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Soon, No More Film Movie Cameras
phil reed writes "Creative Cow Magazine reports that manufacturers of movie cameras have quietly discontinued production of film cameras. There are still some markets — not in the U.S. — where film cameras are sold, but those numbers are far fewer than they used to be. If you talk to the people in camera rentals, the amount of film camera utilization in the overall schedule is probably between 30 to 40 percent. However, film usage is dropping fast, which has ramifications up and down the production line. Archivists are worried."
Film doesn't have a "true RGB" resolution because the granularity of the three layers is different. If you examine some film scans the detail you'll pick up in blue is much less than the other channels due to the larger grain size in that channel. Even at 160 l/mm that's like what, 3.5k across the film? Typically 35mm film will measure around 3k resolution. RED Epic will measure (in the recorded file) ~4k and in A/B testing does look sharper than 35mm film, looking more like 65mm film.
-- oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc
film is very high res. your comment shows your ignorance.
tell me, oh wise one, how do you squeeze more detail out of a digital 'film'?
otoh, gone with the wind (very old film-based movie) can be resampled and given more resolution than even some modern HD movies.
I laughed when some kid said something about 'yeah, but they didnt' shoot with HD film, did they?'.
film has always been 'high def' and with better scanners, you get more bits of res from it.
my old 35mm negs still scan very well, too.
film is more expensive to edit and change and digital does that easily; but film has its place and pretty much always will.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Digital will never be 100% for everybody... for most of us, it's pretty close though. The reason is that while light is a continuous spectrum of wavelengths, our perception of light is a mix of 3 primaries. There's 3 basic colours of cones in your eye (red, green, blue... what a coincidence!), and your brain compares how much each of those react to different wavelengths to produce a colour. Digital display relies on this in order to reproduce the same perception of colour... it displays relative intensities of each of these three primaries in order to trick your brain into thinking it's looking at a different wavelength when it's actually looking at a combination of primaries.
The thing is... your "red" cones aren't all responsive to exactly the same frequency. Ditto the green and blue ones. And my red peak sensitivity band is almost certainly different from yours. Because digital display doesn't reproduce the exact colours you're sensitive to, it'll never be 100% true to life. It'll be close enough that most of us won't notice the difference, but it can't be 100% true to life. More than that, some humans, mostly females, actually have 4 colours of cones instead of 3, and can see slightly into what most would consider the ultraviolet range (I'm one of them). For those people, digital playback can never be as vibrant as real life, because it's not capturing that extra information that the eye sees. (and no, Sharp with their quattron, is still a waste of money, because the 4th colour isn't yellow).
Don't want >1080p now, no problem, but shoot it on a 1080p camera now and you're screwed later. Shoot it on 35mm and your good for 2K later.
Uh, since 4k and 2k refer to the horizontal resolution 1920x1080 is already ~2k. A direct scan of a 35mm film negative will have a bit more detail than that, but plenty film grain too so in practice they're pretty close as we've seen on many 35mm to BluRay transfers. Note that with analog processing the actual resolution in a cinema was typically less than 1080p so it's not like it was better in the "good old days". Digital 4k all the way from the camera to a 4k projector is likely to look better than 35mm and more like something shot on 70mm, which was fairly exotic. Relatively little was shot on it then and even less now, I'd wager.
As for 4k, yes it's expensive but not like Hollywood-expensive anymore. Compared to paying Will Smith $20,000,000 to star in your movie renting a Red camera or a Cinealta F65 is peanuts. Then again, unless you're going to be in 4k digital projection cinemas then it's not going to help you today, only when what comes after BluRay comes out. That could take a very long while. Not to mention I wouldn't bet on the tool chain being ready for it either, if only the raw footage is 4k then it'll be a huge job to upgrade it. We saw that with many things made for TV, even if it was shot on 35mm film all the rest was done in SD and would have to be redone.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
A good 35 film neg will contain around 3k of resolution. This is generally scanned at 4k to preserve all the detail. Scanning beyond that makes for larger files, but no more actual detail. "Digital film" - as in the files from modern digital cinema cameras like the RED Epic is already recording more detail than that 35mm film neg.
-- oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc
"Being able to play back what you just captured is invaluable"
It's called video tap, and it works on 35mm cameras.
"Reloading by slapping in a new hard drive saves downtime"
Changing magazines on a film camera is just as easy and quick. Pop one off, pop the other on.
"Cutting the size and weight of the camera down by 70-90% gives you flexibility"
There are tons of small motion picture cameras. The A minima is way smaller than any comparable HD camera for example.
"Filming at high frame rates like it's nothing is damned cool"
With film you can shoot hundreds, or even thousands of frames per second easily since it's all mechanical. I'd like to see you do that with something like the varicam or RED's stuff, which tops out at 120fps.
Just about the only advantage to Digital over film right now is if you're going for a certain look, and cost.
Which film stock are you referring to? at 35mm to get 8k rez you'd need a lens capable of passing detail at 160lp/mm.
-- oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc
No, good 35mm motion picture film stock like 5219 measures about 3k resolution. 80MP would equate to what - 12k. Don't be silly - that's a vast over-estimation of the resolution of film and you're also well into lens and diffraction limitations at that point. Don't confuse scanning resolution with measured detail, and don't confuse 35mm motion picture film with 35mm stills film which is somewhat larger...
-- oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc