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This topic comprises 6 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6
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Author
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Topic: The future of film ... according to (a guy at) Arri
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Julio Roberto
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 938
From: Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Registered: Oct 2008
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posted 07-25-2009 07:33 PM
Bobby,
Don't base your sole opinion of digital=bad based on a few movies that have, probably on purpose, gone for a look that can be better described as "shitty".
Remember the Star Wars, Spy Kids, etc, etc, etc done digitally that looked fine.
And even Stanley Kubrik photograhped a film which image quality SUCKED, proving that film, done incorrectly, can suck butt too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKZhzpBl5g4&fmt=18
(it's not a bad transfer, it's the original photography that was awful, badly exposed left and right)
Also, that it doesn't look like film does not equal to it looks bad. It may look bad to you, like maybe Cinematography Oscar and ASC prize winner Slumdog Millonaire, but that doesn't mean that is "inferior", just that you prefer the look of film.
A 35mm photograph of the Mona Lisa is without a doubt, mathematically and proven a better representation (closer to reality) of the Gioconda than a painting by Da Vinci. You are entitled to think the painting is so much better, full of life, organic and appealing while the photograph is lifeless, dull, ugly, limited in dynamic range and with visible grain. Nobody is gonna blame you for liking the painting better.
But to say that the photograph, just because maybe it turned out maybe a little overexposed and has a little grain (like all 35mm photographs) is SO much worse, so inferior to the oil painting (when it's actually objectively superior) and such piece of crap is just not right.
You don't like it and prefer the painting? Fine. But the photograph is also a good representation objectively.
You CAN make digital look just about the same as film, almost EXACTLY like film even, but then it would be stupid to shoot digital when film is still available (for that look) and still price-competitive.
There are digital cameras that FAR, FAR, FAR surpass Imax or medium format film resolution. Of course, they are not very fast and used by Nasa and the Air Force for aerial recognition.
There are digital cameras that FAR, FAR, FAR surpass 35/70mm film in shooting speed, being able to capture at over 6.1 MILLION FRAMES PER SECOND.
There are digital cameras that surpass 500ISO film stock in dynamic range, though barely.
There are digital cameras that surpass 3200ISO film stock in sensitivity, by a lot (all the way to the infrared spectrum to boot).
There are currently digital cameras with sensor size and aspect ratio of 70mm film (but not its resolution) capable of up to 140 frames per second:
http://www.visionresearch.com/uploads/docs/Products/DS_phantom65.pdf
But the camera Mark is probably talking about, is scheduled to hit the market spring 2010, is the EPIC 617 PRO, which has a resolution of 28K (bayer) and shoots up to 30fps with more pixels (261,352,000) than ALL CONES AND RODS on the retina of BOTH eyes of the average human being added together (126,000,000 x 2 eyes = 252,000,000).
As you can see, it doesn't even matter if it has more or less resolution than an Imax or 70mm frame (I don't care to bother to calculate it), but it captures more information than any human could ever possibly see without substantial magnification. It could cover your entire field of view, and still there would be at least 2 photosites giving information to each one of your retina's photoreceptors.
And it RETAILS for $53.000
Digital currently doesn't "annihilate" 35mm film for motion picture use, so I can understand people liking it, using it, and preferring it without being idiots (at all).
But the point here is that soon this is bound to change. So no point on betting on "next year's" (or 5 years from now, whatever) losing horse and claiming it's so far ahead in the race that it's actually unreacheable, on the rise, attracting new jockeys, and playing strong for the next many many years.
It's a dying, losing horse. Only question, is how many more years it has to live and remain competitive. The Chief Techical Director at Arri says 5 to 10, but definitely not 20. I tend to agree.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 07-25-2009 09:59 PM
quote: Julio Roberto
Don't base your sole opinion of digital=bad based on a few movies that have, probably on purpose, gone for a look that can be better described as "shitty".
Remember the Star Wars, Spy Kids, etc, etc, etc done digitally that looked fine.
I'm not dismissing video across the board, but this whole "we have to switch everything to digital only as soon as possible" stuff is closed minded and destructive in terms of pursuing the best image quality and overall future proofing an expensive movie production for how movies will be shown in the future.
