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Topic: The quality of grainy film lately.

David Stambaugh
Film God

Posts: 4021
From: Eugene, Oregon
Registered: Jan 2002

posted 05-06-2002 07:55 PM

I drove 200 miles round-trip to see "Far and Away" in 70mm, at the Lloyd Center in Portland. Was very disappointed. I later saw it in 35mm on a mediocre screen here in Eugene and I thought it looked about the same.

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Mark Gulbrandsen
Resident Trollmaster

Posts: 16657
From: Music City
Registered: Jun 99

posted 05-06-2002 09:30 PM

Well finally we have an interesting thread going here. I am in complete disagreement with Bobby about Contrast, overall sharpness, and color quality between smaller still format and large still camera formats. I shoot 35mm, 6X9, and 4X5 on quite a regular basis(at least bi weekly). If one has lenses capable of great resolution it is very difficult to tell the difference between 6X9 medium format and 4X5, which is considered large format. I Use 65, 90, 100, 150, and 210mm Rodenstocks which are all interchangable between the 6X9 and the 4X5 cameras...they are both full view cameras, not limited use Field Type view cameras. I typiclly shoot Fuji Velvia (sorry John but most senic photographers do) as it has the highest resolving power of all color transparency films, amazing color saturation and wonderful contrast. If I shoot the same scene with both cameras through the same lens I get exactly the same results photometrically speaking (according to the lab I use) using the same film. In other words they make almost no change to the filter pack when printing, and usually only change printing time exposure from one format to the other. Only a little more grain is apparent from the 6X9, which is still incredibly difficult to see
at 16X20 size. With the 35mm Nikon its another story but still pretty amazing results when using Velvia. Going to 16X20 does cause the grain to show up a wee tiny bit but contrast and color are still visually pretty much the same as the larger formats. I guess I should go out this weekend and shoot my Color chart with all three formats and post the results of these on my web site next week for all to see.
Mark

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Leo Enticknap
Film God

Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 05-07-2002 02:23 AM

I agree with an earlier contributor that the production process for release prints must be critical to this.

In cinemas where I showed the same film several times with different prints, I noticed enormous differences between each copy in the contrast, saturation and graininess of the picture. I think I must have handled about 10 prints of Titanic in total and they ranged from crisp and dense to grainy and washed-out.

Ironically, new 35mm prints of archival rerelease titles generally look far sharper than routine release prints of new films nowadays (though admittedly, the larger frame area of Academy or full-gate silent relative to S35 and widescreen flat 35 makes this a bit of an unfair comparison).

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Brian Tristam Williams
Film Handler

Posts: 93
From: Johannesburg, South Africa
Registered: Apr 2002

posted 05-07-2002 03:53 PM

I haven't yet noticed this 'Super 35mm' anamorphic, of which you speak. So, they shoot the film, with no anamorphic process, then just mask it and compress it horizontally to fit a 35mm scope screen? Well, I've always been able to tell when a film was shot using the scope process - even on TV. With a film shot using anamorphic lenses, if you have something in focus, like a circle, it has a proper 1:1 aspect ratio. As soon as it goes out of focus, like lights in the background while the actors are in focus, the out-of-focus stuff becomes horizontally compressed. This is particularly noticeable with lights in the background.

If Ocean's Eleven was not shot using anamorphic lenses, then the lights in the background should remain round. I see that it's still showing here at our 15-cinema complex, so I must check that out.

Unrelated, but you mentioned Ali using this process: A premiére of Ali was held at our complex, and Will Smith, Michael Mann (director), Nelson Mandela and other celibrities were here. If only I'd known about the question of Super-35. I would've asked Michael Mann about it.

By the way, it seems to me that a scope film will definitely have more light output and more contrast when viewed on a top-masking screen, and possibly even with side masking. I mean, with a flat film, you mask half of the aperture out. With scope you let the whole frame through. So, being confident that scope will give you more brightness AND more contrast on a top-masking screen, has anyone done the math for side-masking? I mean, there'll be more light, but the screen is also bigger in that instance.

