georg lamshöft

From my perspective (simple guy just sitting in the cinema watching your work ;-) it makes a big difference. Whenever I saw a digitally shot movie (with a serious digital cinema camera like Genesis) I was distracted by the artifical look of movement. From my experience in still photography I know that 35mm can resolve 4k detail and using a hybrid process (not digital OR film but shooting film & scanning) gives you the best of both worlds but scanning is an art for itself and many DIs are simply horrible and far from showing the true potencial of the film. With all the 1080p-formats (Blu-Ray...) and the simple transfer to this format when using HD-cameras sometimes gives you the impression that 35mm isn't better, but that's a problem of post-production, not of 35mm itself. Film is chemical, it's failures still look "natural", because our eyes/brain are also working in a similar way, while even the slightest digital/mathematical artifact looks artifical. Digital cinema cameras will come, and they get better every year but 35mm is also progressing and still gives superior results (in my eyes) while it's disadvantages (speed... that made digital so popular in still photography) are nearly irrelevant when producing a x-million-€ TV-series or movie - or am I wrong? I always get the impression that many people use digital just because they think it's inappropriate using "19th century-technology" in the 21st century!? It makes me sad seeing horrible digital images by so talented people like Mann or Fincher while incredible, accessible and affordable (by them) technology like 65mm is simply ignored. I think the industry should seek for the best possible quality of both technologies and let the dops, directors (=artists) instead of businessmen decide... Just my two cents... :rolleyes:

"I'm wondering why Zeiss and Cooke don't publicate MTF tests for their cine lenses! Is this any mystery?" I'm not sure, but an optical engineer once told me that comparing MTFs by different manufacturers is risky, e.g. Japanese manufacturers usually only calculate their MTFs while Zeiss/Leica/Schneider measure real production samples. There are many ways to "manipulate" the MTFs, I would only use them to compare lenses of the same manufacturer.

Surprising even movie-experienced people while making the story still logical and "work" (forgetting for hours that you're staring on a white wall in a dark room) is part of the "magic" to me. Maybe it gets harder year by year to create such experiences because we are used to so many variations of basically the same story (basic topics: love, revenge...)? Juno was a - even more extreme - example of really good story(telling) to me: making a really simple and small (and to most of us uninteristing) story "work", the story is driven by the characters and surprises/touches us in the most unexpected moments! I really liked "Garden State", I was surprised how creative and well-done a movie by a newcomer (who has basically done all by himself!) can be, someone who was only known as an actor of a TV-comedy-show! You can see his thesis-movie on his site done years ago and some nice b/w-photography work with his Leica M. I wonder how many other talents never get a chance... It also never looked "cheap", everything was done with care, everyone seemed to do his/her best!? I'm really looking forward to future work of Mr. Braff!

I don't know century-optics, I have only experience with using conventional still-photography-lenses. These are Schneider-Kreuznach-lenses? I had one 2,8/50 for a Rollei 6000 - optical&mechanical quality like Zeiss! To me, mass-production lenses like Canon/Nikon never came close to comparable Leica/Zeiss-lenses. But some of their designs are very old (shorter lenses for R-System) and don't really show what Leica is capable of and what we can expect from the S-series. Long enough? ;-) : http://www.pstechnik.de/en/optics-leica.php

Today I was visiting a product presentation, but they had no S2+lenses, they disassembled most prototypes and needed the rest for another presentation... :-( The Leica-engineer told me that he didn't know anything about plans to adapt the S-lenses to a 65mm-film-camera, but he liked the idea and promised me to mention it back in Solms :-) I don't know how well they can used for follow focus work, has anybody ever used AF-lenses on a film-camera? It makes sense to me using an internal motor. But he also made clear that these are professional Leica-lenses. Full-metal-construction, weather-sealed and measured/optimized perfomance for every single lens - much closer to traditional film-lenses than consumer-stuff from other manufactureres! After seeing "Dark Knight" on IMAX it seems stupid to me to invest so much money, passion and time and using only 35mm or even HD on any big project. Aren't all the Nolan's, Scorsese's, Spielberg's (+Stars) powerful enough to convince producers to invest into this format after the enormous success of Dark Knight?

On his next film he will use the video-function of his iPhone... :lol: :blink:

Next summer the S2-body is introduced with four lenses: 2,5/35Asph, 2,5/70Asph, 3,5/120Makro Apo and 3,5/180 Apo. A few months later these lenses will follow: 2,8/24Asph, 2,5/100Apo, 3,5/30-90Asph, 3,5/350Apo and a 30mm Tilt&Shift. Other (also faster) lenses will follow. The flange distance is about 60mm - I don't know if that's sufficient for regular 65mm-cameras. Buth they all have internal focus, are weather sealed and extremely robust full-metal-designs!

