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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

OK... Film vs. RED

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Film is very forgiving, digital is not. I love both formats.

But like so many digital photographers, i'm sure they'll be plenty of people who figure out how to make Red Footage look like junk.

Lets just hope people don't gaussion blur parts of peoples faces in post like they did in Ultraviolet because the footage was too sharp.
 
Forget all this digital vs film stuff... it's all been downhill since ochre, charcoal and rust was put on granite by hand in a nice dry cave.

Hard to beat >20,000 years with full data recovery... and it is only recently that they felt a need to create a working copy of Lascaux while offlining the original.
 
jimarri said:
I couldn't have said it better myself. It's the chip and the cost as the two most compelling reasons for me - as well as several others.

Jim McKinney
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There is to add that the ARRI D20 sensor is an already 5 (or?) years old design - as when they started developing it. Its design with help from Fraunhofer institute by Cypress, ehm, Fillfactory?

Fillfactory told us that every two years the sensibility is doubled in sensors. They did a lot of high end sensors - not the Mysterium - that deal went elsewhere. But they do e.g. the Phantom 65 chip. And have you ever seen a 1,000 fps 10 MPixel sensor? Ouch, you need way to much RAM to handle this anyhow useful. There are projects done with sensors that escape our imaginations by far. Think of 8K square at 10,000 fps as well. 1 TB/s if you got it... I guess clearly military use.

Fraunhofer did a very good job on getting the best out of that 3K sensor. Apparently recent sensors required MUCH LESS fiddle around to get at least comparable results. This makes the design easier, cheaper, lighter, light weighter. Don't try to put a D20 on your shoulder...

RED's biggest advantage is the small and very efficent design team with a drastically short time-to-market approach. It is an open minded, user oriented, almost no compromise approach.

The monetary backing of Jim surely opened a lot of doors that small startups with similar idea would not be able to open, its that simple - the ideas behind RED aren't new, their approach to make it happen is!

There are not many big companies really approaching the competition in terms of aiming at film, namely Panavision, ARRI, Dalsa, but in prototype style behaviour.

All existing HD gear is 2/3" max - mostly interlaced stuff too. Thats VIDEO, guys, thats NOT FILM. So there is no real competition between these companies.

The only change is that in future customers my decide for digital film rather than quarter sizde resolution full HD gear, not having any prism issues anymore, not needing to pay unbelieveable amounts for optics that solve the 3 chip design issues. No more tapes. No more decks. That saves your butt in the end, many times.

Clearly there are some flaw's in digital compared to film. But certain things have not yet been mentioned in Jim's list:

When we print to film at 4K we'll measure about that resolution in the neg, but the best positive I've seen to measure was just 2.6K! And this was a very very good print. The average cinema print can go down to 1.5K or the like. We have a printer that can go up to 8K, but on the small size of 35mm movie film (4perf) thats WAY off its physics.

When shooting in film you have unstable recording. You need to stabilze in post and film-record stable, and then need again expensive step printers to get best film stability. But the projector will do its rest to get it shaky again. Shooting digital and preferably presenting digital is unbeatable stable. But keep in mind: Shaky camera motion does more area samples that way, and results in something that is felt "sharper". Best trick to show this: Go to an old 35mm review / cut table and play and normal speed and then play maximum speed. Maximum speed always looks drastically sharper. Human eyes are really interesting devices :)


Cheers,
Axel
 
studiodrome said:
Film is very forgiving, digital is not. I love both formats.

But like so many digital photographers, i'm sure they'll be plenty of people who figure out how to make Red Footage look like junk.

Lets just hope people don't gaussion blur parts of peoples faces in post like they did in Ultraviolet because the footage was too sharp.
Click to expand...

The biggest difference between using FILM and DIGITAL for recording is the way you set the light. While in film you had to take care of the blacks to not under-expose, in digital you always have to take care on the whites to not burn out. Thats making light setting a completely different pair of shoes in some cases. The better the sensitivity of the digital camera, the easier you get to the point which you correctly named "forgiving" in film. Thats the 1.7 (still? Jim?) f-stops between this paricular sensor and film.

