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Some directors like the appearance of film... Given that the spectacle is a large part of the reason we go to the cinema, the colour fidelity and (and in the ca

by dbspin 2mo ago

Some directors like the appearance of film... Given that the spectacle is a large part of the reason we go to the cinema, the colour fidelity and (and in the case of IMAX) unique scale and aspect ratio are the point... Not sure why practicality or cost would override that? As a director who doesn't shoot on film - I still see the appeal, there's a particular quality to skin tones - especially in response to older arc lights and the like - that digital still doesn't quite capture. Ditto motion cadence, halation and grain that are all emulated in digital post to greater or lesser degrees of fidelity.

jagged-chisel 2mo ago
I don’t understand how even the preference for shooting on film makes any sense if you’re digitizing, heavily processing, adding entirely digital elements … I get putting the final edit to film. If you’re not doing all that additional garbage, then capturing on film, going digital for basic editing, then back to film might make sense.
- dbspin 2mo ago
  Sure, let me explain it to you. The end result is not recreatable with digital assets. i.e.: It doesn't matter your budget, we cannot currently simulate the look of the original footage shot on 35 (let alone 70mm, forget about IMAX 80mm) by shooting digitally. Also what you're referring to as 'garbage', is colour grading and composite work. It's not adulteration, it's an essential create part of the filmmaking work. Whether you're doing it exclusively as part of the development process of the physical film, or digitally in Nuke or Resolve etc. Your inability to understand why people do things in a domain you're not familiar with is indicative of gaps in your knowledge, not the futility of the process. Lots of information about how and why all this works as it does online.
  - nimbleal 2mo ago
    I work in this industry and I don’t think this is true. Look at these tests, using a camera that’s now two generations out of date: https://youtu.be/suZtYPIADHM?si=KMgFb1gEhA7z7QVm https://youtu.be/suZtYPIADHM?si=KMgFb1gEhA7z7QVm I think what makes film great is more the process. It forces slower more deliberate filmmaking and somehow that seems to show up in the product. Only celebrated/respected filmmakers have the influence to force production to allow them to shoot film so there’s a selection bias at play too.
    - dbspin 2mo ago
      That is not what Yedlin's tests show or made an effort to test! His famous first set of comparison tests are about resolution, specifically his opinions about the unimportance of 4K. I deeply disagree with his conclusion, because he is downgrading a digital image to show it can match the resolution and some of the visual aspects of a 16 print. Which is like putting a filter over a high resolution monitor and then comparing it to SD TV. But in either case, his work wasn't about whether digital could match the look of any film (it can't). He has also never released his nuke workflow, although he's more recently productised it to some extent. Here's his discussion of the footage you linked - https://www.yedlin.net/DisplayPrepDemo/DispPrepDemoFollowup https://www.yedlin.net/DisplayPrepDemo/DispPrepDemoFollowup
- Tarq0n 2mo ago
  This is out of my area of expertise a bit, but digitization quality loss often depends on whether you quantize things, at what level of fidelity and also what kind of transformations you apply (stepped discrete or continuous for instance). Consider how music production is often done on audio recorded at a higher sample rate, so when effects are applied artifacting is reduced for the eventual export sample rate. For video, one analogy is recording slow-motion shots at a higher framerate rather than slowing down regular footage.
- wuliwong 2mo ago
  I cannot speak to film->digital->film but for audio recording if you did a similar thing like tape->digital->tape you would impart some real stuff to the recording versus just digital all the way through.
chris_va 2mo ago
I know extensive thought goes into filters in front of the camera and the lighting, but one can probably change the bayer filter transmission function to get them to match better (and maybe add one or two channels at the cost of shot noise). I see this in industrial cameras, do you know if any filmmakers use non standard Bayer filters?
- dbspin 2mo ago
  The only cinema cameras I know of that don't employ some variation of a bayer filter in the colour science are black magic cameras. Their higher end cameras all have an RGBW sensor with a 6*6 grid including a white photo site. This is way beyond my technical level of expertise to understand or explain, but there's some more info below. https://www.cined.com/ursa-cine-12k-blackmagics-rgbw-sensor-technology-explained/ https://www.cined.com/ursa-cine-12k-blackmagics-rgbw-sensor-... Broadly speaking these cameras aren't used on any major features. The market is still pretty much exclusively Sony and Arri.
KaiserPro 2mo ago
disclaimer: I worked in a DI lab second disclaimer, dbspin knows all this, this is aimed at the casual observer About 2010 was the time that digital cameras were common enough and had enough dynamic range to make "better" looking 35mm than 35mm. There were caveats, certain hella expensive fujifilm stock still looked great and had decent enough resolution if you were skilled enough. (I'm not a DoP or lighting designer so take this with that in mind) RED gets lots of credit, but frankly they were not that great, they had optical resolution, but not very good colour or dynamic range. However, the most important point is this, most films from about 2006 were fed through DI. This means they were scanned in, degrained, conformed (so all shots from the same scene had the sameish histogram). Then the colourist would grade it all, give it a feel ( a bit like foley/music) and it'd be lasered back out to film or sent to be packaged into a DCI. the "feel" of film is usually added or enhanced. modern film stock isn't grainy, unless you choose it to be. (compare layer cake to harry brown) "film-y ness is a choice, in the same way that "warm" analogue sound is a choice"

by dbspin 2mo ago

jagged-chisel 2mo ago

I don’t understand how even the preference for shooting on film makes any sense if you’re digitizing, heavily processing, adding entirely digital elements … I get putting the final edit to film. If you’re not doing all that additional garbage, then capturing on film, going digital for basic editing, then back to film might make sense.