Those lenses are spectacular, but M-lenses have a flange distance of only ~27mm and it's impossible to focus them with an SLR (well, Kubrick used an adapted f0,7 Planar which also had to be used with a viewfinder camera :-). Much more interesting to me are the new Leica S-lenses, they have AF and automatic aperture control (an electric adapter could remote control these functions) and their image circle is large enough for 5perf 65mm!!! The Leica optics chief designer said that these lenes are even better than most M-lenses, which would mean that they are way superior to every other lens used for 65mm...

It started last week in Germany and I just saw it on IMAX in Berlin. I was simply blown away, the film itself is very good (by comic/action-standards even a masterpiece) but the technical quality of the projection was simply OUTSTANDING! The screen is 21x28m (are there bigger IMAX screens in America?) and everything, the colors, the contrast, the steadiness and even dirt (I've noticed two tiny dirt particley in 152min with an one week old copy!) were close to perfection. The image sharpness was great, even in the 35mm-segments but the wideangle-cityscapes in IMAX were simply the best thing I've ever seen in movie history! Pppppllllllleeeeaaaaasssseeee all Spielbergs, Camerons, Nolans, Scorseses, Malicks, Lubezkis, Ballhauses, Tolls out there... stop using inferior technology on big productions! THIS IS WHAT CINEMA IS MADE FOR! That's what keeps audiences from watching cheap copies on tiny TVs! Use at least 65mm (nealry as big as IMAX when considering the aspect ratio - IMAX is not much wider, "only" higher) and present them on IMAX! Or use the coming-up great 4k-transfers of modern films and classics (e.g. Blade Runner) to make IMAX-prints and show them there! It's cheaper than producing boring 50min 3D-Canyon/Dinosaurs...-films and people will watch them, then after one month, change the copies from city to city so e.g. NYC can watch Blade Runner, while Chicago has a 70mm-copy of a critically acclaimed movie from last year...

"Silence of the lambs" is my all-time-favourite movie and I think Jonathan Demme did a fantastic work (+script + actors) which actually surpassed the book it is based on. So I was eager to see a new movie from him - Anne Hathaway? Whatever, when somebody can push actors to their limits, it's Jonathan Demme. But I was shocked when I saw the trailer! A Dogma '95-movie? A German no-budget-social-drama? Shacky digital pictures with no lighting, no style - nothing! Is this really necessary? Is it just me who doesn't understand the documentary-style-approach of Dogma-movies, blairwitch, cloverfield!? Am I the only one who HATED "dancer in the dark" (the music was great...)? Wouldn't support (= enhance the storytelling) a descent cinematography such a project (especially because of much dialogue)? Is this actually what cinema is made for? Or is it the "youtube-generation"? Would he have chosen at least shacky 35mm-hand-cameras if there would be no HD available? Am I ignorant? A dumb mainstream-guy? I'm worried, I think I will get the DVD but I won't be able to stare at this on the big screen for 2 hours...

I really liked the look of "the Prestige" but he isn't one of my favourite cinematographers, I can't remember a certain "style" or scenes. Have you seen his comment (imdb->trivia) on "good is not good enough"? So true... I hope they use the success of the dark knight to finally switch to bigger formats entirely!

If I remember correctly, Michael Ballhaus liked them and used VPs for most of his work since "Air Force One". Zeiss had to redesign some lenses because of stricter enviromental laws in Germany, some designs didn't survive... Maybe also the case with the VPs?

