Predictions. When will Red "match" film?

[Fran Kuhn]

I'm not sure if comparing a 4X5 large format camera loaded with portrait film AND a FF digital camera is fair ?? At least the sensor / film size should be the same or at least closer.

Hi Michael,

I agree, A 200 MB drum scan from the 4x5 film makes the Canon's 21MP 1Ds file look like a joke. That's 20 square inches of film--really not a fair fight.

But i see the same issues when shooting medium format film in my Hasselblad. The skin tones are just superb on film. The Canon renders them with what one art director likes to call "The look of death". Of course, they do like the many other advantages of digital capture, which is why I hope the newest generation of sensors moves closer to film's ability to render a good skin tone without hours of post work.

I watched Lee Varis work some impressive post magic on skin tones at the Icon seminar the other night, but what a nightmare of Photoshop layers, masks and filters!

-Fran

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

Here's a side-by-side: Two examples of a Garage Magazine portrait shoot I did last month with Seattle artist Charles Krafft. (Same lighting, just different cameras.) Toggle back and forth quickly between the two photos looking directly at the faces. I think you'll see what I mean--the film simply has the appearance of greater depth and much more appealing skin tones. Hopefully you can see it in these small, low-res files. The difference on my Apple Cinema Display is astonishing. BTW notice how different film and digital render the color of the shirt. The film is closer to what I saw in real life, even though I did a white balance in post for both files.

But i see the same issues when shooting medium format film in my Hasselblad. The skin tones are just superb on film. The Canon renders them with what one art director likes to call "The look of death". Of course, they do like the many other advantages of digital capture, which is why I hope the newest generation of sensors moves closer to film's ability to render a good skin tone without hours of post work.

I watched Lee Varis work some impressive post magic on skin tones at the Icon seminar the other night, but what a nightmare of Photoshop layers, masks and filters!

-Fran

This is in 8 bit space, without masks, layers or filters or hours of post work. I'm pretty sure I could make RED material also look like this. This is a relatively quick PS job after a whole day of work and I can do better than that, but it's enough to prove a point. Point being - if you have close enough latitude and enough data to work with you can shape digital to look like anything.

 

[Casey Schendel]

It's like the difference between vinyl and CD's, both are great, both are prefrenced but technically you can hear more on vinyl then cd's since it's analog.

Same goes for film, film is a natural process, not zero's and ones of data. The red is close, and someday may be identical to the eye but there will always be a difference whether we see it or not.

 

[Fran Kuhn]

This is in 8 bit space, without masks, layers or filters or hours of post work. I'm pretty sure I could make RED material also look like this. This is a relatively quick PS job after a whole day of work and I can do better than that, but it's enough to prove a point. Point being - if you have close enough latitude and enough data to work with you can shape digital to look like anything.

Looks good, Hrvoje. Nice job matching the colors. Thanks for posting that.

-Fran

 

[Eki Halkka]

It's like the difference between vinyl and CD's, both are great, both are prefrenced but technically you can hear more on vinyl then cd's since it's analog.

I'd say the above is simply not true.

You certainly can't hear more of the original signal on vinyl than on CD, quite the contrary: vinyl loses quality wise in more or less all measurable ways. CD reproduces the recorded signal in a much more faithful way than vinyl ever could.

You can hear more distortion, noise and other artifacts on the vinyl: the thing is, these artifacts are often regarded positive. They may very well be, but it doesn't take away the fact that they are artifacts.

Consider this: you CAN record a vinyl digitally, and maintain it's unique "analogue" sound (as it's basically just distortion, compression etc.). But you CAN NOT make a vinyl out of a CD while maintaining the quality, without introducing vinyl's artifacts.

 

[Steve Sherrick]

I'd say the above is simply not true.

You certainly can't hear more of the original signal on vinyl than on CD, quite the contrary: vinyl loses quality wise in more or less all measurable ways. CD reproduces the recorded signal in a much more faithful way than vinyl ever could.

You can hear more distortion, noise and other artifacts on the vinyl: the thing is, these artifacts are often regarded positive. They may very well be, but it doesn't take away the fact that they are artifacts.

Consider this: you CAN record a vinyl digitally, and maintain it's unique "analogue" sound (as it's basically just distortion, compression etc.). But you CAN NOT make a vinyl out of a CD while maintaining the quality, without introducing vinyl's artifacts.

Problem with CDs is that they are 16-bit 44.1khz and are not capable of capturing the full range. 24-bit, 192khz gets closer and there are other formats like DSD that are are really pushing the capabilities of digital audio. Having said that CDs are good enough for most people. Heck, MP3 seems to be good enough for most people these days.

