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Article confuses "filter" with "lens". There were various generations of the Technicolor system over the years, each system comprising special movie cameras (w

by w0mbat 5y ago

Article confuses "filter" with "lens". There were various generations of the Technicolor system over the years, each system comprising special movie cameras (which could only be rented), film, and complicated film processing and printing. The early systems used two color layers, the later ones had three. By the time "The Wizard of Oz" was made, they were on Process 4, AKA 3 strip Technicolor. The effective ASA of the system used on that movie (taking into account filters and beam splitters) was 5 ASA, hence the need for very bright lighting. For a more informative article on the shooting of that movie see this article. https://ascmag.com/articles/beyond-the-frame-wizard-of-oz https://ascmag.com/articles/beyond-the-frame-wizard-of-oz

ghaff 5y ago
One of the probably underappreciated aspects of digital is that it makes what would have been considered extremely low light photography and film-making a few decades ago almost effortless. See what Kubrick did for Barry Lyndon candlelit scenes. As an undergrad in the late 70s, even B&W up to about 1600 ASA/ISO was pushing things and required special chemistry. For color you really wanted to shoot ASA 25 Kodachrome if you could. Could reasonably go up to about ASA 100 Ektachrome in subsequent decades. And could push things to maybe 400/800 with significant compromises. These days a full-frame DSLR can hit 6400+ without breaking a sweat. Probably higher with the newest equipment. I was being "filmed" for a documentary a couple of months back and the lighting was just some LED soft boxes.
- acomjean 5y ago
  Still photography too. In the Early 90s I did some college newspaper photography. We'd push our "400iso" film to 1600 by changing the processing, which worked but made it grainy. Also manual focus, when shooting basketball and concerts was challenging as the depth of field is quite small. You quickly realize the price of a lens wasn't soo much the focal length (200mm) but increased rapidly depending on much light it let in. But back to color. Some of those slide films from the 60s and 70s rendered color quite accurately/vividly. I went to a slide presentation and someone was showing slides and I guess I was a little stunned and you associate certain decades with a "look" that may have been a limitation of print film at the time.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    My personal experience is almost entirely with stills. > I went to a slide presentation and someone was showing slides Different slide emulsions definitely had different looks. I always found Kodachrome very naturalistic and it was my go to until good ISO 100 Ektachromes came out, especially the warmish ones. Many nature photographers really liked Fuji Velvia for its somewhat exaggerated saturation--it and KC25 had about the same working film speed--but I never liked the look of Fuji film myself.
    - klodolph 5y ago
      I think it's interesting what people consider to be "naturalistic" color representation--the sensitometry and psychovisuals behind why Velvia 50 is considered to have exaggerated colors, while something like Kodachrome 64 is considered to be more natural, is a bit complicated. Velvia 50 had, among other properties, a higher Dmax (maximum density / deepest black) than other slide films at the time, which allowed it to be shot differently, at a lower EI. Overexposing slides washes out the colors, so this difference alone accounts for some of Velvia's reputation for rich colors. There were also differences in the sensitizing dyes. These differences are a bit more complicated than what you can capture in an RGB model, so when people try to replicate Velvia's look by increasing the saturation in an image editor, it generally fails. You can't just create an ICC color profile or Instagram filter for Velvia. Other "vivid color" films often tried to achieve more saturation by adjusting the sensitivity curves instead, which creates a very different look from Velvia 50. People are also used to seeing films which are specifically designed to give a certain look to lighter skin tones. A lot of work went into making people, specifically white people, look "good" in standard consumer films and certain lines of professional films.