@Jeff Every real Carl Zeiss lens says: "Made in Germany" or "Lens made in Germany" - ALL other lenses are either produced by others to cut costs (and usually differently designed to fit the skills of these producers - like most "Zeiss"-branded-lenses for todays rangefinder-cameras or Nikon/Pentax (all Cosina) or most of the old Contax/Kyocera-lenses) or are old lenses manufactured by Carl Zeiss Jena (as already said: different company, different skills) till ~1989. Alle cine-lenses and the Hasselblad-lenses are REAL Carl Zeiss with all it's advantages/disadvantages. Carl Zeiss is more than just a brand, it's a company with more than 160 years of experience, the Oberkochen-production-site is the most advanced lens-production-site in the world! And the Carl Zeiss foundation also owns the world's biggest/most advanced technical glass-producer: Schott (everybody knows Ceran) which also produces most of the glass for Zeiss-lenses! But they're expensive... @Olex It's interesting that you mention the Sonnar 2,8/180. The Jena-version is based on a design of 1936 (that's why it's often called Olympia-Sonnar") when Carl Zeiss Jena still was real Carl Zeiss. "This is lenses have low price on ebay now, that's why, can be very good alternative" That's true and I'm sure you can find people who need exactly what Carl Zeiss Jena-lenses have to offer! But speaking of an "alternative" people usually start to think of Carl Zeiss Jena as an alternative to real Carl Zeiss. I didn't want to start a political discussion either, but when I talk badly about these products (Zeiss Jena, Praktica...) people usually come up with personal, positive experiences. The reason and the scientific cause of the quality difference between "Eastern Germany" and "Made in Germany"-products lies within political/social reasons, besides personal, singular experience/subjective impression there are huge differences in the way these products were designed and manufactured.

The Imacon-Scanners (Hasselblad is just the brand) have a moving Rodenstock lens which enlarges the film from 24mm width up to 9cm so the whole area of the CCD-sensor is covered and the scan-results become ~8kpixel wide (which results in 8000ppi for 35mm film, 3200ppi for medium format and 2000ppi in large format). It would be really interesting to build an adapter which takes film rolls!? Although the scanner isn't pin-registered and it's not very fast. I just thought it would be interesting to "imitate" a DI-scan with up 8k resolution. Why are so many DIs/transfers so bad? The telecine seems to be like a flatbed-scanner in the still-photography-world: horrible results with good technical data!? Aren't these people specialists, working in highly specialized companies, getting hundreds of dollars per hour? Can't they use a good scanner (Northlight/Arriscan) to make a good transfer? Is it soo difficult? They did a new transfer for "Blade Runner" or "2001" with great quality but "Juno" (one of the best-selling movies (and DVDs/Blu-Rays), best-picture-nominated) is gets such a bad transfer that people think a simple HD-camera is better for Blu-Ray? I simply don't get it! That's just like the photographers who bought a Epson-flatbed-scanner, scanned their Hasselblad-slides, compared them to their 35mm-DSLR-results and threw away their Hasselblad!

Grain with current film-stocks at a effective scan-resolution of <2000ppi? Well, I'm not too familiar with current film stocks but this is the result when you scan a current fine-grained 100ASA-slide-film, it's a Imacon/Hasselblad X1 using a 8kpixel-Kodak-CCD-line-sensor which is cooled by peltier-elements. This scanner is nearly (not entirely!) noise-free and translates into the DI-world with a resolution of 8k. The scan/slide itslef isn't perfect (it could be sharper). First JPG-100%-crops of the original 480MB-16Bit-TIFF-file, one without any sharpening or noise reduction, the second one with little sharpening and noise reduction: And downsampled with PS (bicubic) to HD-resolution (~2000ppi): Where is the noise? Are Vision2/3-film-stocks grainier even below 200ASA? I can see the difference between color-noise and grain and MANY Blu-Ray-transfers have heavy color-noise, grain-alaising and other artificats propably not even close to the quality of the original!?

I'm really excited! Fortunately, Dark Knight comes to IMAX before IMAX becomes "2k is enough because it's new cool digital-stuff"... Wasn't "2001" a great commercial success, too? But they killed 65/70mm anyway, because it's success had nothing to do with spectacular pictures/effects? :blink: @Paul Bruening Off-Topci: I've spoken with an Imacon-technician about their scanners, he scanned slides for me and showed me how the Imacon looks from the inside... It has very little to do with all this chinese HP/EPSON-"throw me away"-crap... The mechanical parts have to be very rigid/stiff and precise and he also told me that the custom Rodenstock-lens costs about 1000€ alone... Cheap electronics have never been the problem... I'm really happy with the performance of the Kodak CCDs, my little M8 with it's tiny 10MP-files blows every 12MP-full-frame-combination with three times the size out of the water (although that's mostly the job of the lenses)...

