<<<-- Originally posted by Ignacio Rodriguez : This thread is really great.

In regard to resolution, the market has already seen 8Mpx CCD still cameras. -->>>

http://www.dalsa.com/

That's an 8 megapixel motion picture camera with a 35mm-sized sensor and a PL lens mount. There's more stuff like this coming soon, too.

-Rob

> That's an 8 megapixel motion picture camera with a 35mm-sized
> sensor and a PL lens mount. There's more stuff like this coming soon

Ohh yes. Read about Dalsa... seems like the resolution is very high... perhaps even too high for practical use right now. I mean, assuming that the masses can't tell 8Mpx from 4Mpx... I would be happy with the latter and a big compression ratio a-la-pixlet so as to not lug around and process terabytes and terabytes. UHDV seems like a nightmare to manage... not exactly what I have in mind as the digital film dream...

I imagine something which uses a drastically modern codec with res big enough to compete with film for the average eye, where the resulting stream can be managed on a G5 or big P4 machine with off the shelf storage.

<<<-- Originally posted by Ignacio Rodriguez : >

Ohh yes. Read about Dalsa... seems like the resolution is very high... perhaps even too high for practical use right now. I mean, assuming that the masses can't tell 8Mpx from 4Mpx... I would be happy with the latter and a big compression ratio a-la-pixlet so as to not lug around and process terabytes and terabytes. UHDV seems like a nightmare to manage... not exactly what I have in mind as the digital film dream...

I imagine something which uses a drastically modern codec with res big enough to compete with film for the average eye, where the resulting stream can be managed on a G5 or big P4 machine with off the shelf storage. -->>>

Yeah, the data storage issue is what I think is slowing everything down at this point. Quite a few companies have sensors capable of spitting out high-resolution images fast enough, but very few companies have solved the problem of what to do with that data. The Dalsa page says their system takes about one and a half terrabytes of storage per hour of run time. Disc I/O requirements are around 1 Gb/sec. That's RAID-only bandwidth.

Of course, we're talking about technology comparable to shooting with 35mm film. There aren't a lot of people who can do 35mm post in their garages, either. Five or six years from now, though, who knows? Cameras operating at these resolutions may be able to record on internal media that can manage hundreds of terrabytes of data at those I/O speeds.

> Of course, we're talking about technology comparable to
> shooting with 35mm film

Hmmm. I don't think it needs be *that* good. The 35mm negative will have a much higher res than a 4 Mpx digital image, but the 4 Mpx digital image will be good enough for the masses... that's my whole point.

I mean, when I saw the Star Wars sequel shot I think in CineAlta... I really enjoyed the imagery, I don't see how it could have been better to use film. I wasn't close to the screen, I wasn't looking for jaggies, I just enjoyed it (even though the story was sort of boring), the sound was great, the image was great, what else can we want? Simple: a 35mm CCD, better lattitude, inexpensive media...

Perhaps in the end it's all going to be about who has the best quality CCD and the best quality glass, so there will be on one end the 'pro' stuff being used by next year's George Lucas and on the other end the 'indie' stuff, which is what you and me will use. 'pro' being perhaps Zeiss lenses and a Dalsa head and 'indie' being a Canon Xl1-like thing with a 35mm Sony CCD.

There's another aspect of the (I believe eventual) digital takeover of theatrical capture and exhibition that no one seems to talk much about, and it may be one reason that Hollywood is dragging it's feet just a bit on embracing digital.

Digital is too good. Yes, I'm talking about even current technology. Even the Panasonic Varicam, at only 1280x720, and even the current DLP projectors that are installed in maybe 30 locations nationwide. They are too good.

The first time I saw a movie projected digitally was JVC's DLP technology demonstration at NAB in 1999. They showed a D-9 copy of Shakespeare in Love on an ad-hoc theater in a ballroom at the Riviera Hotel. It was a really good job for a temp theatre, with a big screen, stadium seating (albeit with the hard ballroom rental chairs), and a killer surround sound setup.

As my wife and I sat down to watch the feature, the first thing that struck us both is how much better the image looked than when we saw it in the theater. Once you took away the gate weave, printing inconsistency, sprocket jitter, and the inevitable bad focus and dim projection bulb of your local Cineplex, the effect was astounding.

