Max Jacoby

I hope you're talking about the American West, not the Western World, because us Europeans do consider you Americans pretty retarded for sticking with your silly gun laws despite ample evidence that you'd be much safer if you did not hand out guns like candy.

According to the latest ArriNews they are shooting spherical 4perf on Arricam and Master Primes.

I loved his performance as Ben Hur. That film is so funny, all that gay subtext between Heston and Stephen Boyd!

With digital storage, the issue is not the degradation of binary information, it's the degradation/failure of the media that information is kept on. Since any failure means an instant loss of information (unlike film) the storage is labor intensive and expensive. It's really not as simple as it seems, at least at the current state of technology. I haven't seen these yet, but bad picture quality does not automatically mean that these films are degraded already. They might just have taken an older transfer (meaning telecine). It was the same with early dvds, they did not look very good, loads of compression artifacts, weave, probably scanned off an IN.

Film properly stored will last a long time. Even films that do a DI (and output a new neg) still cut the original neg and store it, so that they can rescan it in the future.

Unfortunately that is not the case, simply because it costs so much. I'm sure most filmmakers would like to see a 4K or even 6K scan of their negative for archival purposes, but unfortunately it is hardly ever possible.

The posted charts are useless when it comes to judging the performance of their lenses. Like you're suggesting, wide-open is where you see how a lens really performs. T2 or T2.8 are more commonly used shooting stops and that's where you start to perceive differences in lenses. At T5.6 almost any prime lens will look good. On top of that they only posted charts for the 50mm and 85m. Long lenses are easier to design and they always look sharper with less chromatic abberation than wider lenses (because they cover a more narrow filed of view). Let's see what the 15mm looks like, now that's a lens that's much harder to design...

If you speak French, get a subscription to 'Positif'. They have great interviews with directors. None of that superficial backslapping, they know how films are made and ask very good questions.

A couple of years ago Arri gave you a full set of Super Speeds when you bought a 235... I guess some companies making affordable 35mm cine primes, like Elite for instance, will make some good business.

Glad to see you are contributing such informative posts, Emanuel . But please don't restrict yourself solely to the Red forum, there are many more forums on this site that could gain from your input.

A lot depends on the scanner. A pin-registered scanner is a must to get the a stable (i.e sharp) image, luckily the times of HD scans on Spirits seem to be a thing of the past. Also it is better to oversample, so scanning at 3K and downsample to 2K, resp scanning at 6K to downsample to 4K will give better results (less aliasing) than a straight 2K/4K scan.

The film was shot on Master Primes and Fuji film stock.

Love your third still David, the wide shot in the woods looks very moody.

Wish he had though...

Haha, this is hilarious! I'm getting five cameras!

A lot of it is in the design. I spoke with the Costume Designer of that film recently and she said that they used a restricted palette of colors, much like in Communist nations in those times, where basically you only had one shade of yellow, one shade of red, etc... I seem to recall that they also did a DI on this film.

Okay so what does politically driven mean exactly?

Can't see them.

Yep, nothing's worse than a film (or piece of art in general) that just leaves everyone indifferent.

They were released in the 70s over a period of years. Don't have any more specific dates.

Adam, I'd love too, but it's too damn expensive! Guess some old VHS tape will have to do ;)

So by that very same argument: If they could have pulled the whole film off with digital they would have... ;) Since no one knows (or is telling yet) why they used the Dalsa for that shot, speculating on their reasons for the choice of format is just plain useless. I guess when the film gets released we'll all learn why.

Primos were first used in 1987 on 'Empire of the Sun' Cooke S4s got released in 1998. Zeiss Ultra Primes in 1999. Zeiss Master Primes were released in 2005. One of the first films shot on it was 'Perfume'. For older lenses it gets a bit more tricky. I have one source that says the Canon High Speeds were released in 1987. Maybe Stephen can chime in here. Panavision's Ultra Speed 'Z' Series apparently was released in 1985, as were Zeiss Standards.

Yeah right, that's ONE shot. The rest of the film is shot on 35mm.

I was not suggesting that he should use the exact same lens on the Red as on the F23, after all that is impossible. My point is that the Master Prime is the 35mm equivalent of the Digi Prime used on the F23. Both of these lenses feature the latest in optical and mechanical design The Superspeed he used instead is a 20 year old lens that is just not as good.