I've tried scanning 35mm-Slides with 4000, 6300 and 8000ppi (~4/6/8k) and yes, scanning above 4000ppi actually makes sense. You have to scan the grain itself to reproduce the information, ortherwise effects like "grain-alaising" will destroy or create false information even if the actual resolution within the image is much lower. It's a bit like using a magnifing glass when working on a painting, you use filters etc. on a higher magnification level and the artifacts caused by the filters will appear smaller in the final image!? Does that make sense? I think that's the linear CCD-Sensor used in the Northlight and the Imacon-Scanners, so using the Imacons you can propably get an idea what a >4k-DI could do: http://www.kodak.com/global/en/business/IS...l?pq-path=12272

I grew up with the separation of Germany, saw production sites on both sides, have relatives on both sides working in the industry. My engineer's view: It's simply a desaster, it's unbelieveable how much knowledge and skill was destroyed by ignorance - some of the most advanced technology once came from regions in Eastern Germany (like the first 35mm-SLR-camera, watches...) but after WW2 the Russians destroyed everything that was left by the war with no intention in reconstruction like in Western Germany by USA/England/France. In the end 99% of the eastern industry was focused on producing for the communist world or cheap exports with old machines, old know-how, too few skilled people and constant lack of materials! Have you ever driven a Eastern German car? Well, you haven't missed anything... When we talk about quality, we mean it in a scientific, technical way. I just wanted to say that you have to be very careful when you expect comparable quality of "Carl Zeiss Jena" just because of the similar name or older products before WW2 - it's more familiar to Russian standards (works somehow...) and no cheap alternative to "Made in Germany"-lenses!

The lenses from "Carl Zeiss Jena" have very little to do with real Carl Zeiss lenses! Jena (Eastern Germany) was the hometown of Carl Zeiss, after WW2 they realized the Russians weren't interested in helping them, many highly-skilled specialists flee from weak economy, low wages and well, missing democracy/freedom... So most of the know-how, technology, people and machines (what survived the war) were quickly transfered to Oberkochen (Western Germany). After 1989, Carl Zeiss Jena was 40 years behind in quality/technology and couldn't survive the market, so Carl Zeiss Oberkochen reinvested in Jena (Jenoptik etc.). I had some Eastern Germany-cameras/lenses, I wouldn't even dare to call them high-quality.

The studio-system is dead and so is "New Hollywood"... But I think both "philosophies" have their successors, on one side the big blockbusters, created by "professionals" (combining last years' success-story A with favorite actor B and oscar-winner C, then mix it) to make as much money as possible, it's a business and the movie is a product that has to be sold! But there are also those who "trick" the system, making succesful but not very innovative movies that won't hurt anybody to get enough money/reputation to realize projects they want to do as artists! Clooney, Pitt, Spielberg, Scorsese&DiCaprio play this game pretty well!? And I think this is the place were some of the best movies are made -today! Don't forget that "artificial blockbusters", created like a product, weren't invented in the 90s but decades ago... Of course we love the classics, but even in the 70s most movies were bad... Today's Disney is now Pixar, Hitchcock is now Nolan, Bogart is Clooney... And in a few decades we will go into the cinema with our grandchildren and will say: Wall-E, that was a REAL movie! ;-) Maybe it's my age, but I can tell some "Hollywood"-masterpieces created within the last decade and 90% of my all-time-favorites were made within the last two decades: American Beauty, Memento, Juno, Silence of the lambs, Fight Club, Leon the professional, Terminator 2, Requiem for dream... Of course I have highest respect for Hitchcock and Co for "inventing basic rules" that influenced all new movies, but they were perfectionized decades later... Do you think a backward-story like Memento would have worked in the 70s? Were the audiences/society ready for Juno? I think we can be lucky when 2-3 movies a year stand the test of time as masterpieces, was it ever different? Of course I hate this "artificial" stuff, romantic comedies for 50M€(20M€ for actors, 25M€ for marketing?) or the fourth sequel of a comic-book... but that's not what people will rememberin 50 years when they think of the movies of our time...

@Michael Lehnert I'm confused :blink: I'm not a cinematographer, just a mediocre photographer and I enjoy movies, so maybe I'm completely wrong, but... Spielberg has made many movies in the last three decades, some were weak, some "only" good and some are masterpieces! In fact, when I think about all the great cinematic moments Spielberg created, it's really hard to find someone in history of cinema that can be compared to his work over the last 30 years!? Well, maybe some people simply weren't lucky enough to stay in this business for such a long period of time, but I think Spielberg has changed cinema forever and not only 20/30 years ago! Who is Janusz Kaminski? Is it fair to compare someone who is lucky enough to work with Mr. Spielberg (strong visual components, big budgets, lots of freedom) to somebody who tries to get the best out of small-budgets, small-stories!? I don't know, but I think that his work with Mr. Spielberg set standards and that the visually strongest Spielberg-movies we're all made by Mr. Kaminski (just because these movies were more expensive, the technology more sophisticated?). Schindlers List, Amistad, James Ryan, AI, Minority Report, Catch me... Just five movies that came to my mind in a few seconds, visually really impressive top-notch movies to me -complex, innovative and yet different (fitting the story) looking movies. How many cinematographers can compare to that? Three, four? I think Indy4 was a modern George Lucas-movie, but Spielberg/Kaminski have proven far too often that they're real masters, responsible for some of my most unforgetteable movie experiences of all time! Indy4? Already forgotten and forgiven (I know who to blame ;-), I'm looking forward to their new project! Am I alone?