 

[Sanjin Jukic]

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[Michael Totten]

Hi Michael,

I agree, A 200 MB drum scan from the 4x5 film makes the Canon's 21MP 1Ds file look like a joke. That's 20 square inches of film--really not a fair fight.

But i see the same issues when shooting medium format film in my Hasselblad. The skin tones are just superb on film. The Canon renders them with what one art director likes to call "The look of death". Of course, they do like the many other advantages of digital capture, which is why I hope the newest generation of sensors moves closer to film's ability to render a good skin tone without hours of post work.

I watched Lee Varis work some impressive post magic on skin tones at the Icon seminar the other night, but what a nightmare of Photoshop layers, masks and filters!

-Fran

I've never heard of Lee Varis, but his work/focus sounds very interesting. I'm going to check out his work.

Yeah there is no doubt in my mind that film still has the advantage in certain respects... but digital is getting so close. Most of the photographers that I've worked with used to swear they'd never shoot digital... now most of them do most of the time. My technical knowledge doesn't run deep enough to understand what would help skin tones in the digital realm (I would guess it has something to do with bit depth though).
thanks for sharing with all of us.

 

[Michael Totten]

It's like the difference between vinyl and CD's, both are great, both are prefrenced but technically you can hear more on vinyl then cd's since it's analog.

Same goes for film, film is a natural process, not zero's and ones of data. The red is close, and someday may be identical to the eye but there will always be a difference whether we see it or not.

Technically you may be able to hear more but in practice I would bet most wouldn't. Don't get me wrong I love vinyl ... but I think that music was the first "analog art" to die. Partially because the processor speed, bandwidth and drive space required to deal with audio was much smaller than still photographs..... and much much smaller than motion pictures. Anyway, I saw a test where a dozen veteran audio engineers were given the pepsi test on Vinyl vs. a high digital audio files.... long story short, they couldn't tell the difference. They were all totally confused and stumped.

I think still images is the next "analog art" to go (it's already so close) in fact it's close enough where most pro's are like "it's good enough" (even if they can see the difference). Soon it'll be motion pictures.


Seems like the studio executives and the masses already can't tell the difference... and I guess for all intents and purposes that's all that matters (at least for the bean counters).

I just can't wait until I'm fooled, I have a feeling it's going to feel good.

 

[christopher witzke]

Can someone please shoot footage of a dead cat being swung around by it's tail.... shoot both film and digital.... then maybe we'd have something to talk about.

 

[Michael Totten]

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of more than 200 state-of-the-art image processing and synthesis effects such as
glows, glints, lightning, film effects, warps and textures. Over the last 13 years,
Sapphire has become the plug-in suite of choice for production compositors and
editors who require the perfect balance between creativity and productivity.
Sapphire is a suite of plug-ins available for a comprehensive range of host platforms,
including those from Autodesk, Avid, Apple, Adobe, Quantel and Eyeon, and it supports
key industry standards such as AVX, AE and OFX. Sapphire is used extensively
and by a broad range of artists and editors in the production and post-production of feature films,
broadcast television, commercial advertising and music videos.
Sapphire has the distinction of having been a key component of an Academy award-nominated film
for the past 12 consecutive years.


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This stuff has to be used extremely judiciously otherwise (more often than not) it just looks like some kind of film effect that's layered over the ultra sharp digital picture that's screaming out from underneath.

 

[David Rasberry]

Sanjin, I remember seeing a close-up of a hand shot from your Red that revealed amazingly translucent nicely textured skin tones. One of the earliest images I saw that really impressed me. Canons by comparison have always seemed a little pasty and flat to me. Nikons are better with skin tones.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

I shoot a shot on both 35mm and on a digital body and I almost always find the 35mm more appealing.

It's not magic though. It's just the color response of film. Which has been refined over 100 years of artist feedback. The comment about grain usually looking like grain on top of a digital image is pretty accurate to me because what I like most about film isn't the grain (although I do like grain) but the response curve of film that it comes with out of the box. Just off the top of my head one of the best things about film is its saturation, how the saturation drops off gracefully. The film look is far more complicated than twiddling the RGB levels or curves in Photoshop.

All of this isn't to say that digital can't deliver the same look as film. It can. But it's not as easy as it should be yet.

Film and Digital have diametrically opposite problems. Film looks great but is a huge PITA. Digital is really easy but doesn't look as good to me. The meme "If you want the film look shoot film" is broken because it completely ignores the workflow and advantages digital brings to the table. I love plasticine but I don't like my house smelling like a volcano. I love paint but I hate not having undo and saving multiple versions. The great thing about digital is that it's offering us all the things we love about computers without sacrificing the look we like-- or at least that's the promise.