      - brudgers 5y ago
        My semi uninformed understanding is that Velvia’s color is biased for the rather overcast conditions often occurring in Japan. Color is always opinionated. But so is black and white.
- colechristensen 5y ago
  This progress is also why new films look so badly lit. The state of the art is still stuck with habits and techniques built for times when you had to do a whole lot to get your vision across. The same things with cameras that have much better dynamic range and low light performance and you can easily notice (and not unsee) “oh look it’s a bunch of actors on a soundstage in front of a green screen” or “where is that light coming from”. The original star wars looks so much better now than the rest of the films because it was real people in real places and you’ll find that theme all over. Green screen looks bad because you just can’t believably light people in many environments any more without painstakingly painting every frame but very talented artists. (gollum in lotr was done quite well most of the time)
  - extrapickles 5y ago
    The tech were the actor is surrounded by bright LED displays showing the virtual set works much better than green screen as the actor now gets somewhat correct lighting. It also allows for shinny clothing to have the scene correctly displayed on the costume.
    - crooked-v 5y ago
      This video has a lot of examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUnxzVOs3rk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUnxzVOs3rk Part of the idea is to do as much as possible in-camera, by rendering the virtual surroundings at a high enough quality to directly film them as the actors' backdrop. It's sort of like a wildly more advanced version of using matte painting backdrops. It also seems far better for actor immersion than green screen, as the people on camera get a live wraparound view of the virtual 'set'.
  - crazygringo 5y ago
    > This progress is also why new films look so badly lit. I'm pretty sure it's the exact opposite. Watch old films and the nighttime scenes are... almost cartoonishly lit. Like there are hidden floodlights everywhere, or just filmed in straight-out daytime but underexposed. Whereas modern film and TV looks far closer to reality. I don't know what you mean at all that the "state of the art is still stuck with habits and techniques". If you've been on the set of a modern film or TV production, the state of the art is, well, state of the art. The lighting would be unrecognizable to someone from 30 years ago. Can you give an example of a scene in a new movie you consider to be badly lit because of old "habits and techniques"? Green-screen is a totally different situation, because it didn't exist before. But even there I think you're making a mistake with comparison to Star Wars. Have you watched The Mandalorian? Because that's current state of the art, and it's stunning. The environmental lighting is real, and the technology they use to achieve it is utterly amazing.
- beerandt 5y ago
  The old westerns where the cowboys are riding outside at what's supposed to be nighttime, but really is just a filtered daytime shot come to mind. (It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize they were trying to simulate nighttime lighting.) Contrast this with the first few minutes of Netflix's Godless, which has possibly the best example of HDR capability I've seen, imho. The scene is extremely low lit, but visible, and intermittently gets fully illuminated by lightning. Not sure I've got a point here, other than as impressive as the new technology is, there's something culturally special about the nighttime horse riding scenes, visible clouds and all.
EMM_386 5y ago
I found this short 8-minute video to be a good explanation of that era: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EG7kfllFEI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EG7kfllFEI
type0 5y ago
the actual camera used semitransparent mirror in the center https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-T8MVrw1L0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-T8MVrw1L0 the process used three color dye transfer printing process https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9S76vtk4Ro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9S76vtk4Ro incredible how complicated the machinery had to be to achieve that