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"One man can make a difference."

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John Pytlak
Film God

Posts: 9987
From: Rochester, NY 14650-1922
Registered: Jan 2000

posted 05-07-2002 04:00 PM

Brian said: "By the way, it seems to me that a scope film will definitely have more light output and more contrast when viewed on a top-masking screen, and possibly even with side masking. I mean, with a flat film, you mask half of the aperture out. With scope you let the whole frame through. So, being confident that scope will give you more brightness AND more contrast on a top-masking screen, has anyone done the math for side-masking? I mean, there'll be more light, but the screen is also bigger in that instance."

The "math" is in my article about the advantages of "scope" formats, including current 2X Scope 2.39:1 and a proposed 1.5X Scope format that would produce a 1.79:1 aspect ratio with the current "scope" aperture and give 1.5 times MORE screen luminance for the cost of a lens:
http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/newsletters/reel/february97/pytlak.shtml

------------------
John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7525A
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: +1 585 477 5325 Cell: +1 585 781 4036 Fax: +1 585 722 7243
e-mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

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Brian Tristam Williams
Film Handler

Posts: 93
From: Johannesburg, South Africa
Registered: Apr 2002

posted 05-07-2002 04:13 PM

Well, that answers my question!

The scope film on a screen that has side-masking will have more light on the screen than a flat film, at a ratio of 13:16!

The other facts were interesting, too. Forgive my ignorance, but I always thought that scope was 2.35:1, not 2.39:1. What gives?

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"One man can make a difference."

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Gordon McLeod
Film God

Posts: 9532
From: Toronto Ontario Canada
Registered: Jun 99

posted 05-07-2002 04:38 PM

Mark the PowerScope lens have very good depth of focus as does the ArriScope lens

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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 05-07-2002 05:43 PM

Posting color chart results from 6 X 9 and 4 X 5 chromes on the web is not going to yield greatly different results (computer screens have very puny resolution and limited color accuracy). You would have to make a high res drum scan and do a tiny extraction of that scan to try and show any perceiveable difference. And both of those view camera formats are extreme high resolution formats. Super35 and 'Scope 35 are not.

With motion picture film, you're taking about taking a much smaller size negative and blowing it on a screen much larger than any print you would make with a view camera. Those two items greatly amplify the roughly 40% size difference in negative between a cropped 2.35:1 Super35 frame and full 4-perf anamorphic 35mm frame. Anamorphic 'scope originated 35mm film images are already pushing the limits of what is acceptable for 35mm use. 5-perf 70mm was developed partly in response to the obvious compromise in quality that anamorphic represented. Super35 origination is taking the blow-up to widescreen method a step farther.

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Mark Gulbrandsen
Resident Trollmaster

Posts: 16657
From: Music City
Registered: Jun 99

posted 05-07-2002 08:00 PM

Gord,
I think you are overlooking the real point here. One of the principal reasons for shooting Super 35 is that Spherical lenses will always have greater depth of field than their counterpart anamorphic lenses will. Even the latest Anamprphics have less than half the depth of field that an equivelent spherical does. While some Anamorphics have slightly better depth of focus than others do the real point is that Spherical lenses do far better and always will.
Mark

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Tao Yue
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 209
From: Princeton, NJ
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 05-08-2002 12:18 AM

quote:

The other facts were interesting, too. Forgive my ignorance, but I always thought that scope was 2.35:1, not 2.39:1. What gives?

The standards changed. See: http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/widescreen/apertures.htm where Film-Tech (and Kodak's) very own Human Search Engine traces the history of the 'scope aperture.

IMDB, by the way, continues to list all anamorphic as 2.35:1. They do, however, list Academy ratio correctly as 1.37:1 (many projectionists get this wrong). Just another example of how unsuited the IMDB is right now for technical data.

quote:
I haven't yet noticed this 'Super 35mm' anamorphic, of which you speak.

