georg lamshöft

I'll have to admit that James Cameron is one of the very few directors, whose movies I would always watch, I wouldn't listen to any critic or friend either! He is not a usual F/X-director. He always invests lots of effort into those things but in the end, it's about the story/experience. The first JC-film I saw was "Terminator 2", at this point I already saw movies with much more sophisticated F/X - but this was a unique experience, a rollercoaster-ride. It's not the dialogue or the actors performances (Arnie! :lol: ) - I think he always sees his projects as an entity. "Aliens" was the next one, the F/X were already ridiculous but this was a sequel to Ridley Scotts "Alien" and it was entirely different but also a masterpiece in it's own way! Who else could have done that? I hated "Titanic", everyone did, who was this DiCaprio-boy anway and why is every girl dreaming about him :blink: ? It took me years to actually see it and again, despite really minor things that could have been made more subtle the experience in the end was groundbreaking! He cares about his work and as far as I know, he swore himself to never make a bad movie again and give away control after "Piranha Part Two: The Spawning"... :P From what I've read I'm not really excited about the actors, the story or camera technology used in "Avatar" - but you know what? It's still the most anticipated film I can think of! Maybe naive, we'll see...

"Avatar" won't be about the resolution or DR - but I simply expected something different from Mr. Cameron. He waited 12 years to make another project and doesn't use the best technology available? He first describes what he is looking for but then chooses the opposite technology: he loves 48p, but isn't able to shoot it with this camera... Panavision would propably made him a custom running prototype of their 4k-camera!? :lol: Digital is great for students/independet filmmakers, imitating 35mm-look is easier than ever before! But people like Jim Jarmush orJason Reitman use 35mm even for comedies while Fincher and Cameron use digital for huge blockbusters? That's not the idea. Pfister & Nolan had to fight for every IMAX-scene in the >200mio.$ "Dark Knight", if I understood it correctly they weren't able to "hide" the additional cost for IMAX in the budget but had to justify every single aspect of the budget - additional 100.000$ for film is propably too much while +10mio.$ for marketing are just right... :blink: I would love to hear the desperate explanations of business people to cut costs on "Inception" because of the financial crisis... I hope he got a special contract with full control about artistic & technological aspects and final cut.

"Fortunately, the new 3-D cameras are able to meet their revolutionary performance specs, that no film camera could dream of matching, because they are HD. So that immediate real-time stereo image is there for the filmmaker to experiment with." Matching "immediate real-time stereo image"? Absolutely true - well, we now have the same sensors in video assists as used as primary sensors in "slumdog millionare" :blink: "Perceived resolution = pixels x replacement rate. A 2K image at 48 frames per second looks as sharp as a 4K image at 24 frames per second ... with one fundamental difference: the 4K/24 image will judder miserably during a panning shot, and the 2K/48 won't." The second part is propably true but the first part is simply incorrect. Without movement the perceived resolution doesn't change if your filming with 1fps or 1000fps (ok, maybe the grain/noise becomes less noticeable). "Film cameras can run that fast, but stock costs would go up. However, that could be offset by shooting 3-perf, or even 2-perf, because you'd get the resolution back through the higher display rate." James Cameron talking about stock costs, the man who made six movies in Hollywood and the last three were the most expensive of their time... :lol: Yeah, the old film-guy complaining again, without having shot a single film... :rolleyes: But James Cameron claimed in an interview from the early 90s that 35mm has more than 1100lines of resolution and therefore is still ahead of video-formats of that age. But now, his simple 2/3"-CCD-F950 with 1080 theoretical and about 800-900 lines real resolution is better than todays film... and HD is just as good as 65mm or IMAX... He even used Stereo-70mm once but now 1080p is better... I'm sick of all these HD-movies, I enjoyed "Jekyll" but these are the masters of cinema, big screens, not blu-ray, spending years of work and more than 100million-dollars and then they use a 1080p-camera with less resolution, limited dynamic range, digital artifacts and problematic colours to compromise the technical aspect of their artistic work? Why has "Titanic" to be the best film of Cameron regarding IQ? Why has "Se7en" to be better than "Benjamin Button" while newer technology could have generated superior IQ!? Hopefully "Inception" will be entirely IMAX... I'm sick of bad 35mm-projection, either. Modern DLP-beamers and stereo will surely improve the experience! Digital technology is great, I'm impressed how well a poperly made 4k-DI can look, degraining... But digital cameras aren't ready yet for this kind of work, there are better tools for those projects. But anyhow, I'm a big James Cameron-fan, his artistic skills (that might sound strange because of all the F/X in his work) are undeniable. At least half of his movies were groundbreaking, changing cinema, changing the expectations of the audience, raising the bar again! Who else achieved that? Spielberg propably... I'm sure, despite it's limitations regarding camera-technology, "Avatar" will be groundbreaking again and a fantastic experience. It's not the characters or the story, it's the way Cameron-movies simply "work" in the end. Entertaining, breathtaking, emotional, exciting - whatever he intended, you will experience it in the cinema... But I would enjoy it even more with better technology, it just doesn't make sense! :P

