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Author Topic: Resolution equivalent for 35mm Monte L Fullmer Film God Posts: 8367 From: Nampa, Idaho, USA Registered: Nov 2004 posted 05-02-2006 11:47 PM                     quote: Dan Chilton So are these digital films then shown on a 2K projector? Yeppers - the Christie and the NEC versions.  |  IP: Logged Lyle Romer Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1400 From: Davie, FL, USA Registered: May 2002 posted 05-03-2006 06:03 AM                     quote: Aaron Haney Resolution of film: As demonstrated above, viewers need more than 2K. 4K will meet the requirements, with a little extra headroom. EFilm has a page talking about 4K digital intermediates which also discusses the size of the data Not exactly true. You will need more like 8k to exceed what the eye can resolve at that distance. Per the Nyquist theory, you need to oversample at 2x. In other words, for the system to display 3600 pixels worth of detail, you actually need 7200 pixels. IMHO, based on what I've seen of 2k digital projection and film done right and wrong, 4k digital cinema at the same color depth and contrast available from the 2k DLP projectors will exceed the quality of 35mm film. 2k comes closer to film done right than you would think but it does not equal or exceed the quality of 35mm film. Of course, the industry is about to roll out 10's of thousands of 2k projectors instead of demanding 4k. 4k would give the studios the electronic distribution that they want while giving exibitors a clearly superior picture to home HDTV. I guess it makes too much sense.  |  IP: Logged Larry Myers Master Film Handler Posts: 371 From: Herndon, VA, USA Registered: Jan 2001 posted 05-03-2006 09:57 AM                 If you want to use the subtend math, you forgot about the degrees of forgiveness. Even in the Circle of Confusion calculations, there is a degree of forgivness. I like my eye resolution tables because the eye more or less resolves 8 lp/mm at any distance. Only the scale controls what the eye actually sees. Example 1 lp/mm very fuzzy image 2 lp/mm fuzzy image 4 lp/mm slighty fuzzy image 8 lp/mm sharp image 16 lp/mm very sharp image 32 lp/mm very very sharp image. The human eye can select all these images and put them in order even though the eye sees only 8 lp/mm. This is the area of forgivness. In other words, if pictures from about 3 lp/mm to 32 lp/mm are shown one by one, the untrained eye can't tell which one is which. If you look at them all together, in less the 5 seconds you can put them in order. What does this mean. Well it means that watching a DVD on it's own at about 3 lp/mm will look about the same as watching a 7 to 9 lp/mm 35mm film presentation if both these presentations are in different rooms. Now put the presentations side by side and bam, you see the difference. Split them apart again and you don't. Lots of scientific studies have been done on this sharpness and degrees of forgiveness issues in the last 100 years.  |  IP: Logged Eric Robinson Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 538 From: Santa Rosa, CA Registered: Jan 2005 posted 05-03-2006 02:46 PM                     Just curious, do cinematographers use film in their cameras or do they use digital cameras? If they use digital cameras, then one couldn't expect to have film quality any greater than its origin?  |  IP: Logged John Hawkinson Film God Posts: 2273 From: Cambridge, MA, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 05-03-2006 03:18 PM                     The vast majority of features originate on FILM. Digital origination is an area where technology is clearly much less mature, and it's very hard for digital to capture the same breadth of light levels that you can capture with film. Moving back to projection: I continue to think that the pro-film people on this site overstate the case for film, and cannot see the future coming. Despite being a pro-film person myself, I find the pro-digital argument of "no scratches" to be extremely compelling. The fact that it is possible to present film without scratches is not the issue. The reality is that most presentations are poor, and that most film prints do get scratched, and it happens apallingly near to the start of their run. You can fix this with digital, and you can fix this by reeducating the operators. But guess which one of those is never going to happen? We then get the question of whether a 1024x768 compressed digital presentation is better or worse than some number of green or black lines. This is subjective, but, well... --jhawk  |  IP: Logged Mike Schindler Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1039 From: Oak Park, IL, USA Registered: Jun 2002 posted 05-03-2006 08:20 PM                     I don't really know what all those numbers in the previous posts mean, but aren't most release print stocks of a higher resolution than the original negative? I'm guessing that this is also true for 2K video since you can typically see a film's grain structure in DLP. Also, on a typical 2K setup, how does the size of a single pixel compare to a perf in the screen? I guess my thinking is that at some point these differences become so minute that other factors become more relevant. I don't think that scratches or dirt are much of an issue, because these things are easily prevented. But what about other things like focus, framing, jumping, weaving, ghosting, keystoning and all those other "ings"? I've never seen any of these problems in a DLP presentation, but it's rare to not see at least a few of them on film. I live in Chicago, which apparently is the worst place in the country to see a movie, but the last film I saw at a theater that wasn't my own had no digital sound (although both the theater and print were equipped), the lens was too short so the image was being cropped on all sides, and it was out of frame so the titles at the bottom of the screen were partially cut off. A few months ago, a coworker and I were watching the CARS trailer in DLP, and after it ended he turned to me and said, "Boy. Do you remember when we thought that film looked good?" But he's right. Despite number crunching, I've come to terms with the fact that DLP is better than 35mm for all these other reasons. And I'm OK with that. That being said, this week we open M:i:III in both 35mm and DLP. This movie was shot in anamorphic, and the print will be playing in our best auditorium. So I guess this will be the ultimate test.  |  IP: Logged Patrick de Groot Expert Film Handler Posts: 161 From: Sprang-Capelle, Netherlands Registered: Apr 2001 posted 05-05-2006 12:27 PM                     Mike, what about posting your results of your comparison of a 35mm film and DLP video show of M:i:III?  |  IP: Logged Tim Reed Better Projection Pays Posts: 5246 From: Northampton, PA Registered: Sep 1999 posted 05-05-2006 02:34 PM                       Guys, like it or not, DC is happening. It's happening now. And it's not going to go away. Just like when we were forced to deal with polyester print stocks industry-wide, NATO wants it so NATO is getting it. Forthwith. The technical arguments are really moot at this juncture. DC will only be improved upon, like sound was, like color was, etc., etc... And it seems film never was perfected, anyway. Kodak, for example, keeps coming out with improvements. ( John!) As far as saying goodbye to old friends, does anyone care to recall which gave a better light; carbon arc or xenon? Xenon was clearly inferior and more dangerous, yet that didn't stop it from becoming boss in a few short years.  |  IP: Logged Mike Schindler Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1039 From: Oak Park, IL, USA Registered: Jun 2002 posted 05-05-2006 02:41 PM                     OK, I've watched both versions all the way through, and have run back and forth between the two over the course of the morning to compare certain scenes where I thought one or the other had some sort of deficiency. Here's what I've noticed. Trying to disregard any limitations imposed by the equipment we're using, it seems that there isn't much of a difference between the two. The DLP image is slightly sharper. The 35mm image has a little more detail in dark areas. The one place where DLP is much better than 35mm is color saturation. This surprised me quite a bit. It was most noticeable during explosions. It's very very evident throughout the SUPERMAN RETURNS trailer, but that looks better in DLP all the way around (which makes sense, since it was shot in HD). So, yeah. Not much difference between the two, although I would like to hear other people's observations, because who knows what impact the equipment had on the comparison. And speaking of the equipment, like I said before, in the real world DLP wins every time. Film jitters, anamorphic lenses are evil, etc. These are minor problems, but DLP doesn't have them. And it's ridiculous how much control the operator has over a DLP image, down to the pixel. So I'd go with DLP. But you could argue it's just a different aesthetic, and that's cool too. I'm glad that the choice is out there.  |  IP: Logged Monte L Fullmer Film God Posts: 8367 From: Nampa, Idaho, USA Registered: Nov 2004 posted 05-06-2006 02:55 AM                     quote: Tim Reed As far as saying goodbye to old friends, does anyone care to recall which gave a better light; carbon arc or xenon? Xenon was clearly inferior and more dangerous, yet that didn't stop it from becoming boss in a few short years. That little pict of me with that old carbon arc booth clearly supports my comment on which is better....and carbon arc light is still, by far, the better light. The print that was running in this small house looked excellent on an old silver screen using 45 amp arcs (7mm positives), using old tungar bulb rectifiers looked so bright, full of contrast and an even field of light all the way around. The old gentleman who ran this booth was duefully at his position - keeping a careful eye on the rod alignment on the image card to keep that ball of light from the positive rod in focus to the mirror. Why xenon became the boss is of the simple economic reason: a case of positive carbon rods can't hold a candle to the efficency of a xenon bulb in both price and power consumption. -Monte  |  IP: Logged William Collins Film Handler Posts: 18 From: Porirua, Wellington, New Zealand Registered: May 2006 posted 05-06-2006 04:36 AM                     Argument agaisnt: Has anybody considered that a move to digital cinema technology would mean more piracy of films? i know that you can take a 35mm print and record it using the right gear but getting this gear I beleive is hard and very expensive. now if theatres are digital all you would need to have is a computer with the right cable, plug it in the machines and download it. I know how fast computers are these days, and an average laptop can take a full DVD and copy it within around 20 minutes (thats back onto another DVD!). Argument for: If companies that make the gear for digital theatres get it right first time and make it impossible (or just very expensive to plug in a laptop) then the film industry may find that its easier first to produce film, then secondly to distribute it. Cameras these days are more than capable of recording high resolution video, also storage capacities are blooming. you can pick up a 400Gig hard drive for about 250GBP which you will only need to replace say once every few years (assuming the setup is correct and that all needs are catered for!) Distribution of films is also going to be easy, you could just have a satalite link directly to the right people, order it and a hour or so later your systems will have it available. no more scratches, no more worries about incorrect lace ups etc. Conclusion: Personally I think it would be great to seem a digital revolution, but then at the same time, i think it would be a great shame to stop using older technology, which has prooved itself on many occasions.  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 05-07-2006 02:33 AM                     As long as Hollywood film distributors stick with the upper end specs on D-Cinema standards, it will be extremely impractical for anyone to pirate any movie from a theater. Basically the task will be do-able if the data stream is a mere 30Mb/s. But it would be very difficult to manage if the data stream is running in the 150Mb/s to 250Mb/s range. The average laptop PC or Mac simply will not have the space available to hold all that data. You would need one of those new Maxtor 1 terabyte drives or even a couple of them to hold all the data. Even if one could copy all that data, good luck on successfully uploading it anywhere, much less expecting other folks to download it with any success at all either.  |  IP: Logged

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