does a film camera help to determine the "look" of the picture?

[Abdul Rahman Jamous]

In the digital age, the sensor of the camera is one of the factors that determine the "look" of your image . But when it comes to film cameras, do they differ in terms of image quality? or does the "look" depend less on the camera and more on the film that is loaded inside the camera?

 

please excuse my bad English?

[Joerg Polzfusz]

When you ignore factors like camera-defects that leads to jittery images, then it’s filter+lens+film.

[David Mullen ASC]

Not really, a movie shot on a Mitchell instead of an Arricam is going to look the same if the same film stock and lens are used on both.

I remember a sequence in Coppola's "Bram Stoker's Dracula" shot on a hand-cranked 1920s camera for a look but loaded with 50D color negative.  They ended up optically printing it to look soft & grainy, like an Autochrome, because it looked too modern.

[David Sekanina]

2 hours ago, Abdul Rahman Jamous said:

In the digital age, the sensor of the camera is one of the factors that determine the "look" of your image.

Steve Yedlin questioned this assumption and he has a point:

 

[Robin Phillips]

Film cameras are more or less just a box that holds the film. Your "look" comes from which stock you use, how you expose it, what lenses you use, how you color it, what gauge you're using (65mm, 35mm, 16mm, 8mm) etc. This assumes you're shooting with what we'd consider a typical crystal sync camera for production use. 

Now if you have film registration problems that can introduce excessive gate weave. There are hand crank cameras whose "look" will be dependent on consistant turning of the crank. You can get a very slightly different vibe from the cameras if the shutter is more side mounted than bottom mounted. But thats really about it. 

As for the digital cameras having their own look, the truth behind that depends on if you're using proper color management and how much time and money you want to spend manipulating the image to look a certain way. As David pointed out with Yedlin's demo, its certainly possible to match different systems to either film or whatever look you're after. But What Yedlin's demo doesnt demonstrate is the work required under the hood to really nail that. If it was as simple as he suggests, everyone would be doing it and Arri would have pre-packaged their cameras to perform in that manner as a turn key option. One reason to shoot film if you want the film look is to just avoid having to deal with all that potentially costly post processing.

[Tyler Purcell]

It's really just the lens and the stock with film cameras.