I was fascinated by the results from the very beginning. Now ARRI starts to support this process: http://www.arri.de/fileadmin/media/arri.co...4_ARRI_News.pdf The link www.degrain.de doesn't seem to work yet. But how does it work? Would it be possible to use this technology for still photography? Or does it work by comparing an image series and therefore recognizing what is grain (changes from image to image) and what is detail (remains the same)?

After reading the official statement, I'll have to say that I'm a little bit less enthusiastic now. I know the ZF-lenses and they're really good performers (especially newer designs like the 2/28) but they don't represent state-of-the-art technology Carl Zeiss is known for. Their designs are limited to lower costs and to allow production by Cosina (- no complex aspherical designs... but the compact primes are made in Oberkochen) and in critical situations they are visibly below new Leica Asph/Apo-designs and propably their own cine-lenses (Ultra/Master primes). It would be interesting to see the differences in performance caused by tighter tolerances in comparison to the cosina-made lenses but I don't think that their performance is as unreachable to others as the Master Primes.

"Too sharp"-lenses don't exist, you can always lower the resolution/contrast of any high performing lens in several ways. But you can't save information that was lost during shooting. Using lenses because of certain subjective aspects like bokeh or flare handling is something different. Bayer-filtered and interpolated images need sharpening, especially when they're low-pass filtered. And every sharpening can look artificial, especially on moving pictures. By the way, who is manufacturing/designing the Red Pro Primes?

"...and one studio set..." It was the house of the stunt coordinator :blink: But it is only going to show: if you want to shoot film, you can shoot film. In another thread somebody wanted cheaper instead of better stock from Fuji or Kodak - but even the small movies can handle the cost of film, when they say it's too expensive, it's just a lame excuse to cut costs at any cost. :( You'll have to pay about 120k$ for 30km (100x 1000ft = 15h) 65mm-Vision2 but yet, even projects which are 1000 times (!!!) more expensive are filmed on 35mm, because it's just too expensive... Why is a 1mio$-movie made with the same equipment as Titanic? But that's off-topic, sorry ;-) :P .

Hard Candy made extensive use of DI-color-adjustment. I thought it was interesting that they used 35mm+DI in a 1mio$-budget when others try to argument that 35mm is too expensive for Hollywood... Try to get the DVD (only 2DVD?), it has extensive comments from the director and actors, also about the look.

They will really cover 24x36mm? I know that everybody is waiting for a little wonder, newest optical designs with optics and mechanics manufactured to the highest standards - but cheaper, much cheaper just like flatscreens or digital cameras got cheaper... But that simply is not going to happen. Lenses are wonders of manufacturing. It's not only the lens performance but also the consistence of perfomance, the mechanics and optics that demand very expensive processes which only a very few companies in the world are capable of - with experienced, well-trained staff. Even the calculation software (despite well-known mathmatics behind it) from Leica or Zeiss is self-developed and exclusive, even the top-notch lenses of these two high-end manufacturers have distinct characteristics. Bigger production numbers can lower costs to a certain degree, but costs for this quality remain high. One simple example: They can't use lens grinding machines which polish several lens elements at once (used for C/N...) even if they would sell thousands of these sets but to keep tolerances every lens surface has to be mashined individually. That are not the cost-savings we know from other industries with mass-production (substitute metal with plastic...). Even the new WA-Summilux-lenses (which are mass-production by cine.standards with way more than 500 pieces) from Leica cost 7k$ each. Many new brand-names will show up and try to enter an entirely new-market (prosumer 35mm-cine) of mostly unexperienced RED-users with lower and lower prices, new cool names and marketing... But I've seen what the Russians did to East German production facilities, what their standards are - they didn't invest anything into quality and technology for decades (that why Zeiss moved to West-Germany) and their skills in manufacturing and design of lenses is at least 20 years behind. Don't expect any wonders from there... I know Carl Zeiss and their quality-standards (I'm not talking about every lens with their brand-name on it...). When they're not able to design a great-quality WA for this price beyond T3.8 nobody can and no sales or marketing person can overrule their engineers. They rather produce a great T3.8 than a not-so-good T2.1 which becomes usable at T3.8 but that sells ten times as good...