Having worked on some feature films, I’ve had the opportunity to watch 35mm film dailies on many occasions, and it's really stunning how far removed from that camera original the standard Hollywood feature gets. A normal feature gets printed at least 3 times before it gets to your local theater. That's a copy of a copy of a copy, folks!

The point is, that we were watching a very different movie that night. It looked like I was watching dalies on set. Better than that, even. You could see subtle details in the costuming and makeup that were totally hidden on a 35mm print. You could see paint texturing that was faked on the set. You could even tell which greenery were real plants and which ones were fake plastic!

I know that SIL was shot on 35mm film, but the problem I’ve just described would be even worse on HD capture, in my opinion. In that case you’re looking at a perfect digital copy.

It's just like the local news outfits that had to completely upgrade the news sets when they made the switch to HD. Problems that would be hidden on old NTSC were ugly, obvious flaws in HD!

My wife recently had a similar experience when she went to see the Matrix Reloaded at the IMAX. She told me how Keanu Reeves' makeup was horrendous. You could see how they covered his dark stubble with makeup to create a smoother skin texture, and it just looked bad. She said Jada Smith was beautiful, you could tell she was just a knockout in person, but Keanu and Carrie-Ann Moss looked like hell. I noticed none of these things when I saw the Matrix Reloaded on 35mm. Maybe from a storytelling standpoint, there is such a thing as too much resolution.

My point is that when feature films are captured digitally, even at current resolutions, and projected digitally, we'll basically be seeing as close as possible to the camera originals. Any cost savings from an all-digital pipeline is going to be FAR offset by higher production costs in sets, costume, lighting and makeup. The bar is going to be raised so high for production design that the entire industry will be turned on its head.

I guess this all brings me back around to the original post on the thread. That instructor had it right, but he actually had it completely backward, and for all the wrong reasons. 35mm film IS like a dream. It's a hazy representation of reality. The digital future is perhaps more real than we would like it to be. The images are disturbingly lifelike. In the near future it will actually be harder to shoot digital than film. It will take more work to sell the fantasy. I, for one, hope that the bar IS raised. I think the industry as a whole will be better for it.

What you saw in the digital projection, the 'defects' of makeup and foliage, are artifacts of digital conversion and possibly post processing. If the foliage looked plastic it's due to loss of gray scale and maybe an attempt in post to increase the colors. Since digital can't capture the full range of the film, it tends to go "plastic".

So digital isn't too good. It's not half as good. You can get away with more on digital than you can in film because mistakes are more likely to show up on film.

If the theatre you go to has all those problems, I would change theatres or complain to someone. If they can't properly project a film they surely couldn't do it right with digital.

Depending on the chain, certain theatres do not get the best prints. I've heard a lot of complaints about Deluxe which a lot of the studios use.

<<<-- Originally posted by Rob Belics : What you saw in the digital projection, the 'defects' of makeup and foliage, are artifacts of digital conversion and possibly post processing. If the foliage looked plastic it's due to loss of gray scale and maybe an attempt in post to increase the colors. Since digital can't capture the full range of the film, it tends to go "plastic". -->>>

I'm not at all sure that that's a fair assumption. We really don't know what Scott and his wife saw. I suspect that Scott could spot compression artifacts, given his background.

I think Scott makes a keen point that digital versions of material -can- be less forgiving than some film renderings. Although pixels are larger than film grains, they remain in precisely the same position on the screen unlike film grain.

[EDIT]
I seem to recall someone, perhaps Charles Papert, recently remarking that HD productions must pay more attention to subtle details and defects on sets because of this characteristic.

Just don't get too close to a feature being projected digitally, or you will begin seeing pixels and aliasing. It is recommended to be at least 1 and a half screen heights away from the screen at the minimum.

As far as "dim projection bulbs" go, that really is an unfair comparison. Once DLP gets standardized into all theaters, owners will let them get just as dim and flickery in a digital projection unit as they did in a film lamphouse. In fact, the lamphouses are the same for both film and digital, only for some reason digital seems to need more light (thus more expensive xenon bulbs) to light the same size screen as film. I think a lot of people are impressed by the artificial "sharpness" of digital cinema. It's like taking a large photo of something, then scanning it to say, 800 x 600. Then you run it through Photoshop's sharpening filter. Suddenly people are like "The digital version looks sharper. Digital is better!" They do the same exact thing with digital cinema, and if you look carefully, you can see the ghosting around the edges that result from digital sharpening.

