Alessandro Machi

What would be cool is if this system could be "snapshotting" a waveform and vector of each frame, then that info would somehow interact with the Spirit for real time transfers. However, it really looks good, just not sure how much better a Spirit would be.

Most definitely the color can be saturated more and I don't think it would affect anything adversely. Since you seemed to do the entire transfer flat, you could probably go back and simply crank up the saturation and post it, no? Might be fun to put both images in the same response and run them in sync if possible.

One concern is how well it can do time-exposure. And if it can do time-exposure, how can we see the image via the viewfinder as opposed to the mounted digital viewfinder? Time-exposure seems to me to be underexplored and super-8 of all the formats has had the advantage of being able to see view image even when the shutter is exposing the frame. It can be very educational to see what is transpiring in the frame then recall it later when seeing how the actual shot came out.

 

I didn't say it wasn't sharp. In fact, I have a hard time putting into words what's "off" about it. It could also be the grade. It just looks a bit flat and "videoized". Yes, I made that word up. :)

 

The "what footage to transfer" would be more along the lines of whole rolls... do I want to bother transferring this roll or not.

 

I like the cheaper idea for cheap transfers and planning to do high end ones. Very interesting thought.

it should look flat. One of the mistakes that I think filmmakers make is deciding how to grade a shot before it is actually in an edited sequence. I did both camera and editing for over 10 years using betacam sp decks, waveform and vectorscope, three professional monitors of the same brand (two 12" monitors and smaller 8 inch for preview. All of it was actually right in front of me. (along with an MX-50 switcher and a sound mixing board along with equalization and the speaker amplifier.

If I created a layback tape with everything color corrected ahead of time, I quickly discovered that it matterd more what the shots were before and after that shot. So ideally, make everything flat in transfer or acquistion (for lower budgeted projects), then either as the project is edited together shot by shot, correct then. I'm not even sure it is ok to edit flat and then correct later on because the editor is not "feeling" the actual intensity of the shots if they are not color corrected while editing.

In the past, I would recommend going in in person and analyzing the pieces that are supposed to go together.

However, if you cannot do that, than images of both the lens. camera mount and adapter should be being swapped between you and the rental house so that you are both in agreement as to how the situation is to proceed.

Looks pretty good to me. How can you tell it isn't as sharp? Although it might make sense to view it at full screen size. However keep in mind that this is still the internet and susceptible to compression schemes.

The registration seems phenomenal, both vertical and horizontal.

Good idea of using it to determine which footage to transfer. However, how can one actually handle the film without making it dustier and scratchier? I guess one would review a dvd copy and make meticulous running time notes. However, the telecine place would probably not want to speed up and slow down the film transfer speed, so would there actually be a time savings?

Would be interesting, if the Spirit is actually better, maybe the contrast settings could be used so that the transfer is done in real time, that could be intriguing.

Maybe that would be an incentive for a transfer house to buy one, let their clients use it a nominal price of 30 bucks an hour, produce actual transfer data, which is then imported to the spirit or high end transfer system, and the person is just paying for a real time transfer plus a nominal set up charge, or not.

Looks really good. About the only thing I wondered about was the movement of the train seemed uneven, but that could be related to shooting at 18 fps?

Again I do feel compelled to mention that without the super-8 labs, this device could actually spell the downfall of super-8 if labs lose to much transfer work as a result.

The cost to process the film is absolutely subsidized by the film transfer portion of film lab's business. For a lab to survive by solely processing film they would probably have to charge 75 to 150 dollars per cartridge, depending on the volume of film a filmmaker brought in.

And even if a filmmaker was willing to wait until the lab had enough orders to get the best possible price, the lab could still go under due to insufficient number of processing days per month. Hopefully someone intercedes and if this film transfer system can save money for the filmmaker the film labs could offer it on their premise, a "do it yourself" type of situation.

The problem that I see is I don't see a film lab begging Movie Stuff for product, and I don't see Movie Stuff working with the film labs. Hopefully there is a third party who could step in and broker a deal, maybe Kodak?

The colors look terrific, the registration looks really good, both vertically and horizontally.

