Fulgencio Martinez Posted June 25, 2004 Share Posted June 25, 2004 Hi, Celco´s web says it is better than Laser for printing to 35mm. (celco.com) Can CRT technology be better than laser? Is it much cheaper? Thanks fulgencio Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Filip Plesha Posted June 25, 2004 Share Posted June 25, 2004 What they are using is not classic CTR technology. It is a new invention. It is based on CTR but different (i don't know the details). They won an academy award for it. Usually, the basic CTR technology is much worse than laser recording. But i have no idea how does this new technology perform vs. laser. Acoarding to their tests, it is better than laser, but they didn't say which laser recorder they were comparing it to. Perhaps the worst one they could find. Or maybe it really was arrilaser, who knows. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dirk DeJonghe Posted June 25, 2004 Share Posted June 25, 2004 The last film I saw was Troy, done on a CRT Lasergraphics, and it certainly looked very good. The main advantege of lasers is that they can easily get higher densities on lower sensitive films such as 5242 Intermediate. The main advantage of CRT is that they are so flexible and can shoot almost any stock in existence, in particular camera negative, black and white, high contrast positive stock etc. They used to be slower than laser but not anymore. I find it easier to match CRT output on camera negative spliced into original camera negative. Somewhat like the difference between a flying spot telecine and a CCD telecine, they have their own look that is no better or worse but different. Dirk DeJonghe www.color-by-dejonghe.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member John Pytlak RIP Posted June 25, 2004 Premium Member Share Posted June 25, 2004 Dirk: What color negative film do you usually use for film-out on a CRT recorder? 5245? 5212? Other? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dirk DeJonghe Posted June 25, 2004 Share Posted June 25, 2004 John, My current favorite is the 5217, gives me good speed, very good sharpness by not driving the CRT too high, and matches perfectly with the original negatives that are mostly 5218 or 17 these days. it helps to reduce the grain on some of the scans because you don't want to have twice the grain. Dirk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Max Jacoby Posted June 25, 2004 Premium Member Share Posted June 25, 2004 The last film I saw was Troy, done on a CRT Lasergraphics, and it certainly looked very good. Dirk, 'Troy' wasn't a DI was it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fulgencio Martinez Posted June 25, 2004 Author Share Posted June 25, 2004 Is CRT cost saving compared to Laser? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Filip Plesha Posted June 25, 2004 Share Posted June 25, 2004 Well it certainly is faster.. On the Celco website (where those tests are shown) it says that the displayed image was exposed for one second (the left image made on the Celco) The contrast seems to be better and the black is deeper and it does not have a color cast. You know something is funny here to me. If Celcoe was better than arrilaser, and cheaper and faster, then how come arrilaser is so common in the industry. BY the way. This might interest some people on this forum (perhaps audiris and film4ever) I have spoken today with someone that has been working on cineon systems for some time, well since the begining of the whole digital age. He said that cineon systems are way better than modern systems that are much cheaper. He said that in the early 90's they had been doing a lot of tests. One of the tests included a side by side comparison of a contact print from the o-neg and a contact print from a negative outputed from a cineon system (lightning scanner, and lighting recorder) without any image modifications. He said that the results were identical. There was absolutley no difference in qualitty. they were doing this at 4K by the way. It seems that in the begining, Kodak wanted to make a state of the art scanner just to prove to the industry that digital scanning is doable and does not leave artefacts. And later when the hype cooled down, other companies rushed to take advantage of it and create cheap machines (now that everyone was excited about digital) and they comprimised qualitty. It is quite absurd that modern DI work is worse than one from more than 10 years ago. Well, Cinesite still works with both cineon scanners and recorders. But this proves one thing: The qualitty depends on the facility, the operators, and the choice of equipment. It can be done so that you can't see ANY difference. The problem is not in the nature of digital data itself, it is of the finantial nature. Money in this case CAN buy you a perfect DI job. DI has gotten a bad name because people used spirit datacine too much. Or scanners at 2K, or bad output or whatever. there is a reason why there are just few cineon lightning recorders in the world and they cost like a whole bunch of arrilasers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Kevin Zanit Posted June 25, 2004 Premium Member Share Posted June 25, 2004 Yes Troy went through a DI, or at the very least did the step to super 35 via a digital step. Kevin Zanit Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Phil Rhodes Posted June 25, 2004 Premium Member Share Posted June 25, 2004 Hi, I'm sure this is fairly obvious, but be aware that the super-35 part of a 2K film scan is only 850-odd pixels high. That's less overall resolution than hi def, although the 2K would generally be uncompressed. Phil Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Filip Plesha Posted June 26, 2004 Share Posted June 26, 2004 A 2.35:1 image area in HD would be 817 pixels high. So a "cinemascope" HD would have less resolution. Or are you just comparing image heights? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dirk DeJonghe Posted June 26, 2004 Share Posted June 26, 2004 Max, Troy was scanned on a Northlight scanner, graded on 6 or 8 Baselight systems, and recorded on a Lasergraphics CRT recorder so that counts as a DI I guess. I had the privilege to see the film in MPC's preview theatre in Wardour street. Excellent projection, picture and sound, no commercials, no popcorn. Dirk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Max Jacoby Posted June 26, 2004 Premium Member Share Posted June 26, 2004 He said that the results were identical. There was absolutley no difference in quality. they were doing this at 4K by the way. In the new AC there is a very good article on DIs by Bill Pope (who did Spiderman in 4K). He gives an honest opinion on both the advantages and drawbacks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Filip Plesha Posted June 26, 2004 Share Posted June 26, 2004 Audiris, I am talking about cineon systems, not 4K DI in general. Surely an imagica 4K scan is not going to give such results as a 4 times more expensive kodak lightning scanner. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Max Jacoby Posted June 26, 2004 Premium Member Share Posted June 26, 2004 I am talking about cineon systems, not 4K DI in general. I know. I posted this because it is an interesting article about 4K in general. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Filip Plesha Posted June 27, 2004 Share Posted June 27, 2004 Is he talking about pro and cons of 4K vs. 2K work, or is he talking about 4K vs. no digital work? And what are these drawbacks? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member David Mullen ASC Posted June 27, 2004 Premium Member Share Posted June 27, 2004 He was talking about testing DI's done all at 2K, 4K downrezzed to 2K, and 4K all the way through the chain. He found a more significant improvement between doing it all at 4K than between doing it all at 2K versus a 4K scan downrezzed to 2K. He felt that the all-4K work not only held fine details better but gave the impression of greater depth and exposure range to the scene. He also said that DI's generally have a problem with skintones done in warm, yellow light since green and yellow are so close in the digital realm. I agree -- "gold" is one of the harder colors to achieve in general. He also said that he did not do an all-DI approach to the Matrix sequels since he wanted them to look consistent and the first one did not use a DI (he didn't mention of course that the IMAX versions used a DI....) I was excited to hear that not only was Spiderman 2 a 4K DI but that it is a 2.35 film, not 1.85 like the first one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Max Jacoby Posted June 27, 2004 Premium Member Share Posted June 27, 2004 Is he talking about pro and cons of 4K vs. 2K work, or is he talking about 4K vs. no digital work? And what are these drawbacks? About both really. Before the shoot they did 4K scan/4K output vs 4K scan/2k output vs 2K scan/2k output tests and 4K scan / 4K output was definitely better. Less artifacts and blooming around bright objects and better sharpness. The drawpacks according to Bill Pope are that the skintones are more plasticy. Yellow light is tricky in digital, because yellow and green are so close together in the digital realm. They had problems with one scene which involved golden light and while on film dailes that looked very good, once they started with the DI, they struggles to make it look as they intended. The DI was done at EFilm. Does anyone know what scanners they use? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Max Jacoby Posted June 27, 2004 Premium Member Share Posted June 27, 2004 David I must have started writing my reply just before you posted yours... :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Filip Plesha Posted June 27, 2004 Share Posted June 27, 2004 They use Imagica scanners.. While these are too considered high-end, they are worse than northlight (and cheaper), and specially Cinesite's kodak scanners (all that accoarding to some postproduction people). But I think the problem is less in the scanner, and more in the film recorders. But that is just my guess. Perhapse someone should make a DI test using all the common scanners and recorders today. cineon scanners vs. imagica vs. northlight arrilaser vs. celco vs. cineon recorder By the way, has anyone seen some of cinesite's digital work lately? Perhapse "the story of a patriot" restoration? This would have been a great example because it was printed onto 70mm film (great way to judge qualitty) I am really interested what people say about cineon workflow.. Does anyone remember the early 90's FX work? (Jurassic park for example) I suspect the resolution was bad, but how good were the skintones? By the way, audiris, have you seen Troy? How good was the DI work? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Max Jacoby Posted June 27, 2004 Premium Member Share Posted June 27, 2004 By the way, audiris, have you seen Troy? How good was the DI work? I think it was the best DI I have seen so far. Actually when I first saw it, I didn't see a DI credit at the end, so I thought that it must have been an optical blowup then. To be honest, while I was watching the film, I was not quite sure whether it was a DI or optical. While the skintones weren't the best I had ever seen and the look was a bit flat, it still looked much better than usual DIs. Also with a film like this there are always digitized shots in there because of the special effects. But yes, MPC have definitely raised the bar for DIs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Filip Plesha Posted June 27, 2004 Share Posted June 27, 2004 What equipment did they use for that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Max Jacoby Posted June 28, 2004 Premium Member Share Posted June 28, 2004 What equipment did they use for that? You mean for 'Troy'? Dirk mentioned earlier that it was scanned on a Northlight, graded with Baselight and output by Lasergraphics CRT. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Filip Plesha Posted June 28, 2004 Share Posted June 28, 2004 hmm..interesting I wonder how would it look if a laser recorder was used.. Lasergraphics is a traditional CTR recorder which is "supose to be" worse than laser recording accoarding to many people that used DI. David allso commented that he had bad experiences with traditional CTR recording. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member David Mullen ASC Posted June 29, 2004 Premium Member Share Posted June 29, 2004 My "bad" experiences were with the older Celco CRT recorders, not the new Lasergraphics. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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