Thanks for the vote of confidence, Ken. You're right. I could and have spotted compression artifacts on a variety of content, from DVDs and digital cable to cheaply done CG FX in big Hollywood movies. The issue was that with such a clean transfer, and such a rock-solid presentation, the image is much less forgiving. Even though technically the resolution is nowhere near 35mm film, the combination of factors makes the overall psychological effect is of a cleaner image.

I've been a professional theater projectionist (remember those?) I've been a professional videographer. I've shot films, on both film and video. I'm pretty much as anal about image quality as it gets, and I can tell you that past row 4 or 5, my local Technicolor DLP projector blows film out of the water. I will grant you, I've only seen Shrek, Episode II and Finding Nemo on that particular projector, so it's not really fair, as they're all animated films ;-)

I have, however, seen clips from several other features in darkened rooms all over NAB the last few years. Seeing 10 minutes or so of Amile' was a trancendent experience. That's an example of a film where the production design was so lush and overwhelmingly fantastic that it holds up wonderfully. I only wish I could have seen the whole film like that!

Rob, being in St. Louis, I can't believe you haven't run into the same inconsistancies that we get in my neck of the woods. Let's face it - outside of the Studio Zone in Los Angeles, theatrical presentation is a crap shoot. Something like 85% of theater houses are not up to SMPTE standards. It simply costs too much to replace xenon bulbs. Theater owners just wait for the bulbs to burn out. I'm not saying this will change with digital projectors, but one thing will change.

When a print is threaded through a projector, it needs to be re-framed and re-focused for each show. That's just the nature of the beast. even the best 35mm projector will require this. Now, take a 25-plex with one manager who now starts all the shows. Someone else probably did the build-up with all the trailers and promos. This manager has no time to ride the print through until the movie actually starts. They have to serve double duty selling concessions. So they rush in, start the projector. Maybe they do a rough framing on the first promo. They don't focus at all unless it's way out of whack or someone (usually me) complains. Then they walk away. Now, let's say the assistant manager who built the film from the reels and trailers missed a sprocket on the splice between one trailer or another. Now the film is 10% out of whack vertically, but no one (except me) complains because there is often a soft matte on the picture. That means the full academy frame is still printed on the print, even though you're supposed to see the middle 1:1.85, or more, for a 'scope picture. Now everyone's head is cut off, or the opposite - you start seeing boom mikes creep into the top of frame. That happens less often these days, but still.

Let's say the gate and intermittent on the projector hasn't been cleaned in 2 weeks, because projectors run so smooth these days, and film lubricants are so much better than even 10 or 15 years ago. Great, but all the while, the jitter and weave gets worse, and every print they show gets eaten up. Who cares? The film isn't worth diddly squat after opening weekend anyway, and after that the print just gets shipped off to the dollar theaters.

Okay. Same theater. Same (ahem) projectionist/manager. Digital projector. Files get shipped in on DVD-rom, or satellite. Wherever. Manager builds up previews point and click. Focus only needs to ever be set up once for the projector. Never changes - no moving parts. Maybe it's checked twice a year with a collimation chart. Maybe the projector senses lumen output changes and reacts to a fading bulb. Gives a warning signal when bulb is within 500 hours of failure. Manager never even starts the projector as it's all programmed into the computer. Set your watch by it. Picture is always the same, always framed and focused properly, never weaves or jitters, never a bad print by Deluxe or any other of those dinosaurs. Print also looks as good after 200 shows as it looked opening night. I'll give up the resolution right now, and so would a lot of other people.

Right. More "real" is not at all a function of HD being "too good". It just means that it represents the world in a different way.

I have seen actresses who look fine to the eye and would photograph on film nicely look haggard and/or older on video. The cameras respond to colors and contrasts differently than both film and the eye, and require a different approach. However, I have also seen skilled on-set video techs instantly dial out those kind of problems in a way that would be much more of a crap-shoot if even possible on film.

Last night I watched some camera tests of beautiful underwater footage from the Bahamas shot on both 35mm and HD. I only got to see the 35mm, in an HD telecine bay. It was stunning. Some of the contrast was so extreme that it was pushing the limits of the latitude of the motion picture film. I mentioned that it would likely be virtually blacks and whites on the HD, not much gray scale left in the middle. I'm going to check in today to see if this was the case.

Without a doubt, 4K film-outs or even top digital projection can present a 35mm-originated image in an impressive way (I still see aliasing and artifacting, but it's getting better). Digital origination is well behind in maturity. It seems likely that barring the political and economic issues of converting theatres over to digital projection and revising the distributions system (no easy task), we will see the exhibition end of Hollywood filmmaking go largely digital well before the acquisition end.

First of all, a show on film does not need to be reframed and/or refocused for every single show. If the projectionist is not competant enough to thread the film in frame each and every single time, he/she should not be in the projection booth. Same goes with focus. Unless you have a bad lens, there should be no need to refocus each show. Why would it go out of focus? The best 35mm projectors (Kinoton E series) are electronically controlled, and even the lesser projectors such as Simplex, Century, and Christie are not vunerable to this if maintained properly. Any theater using the manager to run the booth deserves the bad presentation quality they get. They should have a projectionist. I personally lock the framing knobs of the projector so that the projectionist is FORCED to thread in frame. Also, a frame of film has 4 sprocket holes. If it is misspliced by one sprocket, it will be 25% out of frame, not 10%.

I personally ran My Big Fat Greek Wedding for about a thousand shows on a set of Simplex projectors. The print left without a mark on it. It played BETTER than it did when we had it on its first day. No scratches, no dirt, no extra weave or jump. It is not the nature of film to be damaged. It is only incompetant operators and poorly maintained equipment that can damage film during its run... nothing else. A bad presentation is purely the fault of the theater showing it. I imagine the question will be asked: "How can it be better that when it was brand new?". Simple... shipping dust. There is always a bit of dust and dirt on a film from shipping when it is brand new.

Ted, no offense taken. What I don't know about projection is a lot more than what I do know. It was 20 years ago on equipment that was old even then.

What you're describing is exactly how it should be. A competent, union projectionist in a well-maintained booth can present a print flawlessly for a long run. But that's just not reality in many theaters across the country.

When I said that I'd gladly give up resolution, I spoke too soon and too blindly. My sincere hope is that theaters don't just jump all over the first technology that makes financial sense right now, but that the standards that develop will be every bit as compelling as the best film based projection.

As to the Texas Intruments' DLP technology, it will need to improve resolution before it will be really impressive. The fact that it is based on Digital Micromirror Devices inherently leads to the pixels being very distinct and separated. DLP's top resolution of 1280x1024 isn't quite enough to overcome the limitations of the device.

JVC's D-ILA Digital Cinema projectors on the other hand, based on CMOS LCD type devices, seem to be much more organic. The pixels tend to smoothly transition from one to the next. And at resolutions now topping 2048x1536, I don't see any reason why this should not be acceptable to even the most discerning audience.

Thankfully, it seems that the theater conversion to digital will drag on for at least a few more years, and in that intervening time, Moore's law will trudge forward as it does for all things digital, and we'll have double the resolution at half the price by the time theater owners are ready to step on board en masse.

<<<--
Thankfully, it seems that the theater conversion to digital will drag on for at least a few more years, and in that intervening time, Moore's law will trudge forward as it does for all things digital, and we'll have double the resolution at half the price by the time theater owners are ready to step on board en masse. -->>>

The official position from DCI right now seems to be a 2K interim solution with a 4K system as the final (well, for the time being) solution. Now that they've all kind of agreed what the specs for certifiable systems should be I feel like we'll start seeing more of them popping up.

FWIW, I go a a film school where we watch almost all of our movies on crappy LCD projectors that would be better suited to conference room PowerPoint presentations. It's kind of a drag.

Scott, the projectionists don't have to be union to be good, but they should be well compensated and valued. Unfortunately those days are long past... but not everywhere.

As far as digital cinema is concerned, the biggest issue is the question of who is going to pay for it all. A single digital cinema projector costs upward of $120,000. A regular film projector, lamphouse, and platter system costs around 1/4 of that. Not to mention that digital cinema needs bigger (thus more expensive) xenon bulbs. Also, the bigger the bulb, the shorter the warranty and the fewer hours it is able to last. The bulbs will need to be changed out more often, thus the cost of running digital cinema is more than film cinema. Theaters won't bring in much more business switching to digital cinema... certainly not enough to pay for the hardware upgrade. Studios will save a TON of money on print shipping costs, print manufacturing and the like. So really it is only the studios who see any real monetary benefit, but they don't want to buy everyone a digital projector.