by w0mbat 5y ago

ghaff 5y ago

One of the probably underappreciated aspects of digital is that it makes what would have been considered extremely low light photography and film-making a few decades ago almost effortless. See what Kubrick did for Barry Lyndon candlelit scenes. As an undergrad in the late 70s, even B&W up to about 1600 ASA/ISO was pushing things and required special chemistry. For color you really wanted to shoot ASA 25 Kodachrome if you could. Could reasonably go up to about ASA 100 Ektachrome in subsequent decades. And could push things to maybe 400/800 with significant compromises. These days a full-frame DSLR can hit 6400+ without breaking a sweat. Probably higher with the newest equipment. I was being "filmed" for a documentary a couple of months back and the lighting was just some LED soft boxes.

acomjean 5y ago
Still photography too. In the Early 90s I did some college newspaper photography. We'd push our "400iso" film to 1600 by changing the processing, which worked but made it grainy. Also manual focus, when shooting basketball and concerts was challenging as the depth of field is quite small. You quickly realize the price of a lens wasn't soo much the focal length (200mm) but increased rapidly depending on much light it let in. But back to color. Some of those slide films from the 60s and 70s rendered color quite accurately/vividly. I went to a slide presentation and someone was showing slides and I guess I was a little stunned and you associate certain decades with a "look" that may have been a limitation of print film at the time.
- ghaff 5y ago
  My personal experience is almost entirely with stills. > I went to a slide presentation and someone was showing slides Different slide emulsions definitely had different looks. I always found Kodachrome very naturalistic and it was my go to until good ISO 100 Ektachromes came out, especially the warmish ones. Many nature photographers really liked Fuji Velvia for its somewhat exaggerated saturation--it and KC25 had about the same working film speed--but I never liked the look of Fuji film myself.
  - klodolph 5y ago
    I think it's interesting what people consider to be "naturalistic" color representation--the sensitometry and psychovisuals behind why Velvia 50 is considered to have exaggerated colors, while something like Kodachrome 64 is considered to be more natural, is a bit complicated. Velvia 50 had, among other properties, a higher Dmax (maximum density / deepest black) than other slide films at the time, which allowed it to be shot differently, at a lower EI. Overexposing slides washes out the colors, so this difference alone accounts for some of Velvia's reputation for rich colors. There were also differences in the sensitizing dyes. These differences are a bit more complicated than what you can capture in an RGB model, so when people try to replicate Velvia's look by increasing the saturation in an image editor, it generally fails. You can't just create an ICC color profile or Instagram filter for Velvia. Other "vivid color" films often tried to achieve more saturation by adjusting the sensitivity curves instead, which creates a very different look from Velvia 50. People are also used to seeing films which are specifically designed to give a certain look to lighter skin tones. A lot of work went into making people, specifically white people, look "good" in standard consumer films and certain lines of professional films.
    - brudgers 5y ago
      My semi uninformed understanding is that Velvia’s color is biased for the rather overcast conditions often occurring in Japan. Color is always opinionated. But so is black and white.
colechristensen 5y ago
This progress is also why new films look so badly lit. The state of the art is still stuck with habits and techniques built for times when you had to do a whole lot to get your vision across. The same things with cameras that have much better dynamic range and low light performance and you can easily notice (and not unsee) “oh look it’s a bunch of actors on a soundstage in front of a green screen” or “where is that light coming from”. The original star wars looks so much better now than the rest of the films because it was real people in real places and you’ll find that theme all over. Green screen looks bad because you just can’t believably light people in many environments any more without painstakingly painting every frame but very talented artists. (gollum in lotr was done quite well most of the time)
- extrapickles 5y ago
  The tech were the actor is surrounded by bright LED displays showing the virtual set works much better than green screen as the actor now gets somewhat correct lighting. It also allows for shinny clothing to have the scene correctly displayed on the costume.
  - crooked-v 5y ago
    This video has a lot of examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUnxzVOs3rk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUnxzVOs3rk Part of the idea is to do as much as possible in-camera, by rendering the virtual surroundings at a high enough quality to directly film them as the actors' backdrop. It's sort of like a wildly more advanced version of using matte painting backdrops. It also seems far better for actor immersion than green screen, as the people on camera get a live wraparound view of the virtual 'set'.
- crazygringo 5y ago
  > This progress is also why new films look so badly lit. I'm pretty sure it's the exact opposite. Watch old films and the nighttime scenes are... almost cartoonishly lit. Like there are hidden floodlights everywhere, or just filmed in straight-out daytime but underexposed. Whereas modern film and TV looks far closer to reality. I don't know what you mean at all that the "state of the art is still stuck with habits and techniques". If you've been on the set of a modern film or TV production, the state of the art is, well, state of the art. The lighting would be unrecognizable to someone from 30 years ago. Can you give an example of a scene in a new movie you consider to be badly lit because of old "habits and techniques"? Green-screen is a totally different situation, because it didn't exist before. But even there I think you're making a mistake with comparison to Star Wars. Have you watched The Mandalorian? Because that's current state of the art, and it's stunning. The environmental lighting is real, and the technology they use to achieve it is utterly amazing.
beerandt 5y ago
The old westerns where the cowboys are riding outside at what's supposed to be nighttime, but really is just a filtered daytime shot come to mind. (It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize they were trying to simulate nighttime lighting.) Contrast this with the first few minutes of Netflix's Godless, which has possibly the best example of HDR capability I've seen, imho. The scene is extremely low lit, but visible, and intermittently gets fully illuminated by lightning. Not sure I've got a point here, other than as impressive as the new technology is, there's something culturally special about the nighttime horse riding scenes, visible clouds and all.

EMM_386 5y ago

I found this short 8-minute video to be a good explanation of that era: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EG7kfllFEI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EG7kfllFEI

type0 5y ago

the actual camera used semitransparent mirror in the center https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-T8MVrw1L0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-T8MVrw1L0 the process used three color dye transfer printing process https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9S76vtk4Ro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9S76vtk4Ro incredible how complicated the machinery had to be to achieve that