I still see some exaggerated contrast issues however. Would like to see a wide angle back lit shot with people in it in which the faces are a relatively small part of the image to see if it can hold the contrast values on the facial features.

Then there are issues of what lens magnification are we talking about, and key light versus back light. Contrast values for telephoto are different than for wide angle mode, and then add in if the shot is key lit or backlit.

It seems to me that the digital cameras don't do quite as good of a job on back lit, wide angle scenes as film does, especially if there is high contrast in the lighting and in actual colors on the set. But if the shot is zoomed in, the difference in quality between film and video becomes much less noticeable.

Technically, the numbers aspect is above my knowledge range, however I have had an editing studio with wave form and vector scope set up for a long time and I have always been challenged by optimizing the lower end IRE/black range. It's amazing to see detail emerge by simply raising the black level just enough without actually fogging the image.

I don't have numbers to back me up but I have always felt that not enough data was being allocated to the zero to 10 IRE range. One can take a signal that has 100 IRE and dial it down to 50 IRE and still have a nice image, but if the lower end blacks are off just one or two IRE, tonal qualities within the black spectrum just disappear.

Are you ok with telling us the specs? How many miles did you ride, over how many days. Did you "settle" for one f-stop or bracket?

Was the long time exposure set to one specific time interval or was it based on how much light hit the sensor?

Although the Kodak Vision III 50 ASA is an excellent replacement, for those who clamored for a reversal stock this is a huge imminent loss.

Yep. It'll happen one day. Maybe it'll really suck. But such is the nature of a market, and in the ashes other players emerge. Maybe we can finally get out of al these sequels, prequels, and reboots.

It's the guns I can't stand. Too many guns in too many movies. If people need guns to go see a movie, if editors need guns to make "exciting" short promo's, then let the implosion begin. Is there such a thing as an A actor who doesn't brandish a gun? Yes, but their numbers are excruciatingly small.

Due, however, to the enormous expense of colour videotape (more expensive than film at the time), it was common practice for 16mm telerecordings to be made instead, sometimes in colour and sometimes in B&W depending on archival merit or potential for overseas sale - particularly given that there existed no PAL vs NTSC format incompatibility for film!

 

2 Inch videotape comes out but the cost to make it is more than shooting with film, i love the irony.

The story I heard was that just before the first television was introduced to reporters, the president of the company said make the image sharper, so the company think tank people moved the television farther away from where the reporters would be viewing it.

Problem solved!

'When Ampex introduced a 2-inch videotape system in 1954, a front-page banner headline in Daily Variety proclaimed, "Film is Dead!"'

Does anybody have a link to the actual article?

:rolleyes:

I think Broadcasting Magazine had an HD will replace film article back in either 1984 or 1994. The irony is all the formats that have come after film relied on film to make themselves look better until they could improve their own technology enough.

I grew up in Britain, and faithfully watched all of the original Star Trek series in black & white. It may well have been broadcast in colour, but at that time nobody that I knew owned a colour TV set. I was amazed to watch it in syndication in the Seventies - in glorious NTSC! I had no idea that it had been originated in colour.

That's the kicker. watching a show in BW, liking the show, and then later on, rediscovering it in color. It's really quite an experience. I had that happen with both Combat and Twelve O'Clock high. Another thing that possibly doomed color from an earlier debut was that a BW NTSC signal has 50 lines more resolution than the same signal in color. Factor in that color television technology was still being improved and the irony becomes surreal.

BW was more vivid and sharp, yet color was the obvious choice over the long haul. I'm still curious when syndication began in earnest. I wonder how many executives and producers freaked out when they realized they could make money in perpetuity, and more easily if they had shot in color instead of BW.

I'm seeing BW Sea Hunt episodes. Interesting that they shot the pilot in color but not for the first season or two or three.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080703202533AA83J7x

 

The link above has some info about the switch from b&w to color.

One of the unchosen answers had some good info as well. According to a linked article it was the transmission that was the issue. Only NBC was transmitting in color and had been for quite some time, but ABC and CBS held out. I wonder if a BW television set still looked better than the color sets in the early 60's. Apparently the earlier color sets were dimmer and much more expensive.

I just find it strange that people were primarily watching color movies in the theatre but the studios were still accepting black and white for their broadcast programming.

Thanks David. There must have been some heavy debates going on back then as the first color tv's showed up but shows kept being shot in BW. Was syndication being considered back in the early 60's? I ask this because some shows like the Rifleman were only on the air 5 years but they shot 168 episodes, an average of around 33 episodes a year. Does that mean that some shows were not rerun at all back then?

Combat was on 5 seasons and averaged around 30 episodes a year.

Was there one specific year when all shows just went color and is it correct to presume it was based on color television technology, or was it based on the ability to transfer color film to video at a high enough quality?

I assume you mean after the 1 minute mark on, no?

I've recently had a chance to get acquainted with shows from the late 50's and 60's by watching Antenna TV and MeTV.

The show "Combat" is like watching extremely talented student filmmakers with the energy to shoot over vast distances when necessary. Unlike more recent fair that is high energy, high action, fast movement, Combat seemed to strike a chord of low speed and longer distances, resulting in a sort of slow motion drama that I like as much if not more than the high speed stuff we see so much of nowadays.

One day, Combat, (and eventually other shows such as Twelve O'Clock High), were suddenly being broadcast in color. What a time the 60's must have been, first cutting costs by shooting in BW because television was BW, then suddenly realizing that color television was here to stay, and switching in mid series to color!

Every now and then, I'll see a show that started in BW and later went to color, but I swear, sometimes some of the BW shows look like they may have been shot in color negative but perhaps BW prints were made from the color negatives?

Just now I saw the tail end of "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" in BW. I presume that most of this shows seasons were shot in color, but this black and white image seemed to have no bite to it. Most of the 60's shows that were shot in BW, have a definite clarity to them.

Is it possible that 60's television shows were actually shooting in color but making black and white prints, and nobody has bothered to go back "into the vault" and see if the original cut film negative might actually be in color?

Any opinions?

Might be fun for someone with access to make a discovery that some classic shows of the 60's had cut color negatives of their shows but never bothered to make color prints and instead keep reusing BW ones whenever a new film transfer is needed.

As much as I like BW, when a show that started in BW then switched to color, I found myself liking the color version more. Maybe specifically because it was the same characters suddenly had color?

Because of the current situation with film i may abandon super8 sometime in 2014. :(

I don't understand this comment. Because film is still being made you plan on abandoning it?

Newcomers tend to ask if a certain film stock will over or underexpose in a specific camera they have just purchased when shooting in the automatic exposure mode.

Has anyone actually gotten negative footage that was either too over-exposed or too under-exposed when shooting in the automatic mode, and of course assuming there was adequate light with which to shoot?

Fully tested for most sellers means they put film in the camera and the camera transported the film with no apparent problem, some don't even put film in the camera. One way you could have cause is if the seller actually sent the camera in for a service estimate, refused the estimate, then sold it on ebay as working. But finding that out could be next to impossible.

If the camera broke down relatively quickly after receiving it (within a month?) perhaps the seller would agree to a partial refund of the sale price once you produce an actual receipt showing the repair work has been done and paid for. That is one negotiating position that might be reasonable.

Keep in mind that a beaulieu camera that needs servicing still has a baseline value. If the ebay auction sale price was at the baseline value, then you would not have cause in my opinion.

Baseline value is subjective. It could the difference in cost between a camera that is serviceable and is actually serviced and put back in good shape and what the selling price is, plus an additional intrinsic value added in as well for merely existing as a brand.

So if a camera sells for 300 bucks while being presented as being in working condition, but needs a 250 dollar repair after a relatively short period of time, the baseline for that camera could be double the difference, so 50 bucks plus another 50 bucks, aka a 100 dollar baseline value, but that is subjective.

Or another way to determine baseline value is to price out what a camera that has just been serviced is "worth", then subtract what the repair costs to get the camera into that condition, than add another 20 to 200 bucks to that amount depending on the actual recognized popularity of that particular camera.