Star Wars: The Revenge of the Sith looked pretty good, certainly better than the soft looking Attack of the Clones -where the 2K CGI footage was noticeably sharper than the not quite full HD live action stuff. Despite the stylized black and white look, Sin City is one of my favorite "all digital" movies. The Spy Kids movies looked more obviously video sourced. Same goes for that Desperado sequel.
It seems more often than not when digital cameras are involved they're going to be showing off that muddy "this was shot on video" look. I don't have nearly as many complaints when movies are shot on film. I agree that some film-based movies have botched cinematography. But when film is shot well it tends to look fantastic.
The upcoming "digital" movie The Goods looks as bad or even worse than the stuff from Public Enemies. I can forgive that sort of thing if it is something like a Jackass installment, Borat or a documentary shot on a shoe string budget. But when the movie is a big project with name above the title actors the crew can manage to take some extra time and shoot the movie on film to gain better image quality.
The last all "digital" movie I watched that I thought looked pretty decent was Knowing, which was shot with Red cameras. Knowing was a little soft looking in some respects but did a good job hiding the video sourced look without making the imagery look muddy.
quote: Julio Roberto
Also, that it doesn't look like film does not equal to it looks bad. It may look bad to you, like maybe Cinematography Oscar and ASC prize winner Slumdog Millonaire, but that doesn't mean that is "inferior", just that you prefer the look of film.
The cinematography of Slumdog Millionaire looked terrible. Another all "digital" movie, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which was also nominated for the Best Cinematography Oscar, looked 1000 times better. Far better compositions, better lighting/color schemes and it hid its video-sourced look far better.
quote: Julio Roberto
You CAN make digital look just about the same as film, almost EXACTLY like film even, but then it would be stupid to shoot digital when film is still available (for that look) and still price-competitive.
Video can be made to look like film if the scene is shot and lighted in the right manner and treated in the right manner in post production. That costs more money. Obviously some movie productions are not going to quite that much trouble.
Honestly, I would have more respect for the fans of digital-only movie making if they had the balls to leave the video looking like video. Digital projectors are RGB based. HDTV monitors are RGB based. One of the biggest strengths of video over film is its wider RGB gamut range. Why not use that? Why mute down the color signal to make video look like something that it isn't?
quote: Julio Roberto
There are digital cameras that FAR, FAR, FAR surpass Imax or medium format film resolution. Of course, they are not very fast and used by Nasa and the Air Force for aerial recognition.
Which cameras are these? Given some of the military people I know very well, I also know that most military aerial photography done for recon purposes is huge compositions of many image tiles.
CCD and CMOS imaging chips cost a LOT of money to design and manufacture. Just look at the gigantic steps commercial companies like Intel have to make to move to a more advanced chip manufacturing process, such as 32 nanometer production. Chip replication plants have to produce parts by the thousands or millions for the effort to even be worth doing at all. The military does spend quite a lot on custom optics for everything from satellite cameras to sniper scopes. Those items can be custom made just a few pieces at a time.
quote: Julio Roberto
But the camera Mark is probably talking about, is scheduled to hit the market spring 2010, is the EPIC 617 PRO, which has a resolution of 28K (bayer) and shoots up to 30fps with more pixels (261,352,000) than ALL CONES AND RODS on the retina of BOTH eyes of the average human being added together (126,000,000 x 2 eyes = 252,000,000).
Provided the company can deliver such a camera how is the company going to accommodate the immense bandwidth and data storage needs of that kind of resolution? Just in normal 8-bit per channel RGB color mode one single frame uncompressed would require 784MB of storage. Multiply that by 30 and you have a 23.5 GB per second requirement in bandwidth, just for 8-bit per channel operation. None of the HD-SDI standards can handle that.
Better question yet, how will this company convince a Hollywood studio to do a 28K digital intermediate when they're only doing 2K for the most part now? Same goes for CGI work. Still mostly 2K only. Michael Bay made a big deal about rendering 4K CGI for the IMAX shots in the latest Transformers movie. Hell, most productions won't even use 4K much of the time even though 4K is feasible to do and companies like Red have cameras that can shoot in that resolution.
There is a lot of stuff in "digital" that costs a huge amount of money. Just because something is "digital" doesn't mean it will be affordable and accessible to budding amateur movie makers everywhere. The major studios aren't using the top end capabilities of the technology.