That depends on the cover glass itself, microlenses and the optical design of the lens. Strong retrofocus lenses (wide image angle but long focal length = light hits the sensor from a very steep angle) tend to reduce the problems. It's propably not a big problem with SLRs and small sensors, but some RED users already seem to wonder about strange aberrations from their lenses which they haven't seen on film - it's propably a result of the cover glass. I don't know if Zeiss and the others really come up with such a lens design, it was just speculation, wondering what we can expect from new lenses!?

You propably already know it: http://www.zeiss.com/c125756900453232/Cont...1257590002976db Most likely it's a low-cost lens set for 35mm-digital!? High production volume could lower prices, but hopefully not too much, lens sets for under 10k$ will be limited in optical design, selection and mechanical quality and you don't need another "Zeiss"-series made by cosina based on 70/80s-optics... Another interesting point of new lens-series: The single-chip-cameras have a quite thick cover-glass in front of the sensor (IR/protection) which causes abberations. Some "digital"-lenses in the still-photography world are already designed with this cover glass in mind as part of the optical path (like Rodenstock HR/Schneider Digitar/Leica S). For use with film, you have to add a special rear element to "simulate" the cover glass.

Try www.archive.org - they simply archive the internet, but it doesn't always work very well: http://web.archive.org/web/20080211100819/...kins.com/forum/

Of course making tests on your own is always the best way, but how often do you get the chance to make these comparisons? The telecine will propably add some noise, which will look like some kind of grain (after post-production), but it shows that film really depends on a good DI/post-production. We are used to see bad 35mm prints, DIs and are somehow getting used and more attracted to the "digital" look and a whole generation thinks that blu-rays are the ultimate standard in IQ...

The ARRISCAN uses a custom-designed LED from Osram(.de) which seems to work very well, maybe there is a way to get this one (it matches the size of 35mm perfectly)?

I'm not sure if it was already posted, because it's already a few years old: http://www.ecctv.de/videos/hdtv/mountain_top_reasons.wmv It is in German but here are the basics about what is said: - DI with Spirit 2k - First comparisons with "normal" zooms, later also with Digiprime (as written) - Super16 shot with Ultraprime It's not perfect, I'm sure a high-quality scanner would have done a better job (oversampling from higher resolution, 2pass for full 16bit DR...) and 1080p-cameras can do better recording uncompressed RAW. They claim that the first comparison a few years before failed because the old Vision1-stock caused too much grain - are these new stocks really THAT much better, is this the point where still photography film has stopped? But it shows that film has about the same amount of resolution, more grain/noise (about 2 stops difference?) but also much higher dynamic range (even from telecine?). But after all, they're comparing Super16, not 35mm!!! Makes me wonder if we head in the right direction...

Mr. Cage's Hairstylist propably costs more than the additional cost of 65mm compared to HD... :blink: So hire Bruce Willis and shot 65mm... :lol:

Camera rent (ARRI) and film costs (Kodak per meter) are actually the same as with 35mm! A film called "Nanga Parbat" about Reinhold Messner was actually shot (partly) in 65mm - and it cost a fraction of "Knowing"... I don't see costs as a real problem, but cutting costs on such thing as the film format is easy, and if you give them a chance to cut 50000$ on a 1000 times (!!!) bigger project, they will do it... I hope "Inception" will be shot entirely IMAX... As for "Knowing", well it didn't look like Betacam and most of the time it looked more like a telecine from 35mm (I think we are used to this kind of quality and certain digital artefacts, even if it's far away from the potential of 35mm) but is this really "good enough" for a 50Mio$-movie? I think there are better tools available for those projects - Micheal Mann's HD-movies might look strange, but at least he doesn't try to imitate the look of film (poorly).

They used their 65mm Arriscan in Munich but only used (6k->)4k for the larger formats and scanned the Super35-segments only in (3k->)2k. That's propably an explanation why the difference is this big even in 35mm-prints. I was surprised to hear that they used a 2k-DI, because it was a quite expensive movie and Tykwer has been really succesful with "the Perfume". 2 years ago "little children" was done entirely with a 4k-DI and even the first Polish movie with a 4k-DI was released last year...

