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Dear Sir Roger Deakins,
In a post regarding printer light as shown in picture, you mentioned that your regular timing light was approximately 29 – 31 – 29. Assuming the order is R – G – B, the green seems to be timed at a higher point.
I suppose a higher green point means the resulting print would have more magenta, but why is that? Were there any greens in the negative stock you usually use (I guess would be 200T or 500T?) that needs to be “canceled” by introducing magenta? Or was it the print, or something else entirely?
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Each lab calibrates their printers to whatever range between 1 and 50 for each color they want, 25-25-25 will not be the same at another lab. And film stocks rarely are printed at the same number value for each color to get to neutral, so having one color at 29 and another at 31 is not significant.
Plus there are some day to day variations from the processing despite what the lab tells you. And there are some roll variations despite what Kodak tells you. And DPs themselves often expose within a 1/3-stop variation because we’re not perfect.
Some DPs just printed everything at the same set of numbers mainly to show them their exposure variations, the processing variations, the stock variations… which to some degree is educational but would also drive you nuts, plus the director and editor would be cutting dailies with these variations visible.
But even if there were zero variations on everyone’s part, it still doesn’t mean that to get to neutral that the film would print at the same number for each color.
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