georg lamshöft

Of course it's strange when a nobody like me blames Mr. Fincher in a forum and maybe I simply shouldn't... But otherwise I've seen it in the still photography world: great artists, wonderful photographers made the wrong decisions choosing their equipment, based on "hypes". I've read some interviews where directors/cinematographers justified using video - but nobody did this based on scientific argumentation. What I see right now (from my "outside" perspective) is that most (expensive) 35mm-projects are not made up to technological post-production-standards which became available in recent years (using pin-registered scanners, 4k downsampled from even higher resolutions and of course experienced and capable people working in post), in fact, even blu-rays are quite often messed up (made of recent DIs!). I can only refer (again) to this article: http://www.arri.de/infodown/cam/broch/2008...%20Brochure.pdf It's the most complete, scientific (yet quite easy to read) article about resolution in film I've ever read. And from my experience in still photography/scanning these resolutions are realistic and way beyond HD. What I'm trying to say: a 35mm-film (even filmed 20 years ago with slow stocks!), excellent made 4K-DI, projected digitally at the same resolution will give a completely different experience- right now most people comparing 35mm vs. HD with analog 35mm-projection (quite often with cheap copies) vs. 1080p/2k-DLP-projection in their heads which leads to the false impression that 1080p is at least equal to 35mm!? That's what happened quite often in still photography: an optical Ilfochrome-print was compared to the digital workflow or bad scanners were used... I even have a scanned 35mm-Velvia picture which seems way sharper than the Ilfochrome made with my Hasselblad! I'm sorry, it definitely starts to become one of these typical wars, I just wanted to write my thoughts in one or two sentences... :huh: and now you have to fight yourself through an enormous amount of grammar and spelling mistakes... Also: Gute Nacht und gut Licht! @Phil Rhodes Dalsa has a high resolution (at least in the technical specs) but it is not 4k... :ph34r:

Of course these movies will still be watched, but you can buy a well mastered Blu-Ray of "Benjamin Button" and use your home-cinema-system while well made 35mm "simply" goes through a 4k DI-process and is projected in an unsurpassed quality (not available on Blu-Ray-successor or IPTV for a very long time) - you can still buy a Blu-ray for home, but when you want the full quality you need to go to the cinema! Isn't that the idea? 4k for future cinema, HDTV for home? Isn't that the reason why the D-21/Genesis/Viper is just 1080p - because it's for high-def TV? Don't get me wrong, maybe I just don't see something Mr. Fincher has seen but to it looks like hype to me. "We have to shoot digital! Why? Because we're living in a digital time!"I see this trailer and try to imagine the work that stands behind such a project and they don't seem to use the best equpiment available to capture it. Am I missing something? Michael Mann used HD to create a certain look (if you like it or not) but "Benjamin Button" seems to be one of these "nearly looks like film"-projects... Zodiac looked nice, though - on a bad (copy of a copy...) 35mm-copy - won't you tell the difference when sophisticated 4k-beamers are out? Of course filmmaking is not just about technology, it's about storytelling. But think of "2001" filmed in 1969... They could have shot it in 35mm or even 16mm - saves costs, is easier to handle and it still would be the same film, don't you think? Just my two cents... :P

I'm not a professional cinematographer and have highest respect for Mr. Fincher and his crew (although Zodiac was boring ;-) But what happens when 4k (projection technology) becomes standard? Modern 35mm-technology (film stocks, lenses, scanners) can capture 4k, in a few years real 4k-cameras will be available (without color interpolation) and Mr. Fincher & Mr. Pitt could even finance 65mm!? But what's then with all the 1080p/2k-movies? A technical curiosity? Sorry, there is this fantastic film-equipment available but nevertheless video-cameras are used in big-budget-projects to imitate film-look!? I don't get it, reminds me of photographers throwing away their large format camera and using 35mm-digital with high-speed AF to capture architecture and landscapes... Explain it to the stupid film-fetishist! :rolleyes: By the way, I'm excited to see this movie!

