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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."
Archivists might be worried but you can't say there wasn't enough warning. Production houses have been switching to digital since at least the 90's.
They weren't worried about their jobs. They worried that now movies will be stored in physical mediums that last a lot less than 100 years. I know that digital information isn't bound to the physical medium - you can copy it to newer mediums, but there's still a valid concern.
The good: Film stock is expensive. Being able to play back what you just captured is invaluable. Reloading by slapping in a new hard drive saves downtime. Cutting the size and weight of the camera down by 70-90% gives you flexibility. Recording in any aspect ratio by just pressing a button is awfully convenient. Filming at high frame rates like it's nothing is damned cool. Digital projection in theaters and HD sets at home let you have an all-digital workflow.
Improving: Film has (had?) better dynamic range. Digital cameras are getting cheaper, but still more up front; still, you make it up pretty quickly.
The bad: Film has established reliable procedures for archiving. Data's still iffy.
So yeah, other than nostalgia for film grain, digital is the future. This isn't a surprise to anyone in the industry... A few years back digital gained solidly "good enough" picture quality at an attainable price, and everyone's switching as fast as they can get comfortable with the new toys. The technology just keeps getting better, so this isn't going to reverse.
Old film isn't exactly the most stable stuff out there either. Nearly every film before 1951 was recorded on nitrocellulose film which is very susceptible to breaking down (also to burning as well). We've lost many of the films from the silent era to the film simply eating itself.
Every generation of media has a special challenge which is eventually overcome. Digital is no different.
I was thinking that it is much easier to duplicate and manage digital films... and more specifically perhaps that we will see an industry arise catering for very long term secure digital storage that will last for centuries.
Imagine many data centers spread across the planet, duplicate copies of stored items, offline and online access... we seem to be on this path now with The Cloud..
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While it's recorded on film, it's edited on a computer, and then duplicated back on to "film", which really is just a long strip of color laser printer transparency paper. The edited digital film is transferred at 4096x2000 give or take. The only films shot in 1080p were independent films. You'd be shocked at how many films are distributed this way. Something like 90%.
The end result is that the picture you see in the theater isn't as clear as the image you saw in the 1980s, but it's still ultra sharp for the purpose it's used for.
moox. for a new generation.
The cardinal problem we have with old film reels is not the medium's inherent instability. It's that no one had the foresight to archive the reels properly.
Properly stored and handled, film is quite stable. But if you send out all your reels on the road because each reel is expensive and they get handled by the doofuses in the projection booth that thread them backwards the first time, left in car trunks, etc. and you store your masters in a warehouse with no cooling/dehumidifying apparatus where it is subject to extremes of heat and cold, sure, you end up 50 years later with reels that are barely salvageable.
Given that most post-processing in film has been digital for decades but digital projectors have only just started to become widespread, I'd say we already have perfectly good ways to produce 35mm prints from a digital source.
It really depends on the film type used. 3-strip dye-transfer prints, for example, are almost indestructible if stored correctly (i.e. negligible degradation over time).
Ordinarily, being the geek that I am (and having worked at the very forefront of digital cinema) I'd be pleased that faster, better cheaper technology is replacing film, even in the "capture" (recording) stage.
However, as a wanna-be physicist, I know(?) that color is NOT just the simple mixture of three (or more) primaries; that is in Real Life(tm) it is a continuos spectrum and that film cameras (I think) capture it with some chemicals that are not just sensitive to a narrow slice of this spectrum. I compare this to modern CMOS based cameras in which the sensors, even if they are similarly "broadband", probably have different responses to light than say Kodachrome.
So, does this account for why some people say digital looks different than film? Can it corrected? Do people care? I worked in compression not color but I guess I should have learned this. :(
.... how many were stored in a climate controlled archive?
Some films do have problems with age. This is especially true of film reels from the early age of the motion picture. But in most cases the degradation is more a function of the film not being stored properly because no one imagined wanting to preserve them for posterity all those years ago. Just like during the studios used to just throw out animation cells, they used to can old reels after they retired them from the box office. Consider one of my favorites, Metropolis. Shortly after its debut, pretty much no one thought it was worth keeping around. The few reels still in existence were found by mistake or in the vaults of private collectors who, fascinated by the movie, bought their own copy when it first came out.
The good part is that Lucas can always shoot the movies again, and make some improvements while he's doing it.
They worried that now movies will be stored in physical mediums that last a lot less than 100 years
You mean, like film? Making film last 20 years is easy. Making it last 50 requires considerable effort. Making it last 100 is really hard. The advantage that film has is that it degrades gradually. A film that's been badly stored (assuming it doesn't spontaneously combust, which is a problem with a lot of old films) will probably be watchable, but the quality will be bad. Digital recording tend to either be perfect or completely unplayable - there isn't much middle ground. The advantage of the digital recording is that, while it is not damaged, copies will be exactly the same quality as the original. This makes archiving a lot easier.
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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.
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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
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