Negative projective to positive image in FCP?

Post by **npcoombs** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 8:03 pm

Does anyone know how I can somehow invert a projected negative image into something similar to how it will look in positive, by using Final Cut Pro?

I shot vision 500T film.

Post by **Skylab001** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 8:23 pm

I'm assuming you mean you are going to project the negative and then capture it as you are projecting it. If thats the case can't you just use the Invert plug in and then tweak the colors a little after it's captured? I've never done it but in theory it seems like it would work.

Post by **npcoombs** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 8:46 pm

exactly, but the inversion is easy...the only problem is that it just all goes from orange to blue. The colour correction seems the hard part...

Ive got it looking reasonably natural but it would help if someone had some experience they could share..

Post by **MovieStuff** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 8:56 pm

This is a fairly recurring topic on this forum. In short, here is what most people do: Put a piece of unexposed, processed neg in the gate of the projector and white balance to that, which will (for the most part) negate the orange masking and leave just negative colors. Then capture and invert in post. However, and this is very important, setting the exposure requires doing tests before the final capture, unless you have a pos/neg switch on your camera or some sort of FX box that has the pos/neg effect built in. Incorrect exposure off of negative can really skew your colors so don't try to use "auto exposure" when shooting off of negative.

Roger

Post by **Will2** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 9:51 pm

Thanks Roger, I've run into that problem many times with non-Rank transfers. Your explanation makes perfect sense, I should have thought of that before.

It can be a struggle with FCP's limited color correction tools to fix this issue.

npcoombs - Try using the white balance in the 3-way color corrector by eye-droping something white and adjust from there.

Post by **mattias** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 11:19 pm

Will2 wrote:Try using the white balance in the 3-way color corrector by eye-droping something white and adjust from there.

yes, good advice, or even shoot a greyscale and pick black and medium grey levels too the same way.

/matt