But the second part of your "forgiving" is clearly missed here: These f-stops range had to be represented in digital bits later on for post work. From film you usually do either a full color depth (10 to 12 bits typically) scan to files. That gives you a range that is "forgiving".

Or you do a direct to tape telecine with color grading. In that case your "forgiving" is used prior to grading. The result is hopefully good enough to not require any more strong changes and therefor does not need to be forgiving.

On digital video and HD most is currently limited to 8 bits on tape. That is not forgiving, thats the PROBLEM. Consider about 80% of the entire electronics of a todays video camera doing NOTHING ELSE than making a bad compressed 8 bit signal that fits on tape from the original say 14 bit sensors. There was something good, and it gets bad.

Digital film bypasses that problem and simplifies it by keeping the bits from the sensor and delaying that in a "forgiving" manner to the post production.

Btw, Fraunhofer recently showed a 20+ f-stops sensor, I think it was for BMW's nightview system. But the trick was HDR imaging with two (?) exposures with different exposure times. Its not clear if they did them sequentially or with a mixed sensor. So the resulting images histograms match each others in a part and the rest is simple math. I've seen images from within a tunnel seeing the sun shining into the tunnel in the front and you can still READ the number sign on the car in front of you. Film can't do this in this particular case. And human eyes neither.

About the gaussian blur: Most recent video / hd cameras have so called "skin tone" feature, which does just that. You select a range of skin tone colors and its starts slightly blurring exactly these colors during shooting, giving you actors a nice teant, like on a front cover photo.

Most grading systems do the exact same thing. Its not junk, its the way it is. Try getting an actor with everyday perfect skin? Try getting an makeup-artist fix that? Its limitations!

Clearly you can make junk images with any camera (as I said, lighting is most important). Its like with ink and pencil. Just owning or using it doesn't make you Michelangelo...

Cheers,
Axel
 
Axel,

Many thanks for sharing your industry knowledge with us.

Very much appreciated.

Dave,
 
the most forgiving part of film isnt just its lattitude, its also its toe and heel, where it transition to black or white. there still hasnt been a digital camera with a simliar toe and heel to film. when digitals curve heads to white it crashes as we all know.

I love both formats don't get me wrong. lets just be honest here.

the Film vs Digital debate only exists when we assume that someone else's needs mirror our own. Film and Digital do different things better and complement each other.

I'm excited about the red workflow and can't wait for my camera.
 
Andrew said:
Kodak should drop the price on the wide dynamic range negative film stock
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The reason Kodak won't significantly drop the price of film is because they can't. The key ingredient in film emulsion is silver halide, which (as the name implies) requires silver. Therefore, the cost of film will always be tied to the cost of silver, thus making it expensive to produce, and difficult to change the pricing structure.

When aquiring footage with the Red One, hard drives take the place of film. Hard drives continue to increase in capacity as prices fall.

In terms of cost, Red will always have the advantage. Film cannot compete now, and will never be able to catch up.

-Thor Wixom
 
Axel Mertes said:
About the gaussian blur: Most recent video / hd cameras have so called "skin tone" feature, which does just that. You select a range of skin tone colors and its starts slightly blurring exactly these colors during shooting, giving you actors a nice teant, like on a front cover photo.

Most grading systems do the exact same thing. Its not junk, its the way it is. Try getting an actor with everyday perfect skin? Try getting an makeup-artist fix that? Its limitations!
Click to expand...

Have you seen Ultraviolet? my statement was a bit of a joke. My friends worked on Ultraviolet, Post was a nightmare. They gaussian blurred parts of the actors faces in post because they didnt shoot close-ups with softening filters. So you might see just the cheeks blurred, or acne blurred. and the matte would be moving all around.

It's one of the extreme cases of HD gone totally wrong. And one of the most extreme cases of lets fix it in post and they couldn't.
 
Some of the reason the HD needs blurring is that it's not sharp enough, so they sharpen it, and then that sharpening really picks up on skin defects. If you shoot with something that's intrinsically sharp and high resolution, without artificial enhancement, then you don't need to sharpen it, and hence don't need to blur it....

