Gregg MacPherson

The edit function disappears too fast for me. I wanted to edit, near the bottom of paragraph 3. It reads: "Unlike a sensor, which discards almost all of this information (keeping just averaged values of intensity), all the photons arriving at the retina have a potential for interaction with light sensitive cells." It should read: "Unlike a sensor, the pixels of which ignore everything but an averaged value of intensity, all the photons arriving at the retina have a potential for sophisticated interaction with light sensitive cells. A photon is tiny compared to a rod or cone."

Post 7 Ok, fair cop, overuse of the word value there. Normally I mean value as an engineer might. For example the number of unique signals per unit area on a sensor is a relatively low number value. The number of unique signals per unit area from the human retina is a relatively high number value. Just while we are here, that is one of my reasons for my calling the signal from an individual pixel "crude". More on value. If we talk about the fine objective value of the image we could (did) refer to the pixel size. If we talk about the finer values of perception, we are edging beyond objective or conscious seeing, more on that in a moment. If we talk about the value of whatever we are able to ingest through our eyes subconsciously, we are pointing to the useful value of it, the usefulness of it. And I am pointing to that useful value, or provoking awareness of it because digital technology is basically ignoring it. As I said before, a vast and sophisticated stream of information stops at the sensor and becomes a "crude", oversimplified trickle. What I think of as the over-objectified global mindset, lacking a sense of wholeness or lacking in what should be just common sense, has enabled this. Now digital technology could further culture the weakening or disablement of our more refined perception. This affects art, culture (popular art, moving pictures) and obviously, human experience in general..... The limits of our sense perception. Momentarily, for a given or specific physiology, there are measurable limits to conscious visual perception. There may be physical factors creating these limits. There are certainly cultural factors and conditioning that create limits to sense perception. Our apparently objective view of the world through our eyes is not really an objective view but a conditioned view. There is far more information entering the eye than we bother to, or are able to, consciously see. Unlike a sensor, which discards almost all of this information (keeping just averaged values of intensity), all the photons arriving at the retina have a potential for interaction with light sensitive cells. Most of the information from these incoming photons is not useful or acceptable for our conditioned style of seeing, but these interactions at the retina are still provoking activity in the neurophysiology, the brain. Lets call this something like "unconscious visual perception". Lets just make a leap of common sense and say that these "unconscious" layers of perception are an integral part of how we form finer layers of subjective awareness or feeling. And, dare I say it, evolve our sense of self and our sense of integration with the universe. Perhaps a good start point to think about art........ As said before, when we transcend boundaries the apparent functional laws can change. In physics this is the accepted common sense. We experience objectively, by consensus or conditioning, in a world governed by Newton's basic mechanics, in a one plus one equals two style. We also have layers of conscious subjective experience where commonly the whole is more than the sum of the parts. Meaning in a more wholistic style. A difficult concept if one has never.....fallen in love for example. Such a common experience actually. By using an intuitive think on microscopic process in a photographic event we are using familiar concepts from physics as a start point. The description actually makes sense in a literal way without actually invoking the magical ideas of quantum mechanics. But those ideas, or the exotic flavoure of them, are a useful nudge toward what may be required for a deeper conscious appreciation of the model I'm offering. So in short, no serious metaphysics nor any sympathy for clairvoyance was required as my start point. I'm sure one could put this model in more spiritual terms, but in the modern world our style of experience and thinking is extremely objective. And about to get a lot worse if you accept my theme. Can one make art with "crude discrete signals" ? Yes of course. While a thing can be considered to have any "value" - it could be art, dollars, we like or love it, a whole culture may love it......The critical useful value I am thinking about is how a wholesale shift to digital tech is going to condition our awareness, our ability to see, and compromise that. And compromise our ability to make art. The coolest piece of art I can think of using crude discrete signals was the piece I imagined Ronnie Van Hout having done years ago. An image photo-etched onto concrete, where you look closer and see it is composed of tiny rectangles mapped over the grain of the concrete. Maybe we'll deal with your mother and the experiments on blind people later (cue laughs). Did you know..some people with no rods and cones still have the photosensitive ganglia cells, which do cool stuff, like sense the circadian rhythums (day/night/day.) and somehow enliven other functions in the brain. I have only ever warched Shortland St for the time it took to change the channel. Although data speeds are a bit crap here, I am actually watching more online. Goodwife, Homeland, Boardwalk Empire, Sons of A, Downton Abey (I'm getting old) and some odd but cool quasi documentaries like Life on the Alaskan Frontier.

Post 6 Freya on the "Is 3D really here to stay" thread pointed out this BBC report on 8K. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/9774380.stm Pasting here some of my response on that thread. I'd like to write more later. Without a whimper from the human population this will be fed to us as a kind of ultimate refinement. The human eye can't resolve finer than that etc. I think this is rubbish. It represents a sort of, perhaps ultimate particularization, in terms of the fine objective value of the image, but ignores finer values of perception and the value of whatever we are able to ingest through the eyes without being literally or objectively aware of it. To do with that, or taking it further, it's as if ignoring the sophistication of the human eye and nervous system. Simply adding more pixels is a simplistic approach to refining the image. What value is there in using a computer to simulate or interpolate in order to turn those crude discrete signals into something akin to an image from a piece of film, or worse, a real object ? (rhetorical question). The engineer in the interview had a faint glow, as though he had just quietly cured cancer. Sad and ironic.

I'll be more careful to label my r h e t r i c a l questions in futre. I hoped it would be assumed to be a large number. Larger than 1 anyway. It was a slightly forced illustration.....Solar particles causing flashes or streaks on the retina of astronauts, wow. How big are they? (rhetorical question)

I'm glad we are allowed to say that word. I've been busting to. I'll save it up. I actually started some objective research for my F vs D theme. I was reminded that photons have no size in the common sense, but I think of them as vey tiny packets of light. Saw a reference to an experiment showing that rods in the eye can respond to single photons. A conscious response by the subject...So how many photons/frame do we think are coming from each pixel on the 8K screen?

Freya, I had a look at that BBC report on 8K. Without a whimper from the human population this will be fed to us as a kind of ultimate refinement. The human eye can't resolve finer than that etc. I think this is rubbish. It represents a sort of, perhaps ultimate particularization, in terms of the fine objective value of the image, but ignores finer values of perception and the value of whatever we are able to ingest through the eyes without being literally or objectively aware of it. To do with that, or taking it further, it's as if ignoring the sophistication of the human eye and nervous system. Simply adding more pixels is a simplistic approach to refining the image. What value is there in using a computer to simulate or interpolate in order to turn those crude discrete signals into something akin to an image from a piece of film, or worse, a real object ? (rhetorical question). The engineer in the interview had a faint glow, as though he had just quietly cured cancer. Sad and ironic. I think relevant to this.....Over on the Film vs Digital, Impact on Art, Culture, Experience I tried to make a start point for considering that comparison in a new way. Focusing on extremely refined processes in the photographic event and more subtle, subjective layers of experience. You were one of the ones I hoped might be curious at those ideas. Mostly people have responded there as though it's just an invitation to the same old emotive arguments. It patently isn't, though I understand why it happns. But you don't need to be quantum physicist or an ocular specialist in neurophysiology to sense something about it or to offer thoughts. Thinking of writing something about this 8K idea over there. Cheers, Gregg.

Liam, You are approaching this in an extremely objective way, learning by peeling back layers from the outside. The magic ingredient for this model that commonly might make it work is contact with an experienced cinematographer who may be the Master of his own small universe. Enlivening very fine subjective values of experience just by proximity. But it sounds like you have a seriously over-objectified version of this model in play. If you damage yourself with your forced de-construction exercises you may compromise the more subtle experience that you are looking for. When I was a young wannabe film maker and cinematographer in the 80s, all my friends were essentially artists who happened to want to make films. Films that would of course change the world, aesthetically, politically and so on, so the inner intention, the thing underpinning the ideas, was commonly intense. Same for the development of idea. Form comes easily from an intense creative core of idea. Like having a baby, but of course there can be agonizing pain etc. So, the thought I had when I read your post a while ago was that you could intensively develop one of your own short film ideas, something really personal that you had intense feelings about. IMHO it would be more poetic than narrative, allowing more freedom in the form. Enjoy the playful flood of images that come up in the imagination. Filter that and focus on what you can usefully develop. When you come to shoot you should have a feeling of intimate connection with the material, No mental blanks at all. Do the same kind of thing, maybe more narrative, as a collaboration. With the most creative young writer/director you can find. Raw talent is what's critical here rather than experience. Again an idea that you (both) really feel intensly for. Get as close to the idea development as possible. If you share in the intensity of idea then the form, the images, the compositions and light should come easily. Or at least nauraly, like having a baby. It may feel like chaos, but mental blanks are unlikely. What's with the photo under your name? Looks like you were headed for a social hook up website and stumbled into here by accident (joke)

This edges toward a question that may be relevant. Are all scanners and scanner operators posing the same level of risk to the film. LAX vs Mumbai or Nigeria. Do they all have the same standards for scanning gear and operators?

Post 4-1/4 (a bit like the train station in Harry Potter) Chris, You poor chap. Having to endure 5 years of that. I have no connection with them other than trying to provoke some vigorous, serious debate in their small cotton wool universe. I pulled my head out of the sand (1) a couple of years ago, looked at some kiwi shorts in the Int Film Fest and felt no real progress had occuered over the 17 years that I had been avoiding them. Films were less formally adventurous, sort of normalized. Similar feeling about the (seemed to me) reduced intensity of the core creative values in the ideas. About half were shot on film. I looked around to see what shape the creative sub culture of grass roots or emergent film makers was in. Did they communicate and help each other? All I found was this large perenial thing on the 48hour forum. I thoght this contest and the culture that has grown with it was a very bounding, limiting thing. Of almost no value at all as far as enabling the emergence of exquisite talent or exquisite little films. But the city walls are well defended, and inside all the space is taken up with the most inane short, self congratulatory bable. Endless variants of Bevis and Buthead on nitrous oxide. I think if that culture can't somehow grow a limb that encourages these more exquisite qualities that I missed seeing then IMHO it desrves to fail, dissapear or just own up to the fact of becoming "white noise", irrelevant to anything except affirming film making as a fun social exercise and achance to learn some basic skills. Again, my condolences on having spent 5 years of palpable conract with them. I have a 10 year project like that, but not to do with moving pictures. (1) Any mean folk can enjoy the obvious oportunity for a joke at my expense. Must be time for Matthew to point out how far off topic I have strayed.

Chris Millar from over on the F vs D thread was or is a proffessional mechatronics guy and may ooze helpfull ideas. When you are over there just ask him, invite him back here. He may not have noriced your thread. Cheers, Gregg.

Daniel, I've been tracking ACL gear on eBay for a while. A PL to ACL mount adapter sold recently quite cheap. Needed a new threaded ring, the one that goes on the camera flange, or some skill to fix it (thought it was called TS mount on the ACL). Was stainless but I didn't recognise it. I sold an unbranded one on ebay for about $280 maybe a year ago, aluminium apart from the rear part that sits on the camera flange. So if you can ge patient they do come up. I have a Les Bosher one, beatifully desgned and made, stainless steel in all the right places, but they are 380 pound ($620 approx) Maybe someone like the Linoptik man could make a good one cheap if you are in a hurry. Thanks for the private message re batteries. Don't worry, we may clog Jeroen's thread but we are usefully bumping it up the board (smiling). PS: Thanks Jeroen, for the battery information.

Me personally I already found a comparison that really interests and concerns me. It's clearly offered at the start of the thread, then expanded on a bit later. If someone has ideas as a direct response to that I would find that interesting. But the topic "sprawl" is inevitable, and people are free to do whatever they want unless they get ugly and over personal, in which case I suggest they be completely ignored. There are things in your posts I'd like to chat about but I can't be in too may places at once without loosing focus on the idea that brought me here. Did you enjoy any of the jokes? I thought ACHE (art, culture and human experience) was pretty good. But Chris did better with "sprawl", perhaps by accident. Too obscure? I don't know why, but over the last few days, in the face of some serious thoughts, including this thread, I've had inexplicable, obscure, humorous ideas and fits of laughter.

I'm glad someone else around here has a sense of humour. So a "sprawl" would be a fight or brawl that you can do while horizontal, perhaps while skimming the www ? Or a "sprawl" is like a multi directional divergence from topic start, like spilling a can of paint? I'm not sure I'm signing on for either of these personally. We'll see. I'll follow those links in an extended jiffy. Is there any refference for that "just saying" sign off? Did you go and read some of that 48hours forum i pointed to. That chap never actually said a darn thing. He and pals normally filled their thread with short nonsense that looked like Bevis and Buthead on nitous oxide.

Post 5 Hey Bill, The key ideas that I've offered, hoping for some response to, I don't know if they ever have been discussed on the forum. I never noticed them. If they have, just nudge me along by pointing to where. I do include some ideas that have come up before and may feel old, and I do express some of my feelings, which may feel similar. But, actually I am quite overtly taking this Film vs Digital comparison to another level. Those that believe the world is constructed only of what they can in the moment objectively see will think my proposition is gobledy gook. Those that acknowledge even the most basic hidden things or processes in nature may be curious. I put the thread title as Film vs Digital, Impact on Art, Culture, Experience. My original tittle was longer, something about a comparison between the two. Too long to fit. The vs makes it seem like it's all about the conflict between these two media. Mostly I was interested in the comparison. But I know the conflict part is inevitable, and I have obvious feelings about that too. You were one of the guys who I thought might respond to my idea or theme. My first thought was that you hadn't read me, but were responding to Matthew and Khaleem's debate. The ideas in their interaction are not central to the core of my idea. Yes, there is a good chance that all the old emotional fights can happen again here, but the core idea I offered was actually new. It could alter peoples perception of the comparison and suggest some left field ideas for the development of digital. There is still time to respond before you wake up one morning and your parner has been replaced by a hybrid cyborg. Maybe you didn't read that one yet. Hope all is well in NYC, Gregg.

Just shake it off mate. I think you wound each other up a bit. Got slightly emotional and personal. I was maybe the only other option, and my ideas mostly have never been discussed before so it's harder to find a start point for a reaction (guessing). Chin up.

Post 4 Chris ! So I'm a crap researcher! Let the combat begin! Neah just kidding. These facts did float through my world about 1978 at art school. You would assume that someone starting a theme like mine would do a lot of objective research. The internet makes this so fast. But no, I wanted a subjective and experiential foundation. The main axis of my theme, or to me the most important part, needs to consider finer values of human perception or awareness and subtle, microscopic elements at play in an interaction, a photographic event. By extension a motion picture negative and.... So how does one prepare a subjective and experiential foundation. I did spend a lot of time with my eyes closed in a very quiet but vitalized state and had my chance to listen to the enlightened. I do fess up that I started study at uni in physics and quantum physics when young. The quantum physics lecturer had big curly hair and a goatee, a happy maniacal gleam in his eye. I remember him writing the Schrodinger equation at demented speed on the board without looking...... Thinking of the idea of making the film negative more densely detailed, a more literal photograph, A big leap in that direction may be almost available now, or actually ready now, at least for B&W. The microfilm style emulsion of the Gigabyte film. I talked about really refined values of process in the photographic event, seeming to imply that an almost infinitely fine result on the negative was the ultimate thing to achieve. That may be one version of it. If the info rich playful photons arrive at an emulsion with coarser grains then you simply have more photons making a detailed map over a larger grain. In the terms that I have been talking about it, this map still attempts to express all that information. The idea of photo etching on concrete came up on another thread. I heard that an old ex art school colleague Ronnie did some of that. I didn't see them, but the idea is an extraordinary expression of photography. Its a good nudge that the ideal "grain" size is not always small. I get a similar sense from silhouettes of hands made by blowing soot onto cave walls. The "grain" here is formed by soot onto the texture of the rock. What's common to all these is that the obvious unit of image, the grain if you like, is organic within the image making. I use that word in exactly the same way that many of you use to describe the look or grain of film. Consider now, maybe Ronie could have somehow achieved small rectangular image units on the concrete, up close quite visible. As a photograph, odd, uninteresting (to me), but if he jumped camp to the sculpture class it would be a remarkable piece previsioning and commenting on the concerns we have today.