*******
Another thing:
quote: Scott Norwood
Stupid (?) question for those who understand digital acquisition better than I do: a broadcast-quality color television (video) camera has three sensors (tubes or chips), one for each primary color (red/green/blue). Why, then, do digital still cameras and the "cinema-style" digital video cameras that are discussed here use a single image sensor? Which concept is better, and why don't all electronic color cameras use the same approach?
3 chip CCD cameras require a prism to reflect the video image onto each chip. The prism itself can degrade some of the image quality. If you can remove that element somehow you can get a more pure image. For a very long time that was impossible to do well at all.
Previous single chip video cameras had what amounted to a grayscale sensor. The CCD or CMOS chip used filters to artificially create a full color image. Colors were not as brilliant or true as what one would see from a 3 chip camera. This was especially true for older standard definition video cameras.
Recently, certain digital camera models like the Panavision Genesis, Arri D20 and others have basically put what amounts to 3 chip function onto a single chip die. The newest sensors can pack in so many pixels it's easier to just have some defined for red only, green only and blue only function. No more need for the prism in the optical chain.
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Julio Roberto
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 938
From: Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Registered: Oct 2008
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posted 07-25-2009 10:16 PM
Cameras for aerial recognition and military applications are custom made.
Just check out publication by the society of optical engineering to find papers on them everynow and then, or scan optical news on the web to read the announcements every time some company lands a contract.
Don't recall now who landed a contract for one that was outrageous, based on a line array. I did say it was a CAMERA that had far more resolution than 35/70/Imax film, but slower (scan). I didn't say it was based on a 2D sensor array. Most of the highest resolution (density) aerial/satellite/space/military are based on 1, 2 or 3 line sensors.
But 2D sensors are also used, similar to cameras for the same purpose available commercially by people like Rolleimetric (60Mpx) or even Kodak (50+) or Dalsa (111 Mpx, shipped in 2006).
http://www.engadget.com/2006/06/19/dalsa-ships-111-megapixel-ccd/
Don't worry about storing/moving/editing 28K. It can, of course, be done and doesn't pose too much of a problem. Capture is to on-board flash media, after being compressed, of course. Data rate is 500Mb/s, so it's perfectly doable with a RAID of 4 Compact Flash cards.
You DON'T shoot a whole movie with a 28K camera, as that would be kind-of like shooting one with IMAX. It's unnecessary. You just use it for VFX plates and specialty uses.
But Bobby, we can just agree to disagree and continue the argument a year from now. For you, currently or in the very near future (coming months) there aren't/won't be any digital products that match (substantially) 35mm film for motion picture use and shooting film should continue to be the best option for quite some time.
For me, while shooting/editing/projecting 35mm film is a very valid option today, there are digital alternatives in the market, or there will be in the very near future (coming 6-12 months), that perfectly match or surpass film for motion picture use.
Time will tell ![[thumbsup]](graemlins/thumbsup.gif)
There are many reasons to use a single sensor in cameras over using 3. Mostly has to do with the available lenses being designed for projecting on a flat 2D surface at a relatively short distance, which gets tricky when you have to fit a prism and 3 sensors in the path. Not to mention potential light loss, etc.
Price is another reason.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 07-25-2009 10:32 PM
quote: Julio Roberto
Cameras for aerial recognition and military applications are custom made.
That doesn't necessarily translate into every part being custom made. Plenty of pieces of military hardware will use commonly available pieces of hardware, but those elements get put into a different, customized use with other parts that are custom made. For example, the armory at the US Marines scout/sniper school makes custom M40A1 sniper rifles for their shooters. The original model used a Remington hunting rifle platform. Everything else on the rifle (the barrel, receiver, etc.) was custom made.
The recon camera body, its lens system, software and certain electronics is probably all custom made. But that doesn't automatically mean the chip sensor is custom made. The military and well funded astronomers both have optical glass lenses made which make the highest end commercially available Canon, Nikon or Zeiss glass look like a joke by comparison. Both the military and astronomers use imaging systems that don't use the traditional optical route at all. The most powerful telescopes are radio telescopes that don't rely on visible light. The military has lots of stuff that works in that vain.