As you might imagine, nobody (except ARRI/Cypress) can say that for sure. Kodak priced CCDs (@ the size of Super35) with approx. 650$ - architectures that are produced many thousand times. That's the point of costs in silicon technology: It's not the material and manufacturing itself, it's R&D and investments in the fab. The D21/Arriscan uses a custom-designed architecture developed by Frauenhofer in which quantity? 1000? How many sensors do they have to throw away to get a perfect one? Panavision said they need 600 Sony-sensors to get one for their Genesis? This is professional equipment not something that has to work most of time to satisfy most customers. So what? My guess: A few hundred Euros for one sensor, paying for fab/R&D/selection - propably 10-50 times as much!? Your question was: Do they buy chinese electronics for a few Euros, print ARRI on it, sell it for 150000€ and laugh at stupid customers willing to pay for a name when they could sell it RED-style for 130000€ less? Am I right? I don't think so.

"Enjoy the Silence is quite charming compared with what's typical today." Really? Let's stay with Depeche Mode: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bsXOcK9_Cw Ok, not exactly "charming" :lol: Patrick Daughters also made this fantastic one-shot-video for Feist: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvOOegxKIoI And of course these two: and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8Z-DIAthbM...feature=related Wow: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1wnOUH2jk8 Cool but more F/X: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgt_WDjbO0o Of course it must have become extremely hard te get a decent budget for more ambitous ideas, but even 20 years ago the mass-market was not really art, either... It's a shame that we have to watch these on tiny youtube-videos, because MusicTeleVision doesn't show music on television... :blink: It's worth looking for new stuff once in a while: http://cliptip.blogspot.com/

I think that's because most of us like the work of Michael Mann (and Spinotti) or the look his movies had when they were filmed on 35mm. But that has changed since he is using HD - in this particular way. His choice of technology simply doesn't seem to improve his work and yes, I think here technology does matter indeed - that's my point of view.

Whether you use the best equipment you can handle/afford to "hide" the technology as good as possible or you're trying to achieve a certain look that corresponds somehow with the storytelling. Using "old"/ less technical advanced technology to show the audience you're telling a story from the past is quite common as we know but what Mann does here is something entirely different to my eyes: He "gloats over" technical shortcomings of his equipment (instead of hiding it like Fincher and being satisfied with looking halfway like film - not my cup of tea, either) which gives the audience the feeling of a reality-show from our decade. That's like a sci-fi-movie filmed in the 1970s using high-speed film stocks and fast lenses, while knowing that the technical shortcomings of this time will be even further accentuated. 30 years later, you have a sci-fi-movie which plays in the year 2000 but looks even more 70s as other movies of that time... :blink: I fear that it will look "outdated" pretty quickly, like 80s-synth-pop... I'll hope you understand what I'm trying to say? :rolleyes:

Editing didn't work: I have no idea what his intentions are :unsure: He could have used Super35 with modern lenses & stocks and create a very natural, realistic look (it's right, a period movie doesn't have to look old) or he could manipulate the look in post-processing or using classical cinemascope or... But instead he used a technology which adds a very special "taste of it's own" (instead of being "invisible") and he uses this technology on very different subjects (Miami Vice = Public Enemies?). So maybe he simply loves this look or he thinks it's inappropriate to use film in the 21st century or he likes the way it handles on set? I don't know, but I'm sure future audiences will look back at this movie and ask: "why?" :rolleyes:

I hate the look, not really the technology that was used - but the technology is part of the look... See "Road to Perdition" (state-of-the-art film stocks and lenses + DI) and then look at this trailer and tell me again, that this movie profits from the technology that was used... Artificial (not intended instead of manipulated) colors, limited DR, HD-resolution, noisy, motion artifacts (OK, I simply suggest that it looks like other movies which used similar technology - highly compressed trailers always look bad) - that's a compromise which doesn't help the story at all. Michael Schuhmacher can drive really fast with a Lincoln but a Ferrari remains the superior sports car -> artistic skill is not an excuse for bad technology, especially not in a 100Mio$ Bale/Depp-movie with this potential. I fear that economists will say: Mann and Fincher saved 50.000$ (?) by using cool new digital cameras so now everyone has to use them!

Sorry, but it simply looks horrible, I cannot even imagine seeing it on the big screen... :blink: The next new trailer on apple is "funny people" an Apatow-comedy shot by Janusz Kamsinki!? What about letting Kaminski work for Mann and he gives his video-cameras to Apatow :lol: