Will digital ever be as good as film

[Freya Black]

You need to remember this is an industry. I'm not sure I agree about the "fanboys buy into it", some of the best DP's in the world have decided to shoot digital, even when they wanted the image to look like film. Roger Deakins said that after he tested an Alexa it looked like a perfect replacement for film to him (he said it in other words), I'm sure Deakins is no fanboy...many Dp's agree with him, so it's more complex than that.

 

But I also agree with what you said, camera companies want to sale more cameras, since digital cinema cameras were introduced they're selling more cameras than ever!

 

It should also be noted that some of the best DP's in the world have decided to shoot film.

They have even shot film when it might have been a bit cheaper to shoot digital or when there was pressure to shoot digital.

Wally Pfister recently said he doesn't think there is a replacement for film yet and many DP's agree with him.

 

Freya

[Freya Black]

 

Hahaha, That's a bit mean. I know there have been many recent threads across the Internet, debating whether digital is as good as/better than film, but the purpose of my thread wasn't to pit digital and film against each other, but rather to discuss the ways in which digital technology is changing to emulate that filmic look we all love.

 

I don't think companies are even trying to "emulate that filmic look" these days. I think most people don't even remember what a film print looked like and people often just think film origination looks like video only with a huge amount of digital scratches and hairs added on afterwards.

 

The companies are just trying to make better video cameras. More resolution, better dynamic range etc etc.

The "filmic look" was sorted once there was 24p progressive recording largely and large sensors were the icing on the cake of that.

 

Freya

[Matthew W. Phillips]

 

The "filmic look" was sorted once there was 24p progressive recording largely and large sensors were the icing on the cake of that.

 

Freya

Haha, I remember when people were saying the DVX100 looked like film.

[Scott Herford]

Beyond resolution, beyond curve and dynamic range. Can digital do this?

 

 

 

Show me some digital that can grade that well.

(And never tell me that it is 'because we are used to it'. This is how my eyes that are connected to my brain process light. It's human.)

 

 

The sharp resolution is there but it's so incredibly cold. I'm really over the super sharpness of digital. The benjamin button script is an achievement but I hope that we get beyond the artificiality of ole digital.

 

Certain things will always work like the smoke down in the theatre shot but I do not agree with this new aesthetic.

 

I agree that Zodiac is some of the best digital I have seen.

 

 

With regards,

 

Scott

 

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Well, it's a bit of an emotional argument, isn't it? When you take that frame from "Barry Lyndon" and subtract the beautiful costumes, the candles, the candlelight, the f/0.7 Zeiss lens, etc. and reduce it all down to just the photochemical element -- the 5254 100T film stock used to shoot it, pushed one stop -- are you suggesting that digital cinematography cannot achieve the quality of that stock?

 

Because bringing in all the other picture elements is just misleading. You should find a fairly crappy shot from some low-budget movie shot in the 1970's and make the same argument if this is really about digital versus photochemical, because if it is the film stock itself that is the main reason that "Barry Lyndon" looks so good, then you might be correct, but I think it is more complicated than that.

[Carl Looper]

There are all sorts of differences between film and digital, from the purely perceptual (eg. what an audience might discern, or not as the case may be) to the 'bigger picture' such as the practicalities of making a work (between loading film in a change bag, as I was doing yesterday, and plugging in a new memory card as I was doing last week), each of which can be seen as a feature or a fault, depending on your particular fetish, financial situation, historical influences, theoretical position, the value one assigns to convenience, technical aptitude, ... an endless list of interacting factors ... that could change from project to project, or from week to week, or day to day, or minute to minute ...

 

I'm currently working with a rig in which there is a film camera and digital camera mounted to each other, viewing the same optical axis via a beamsplitter. Terribly inconvenient but the return on the cost (of building) such a rig is deemed sufficient as to justify it for a number of desired shots in a particular project.

 

The OP question becomes meaningless once you take in all the competing factors driving any particular project.

 

My favourite example of such is this:

 

For a remote control spaceflight to Pluto, which one would you install in the spacecraft: a digital camera or a film camera? If digital is not as "good as" film why don't space agencies install film cameras in their spacecraft?

 

The answer is, of course, obvious. But in such obviousness should be demonstrated why one can't, in the absence of any context, make any decision on the most appropriate technology to employ.

 

C

[Phil Rhodes]

This will get me crucified, but to be honest, I always thought Barry Lyndon looked like a fairly average bit of foggy, milky, glowing 1970s kitsch, photographically. Competent and in the style of the time, but I have never been able to understand why it is held in such high regard, especially in the modern era when the shoot-by-candlelight tricks are far easier to duplicate.

 

It doesn't help that I have absolutely no interest in costume drama, but still.

 

P

[Carl Looper]

This will get me crucified, but to be honest, I always thought Barry Lyndon looked like a fairly average bit of foggy, milky, glowing 1970s kitsch, photographically. Competent and in the style of the time, but I have never been able to understand why it is held in such high regard, especially in the modern era when the shoot-by-candlelight tricks are far easier to duplicate.

 

It doesn't help that I have absolutely no interest in costume drama, but still.

 

P

 

Ok, looking for my hammer and nails and a suitable cross ...

 

It's interesting your characterisation of Lyndon as "70s kitsch". One might indeed characterise a 2000 year old clay statuette, sitting in a museum display case, in the same way: as kitsch!

 

Perhaps ISIS had the same attitude, when they came across what's left of ancient buildings in the middle east: that it was all just kitsch.

 

An alternative approach is to reframe what one is looking at in terms of the past to which it belongs, rather than the present, in which it otherwise looks decidedly odd. In Kubricks 2001, I can't watch it as if it were taking place in 2001, or taking place in 2015 for that matter, but as taking place in 1968. I'm transported back in time to 1968. The present becomes meaningless as any measuring stick, or frame of reference, for what I'm watching. If nothing else I get more out of it looking at it that way. It becomes more alive and tangible in that way. Or better: it is more alive and tangible because the present is actually a fiction.

 

C

Edited September 6, 2015 by Carl Looper

[Tyler Purcell]

This will get me crucified, but to be honest, I always thought Barry Lyndon looked like a fairly average bit of foggy, milky, glowing 1970s kitsch, photographically.

I agree that in some cases, it does look milky. However, I don't attribute that to the medium. Barry Lyndon is one of my favorite movies and it's never received a decent transfer. Warner Brothers needs to take the original camera negative and carefully scan it to 4k digital. When that happens, I think a lot of the milkiness you see, will go way.

 

Is Barry Lyndon a good example of what film can do? Still life is very easy to reproduce digitally and Kubrick is so talented with creating a perfect image in camera, it really doesn't matter. Where the digital and film world separate is when you have more complexity within a given shot. I look at films like (off the top of my head) Saving Private Ryan. That movie would look like crap shot and distributed digitally because the image would fall apart. Just watching a BluRay of it, makes me cringe.

 

Digital technology is still in it's infancy, in 10 or 15 years from now, will it be better? Yes, I do think it will be markedly better. However the film industry as we know it today, will be dead and forgotten. Going to the theater will be a once a year event if. So who cares what it's shot on if the only thing you see it on is a 64" television at home, 8 bit, 4:2:0 color space, compressed to poop. Heck, most people watch content on their iPad's and laptops. I doubt highly "quality" plays any role.

 

People are so desensitized to the crushed black look and ultra sharp images that look like 60fps, seeing film is boring for them. So teenagers today and their kids and their kids, won't even know what celluloid is, let alone care. As long as they get content on that box attached to their wall, they're perfectly happy.

 

So is film better? Yes… in every way outside of low-light situations.

 

But the general public, doesn't care. All they want is sweets, popcorn and to waste two hours of their time.

[David Mullen ASC]

"Barry Lyndon" is one of the best photographed films of all time, and while, yes, the 5254 stock and its one-stop push contributed to that look, I would not over-emphasize that element to the visuals. As for some of the milkier shots, odds are high that it was deliberate. But the pastel, low-contrast look was part of that painterly impressionistic approach that many cinematographers took in the 1970's, partly as a reaction against the high-contrast Technicolor studio approach of earlier films, so one has to factor the aesthetics of the era in which the movie was made, complaining about the foggy look of 1970's movies makes as much sense as complaining about the theatrical lighting of 1940's Technicolor movies. Also, clear, sharp, saturated images are not the only way to make a movie any more than realism is the highest approach to making a painting.

[Bruce Greene]

I think if Batry Lyndon was made today on a digital camera we would still be emamored of the beautiful photography! It would still be made by talented artists with georgeous set design, costumes, and handsome actors.

 

In a few years time, most of us will look at film prints the way old silent films appear to us now; as flickering, scratched relics of a by gone era...

 

And I hope, very much, that people will choose to waste, or better, enjoy a couple hours watching the films I work on. Hopefully in a cinema, or even at home. As long as they pay for it :)

Edited September 6, 2015 by Bruce Greene

[Scott Herford]

Well, it's a bit of an emotional argument, isn't it? When you take that frame from "Barry Lyndon" and subtract the beautiful costumes, the candles, the candlelight, the f/0.7 Zeiss lens, etc. and reduce it all down to just the photochemical element -- the 5254 100T film stock used to shoot it, pushed one stop -- are you suggesting that digital cinematography cannot achieve the quality of that stock?

 

hi David,

in 2015, i challenge you to find digital to match Barry because i have not seen it and yep - like Gaugin shocking Paris with an apple. Art is emotional. Technology is mental. Regards, Scott.

[Phil Rhodes]

...odds are high that it was deliberate. But the pastel, low-contrast look was part of that painterly impressionistic approach that many cinematographers took in the 1970's

 

Couldn't agree more. I'm sure it's exactly what was intended, it's done with consistency, and it looks like a particularly complete expression of the style of the time. I just don't like the style of the time very much, in in the same sort of way I don't particularly enjoy Shakespeare. It's not my intention to deliberately hold opinions contrary to the mainstream for kicks, but there it is. I don't think most modern filmmakers particularly want their work to look like Barry Lyndon. One would be accused of making it look screamingly like it was made in the 70s.

 

If you want a greater articulation of why I object to it, that's why. Barry Lyndon doesn't look like it takes place in 1844 (the year the novel was published), it looks like it takes place in 1975. It's distractingly anachronistic. By comparison, the episode of Ripper Street of which I saw part yesterday evening was less consistent but at least had photography that made it look like the 19th century. Yes, all of this is opinion, all of it is subject to the fashion of the time and the conditioning of the viewer, and I'm not objecting to anyone's right to justify other opinions - but that's mine. Perhaps in the future we will look back at the teal-and-orange of things like the Ritchie Sherlock Holmes and object similarly, but that doesn't really support Lyndon.

 

P

[Mark Dunn]

The book was set in the 1770s.

Sorry, but that is what interiors looked like in the 1770s. There was no gas or limelight, as there might have been in 1844, no unmotivated fill. If it's anachronistic, it's of the way historical dramas were lit until then, thank goodness. Even Ridley Scott had seen it when he made The Duellists.

You can't make a period drama now without at least thinking about Barry Lyndon.

Oh and by the way I do have some suitable nails.....

[Brian Drysdale]

I would say that Barry Lyndon looks closer to 18th Century paintings, which matches its period.

Edited September 6, 2015 by Brian Drysdale

[Carl Looper]

Yes, I agree with Mark Dunn.

 

The whole point of Barry Lyndon is the creation of what the world of the 1770s would have actually looked like - as distinct from the studio lighting fantasies that would otherwise grip the historical costume drama. That is why the work is so important, regardless of personal taste or notions of what is kitsch, anachronistic or otherwise. That it does this and does it so well was basically an "fu" to the studio lighting systems of the time. More independant film making of the time had already paved the way of course, having already found a certain value in rejecting the studio lighting system in favour of natural light. Perhaps the genius of Kubrick (and by which I mean everyone involved as well) is in creating a world in which such light could only make sense.

 

C

Edited September 6, 2015 by Carl Looper

[Phil Rhodes]

I think that's a distinct point of contention. If I want to know what everyday scenes look like, I'll glance out of the window. Justifying that sort of stuff (and Barry Lyndon is not the only example) as realism more or less denies cinematography as an artform. If we want realism, all we have to do is meter for exposure and shoot in entirely available light. You can hardly argue that wouldn't be realistic.

 

But the amount of quintuple-fog, mist and glow-provoking filters in 1970s cinematography suggests to me that they absolutely weren't going for realism, they were going for a particular look, and unmistakably a look that would be familiar to 1970s audiences as simply being what movies look like, as much as teal and orange is familiar to us as being simply what movies look like. There's nothing wrong with that, in its historical context, but I don't think it's fair to consider it particularly inspired or out of the ordinary.

 

P

[Mark Dunn]

You can hardly argue that wouldn't be realistic.

 

I can and will. It wouldn't. The camera doesn't see what the eye sees, of course. The eye adds quite a bit of fill, for a start. The dynamic range is quite impressive as well.

But what you see looking out of your window isn't what an aristocrat of the 18th. century would have seen looking out of his- Barry Lyndon is what Kubrick and John Alcott thought he would see, based on evidence from the period in the form of painting, architecture and interior design. No-one else, before or since, has gone quite that far. Some have tried- I'm thinking particularly of a scene in a ballroom in BBC's 1995 Persuasion- but no-one has carried it through, probably because they can't shoot for a year and don't have several tons of candles.

Edited September 6, 2015 by Mark Dunn

[Phil Rhodes]

 

 

Barry Lyndon is what Kubrick and John Alcott thoughthe would see

 

Seems to be foggy a lot. In sunshine. Maybe Barry has dirty contact lenses?

[Brian Drysdale]

From memory they used low contrast filters.

[Tyler Purcell]

Seems to be foggy a lot. In sunshine. Maybe Barry has dirty contact lenses?

Made out of wood. :)

[Mark Dunn]

 

Seems to be foggy a lot. In sunshine. Maybe Barry has dirty contact lenses?

A no.3 low con and an additional brown net for the wedding sequence. Are you sure you're not remembering a poor transfer, rather than a print? I've never watched it on TV and I don't recall that.

Edited September 6, 2015 by Mark Dunn

[Tyler Purcell]

Yes, the current transfers are really really really bad! :(

 

I have yet to see it in the theater, but I can spot a bad transfer on an iPhone.

[Mark Dunn]

It occurs to me that a lo-con shot would soon blow out if graded a bit light. I'm sure Kubrick told the labs which printer lights to use. He's not around to do it any more. Leon Vitali is supposed to look after these things nowadays but he's no photographer and there's only one of him.

Edited September 6, 2015 by Mark Dunn

[David Mullen ASC]

There's nothing wrong with the current transfers. Kubrick supervised the earlier one to DVD and the blu-ray is similar to that.

 

I've seen it in theaters three or four times, once in brand-new prints struck in the late 1980's. The transfers are similar.

 

Tyler, how can you say that the transfers are bad and yet you have never seen it projected?