Post 3 Commonly the words objective or subjective refer to relative qualities of awareness. More or less of one quality or the other. The style with which we entertain an idea. I have proposed that a level of connection exists between cinematographer, object and emulsion, personified as a vast stream of interacting photons. There is the commonly accepted physically objective value of this, and what is commonly seen, but the density of information on offer is vastly greater than that. Whatever the cinematographer or the audience is able to "see" beyond those boundaries of the objective, we shift by instinct into the realm of the subjective. Or perhaps the imaginary, or the magical, the inexplicable, or art. I see it as somewhat obvious and unarguable that film emulsion is currently the only medium with potential to capture these more intensely refined values of an image. And the idea of developing a sensor that literally emulates the human retina and nervous system, in order to emulate the film emulsion, does seem odd when film itself is such a simple thing, a practical solution, already achieved. The question will come up, wondering about just how valuable or necessary these more refined values of subjective connection are in the photographic event. Assuming it's actually real, does it really matter? Qualities of human awareness and modes of thinking have undergone a gradual shift towards more objective values and greater objectivity. In general people are happy, because they equate subjectivity with myth, unbelievable magic or Santa Klaus......things that objectivity seem able to disprove. But this change in style of awareness and thinking is accelerating. The world seems more particular, broken into manageable units, de-constructed if you like. And what has suffered is the value of wholeness in experience, the sense of profound integration within the universe. So in short, my opinion on the value of subjective and often inexplicable layers of experience, especially as they impact on art and culture......It's as vital as life. We can't afford to loose more of that. If we do we will end up forever trying to recapture what we have lost. When we talk about the accelerating shift to the objective, the particular, the material, in human awareness and life basically we acknowledge that this has occurred in parallel with the growth of technology. I'm not sure whether either one is clearly a cause of the other. That's another big issue I guess. Considering the future and wondering how far these changes in awareness and technology will take us. Consider this imaginative exercise. A future where your life partner is a hybrid cyborg. Better able to provide for whatever you need. If you itemized all the parts or elements of their function as discrete objective items, they were better. When this becomes an option, some people would just happily accept it. Some would be horrified I hope. How will people react when this becomes mandatory, when there is supposedly no other choice. Digital is almost at the point where it has the same context in our time as that hybrid cyborg technology in that imagined future. What we will loose may not even be noticed. We have been mentally conditioned to simply absorb and accept inevitable change. Inevitable change is commonly confused with "progress". All too strange really. Globally we are a feisty lot, going to war for reasons that often seem inexplicable. Here, coming close to loosing film, something that I think IMHO has profound value to art, culture and human experience, there is barely any objection from the human population. There are a few islands of sincere dissent, but globally this change is occurring as if unnoticed.. There is a scene in that Julia Roberts Movie about Erin Brockovich, where her dad is eating a soya cheesecake, complaining that he knows that every bit of it is made from soya, he doesn't like (hates) it, but he's eating it. This kind of wisdom is suddenly less certain when that's GE soya, a fact that may ultimately signal the irreversible compromise of the human genetic code. By accepting digital we are helping to enable a compromise or loss of a similar order. We are replacing a medium that enabled direct connection, "seeing" on an incredibly refined level, with one that does not. In this thread the idea of "seeing" having more refined states was put in a sort of literal way, considering the microscopic, as an obvious way of going beyond commonly accepted boundaries. In physics the apparent functional laws change as we shift from the macroscopic to the microscopic. Without film, is there still potential for refined experience, profound experience or art in stills or motion pictures? My feeling, bear in mind that my whole construction here is intuitively and experientially based, is yes of course, but of a less direct or absolute kind. It's of a different order, some will say lower order. Perhaps impolitic, but probably true.