I think it's a sad thing when technology compromises our work, that's why I think that - whenever possible - we should use the best equipment available. I would have loved to see "Juno" or there will be blood" in 65mm... I can only speak for my still photography experience but comparing resolution of film and digital is very difficult. Digital seems to be able to capture high resolution detail with low contrast while film captures even higher resolution (frequencies) in high-contrast situations. You need very sophisticated scanning technologies and you have to scan at very high resolutions (>>4000ppi) to avoid "grain alaising". I scan Velvia slides at 6000-8000ppi and the results are great, you have to use noise/grain filters and sharpening tools to get the best results. But even then 8000ppi (90MPixels with 35mm!) don't generate 90MPixels of resolution, more like 15-20MPixels - nevertheless it's important to scan with these high resolutions (I think it's called oversampling). There is a very interesting scientific article: http://www.arri.de/infodown/cam/broch/2008...%20Brochure.pdf It's from Arri, but they are about engineering not marketing (they don't even claim that their D-21 despite 6MP-Sensor has 2k - just 1080p)... :-) The article claims that up to 200ASA film stocks you can achieve 4k REAL resolution with 35mm (oversampled from 6k) with technology available for big productions. Bad scanning, marketing hype etc. "forced" many people in the still photography world to shoot digital even when they don't profit from it's advantages... I hope the film industry is more clever and more about achieving the best possible quality in the final product and not about marketing or cutting costs...

I thought it was quite entertaining but the third Indy with Sean Connery (perfect chemistry!) simple set the bar too high... From the technical side I was heavily disappointed. It's Spielberg & Kaminski, aren't these the guys that set standards? Isn't Janusz Kaminski one of the very best cinematographers? Schindlers List, Amistad, AI, Minoritiy Report, Catch me if you can, Munich... Aren't these movies with a magnificent visual style? With all respect to Mr. Slocombes work, isn't Kaminski even more impressive? Maybe he was "forced" to do a visual style he never wanted? But then there's another guy: Georg Lucas... To me it felt like a George Lucas-movie, even the look... He messed up the Star Wars prequels, is he "guilty"? Am I thinking too simple?

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That sounds interesting: http://www.moneyhouse.ch/u/leica_cinema_gm...4.034.603-1.htm Mr. Kaufmann (CEO/owner of Leica Camera) said that in "1-2 years" Leica Cinema will come up with some stuff (most likely lenses). @Mitch Gross Comparing iPhones with high-quality lens making... Consumer electronics are dead quality-wise, since highly-skilled (and fair paid) craftsmanship was exchanged by low-wages slave-work (the iPhone is assembled by a Taiwanese company not even willing to pay Taiwanese wages, they go to China, probably China buys weapons with that money to attack Taiwan -probably one of these things our children will raise their eyebrowes in history class?...). I remember when a teacher of mine looked at my MacbookPro and said none of his students would have passed delivering such a lousy fitting of the metal components... ;-) So please: highly-skilled (handmade/assembly) craftsmanship for all small production numbers and high-tech automatized manufacturing for good-quality mass products (like Swatch) but please no slaves assembling MP3-players that are sold for 5 times their monthly wage... Damn, I just wanted to tell how great Leica-lenses are and now I'm discussing political themes way beyond my English-skills, I apologize... Sorry, back on-topic, please :-)

http://optics.org/cws/product/P000002510 This article seems to claim that ELCAN designed and manufactured these lenses and Panavision "just" ordered them and maybe did some final assembly work. That's also what I've read a few times and it seemed quite logical to me because lens design and production needs specific know-how which has very little to do with traditional fine mechanics (cnc-machining...) I'm not sure if that's true but it would surprise me if Panavision "comes out of nowhere" and is able to machine/coat/assemble lenses to these high standards!?

I have used Leica/Leitz lenses for still photography. In my experience, the older lenses (~60/70/80s) are rendering beautiful images but in terms of technical apsects (resolution, contrast, distortion...) they're not better than most new high-end-glass from Canon/Nikon/Fuji. In the late 80s Leica realized that they cannot compete with Japanese prices and they sold their Canadian faciliity which became ELCAN (Ernst Leitz Canada), this company designed and produced many Panavision lenses (Primo?). Leica insourced their complete lens production back to Germany (I think one Japanese zoom-lens is left) and started to create new, innovative, even more complex and expensive designs (from 2,8/100Apo on). Most >50mm R-lenses and nearly all M-lenses are new designs. These lenses are really, really great! Sadly, the more compact and sometimes more powerful (no retrofocus) M-lenses cannot be adapted to SLR-cameras, including film-cameras. But most R-Lenses (21-35, 28-90, 35-70, 70-180, 19mm, 28mm, 50mm and all Apos) are great performers and should be quite interesting for cinematography (but they breathe, they're still photography lenses...).

"I think the problem with 35mm film is that it is too grainy to be considered ultra high definition" My experience from still photography: Use the best of both worlds! I'm shooting slides (usually Velvia 50ASA or 100F) and always thought that a chemical/optical cibachrome print (easily >50$ each) is the best way to present them. I was disappointed, the cibachrome prints were brilliant (the typical cibachrome glossy, strong colors), but they also looked grainy and soft in comparison to digital prints from my Leica M8 (by the way with a quite 4k-35mm-like sensor with 27mm width ~4000 pixels and 6,8µm pixel pitch). Then I scanned the slides with a 6300dpi Imacon (~ the resolution of a 6k Arriscan?) and used all the digital tools (sharpening, anti-grain/noise tools) and printed them. I was surpised, the digital print seemed as "grainy" and even a bit sharper than the cibachrome made from a 6x6-slide (Zeiss 80mm - not as sharp as the Leica - but still 3,5x image area) and had more detail than the 10MPixel-M8-File! It still looked somehow film-like, no typical digital artifacts and very low grain - from now on I don't use cibachrome anymore and still love shooting 35mm slides for big prints! To my understanding it's the same with film/35mm/DI: http://www.cinematography.com/forum2004/in...amp;hl=arriscan Whenever we compare systems we should look at the whole workflow, maybe the ideal 35mm-solution is using modern DI-technology (6k->4k?) and profit from all the digital tools like grain-reduction and then compare it to other systems instead of making a war "100% digital" vs. "100% chemical/optical"? I hope you got the idea :rolleyes:

It finally started in Germany and even the Germans simply love it! "You didn't feel Jennifer Garner looked honest?" I think this movie made me understand the feelings of people in her character's situation - and I'm a <25 years old male German engineer - that means something ;-) I saw it twice (once original, once in German) and it really made a difference, although German translation is usually pretty well made, this time it was unable to imitate the orignal dialogue. In the beginning I wasn't sure if this language is "overstyled" - but after seeing this movie without original dialogue I realized how perfectly it fitted the movie/story. I think this is one of the few movies people will remember in 30 years and they will say: "Look, those movies aren't made anymore" :-) Mr. Steelberg, I really enjoyed the visual style of "Juno", in Germany they often call it a "non-Hollywood-small-independet-movie", maybe it is, but it to me it had the same wonderful, well-thought and "rich" looking visual style of well-made Hollywood-movies! I hope everyone who was involved in this project profits from it in the future - your work was part of one of the best movie experiences I've ever had! Danke!

Maybe some interesting scenes: Is there any HDTV-release (HD-DVD or Blu-Ray-Disk) planned?

Wow! I was amazed by the movie and by it's cinematography! I've never liked hand-camera - but it worked very well and suited the style - just like "James Ryan". My Question: Are those long-shot-scenes real? Some of them were mentioned by the director but isn't it possbile with f/x- technology to "fuse" (what's the English word?) scenes, even if they contain people or other moving objects? It also had a nice technical quality - has somebody found out how the DI was made? Everybody who isn't shure about watching it because of bad critics ("unrealistic", "missing answers: why are there no children anymore?" - simply not important for the story) should think about it again. Some movies of the last weeks were pretty cool (the Departed, the Prestige) - but this one was fantastic and the best one I've seen last year!

The first new Luc Besson movie in years and nobody takes notice? I saw it yesterday and was quite happy with it. The story is simple, some things should have been said more subtle but what Luc Besson and his crew made out of this little, quite ordinary idea was great! Beautifully shot b&w pictures, charming actors, many nice little ideas. Sadly, not a second "Leon" (the story is not innovative and clever enough) but he still has it!

It sucked, that's true... They had everything, the budget, great actors, interesting places... And Ron Howard made a good job on "A Beautiful Mind" and especially on "Apollo 13"! Is it the book? Is it the adaption of the book? Don't these people with so much experience in Hollywood notice when a script is bad?

I saw it recently and had to say that I was surprised how good it was when you have some critics back in mind... I noticed this effect especially on the scene (I think it was already mentioned) where you can see pictures and the camera moves along a guy's face while he's eating a pizza!? Man, I got headache because the motion was so... I don't know the english word for it, but is it the thing you're talking about? It's not a problem of the cinema or something else? Maybe they had to pay too much to Foster, and couldn't afford the right equipment anymore? ;-) It doesn't happened accidently?

Editiing doesn't work... I think the different styles all over the world are a good thing - but people should stop this "small and nice movie vs. big and evil hollywood"-thinking. They could leanr from each others. The germans that a bigger budget can increase quality and a cinematographer is not somebody who just holds the camera... and hollywood-producers could learn that making movies is different from selling e.g. cars ("we take the oscar-winner from here, a little bit drama, a little bit erotic..."), that exactly the opposite thinking can lead to success.

I'm pretty surprised about the opinions of this movie - especially talking about great cinematographic/technical achivements. I have seen a few minutes of it and it immediately reminded me of this typical "cheap" look of german films. Ok, in fact these films ARE cheap but I've heard that so often from german actors, critics etc. : "we don't need f/x, we don't need big lighting..." but in fact I think in a strange way they are just jealous - they've always made movies with low budget, low technology and they got used to it. I always have the feeling that this mentality does not appreciate the work of cinematographers etc. - would everbody work this way we wouldn't have all the technology that made many movies even possible. It's right, these minimalistic movies have advantages, their story doesn't need to be mass-compatible (does this word exists in english?) and they don't have senseless special effects, slow-motion everywhere... But is it really necessary? Computers also have disadvantages but is this a reason to throw them away? What I'm trying to say: all the possibilities in modern cinema can get used to increase the quality of the movie and were invented for this reason, nevertheless they seduce many blockbuster-producers in a wrong way ("we do it because we can, we have 200.000.000$ to spend"...). Is this movie-technique really the right way or makes it just this impression because we got used to a different kind of cinema? Just because we want to see change from time to time? Trust me, would all films be made in this "minimalistic" way it would get pretty boring... I've always been fascinated by differences in society caused by the mentality. I rarely use "US-engineering" (for a good reason... :P ) but your mentality seems pretty perfect für making entertainment-stuff. Many people have enough of this blockbuster-"we make movies to make as much money as possible"thing and every time a foreign film is really great people say how good movies are without hollywood etc. but when you look back the last decades, where are 80-90% of the top-movies coming from?

I hope the cinemas wait with digital projection until it is better than a good 35mm projection and don't use it only because it is cheaper. This technology seems to be the future: http://www.zeiss.de/de/planetarium/home_e....5e?OpenDocument Extremly bright, extremly sharp, nearly no resolution limits, no light bulb and nearly perfect colors - why using it only in planetariums?

