AshigrainColour negative · Vintage & odd
DS-5M
ДС-5М
Soviet daylight colour that kept reds red.
Soviet daylight cine colour where reds stay red. Original vs Ashigrain.
At a glance
- Exposure index
- 40
- Daylight
- Introduced
- by 1979
- Process
- Svema/Tasma cold colour-negative development (18-22 °C)
About the film
DS-5M (ДС-5М) was the Soviet daylight colour negative for natural daylight or arc light, made both by Svema in Shostka and by Tasma in Kazan.
At the national contest for the best use of domestic colour negative, films shot on it outnumbered those on the tungsten LN stocks roughly two to one until 1983, when the two were used about equally. That year Khristofor Triandafilov's Karakum, 45° in the Shade, shot entirely on Tasma DS-5M, became the first film wholly on Tasma stock to win a prize there. Alexei Rodionov shot Elem Klimov's Come and See (1985) roughly half on Kodak 5293 and half on DS-5M and LN-8, and found the Soviet stocks coarser and grainier, with more saturated colour and bluish blacks. He had the Kodak footage force-processed to bring it closer to them, though in some scenes DS-5M simply lacked the speed. On Torpedo Bombers (1983), Vladimir Ilyin pushed its development to rate it at about 120 GOST units and judged it very good but unstable from batch to batch. Vilen Kalyuta shot all the studio scenes of Two Hussars on DS-5M under tungsten lamps and said he preferred it to the LN stocks, which he found coarser. Writing in 1997, Leonid Konovalov described a red banner shot on it in winter that really was red, and noted that its mask looks almost pure yellow, so its cyan dye is in effect unmasked.
Sources for this history
- Коновалов Л. Как разобраться в кинопленках (1997), Internet Archive
- Артюшин Л. Ф., Барский И. А., Винокур В. А. Справочник кинооператора (1999), Internet Archive
- Гордийчук И. Б., Пелль В. Г. Справочник кинооператора (1979), Internet Archive
- Егоров В. Об итогах VIII Всесоюзного конкурса на лучшее использование отечественных цветных негативных кинопленок (Техника кино и телевидения, 1983, № 9), Техника кино и телевидения
- Триандафилов Х. В. Съемки в Каракумах (Техника кино и телевидения, 1984, № 5), Техника кино и телевидения
- Ильин В. В. Операторская работа в фильме «Торпедоносцы» (Техника кино и телевидения, 1984, № 1), Техника кино и телевидения
- Творчество оператора — от драматургии до техники (Техника кино и телевидения, 1985, № 12), Техника кино и телевидения
- Ермакова Е. Фильм — творчество коллективное (Техника кино и телевидения, 1986, № 1), Техника кино и телевидения
- Ермакова Е. Ю. Практическая магия кинематографа. Часть II (2024), Московский государственный психолого-педагогический университет
The look
DS-5M is a Soviet daylight colour negative for natural daylight or arc light. Cinematographers found it coarser and grainier than Kodak, with saturated colour and bluish blacks, and Leonid Konovalov found that its reds stayed red rather than turning orange like the tungsten LN films'. It prints on Svema TsP-8R by default.
Reds that stay red on a Soviet negative.
Daylight colour printed on Svema TsP-8R.
Best for
- Soviet-era daylight exteriors
- Red subjects in daylight
- Grainy, saturated war-film colour
Among the films
Science & sources
A Soviet daylight colour negative cine film. Its curves are reconstructed from Soviet specifications and handbooks (Konovalov 1997 and others), not digitised from a datasheet. Its cyan dye is LN-9's, which the literature gives as the same dye.
Response curves and the evidence behind the model
Compare manufacturer data with the Ashigrain model on the same axes. This shows the calibration to source curves; comparison with photographed film is a separate question.
Characteristic response
RMS granularity
Density variation (σD). Where the datasheet gives a single grain value, the response away from that point is an approximation.
| Channel | Density | Datasheet-based σD | Model σD |
|---|---|---|---|
| R | 0.3 | 0.004717 | 0.004907 |
| G | 0.3 | 0.005025 | 0.005238 |
| B | 0.3 | 0.009795 | 0.010167 |
| R | 0.6 | 0.004637 | 0.004823 |
| G | 0.6 | 0.004335 | 0.004519 |
| B | 0.6 | 0.009201 | 0.009551 |
| R | 1 | 0.003951 | 0.00411 |
| G | 1 | 0.004838 | 0.005043 |
| B | 1 | 0.00837 | 0.008688 |
| B | 1.5 | 0.004623 | 0.004798 |
Model limits
These images show the film model in use. Spectral response, lighting and viewing conditions include approximations, while halation, bloom, grain size, weave and flicker are not fully measured for each film. A real film capture also depends on development and print timing.
- ДС-5М has no datasheet with curves. Its characteristic curves, spectral sensitivities and magenta and yellow dyes are reconstructed from Soviet specifications and handbooks (Konovalov 1997; Гордийчук & Пелль 1979; Иофис 1980; Артюшин 1999), not digitized from a datasheet.
- Its cyan dye is the ЛН-9 cyan digitized from Konovalov 1997, which gives the same dye for both films. Fog and mask densities are taken from ЛН-8 as a proxy.
- No MTF is published for ДС-5М, only a minimum resolving power of 58 lines/mm. Its MTF is proxied from Kodak Vision3 50D (5203).
- No granularity is published for ДС-5М. Grain is proxied from Kodak Vision3 50D (5203), so the granularity values shown are that film's.
- The sources disagree on the design light, 5500 K or 6500 K; 5500 K is used.
- Because its sensitivities are reconstructed, printer-light timing on this film can differ from the full spectral calculation by up to 0.64 printer points, and colour under custom lights follows the spectral path less closely than for most films.
- Custom lighting spectra, camera metering and the spectral reflectance inferred from fixed-white-balance footage are modeled assumptions, not measurements of this film.
- Colour-print timing and scan balance under arbitrary lighting are modeled. Scanner colour balance has no standard physical unit.
- The spectral transmission of the conversion filter the source prescribes (80A for daylight films under tungsten, 85 for tungsten films in daylight) is modeled, not supplied by the source.
- Individual dye amounts, layer interactions and push/pull behaviour are approximated where the datasheet provides no calibration. Grain size is assumed; published RMS granularity does not specify dye-cloud size.
- Characteristic response outside the published exposure range is an extrapolation, not measured film data.
- Halation strength, radius and layer weights are not quantified by the datasheet. The effect of removing antihalation and the bloom response are also approximations.
- The printer lamp and filter spectra and the Status A grey aim used in this preview are approximated; the source does not publish the required spectral or laboratory aim data.
Film guide: assumptions and practical choices
Sources
- Exposure index: Артюшин Л. Ф., Барский И. А., Винокур В. А. Справочник кинооператора (1999), 1999 edition, p. 114
- Process: Артюшин Л. Ф., Барский И. А., Винокур В. А. Справочник кинооператора (1999), 1999 edition, p. 117
- Reconstructed: Гордийчук И. Б., Пелль В. Г. Справочник кинооператора (1979), 1979 edition, p. 188