dbspin 2mo ago
Sure, let me explain it to you. The end result is not recreatable with digital assets. i.e.: It doesn't matter your budget, we cannot currently simulate the look of the original footage shot on 35 (let alone 70mm, forget about IMAX 80mm) by shooting digitally. Also what you're referring to as 'garbage', is colour grading and composite work. It's not adulteration, it's an essential create part of the filmmaking work. Whether you're doing it exclusively as part of the development process of the physical film, or digitally in Nuke or Resolve etc. Your inability to understand why people do things in a domain you're not familiar with is indicative of gaps in your knowledge, not the futility of the process. Lots of information about how and why all this works as it does online.
- nimbleal 2mo ago
  I work in this industry and I don’t think this is true. Look at these tests, using a camera that’s now two generations out of date: https://youtu.be/suZtYPIADHM?si=KMgFb1gEhA7z7QVm https://youtu.be/suZtYPIADHM?si=KMgFb1gEhA7z7QVm I think what makes film great is more the process. It forces slower more deliberate filmmaking and somehow that seems to show up in the product. Only celebrated/respected filmmakers have the influence to force production to allow them to shoot film so there’s a selection bias at play too.
  - dbspin 2mo ago
    That is not what Yedlin's tests show or made an effort to test! His famous first set of comparison tests are about resolution, specifically his opinions about the unimportance of 4K. I deeply disagree with his conclusion, because he is downgrading a digital image to show it can match the resolution and some of the visual aspects of a 16 print. Which is like putting a filter over a high resolution monitor and then comparing it to SD TV. But in either case, his work wasn't about whether digital could match the look of any film (it can't). He has also never released his nuke workflow, although he's more recently productised it to some extent. Here's his discussion of the footage you linked - https://www.yedlin.net/DisplayPrepDemo/DispPrepDemoFollowup https://www.yedlin.net/DisplayPrepDemo/DispPrepDemoFollowup
Tarq0n 2mo ago
This is out of my area of expertise a bit, but digitization quality loss often depends on whether you quantize things, at what level of fidelity and also what kind of transformations you apply (stepped discrete or continuous for instance). Consider how music production is often done on audio recorded at a higher sample rate, so when effects are applied artifacting is reduced for the eventual export sample rate. For video, one analogy is recording slow-motion shots at a higher framerate rather than slowing down regular footage.
wuliwong 2mo ago
I cannot speak to film->digital->film but for audio recording if you did a similar thing like tape->digital->tape you would impart some real stuff to the recording versus just digital all the way through.

chris_va 2mo ago

I know extensive thought goes into filters in front of the camera and the lighting, but one can probably change the bayer filter transmission function to get them to match better (and maybe add one or two channels at the cost of shot noise). I see this in industrial cameras, do you know if any filmmakers use non standard Bayer filters?

dbspin 2mo ago
The only cinema cameras I know of that don't employ some variation of a bayer filter in the colour science are black magic cameras. Their higher end cameras all have an RGBW sensor with a 6*6 grid including a white photo site. This is way beyond my technical level of expertise to understand or explain, but there's some more info below. https://www.cined.com/ursa-cine-12k-blackmagics-rgbw-sensor-technology-explained/ https://www.cined.com/ursa-cine-12k-blackmagics-rgbw-sensor-... Broadly speaking these cameras aren't used on any major features. The market is still pretty much exclusively Sony and Arri.

KaiserPro 2mo ago

disclaimer: I worked in a DI lab second disclaimer, dbspin knows all this, this is aimed at the casual observer About 2010 was the time that digital cameras were common enough and had enough dynamic range to make "better" looking 35mm than 35mm. There were caveats, certain hella expensive fujifilm stock still looked great and had decent enough resolution if you were skilled enough. (I'm not a DoP or lighting designer so take this with that in mind) RED gets lots of credit, but frankly they were not that great, they had optical resolution, but not very good colour or dynamic range. However, the most important point is this, most films from about 2006 were fed through DI. This means they were scanned in, degrained, conformed (so all shots from the same scene had the sameish histogram). Then the colourist would grade it all, give it a feel ( a bit like foley/music) and it'd be lasered back out to film or sent to be packaged into a DCI. the "feel" of film is usually added or enhanced. modern film stock isn't grainy, unless you choose it to be. (compare layer cake to harry brown) "film-y ness is a choice, in the same way that "warm" analogue sound is a choice"