically you see the complete truth about what's happening to the colors and to the contrast. Is that a digital camera? What? No? Me? This photo of the phone is the perfect example of good idea but bad execution on my part. The lighting and colors aren't working for me, but the composition is nice. I soon found myself in a bit of a sticky predicament. I needed to wrap up this roll of 200T, but it was daytime out. If you don't know, the T in 200T stands for tungsten, which essentially means that the film is balanced for artificial light. So if you shot tungsten film during the day, you might get kind of a blue and desaturated image. Fortunately, there's a way to unf**k this whole situation. You can actually purchase a tungsten to daylight filter. The one I have here is an 85B filter. Once you slap that bad boy on the lens, you can shoot tungsten film in daylight. It's magic. If only the 85B filter solved all my problems in life. Here's a quick comparison of a totally original never before seen shot, shot with and without a daylight filter. As you can hopefully tell, the colors are a bit more balanced in the daylight filter image. And the straight tungsten image is a lot bluer. And here's another shot with the 85B filter. Looks pretty normal, which is something my doctor has never uttered to me. One night, we had this pretty crazy rainstorm pass through LA and so I took advantage of it to go shoot this gas station. I really like this shot. It's a shot that I had been kind of planning for a while and I think Silversalls was the perfect stock to use. But later on, I dared to ask the question, what would happen if I don't shoot neon signs or gas stations with tungsten film? Is the world even ready for such a thing? So let's talk about scanning. Everyone's favorite topic. When your Silversalls film is done, it's processed and scanned. You get a Dropbox link. And for each role, you have three folders. Image preview, full quality and raw scans. Full quality and raw scans are JP2 files, which is an uncompressed JPEG format. I mean, I guess standard JPEG format was already at rock bottom. So I really had nowhere to go but up. These are the files that are meant to be edited by you in Photoshop or Microsoft Paint if you're really talented. I think currently Lightroom cannot import JP2 files. You also get an image preview folder that exists for a quick glance of your shots with a standard look applied so that you can really get an idea of how your image might look with some added contrast and saturation. But me, I'm not so easy. Well, I was in college, but not anymore. I wanted to see what these bad boys would look like run through my editing program of choice, Negative Lab Pro. Long story short, the image output from Negative Lab Pro is actually pretty damn similar to the preview files. But in my opinion, I think that the home scanning takes it that extra mile and just polishes it to perfection. Here are a couple of my home scans compared to the preview files that were delivered. As you can probably see, there's a little bit more latitude and more vibrant colors. This is kind of to be expected. According to Silversols, the preview files are really just that previews. They are really just meant to give you an idea of how your finals might look. With all that being said, if you prefer not to edit them at all and just wanna blast the images up on Instagram, Reddit, MySpace, whatever, then you can totally just use the preview files. So what'd you think of the shots? I think the colors are just too good to be true, especially the night photos. There's just something so crisp and clean about them. Dare I say it, synagazmic. I think this is my favorite shot. After all, neon signs are a lifestyle at this point. I can see Silversols' film being used for all kinds of work. It might be interesting to kinda play with juxtaposing it against something mundane or something we perceive as standard to life. That's right, I'm justifying taking more toilet photos. You can have every special project you like. So if you wanna push or pull or bleach bypass, you can have it without extra costs. I think it would be fair to talk about some of the cons with the whole process, aside from the fact that they're based out of Germany and might be friends with the bad guys from Die Hard. For starters, shipping is gonna be rough, especially if you're like me and you live in California and need to ship to Germany and back. However, if you live in Europe or the UK, it's probably a non-issue. Additionally, Silversols only offers 35 millimeter. As of right now, they do not currently offer 120. I had the chance to briefly inquire about this when we chatted over AOL Instant Messenger. We would love to do it and we hear this question like, like literally several times a day. The processing side of things is easy. The scanning part, it's the challenge. So with all that being said, I think Silversols has a very strong foundation and a healthy head start in the motion picture film market. As well, they seem very dedicated to improving the cine film workflow as well as their pipeline in the future. Me personally, I think that's definitely something worth supporting, especially if you go ape-s**t for motion picture film. Whether it's upgrading technical equipment or improving logistical shipping issues, I'm excited to see where their pipeline goes and what they do next. I was certainly more than happy with the results I got back and a few of my images are gonna go into the portfolio. If you want even more cinematic goodness, you can follow Silversols on Instagram or even here on YouTube at gods of grain, even though I'm internally conflicted because I guess technically they are a competing film photography channel. So I should be trying to destroy them.