Star Wars Episode 2 - A millstone in cinematic history :-)

[Chris Millar]

When not shooting unevenly lit brick walls ?

 

Film>>see my other post ;)

[Matthew W. Phillips]

 

The comparison is specious. I would sort of wonder about such an assertion at this point in time when most if not all major Hollywood productions are scanned to DI these days. Hence the 'colorist' is working with a digital image.

 

Just because they both end up in a digital format does not make them equivocal. And you failed to answer the question. Are we to believe that most all of colorists are misleading us as you assert?

 

Btw, this is a real name forum. I assume that means the format should be "Firstname Lastname". Thanks.

[cole t parzenn]

When not shooting unevenly lit brick walls ?

 

Film>>see my other post ;)

 

Not shooting unevenly lit brick walls wide open, free lensing, and then cropping from one of the corners - some people do other things, right? ;)

 

Yes, a bit abstract.

[Keith Walters]

 

Go on...

 

How do the Nyquist limit and aliasing apply to image capture? Light likes to pretend it's a wave but aren't we really just counting the number of photons to strike a certain area? And how is film immune to this? What is the maximum possible signal to noise ratio?

Extremes of illumination on film are captured by progressively smaller and smaller grains. Essentially, rendition of areas of highest stop level is captured a low-contrast pattern of very fine grains superimposed on a very dense patch of fully saturated larger grains. Capturing that information is only possible with a very high resolution scanner, which is why organization like Imagica have made scanners with 10K+ resolution available.

 

There is still far more information in 35mm negative that is routinley used today. That does not make it not relevant.

[Keith Walters]

And what's the point of beating up on the Sony F900?

Nobody is trashing the F900. It is still a very serviceable camera, and they are still being rented (in some places, for more than some Red cameras)

The position is is the garbage statement from Geo Lucas & Co that: "F900 is 1440 lines"; "Film Print is ~1500 lines" therefore F900 is equivalent to film!

Filthy lie #1: "1,500 lines resolution on a film print means same as 1.5K Pixels on video. "

IT DOES NOT! 1.5K means 750 analog lines! Also, as previous mentioned for film prints, (being all there was in 1999), with F900 you're still starting the Neg-IP-IN-Print chain with half the resolution (720 lines) that normally comes out of a standard Neg-IP-IN-Print chain starting with a 35mm negative.

Filthy lie #2: Camera negative has only about "3K" resolution.

We may accept that it is practically 3,000 ANALOG LINES, but that is NOT the same as "3K". Also with care film actually records considerably more than 4,000 lines.

As aforementioned, the extra resolution yields extra dynamic range as well as extra resolution.

 

Also be mindful, all modern Digital Cinematography images AND DIs scanned from flim, are in a large part, constructs generated by a computer, not actual images, The more data future computers and algorithms has to work with, the more convincingly it can recreate a pleasing image with the end user's limitation of data or pixels available . So extra detail and dynamic range may currently be rendered non-competitive by noise, but that does not mean no computer can ever use this to make more convincing detail correction for example.

 

Which is pretty much why, unless you specifically need video acquisition (read "3D") 35mm film is still the medium of choice for big-time theatre release.

[cole t parzenn]

Also be mindful, all modern Digital Cinematography images AND DIs scanned from flim, are in a large part, constructs generated by a computer, not actual images, The more data future computers and algorithms has to work with, the more convincingly it can recreate a pleasing image with the end user's limitation of data or pixels available . So extra detail and dynamic range may currently be rendered non-competitive by noise, but that does not mean no computer can ever use this to make more convincing detail correction for example.

 

Can you tell when digital window replacement has been done?

[Keith Walters]

 

Can you tell when digital window replacement has been done?

How can anyone tell that?

If you don't feel any "Uncanny Valley" vibes maybe:

 

A. It has been done frame-by-frame at great time and expense so you can't tell the difference or

B. It wasn't done at all (that is, shot was formulated with practical methods).

[cole t parzenn]

Then what meaningful difference is there between "constructs generated by a computer" and "actual images?"

[Gregg MacPherson]

Then what meaningful difference is there between "constructs generated by a computer" and "actual images?"

 

Here in a nutshell is an aphorism expressing our precarious moment in history where common sense is about to be lost.

 

An actual image we could think of as an impression. A photon, we can imagine as a unit with enormous complexity beyond simply having a wavelength. These frisky little things come from the sun (lets say), have some inexplicable interaction with the subject, then drape themselves onto tiny units of grain in a film emulsion.

 

Alternatively, one can pretend that a photon, beyond it's wavelength, has nothing further worthy of discriminative awareness. It either exists or it doesn't, so one could just simply count them as they arrive at a tiny rectangle. The image from that (all those rectangles), being insufficient, requires computation to achieve a simulation, to become an acceptable construct.

 

It's staggering to me that this difference is not obvious, glaring and urgent in our minds. The potential for the human nervous system to experience, to see in a more subtle way, will be compromised (has been compromised) by the proliferation of digital images. The cinema was an oasis. Now with digital projection and digital production taking over that is almost gone.

 

An what motivates all this. It's not progress, it's a cull de sac that I don't know how we will recover from. If the practical issues had some real urgency to them it might be different. But they don't.

[Matthew W. Phillips]

 

It's staggering to me that this difference is not obvious, glaring and urgent in our minds. The potential for the human nervous system to experience, to see in a more subtle way, will be compromised (has been compromised) by the proliferation of digital images. The cinema was an oasis. Now with digital projection and digital production taking over that is almost gone.

 

I lament it as well, my brother.

[Chris Millar]

The way I see it is that heart, you're taking something definitely unique - a point source if you will - in the field of all possibilities and in quantising it, you're giving it volume, volume that could subsume multiple unique entities having also been quantised. It no longer comes from one source, it comes from a distribution of possibilities - it's essence diluted.

 

Of course, this means nothing if you don't see it that way :rolleyes:

[Keith Walters]

Both your auditory experience of the world and your visual experience of the world have this in common:

Both seem fantastically rich and detailed, but both are constructs generated in your brain from an incredibly limited data set.

Sound and picture compression are all concerned with deducing how much information your eyes and ears are actually going to be able to extract from your experiential environment, and how much can be discarded.

[cole t parzenn]

 

Here in a nutshell is an aphorism expressing our precarious moment in history where common sense is about to be lost...

 

I was really just referring to digital steps after photochemical capture. I much prefer film, too, but I don't think there's digital's inherently bad.