Nobody noticed? A new trailer! http://www.comingsoon.net/films.php?id=6166 (take super hi-res, it's worth it) Mr. Delbonnel seems to be a real master of cinematography (or is it Jeunet himself?). Did he used the Ultra Primes or already the new Master Primes? I'm a huge fan of Amelie and I hope he can repeat this success. Jean Pierre Jeunet, the new Luc Besson (I think Leon is the second best movie of all time!)? Are French the only European filmmakers, who can create a real great cinema-look? When I look at all our cheap German movies, exceptions are so rare (Mr. Tykwers next film will be made in Hollywood?)... :ph34r:

Robert Zemeckis seems to prefer the CGI-way, because this technique from "Contact" was also used in "What lies beneath". A very complicated "double actor without mirror"-scene can be seen in the directors cut version of Terminator 2: Linda Hamilton removes a chip from governators head, the person in the mirror is the twin sister from Mrs. Hamilton, making exactly same movements.

When they are really that good (and I have confidence in Zeiss) why do we need Ultra Primes? Ultra Primes are so expensive that they are only used were the price for the equipment is not that important (or not important enough to not take Master Primes because of their price), am I wrong?

I'm only a still photographer but my own experience, my knowledge about the firm philosophies, visits at Leica in Solms, the innovations... tell me that two companys build the best lenses in the world: Leica and Carl Zeiss That does mean that every Zeiss or Leica lens is better than every other lens but when you see pictures made with the newest Leica-asphericals or Zeiss Superachromats you see what I mean. Everybody has to decide for himself if he wants to pay these high prices and he really needs that quality. Also you cannot compare older Zeiss/Leica-constructions with the newest Schneider/Nikon..., espeacially many Zeiss-Lenses for Hasselblad are very old (not bad, but they might be better if they would be new) constructions. You also have to differ betwenn "real" Zeiss/Leica-lenses and the Jena-lenses (eastern Germany had not as much modern technology, exotic glasses etc. were not avaible) and many Zeiss/Leica-Lenses are not build from Zeiss/Leica itself. All Lenses used in Sony/Panasonic-Cameras (and nearly all Kyocera) are only constructed by the german companys and build in Japan, sometimes with special "economic differences" (you think you get the Quality of a 3200? Leica R28-90 with a 7-22,5mm Leica-Lens from the Digilux 2 for together 1800?? Panasonic and Sony have a complete different view of quality). Prooves needed? http://www.leica-camera.com/imperia/md/con...bjektive/37.pdf http://www.zeiss.de/C12567A8003B58B9?Open http://www.zeiss.de/C12567A8003B8B6F/Embed...P_Artikel_e.pdf What do the cinematographers think about that? : http://www.arri.com/entry/products/mp.htm My English... It must be hurt in your ears, I'm sorry B)

"BTW, that Ballhaus is especially popular in Germany is mainly because he does American films, the same way Hans Zimmer is popular for being a successful German in Hollywood, which has nothing to do with the artistic value of his scores.) " You're right, we are very proud of people who made it in Hollywood - look at most german films (especially technical stuff like cinematography, special effects...) and you know why :rolleyes: Before I have seen Gangs of New York, I wasn't a huge Ballhaus-Fan, I thought: "..just because he is german...". But this film showed me what he is able to do when he has the right budget, the right script and director. In my eyes he is one of the "top 5"-cinematographers in the world (+Kaminski, Toll, Storaro...) I understand why some people don't like Hans Zimmer, sometimes his (older) scores were to "obtrusive" (?) and very often his themes seem very similar when they are made within a short time. A "Zimmer-score" is not automatically a good one, but when you listen to his scores from "rain man", "crimson tide", "the thin red line" or "gladiator" (together with Lisa Gerrard) it's hard to say that he is not a excellent componist. But it's all art and a matter of taste. :lol: But shouldn't we talk about lenses? ;-)

Now I know the real reason why you are using Panavision-stuff... "I want to rent a airee" "A what?" "Okay, I take the panavsion as usual" :P Look (or hear) at the Videos on arri.de ("what is arricam"), then you know the right pronounciation! greetings from Berlin!