It's hard to know what to think or say without knowing much about the film. But I was going to say before that it could be a useful shakedown or test for the cast or crew. Thats me guessing that you are taking some risks there due to money.

I meant a very short promotional piece that sold the film, a trailer basically for selling the idea and you. For meetings or intimate screenings with the people that may help with finance, or help make the film. Cheers, Gregg

Kahleem, I didn't get that reference. Is it towards anyone or anything in particular? Is that your take on my original post?

Hey Matthew, fancy bumping into you again.... What about shooting a very short persuasive piece that sells the film idea. You, key people, crew, actors all identified with that achievable goal. Could be usefull in lots of ways. But I don't know if you have some practical difficulty with that. For example, being forced to spend large on sets or something you would rather spend on later.

Dom, I got the new part, old stock from Panavision Auckland for about US$39 before tax, old stock. Talking to Gary Oliver there, he soakes the glue joint in acetone and knocks the part off. He uses Locktite 480 for the glue. When I look at the gluing surface in the new part it is ribbed. Maybe the Sachtler design engineer was being kind. This is somewhere for the acetone to go. But when I remove the old part I may find those ribs full of epoxy (laughing). The insert thread that the twist lock screws into. It's screwed into a threaded sleeve in the plastic. Is the insert thread just kept with locktite or is there something else holding it. Cheers, Gregg

If there were six degrees of separation between our topic start point and, say, talking about cabbages, then you and Kahleem just made the first step. Sorry, I'm still in a humorous mood from the Skyfall thread. I was thinking about art, perception, photography (by implication cinematography). A look at a hugely more refined interaction than is normally part of common experience, but which, even by intuitive analysis, is obviously occurring. My opinion is that these more refined, more subtle values are more potent, even if they are not consciously experienced. The question then comes, is current digital technology disabling that or compromising that? The obvious answer is yes. Next question is, what are the implications of that in terms of art, culture, human experience. Should one be fearful that another increment of inevitable "progress" is about to perhaps irrevocably compromise art, culture and human experience (ACHE ?). Yes. Should all people live in fear? Don't know. Those who are aware will probably feel it for the others by proxy. If digital camera designers and the mind-set of their market agreed with me on an obvious, objective level but (of course) still wanted to evolve digital, then I don't know the direction they would take. Simply having even more pixels and being able to mimic film on a crude objective level would not cut it. The only hope might be a sensor or capture process that more literally paraphrased the human eye and nervous system. Ultimately, cultured living tissue would be a likely possibility. And when they felt they had finally matched all aspects of that quaint, archaic medium called film, I guess they would feel quite good about it. By that time what will the world look like? The vision of Bladerunner is probably too romantic. Think more like Imortal (Ad Vitam) by Enki Bilal. If I am still alive I will be trotting down to whatever obscure place still projects sprocketed film. A museum or an underground subversive society. Unless we were blowing up bridges I think we would be considered quaint and irrelevant. It sounds like I'm really taking the piss re the slight divergence from topic. I think the ideas at issue there are important and worth arguing over. Probably deserving of a thread all of their own. Here in New Zealand the grass roots emergent film makers are coming through and very identified with a large local culture based on the 48hour film making contest. I have "stood on a soap box" alone before and raged against the happy limitations they hold dear within their culture. Digital technology has played a huge part in the democratization of film making that they enjoy. But also, to make the obvious joke, one can also see it as a mediocratization. If you want to read some of that visit here: For my rage and the ensuing bun fight. http://www.v48hours.co.nz/forum/general-discussion/ratty-crack-bride-rules-beyond-48-hours-etc/ For a more reasoned but still hopeless approach. Scroll about 1/4 way down the page. http://www.v48hours.co.nz/forum/general-discussion/the-trifecta-of-bullshit/?i=500#forum-replies If you are in a hurry just read my posts, forget the other guys (smiling). I think anyone can post there. Please do if you have any bright ideas. Cheers, Gregg

Jeroen, Thanks for that info. What batteries are you using? Type (NiMhi / Lipo....), Voltage, Ah? Cheers, Gregg