There was an article on a magazine about a guy called Nico Beyer. He shots mainly commercials and uses Leica SLR-cameras for f/x-shots and a Vistavision-camera with Leica-R-lenses. He claimed that he wanted almost-65mm-quality with lower costs and more flexibility!?

"Nate, film stock can improve. But it cannot double its resolution in a couple of years like digital sensors can" Sadly, effective, real-world resolution and image-quality overall is compromised by many other factors, too. To "record" 80lp/mm (~4k with 35mm-size, digital or film) is very hard, my Leica M8 is nearly a 4k-35mm (~4000Pixels @ 27mm width) with 2fps ;-), to achieve this resolution you need a tripod (shutter speed > 1/125s) and have to focus VERY carefully. I imagine that with cinematography it's even more difficult (moving camera/objects, focus...). So other factors (dynamic range...) are very important but to achieve significant higher resolutions you have to increase film/sensor-size!? Just look at the still photography world, the pixel-race is over, there are P&S-cameras with more megapixels than a DSLR and a 1ds MarkIII has as many megapixels as a MF-digital-back! What I'm trying to say: 4k is as much you can get with 35mm (digital/analog) and bigger formats (65mm 5perf, Imax, 65mm sensors) aren't obsolete just beccause you can squetch more than 24MPixels (4k without bayer!) on a 35mm-sized sensor. When the "Dark Knight" really looks as great on the big screen as some people say, it is time (since more and more people have descent beamers and blu-rays at home) to switch back to bigger formats for the big blockbuster-movies! I just don't get it, there is such wonderful technology available but people discuss about cost-benefits of using HD with 100.000.000$-projects...

"Nate, film stock can improve. But it cannot double its resolution in a couple of years like digital sensors can" Sadly, effective, real-world resolution and image-quality overall is compromised by many other factors, too. To "record" 80lp/mm (~4k with 35mm-size, digital or film) is very hard, my Leica M8 is nearly a 4k-35mm (~4000Pixels @ 27mm width) with 2fps ;-), to achieve this resolution you need a tripod (shutter speed > 1/125s) and have to focus VERY carefully. I imagine that with cinematography it's even more difficult (moving camera/objects, focus...). So other factors (dynamic range...) are very important but to achieve significant higher resolutions you have to increase film/sensor-size!? Just look at the still photography world, the pixel-race is over, there are P&S-cameras with more megapixels than a DSLR and a 1ds MarkIII has as many megapixels as a MF-digital-back! What I'm trying to say: 4k is as much you can get with 35mm (digital/analog) and bigger formats (65mm 5perf, Imax, 65mm sensors) aren't obsolete just beccause you can squetch more than 24MPixels (4k without bayer!) on a 35mm-sized sensor. When the "Dark Knight" really looks as great on the big screen as some people say, it is time (since more and more people have descent beamers and blu-rays at home) to switch back to bigger formats for the big blockbuster-movies!

From my experience in still photography you see a noticeable difference between 4000ppi, 6300ppi and maybe even 8000ppi (these are common resolutions with Imacon-scanners, 1000ppi are ~1k because 35mm-pictures are nearly one inch wide). 4k are definitely not enough to capture the full information of modern film stocks! Of course you cannot compare the generated file-size 1:1 with file sizes of digital cameras but you need to scan at very high resolutions to avoid "grain alaising" and capture the "structure" of film (grain...). Just take a look on the ARRI 4k+-Article mentioned a few times, you can download uncrompressed examples from their ftp-servers: http://www.arri.de/infodown/cam/broch/2008...%20Brochure.pdf On site 17 you can find fig. 20 showing a 35mm-negative scanned with 2k and 4k (downsampled from 3/6k Arriscan?) and a 10k-scan (drum scanner?). Fig. 22 on site 18 shows the loss of quality caused by the optical process. I don't know if these tests are 100% correct but from my perspective they look pretty reliable!