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Julio Roberto
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 938
From: Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Registered: Oct 2008
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posted 07-25-2009 10:53 PM
Well, I can only quote the article I pointed previously:
quote:
Don't expect to see one of these in a commercial DSLR anytime soon (especially now that Mamiya has left the game), but a division of DALSA Semiconductor has successfully manufactured and delivered a 111 megapixel image sensor that's only been topped on these pages by the 500 megapixel monster inside Fermilab's Dark Energy Camera. Putting even the highest-resolution bacteria-based cam to shame, the new 4-inch-square CCD features an array of 10,560 x 10,560 pixels, and was developed in conjunction with Semiconductor Technology Associates to aid the U.S. Naval Observatory's Astrometry Department in precisely determining the position and motion of celestial objects. While you probably can't afford to hire DALSA to build another one of these just for you, there's at least one option on the market that will give you the hundred-plus megapixel bragging rights you seek without breaking the bank: Better Light's 144 megapixel E-HS medium format backing, which, while technically only capturing 48 megapixels per color (and taking at least 66 seconds to do so), should still be enough to impress even your EOS 1Ds Mark II-sporting friends.
Buy in the open market the Better Light's SUPER 10K-HS 10,200 x 13,600 RGB pixels (416 Megapixel, $22.995), and you can claim higher resolution than 70mm (65mm) 5-perf film ![[Wink]](wink.gif) .
If you are heavy into astronomical/scientific/aerial recognition, you can ask them to make a better one just for you for $2 million instead of $22.000. I'm sure they'll come up with something a bit better ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif) .
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 07-26-2009 01:36 AM
quote:
Buy in the open market the Better Light's SUPER 10K-HS 10,200 x 13,600 RGB pixels (416 Megapixel, $22.995), and you can claim higher resolution than 70mm (65mm) 5-perf film :Wink:.
First of all, what is allowing you to arrive at a certain judgment of the resolution of 5-perf 70mm film? IMHO, you're underestimating. The 8K treatment of material from Baraka and The Dark Knight isn't squeezing out every nook and cranny of detail in those negatives. Film scanning equipment has had 16000 line top end capability since the early 1990s for such purposes -even if it went largely unused.
Next thing. Check that one little text blurb about that sensor from Better Light. A 66 second time for image acquisition? It sounds like you're throwing out the specs for very SLOW digital camera back sensors. Such items have been available for a long time, but are high priced, slow and very limited in function. They only work for static, still life photographs. Not anything in motion. Digital camera backs work in the same principal as a flatbed scanner. They cannot move the bits anywhere near fast enough for the sensor to output all of the data at once. Which also means the sensor is totally useless for anything like full motion video.
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Julio Roberto
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 938
From: Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Registered: Oct 2008
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posted 07-26-2009 11:30 AM
Bobby,
I DID say in my original post, the digital sensors that far surpass resolution of film were slow. I was making a point that every single aspect of adquisition with 35mm film (resolution, dynamic range, gamut, sensibility, noise) CAN be surpassed with digital, albeit with specialized cameras in each parameter, but nothing really preventing from a camera combining most of those benefits from appearing "soon" in the market.
There are digital CAMERAS that surpass film in every aspect. Just not ONE single camera that has all the virtues together.
Yet.
If your main point is that "there is currently no digital camera that can clearly surpass 35mm film for motion picture adqusition in most quality aspects", I concur.
If your main point is that "there aren't any digital cameras that surpass 35mm film in just about any aspect", I disagree.
If your point is "film is not only MUCH better than digital for motion picture adquisition but will continue to be so for a significant period of time (several years) and it can always beat digital in most aspects relating to quality", I once again disagree.
Not to repeat myself, but film is fine, but not the "absolute unchallenged king of the game by far in the motion picture world" that you seem to believe. And soon, it will be left behind. It's my opinion we can count on it. Nothing more. I could be wrong. I have been wrong before.
I'm not going to debate the resolution of (each color layer) of 65mm negative film exposed under motion on a (pin registered) gate, or the optimal (fixed grid spatial) scanning resolution to capture the detail it may (or may not, depending on manufacturing defect and random chemical particle clustering) have embedded on it. But even if we obviate the generation resolution loss, etc, I have the feeling you are OVERstimating film resolution by between a factor of 2 and a factor of 8.
Just my opinion. The debate is not worth it of my interest at this point, since 65mm film is hardly used today and expectation of it being (significanly) used in the future is small.
To match or surpass the (true) resolution of 35mm film can be a subject of interest, as that's a technology I currently use and which is being replaced by something new.
The wonderful and always perfect miracle of "digital"
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