Q: The film image is very dark, red-orange with hardly any other color, and
streaky. What happened?
A:The camera was threaded incorrectly, with the dark side and not the
light side towards the lens.

Q: The film is all biased orange/red and excessively warm. Why?
A: Either daylight balance film was used under movie lights without a
filter, or else the correct tungsten balance film was used indoors but
with the daylight correction (#85, or type A) filter wrongly in place.*

Q:The film is all biased purple/blue and excessively cold. Why?
A:Either tungsten balance film was used outdoors without the daylight
correction (No. 85 or type A) filter, or else the correct daylight
balance film was used outdoors but with the tungsten correction (type
80B) filter wrongly in place.*


*Color movie film used to be made in two types: Daylight and Type A.
Daylight gave fine color when exposed with sunlight outdoors. Type A
gave fine color when exposed with short-lived (3 hour) photo flood lights
indoors. Type A also gave fine color when exposed with sunlight outdoors
through a Type A (No. 85) daylight conversion filter. Any other
combination gave bad color. Additionally the film would come out
greenish under fluorescent lights or mercury streetlights, pure yellow
under sodium streetlights, bluish on a cloudy day or in the shade, and
yellowish if filming with ordinary household light bulbs.

Projecting off-color film directly might not look so bad, compared to a
video transfer. This is because: 1. Movies are projected in the dark so
your eyes will adapt to it somewhat, while video is viewed with the room
lights on so your eyes will not adapt. 2. Movie screens are generally
not as bright as a TV set and your eyes are then not as sensitive to
color problems. 3. Video does not have the latitude that your eye and
color film have, so if the color is too far off it will saturate the
color signal and gradations in color will disappear. You can best judge
a films color over a white light box to give you a reference white,
not using a projector.