Graeme
 
studiodrome said:
Have you seen Ultraviolet? my statement was a bit of a joke. My friends worked on Ultraviolet, Post was a nightmare. They gaussian blurred parts of the actors faces in post because they didnt shoot close-ups with softening filters. So you might see just the cheeks blurred, or acne blurred. and the matte would be moving all around.

It's one of the extreme cases of HD gone totally wrong. And one of the most extreme cases of lets fix it in post and they couldn't.
Click to expand...

I watched Ultraviolet in HD and this was constantly calling attention to itself. It was so obvious I just assumed it was some oddball choice of the director... and not one that I would have made. There should have been cleaner ways to fix it but I got the feeling that the budget and/or time ran out half way through post- maybe the completion insurance came into play and the the lawyers started calling the shots?
 
studiodrome said:
Have you seen Ultraviolet? my statement was a bit of a joke. My friends worked on Ultraviolet, Post was a nightmare. They gaussian blurred parts of the actors faces in post because they didnt shoot close-ups with softening filters. So you might see just the cheeks blurred, or acne blurred. and the matte would be moving all around.

It's one of the extreme cases of HD gone totally wrong. And one of the most extreme cases of lets fix it in post and they couldn't.
Click to expand...

It's standard operating procedure to shoot scenes to be composited without lens diffusion, especially chroma key work -- the efx people would have probably recommended that to the DP.

It seems clear from what I saw of "Ultraviolet" that the level of digital diffusion went far beyond mere cosmetic touch-up work into a glowy, diffused visual style. So blame the director for wanting that look, but don't blame the DP because he didn't use diffusion on close-ups.

In fact, on my last shoot, a TV series, I experimented with some diffusion filters for the close-ups even though the lead colorist on the show was saying "why use lens diffusion when I can do it in post?"
 
I don't think it's really an example of fixing something in post, but creating a stylized look in post -- the look of the movie goes way beyond fixing something; it's clearly an intentional style, not an inadvertent result of fixing a problem.
 
Have heard this statement of digital replacing film many times before but never seen it actually happening.
 
Doesn't film only have 13 stop range on the negative? Once it goes to print, it's not 13 stops.
 
I'm in film school now, so my experience is obviously very limited compared to most professionals here, but I can say that most people in the upcoming group of filmmakers either don't care much about film or openly have no interest in ever wanting to use it. The filmmaking crew that I'm involved with at the school, as far as planning a future production studio, shooting our projects, etc., never wants to use film. Eight years ago when I was first thinking about going into the film industry, I hoped I would never have to touch film because it's a ridiculous, ancient technology that has no place in the 21st century. It's practically the last thing that isn't fully digital and frankly it's pathetic that it's still used on such a wide scale, but that will end in five to six years, and everyone at the school knows that. It will be a novelty item, it just takes time to bring down such a large infrastructure.

The whole process is such a pain, though, it really takes me out of the filmmaking process in a way I don't like. I don't want to pay thousands of dollars for film stock that reminds me of the 1890s origin of the medium, and I don't want to hand it off to someone to telecine, or not be able to see what I shot easily right on set after each take. I want to shoot my footage, put it on the computer, then do as I want with it. No handing it off, no nonsense. Film was great for quite a while and it will always be part of the rich history of the medium. But the time has come to move on.

I can't see any advantages to film over digital at all. Every supposed advantage is actually just another horrible shortcoming of a dying medium that somehow over the years has become nostalgic and considered desirable. I'm sorry but a terrible depth of field is not an advantage, it's a disadvantage, it's a shortcoming of 35mm film. You have to light the hell out of it just to get a picture. It has improved over the years, obviously, but when people complain that everything in digital is in focus, first off that's possible to fix so it's really not an issue, but second that's much better because at least you have the ability to choose whether you want it all in focus or want to find a way to make it more, as they say, "filmic." More and more, though, I think people are smart enough about interpreting the medium that they don't need you to blur everything but the main element of a scene. The Star Wars prequels are very busy movies, with things going in all parts of the frame, and if they weren't that way I wouldn't have enjoyed them nearly as much. I want to see action everywhere, where a world is created in the background as well as the foreground. Then when people say how film grain is so wonderful, well that's just another load of bunk. Grain is a defect, not a benefit, and you can't seriously say that a defect is a good thing if it can't be controlled properly. Film is grainy compared to digital, and while grain might sometimes be desirable, that doesn't mean I want to use a medium that is just grainy because it sucks. I'd much rather use something that's crystal clear then add the grain in post. Or if I wanted maybe I could put a fishnet over the lens or something, hehe.