I posted this before on Bill Dipiettra's thread, Sad Day For 35mm Film. It may have got lost there, so I'm starting a unique thread for it. This is my sincere attempt to write some kind of personal begining point on this. It's not an invitation to conflict. I'll call it an invitation for others to offer their own thoughts about it or to make creative reactions. For those interested in that, I suggest we basicly ignore any reactions of an ugly or personalized sort. For some years, from 1993 to 2010, while I avoided any involvement in film making, I occasionally had the strange thought to write something on the differences between the film and the electronic motion picture image - the impact of this difference on art, culture, human experience. I didn't, the grass grew under my feet and now it's almost too late. There are many reasons why people may lament the apparent demise of film and it may be that they all have some legitimacy. Some important things may be wrongly dismissed as mere sentimentality. For example some people are intimately identified with the physicality of the camera, the perforated film and a photographic process which verges on the inexplicable or magical. This can be quite profound and not to be dismissed. The photographic process is more densely packed with intelligence and meaningful information than we can possibly imagine. A tiny pixel sized dot on the cheek of an actor. How many photons arrive there per 1/50 second while the cinematographer watches. There are probably some on the forum who can tell us, per unit of measured light. It's a lot, a vast number. The interaction between the photons and the actors skin, we have to assume is on the molecular level, or on the scale of the atoms there. My contention is that this interaction between the photons and the material structure of the actor is changing the physicality of both photon and actor. I mean on an incredibly microscopic level. Further, some would contend, that the microscopic contains functional principals of the macroscopic. I'm thinking that each single microscopic interaction somehow encodes a snapshot of the macroscopic, at that moment. So this deluge of photons heading towards the cinematographers eye in the 1/50 seconds interval is overwhelmingly dense with information far beyond issues of light, dark, color, contrast that the cinematographer might normally deal with. You could assume that human sense perception is incapable of responding, or that common disbelief would disable the chance of receptivity. Again, taking an intuitive leap, I suggest that some cinematographers are at least subconsciously receptive to this more subtle, densely rich stream of information and process and make use of it without even being aware of it. Regardless of the degree of receptivity in the cinematographer, after the expiration of 1/50 second, all that stream arrives at the emulsion. Thinking intuitively about that, and yes again making some intuitive leaps, the interaction between photons and emulsion could be conceived of on a microscopic level. Maybe black and white is easier to talk about. Imagine a very small element of grain. The arriving photons make an impression apon it. This can again be considered at a microscopic level. Being saturated with information on a very refined level from their interacation with the actor, now an interaction on a similar level is possible with the emulsion. My guess is that with current methods, contact printing the camera original, we loose a lot of or the purity of this vast storehouse of photographed information. On the conscious level, normal human perception may be unable to see it, but this does not mean that it is unable to make an impact upon us and leave us with something useful. Think art, magic, subjective experience. Now, the digital version. The cinematographer, assuming he is lucky enough to have a spinning mirror, no longer has a photographic capture process that is analogous to his own ocular perception. As before we could hope that his retina, neurophysiology and style of awareness is responding in some way to the microscopic interactions with this vast incoming stream of densely laden photons. Again, after the expiration of 1/50 second, all that stream arrives at the .......sensor. All I can think from what is commonly described about the configuration and function of sensors is that the vast bulk of all that impossibly dense, richly packed information is suddenly all but gone. It's replaced by a relatively) tiny stream of zeros and ones that encode a crude value of only some aspects of that. I think photochemical process is capable of creating a direct and profound impression. The photons landed on the negative and changed it. It enables a direct visceral connection that someone can later make with that moment. Not imaginary, not virtual, not smoke and mirrors. It's real, palpable, can feel as real as being punched in the stomach. But I don't think we all respond uniformly, most significantly for me because we don't all have the same acuity of seeing or functionality of awareness. But then again, moving pictures as a popular art form require some degree of common or shared style of seeing. So perhaps the main stream film industry, in particular, digital exhibition, will culture us to see in a way that is useful to them and no one will notice or know any different. On Bill's thread I rounded it off here , thinking I was using more than my share of space. Cheers, Gregg