It's becoming almost ubitiquitous -- a 2.39:1 A/R movie released nowadays is much more likely to be shot in Super 35 than in anamorphic. Looking at the Oscar nominees for cinematography, while hardly representative, certainly shows the trend. Super 35 outnumbered anamorphic 3:1 in the 2001 nominees, 4:1 in 2000, 2:1 in 1999, and 3:1 in 1997.

Super 35 vs. anamorphic (grain, telltale signs, etc.) has been discussed several times before on this forum. You should do a search -- there's quite a bit of info to be found.

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Michael Coate
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1904
From: Los Angeles, California
Registered: Feb 2001

posted 05-08-2002 04:05 AM

quote:
a 2.39:1 A/R movie released nowadays is much more likely to be shot in Super 35 than in anamorphic. Looking at the Oscar nominees for cinematography, while hardly representative, certainly shows the trend. Super 35 outnumbered anamorphic 3:1 in the 2001 nominees, 4:1 in 2000, 2:1 in 1999, and 3:1 in 1997.

I don't think that Oscar-nominated titles from only a few years is a large enough sample from which to create a realistic statistic. Because I'm curious (and I assume at least a few of you may be curious too), I've dug through a massive research project I've been logging over the years on scope releases, and this is what I've come up with for the past five years:

2002
# of scope releases I'm aware of (the number will, of course, increase as the year progresses): 42
anamorphic: 20
super 35: 17
other (HD 24p, digital, etc.): 4

2001
# of scope releases I'm aware of: 116
anamorphic: 37
super 35: 55
other (HD 24p, digital, etc.): 4
I don't have origination format confirmation on 20 or so titles.

2000
# of scope releases I'm aware of: 128
anamorphic: 40
super 35: 54
other (HD 24p, digital, etc.): 4
I don't have origination format confirmation on 30 or so titles.

1999
# of scope releases I'm aware of: 158
anamorphic: 55
super 35: 65
other (HD 24p, digital, etc.): 4
I don't have origination format confirmation on 30 or so titles.

1998
# of scope releases I'm aware of: 141
anamorphic: 70
super 35: 53
other (HD 24p, digital, etc.): 2
I don't have origination format confirmation on 15 or so titles.

1997
# of scope releases I'm aware of: 154
anamorphic: 82
super 35: 58
other (HD 24p, digital, etc.): 2
I don't have origination format confirmation on 10 or so titles.

Keep in mind that I haven't supplied any figures for FLAT releases. My guess is that they account for around 75-80 percent of all releases. Others may have different figures, though. The latest American Cinematographer Manual, for instance, states that SCOPE releases account for 45 percent (which I feel is an inflated figure). The tricky part of gathering these types of numbers is that it's just plain difficult to account for everything. And then there's the definition of "everything." Do you include independent releases or just studio films? What about films shown at a film festival that never get picked up by a distributor? Straight-to-video releases? What about releases from other countries that never get released here in North America, or that we never hear about? Titles from India?

My figures generally account for North American releases and as many international releases as I can possibly track. So, please keep that in mind. The figures I provided can only be considered a guide for the curious and for those who wish to continue a discussion on the topic rather than the final word on the subject.

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Brian Tristam Williams
Film Handler

Posts: 93
From: Johannesburg, South Africa
Registered: Apr 2002

posted 05-08-2002 06:31 AM

Well, I checked out Ocean's Eleven this morning. Thought I'd have to wait a while to see what I was looking for. Nope - as soon as I walked into the theatre I could see it - grainy film, colour seemed overly saturated, and, of course, all of the lights in the background, that were out of focus, were round, NOT ellipsoid, as I've always known in scope films.

I only found out about this Super-35mm format in this thread - I wonder if I've seen a film done this way, in a theatre, and not noticed that?

I hope not. 'Cos then my trained eye's not what I thought it was.

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"One man can make a difference."

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Christopher Seo
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 530
From: Los Angeles, CA
Registered: Jun 99

posted 05-08-2002 02:08 PM

Again, Super 35 doesn't have to look that "bad"... but why bother with anamorphic photography if all you're striving for is a grainy, gritty look?

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