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> You do realize that all this range and depth that purists talk about is just like what audiophiles do when they talk about the "warmth" of a vinyl recording?
by unfocussed_mike 5y ago
> You do realize that all this range and depth that purists talk about is just like what audiophiles do when they talk about the "warmth" of a vinyl recording?
Yes, and no. GP is referring to a specific fundamental difference between digital capture and film negative capture that is not vague or woo or wine tasting.
Highlights record differently on film negatives, because they do not clip; they roll off progressively as the negative image gets denser and denser. This is why wedding photographers kept shooting black and white film alongside digital colour for a long time, for instance.
You retain that benefit when you then scan the negative back into a digital form (because the scanner's dynamic range significantly outdoes the range of the developed negative). You can significantly "redevelop" that negative digitally.
I don't know if that specific fundamental difference was what the Dune production was aiming at -- I am guessing that if it was, they exposed their digital files very carefully to maximise the chance of being able to use it the way they wanted to.
- greedo 5y agoAccording to Kodak[1], most film has 13 stops of dynamic range; today's digital cameras average 14 stops. An Arri Alexa has 14+ stops of range[2]. Discussing what wedding photographers used to do for a long time has no relevance to today's technology. 1. https://petapixel.com/2015/05/26/film-vs-digital-a-comparison-of-the-advantages-and-disadvantages/ https://petapixel.com/2015/05/26/film-vs-digital-a-compariso... 2. https://www.panavision.com/products/arri-alexa https://www.panavision.com/products/arri-alexa This is just like LP lovers talking about the warmth of vinyl...
- dylan604 5y agoYou're like a record yourself. Round, round, right round you go with that methaphor.
- unfocussed_mike 5y agoI haven't been making the case that analogue is superlative in any sense, though, so I am not sure you're particularly on target with the "warmth of vinyl" snark. I'm very far from a purist. I do shoot film occasionally (stills, not motion film), but 99.5% digital, and I'm absolutely not coming at this from the LP-lover's perspective. Not least because the "warmth" thing is purely subjective, when there are fundamental characteristic differences between film and digital regarding the way that highlights are captured by the sensitive medium, and those differences have actual creative impacts that can be exploited. That was the point about wedding photographers. (Incidentally it's not just that the technological gap has mostly closed where black and white is concerned; it's also that the cost and supply models have changed. People don't shoot film for jobs like that now, because the professional infrastructure does not exist anymore.) Where the cinema-oriented, digital-printing-to-colour-negative-motion-stock situation is concerned, I am not convinced that the digital source yet has enough extra headroom to really take advantage qualitatively without very careful capture exposing for the highlights; it's certainly not going to be an automatic, magical conversion.
- unfocussed_mike 5y agoSide note re: petapixel -- this site is not a reliable source of information. (One step above Fstoppers, not that this is difficult)