Digital cinema WILL happen and be commonplace eventually, but not for a long time. Theater owners are incredibly cheap people. There are very few exceptions, unfortunately.

PS - Digital cinema projectors DO have moving parts... every single pixel is a mirror that swivels 90 degrees to be "on" or "off". Unless the technology is improved, the possibility for dead pixels onscreen at the cinema is pretty good. And just like now, projection maitenence will not be a priority.

I always thought I would enjoy owning a one screen theatre that was first class in every way. Perfect sound, best picture, etc. But in some ways it would be like running a restaurant and I do that now and hate it.

<<<-- Originally posted by Scott Anderson : I guess this all brings me back around to the original post on the thread. That instructor had it right, but he actually had it completely backward, and for all the wrong reasons. 35mm film IS like a dream. It's a hazy representation of reality. The digital future is perhaps more real than we would like it to be. The images are disturbingly lifelike. In the near future it will actually be harder to shoot digital than film. It will take more work to sell the fantasy. I, for one, hope that the bar IS raised. I think the industry as a whole will be better for it. -->>>

I kind of think the "video look" will eventually go away. It's not the level of detail that's problematic, as far as I can tell. Portrait photographers with view cameras have to deal with even more resolution than current high-end digital. They use the same kind of filtration and lighting tricks that Hollywood has always used to make people look less beastly and it usually seems to work.

It's the way video reacts to light somehow. I'm not exactly Mr. Wizard when it comes to things like optics or sensor arrays, but there's something about the way video sees light that's not as palatable as film. I kind of expect to eventually see cameras with slots for memory cards that will store operator presets that will dictate things like response curves and maybe even eventually virtual filters. Load up a virtual warm black pro-mist filter, mute the colors a little and start clicking through curves until you're happy with what's on the monitor.

Eh, at the rate things are going we'll probably all have setups like that in our cell phones in another decade. ;-)

Portrait photographers with view cameras have to deal with even more resolution than current high-end digital.

Very few, if any, portrait photographers use view cameras. A minority use medium format, but the bulk of the wedding and portrait business has gone digital. Softening the look of portraits is nothing new. People like a flattering portrait and harsh wrinkles, crow's feet and blemishes certainly don't contribute to the self image they have of themselves.

<<<-- Originally posted by Jeff Donald : Very few, if any, portrait photographers use view cameras. A minority use medium format, but the bulk of the wedding and portrait business has gone digital. Softening the look of portraits is nothing new. People like a flattering portrait and harsh wrinkles, crow's feet and blemishes certainly don't contribute to the self image they have of themselves. -->>>

Geez, looks like a lot of people over at Photo.net haven't heard that nobody uses view cameras for portraits anymore:

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0064CM&unified_p=1

;-)

Open up your yellow pages and try and find a photographer that does large format portraiture. In Tampa/St.Pete there are none that advertise the service. In your link one of the respondents posted about using a digital back on a LF camera. Many of the respondents wrote about the use of LF in a bygone era. There were masters of it, but they're pretty much all gone now. Like film will be in a few more years.

<<<-- Originally posted by Jeff Donald : Open up your yellow pages and try and find a photographer that does large format portraiture. In Tampa/St.Pete there are none that advertise the service. In your link one of the respondents posted about using a digital back on a LF camera. Many of the respondents wrote about the use of LF in a bygone era. There were masters of it, but they're pretty much all gone now. Like film will be in a few more years. -->>>

You make a good point. Still photo gear is so far ahead of digital video. I went to an exhibit at Moma last spring of Andreas Gursky's work. I guess he uses large format digital backs (haven't been able to find anything specific about his process). I don't know how he addresses the speed issue, but the work was amazing. The prints were ten or twelve feet tall and the amount of minute detail in them was overwhelming. The photos are so huge that you seem to get sucked into the environment they present.

When digital cinema can do that; when it can present detail that transcends 65mm or IMAX, then we'll have an interesting game. Cinema Verite that really sucks you in and transports you someplace will be possible. The kind and amount of production design work necessary for features, as someone pointed out earlier, will undoubledly change the industry.

BTW, has Bryn Allen in Tampa gone digital now? I remember getting medium format proofs from them as a kid.