Mystery Test Films (well mystery to me)

[Ryan Gallagher]

I'm privy to most of the dolby test films and a few SMPTE ones. But these two were new to me. Both on ebay, but well outside my price range for the sake of curiosity. Neither make an appearance in the handful of places online that list test films such as Sprocket School's Test Films page (a resource hosted by Chicago Film Society). Both seem to be loosely related to broadcast TV?

1st one is self-labeled as an "RMA Resolution Chart", 1946, and the lister (in Hungary) describes it as being connected to the film-to-broadcast systems, while similar to many aspects of 35PA most of it's features seem to be about quantifying resolvable detail.

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Listing: https://www.ebay.com/itm/365583410242

Wikicommons actually has an image hosted of it as seen through a period TV set, (rounded picture tube and all). Although shown color reversed... so is the film version a negative? Would they have taken B&W negatives directly to broadcast this way?
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/C...n_Chart_(1946)

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I expect every broadcasting jurisdiction adopted some kind of test image of their own.

2nd one is a SMPTE one I had not seen before. My read is it is a projection, or perhaps specifically lens resolution test film, though it too could be vintage Film/TV era stuff? 35PA has elements designed to determining resolvable detail in a measurable way, but these are whole frames dedicated to the topic!

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Listing: https://www.ebay.com/itm/401847084911

I'm too young to have memories of these or similar on broadcast TV (before it was 24/7), maybe "indian head" I've seen in my youth once or twice. But otherwise it was SMPTE bars & tone in my childhood, the age of VIDEO.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Aside, the wikicommons TV or broadcast seems poorly adjusted to the vertical framing lines. ;-)

[Mark Ogden]

Yup. Test film for telecine cameras in TV film chains. The horn-shaped wedges in the middle were tests for horizontal and vertical resolution, the diagonal lines were a test for interlace, the circles in the corners were for checking the focus of the camera scanning beam. Telecine cameras all had a polarity reverse function, but the positive image you posted may have come from a device called a "monoscope", an electronic image generator that was typically used for test patterns, where the image was printed onto a metal slide that was placed into, and scanned by, a cathode ray tube. Monoscopes provided the sharpest and highest quality test image for broadcasting. The classic Indian head pattern that TV stations would run after the evening's programming ended were typically monoscope images, as opposed to slides or art cards.

[Jim Cassedy]

Yes, as others have stated, those were designed to align & calibrate telecine film-chain
cameras. I worked at a lab for a while where we had a telecine, and a very early, and
somewhat temperamental Rank CInetel film scanner, and we had a complete set of
these. I acquired a few of my own over the years. When I had that recent JJ shutter
catastrophe a month or so ago, I couldn't find my 'travel ghost' test film.
But I remembered I had some of this SMPTE RP-27a, which was another telecine
alignment film, which had a high-contrast white-on-black image, which I was able to
use to check my shutter timing, once I put the projector back together.

TestFilm.jpg

> I never thought of this before, but it's interesting that this film has B&H
(negative) type perforations, because I assume, like many SMPTE films,
that this was a 'camera original'-
- but then wouldn't running it on a telecine with release print (KS) perfs
have affected the registration on the telecine?

[Ryan Gallagher]

But I remembered I had some of this SMPTE RP-27a, which was another telecine
alignment film, which had a high-contrast white-on-black image, which I was able to
use to check my shutter timing, once I put the projector back together.

Neat, I had not seen that one either. Note that 35PA has the 4 high contrast squares that are intended for travel ghost detection, but it's got so much going on I expect it is much easier to see/do with something more dedicated to the task. We have 35PA in our booth and no actual RP40, so I guess I have at least one shutter timing film.