I have no interest in ever using film to do any projects. Just digital for me. The RED One is another major step towards the goal of a digital future.
 
Hi everyone,

Red is the single most important step toward digital filmaking...in terms of film cameras I think we can now talk pre-red and after-red period...nuthin will ever be the same....for the first time in history digital filmmaking has all the creative and financial advantages on its side...shooting anything other than red today doesn't make no sense anymore....can't wait to get my hands on it... best regards to ya all
 
David Mullen ASC said:
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The classic difference between video and film (skipping the RED for the moment) is that video has less exposure range and latitude for misexposure compared to film -- but since you can monitor your exposure, you have fewer excuses for misexposing video. Video is more user-friendly. So to some extent, this makes it easier to deal with video's more limited range. However, in real-world shooting situations, exposure mistakes do happen in video. You may balance and expose a scene perfectly for an outdoor cafe scene, only to have a white van in full sun drive up in the background and look horribly clipped. Hence why a digital camera with a wide dynamic range is very helpful.

And it's not really like you toss away two stops of information on the negative (or digital file) when making a print. The information is there, more or less, it's just less visible due to the contrast of the print stock. If the information were missing, you'd see that your shadows were unnaturally blocked-up.
Click to expand...


This is quite true and not. The original Kodak cineon specifications said that the 10 bit = 1024 steps of the cineon file format are being used to cover 0.02 densities per step, resulting in a total range of 2.048 densitites. This is pretty much what you can get from the widest negatives or intermediates.

For a positive print you can hardly see anything outside a range of 1.3 densities from you negative. Given that, all you can do actually is shifting this 1.3 density range towards black or white knee or shoulder to gain more details on blacks or whites, not both at the same time.

The digital intermediate as its called now is the big break through here, because it gave the creatives the chance to actually compress the wider range of the negative (its "forgivingness") to the smaller range of the perceptable 1.3 source densities of a negative in a positive print.

Thats why cineon method (being density oriented) got quickly obsolete, as today nearly no one is using it to do clips that should match original negatives, to use them in a negative cut and print from there traditionally.

Most poeple nowadays tend to scan all footage, make that heavy corrections and print out a negative with a much less density range (see Celco, Lasergraphics, being limited to the 1.3/1.4 density barrier and still doing exactly this: good results in positives).

Instead of its original intention to represent color in density steps (which was cool to re-produce exact same density negatives for intercut with original negatives) the current DPX derivates are being used to simply gain space for extra bits for extra gradation, details.

Example:
When you look at the histogram of an image produced by a purely cineon calibrated scanner, you'll see three mountains with lots of prairie left and right from it (think of Monument Valley - I guess we did to much Marlboro commercials last years...). That said, it simply shows that "normal" exposed negatives very rarely really use the 2.048 density range that is possible.

Many apps have presets like the dpx log value range 95 to 685 = 591 in total from 1024 = 57.7%.
2.048 density * 57.7% ~ 1.182 (which is already less than the mentioned 1.3 densities).

Yep, the "extra" information might be there in the negative when shooting on film, but it will be not visible to anybody on positive film. Not even with eye accomodation, filters or the like.

The other way around you can use film recorders that surpass the 1.3 density barrier (like the ARRI Laser, Definity, Cinevator) and print negatives from purely digital camera sources, that actually contain "extra" information. Again, it'll not be visible on the screen.

Bottom line: Its wise to have extra information for any kind of tweaking during post. It'll not visible unless you move it in the visible range during post.

Regarding the use of video and the non excusable burn outs: Using the zebra function is therefor a must, its meant to save you butt and it does if used the right way. Most time.

Example:
When shooting with the Varicam we tend to underexpose up to 2 stops to have "overexposure" reserve for the white transporter driving through... Most time that worked fine. Its a question of the linear color rendition and how you knee is falling compared to the lower end knee of a film response curve (which is not exactly the same, unfortunately).

Cheers,
Axel
 
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