Will Keir
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Damn, kind missing Jim's posting today... Guess I have been for a while now.
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RED Dragon vs. 65mm film...
- Thread starter Jannard
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It's been a while since I've seen this thread. It is a nice reminder of what's exactly happened in the last 11 months really.
The comparisons between Dragon and film are pretty dead on. 5-perf 65mm scanned at 4K isn't going to look as good at 6K Dragon, the pixels themselves are different as is what's resolved. And actually 65mm is often not scanned in an appropriate way to maximize the potential of the format itself, let alone shooting it flawlessly to get the most out of it. Even in these times of 6K and 8K film scanners and the various methods to scan at higher resolutions that often are not utilized due to time and budgetary constraints.
For me Dragon is hitting a very specific resolution number and actually surpassing a format I truly love. One format that I always wanted to harness the power of in a digital cinema camera. VistaVision.
While the physical sensor size of Dragon 6K is a bit smaller than a VistaVision frame, it's resolving power is a bit higher than that format. And the added good there is you can window down to a more traditional Super 35mm format at 5K if you desire to use that format for any reason. It's now multi-format in the truest sense and all focused on delivering at 4K.
Dragon sort of shows the general concept of what's possible in terms of not just a film alternative, but also a film replacement. You get more in nearly every way. Every stop counts. Dragon's way more sensitive and cleaner than film ever was. You can also make it look like anything you'd like if you want to "go retro".
This is why Jim references the "final frontier", because Red has surpassed the technical merits of a standard and medium that built an industry and created memorable stories that will last forever. Where things go from here is truly unknown territory.
The comparisons between Dragon and film are pretty dead on. 5-perf 65mm scanned at 4K isn't going to look as good at 6K Dragon, the pixels themselves are different as is what's resolved. And actually 65mm is often not scanned in an appropriate way to maximize the potential of the format itself, let alone shooting it flawlessly to get the most out of it. Even in these times of 6K and 8K film scanners and the various methods to scan at higher resolutions that often are not utilized due to time and budgetary constraints.
For me Dragon is hitting a very specific resolution number and actually surpassing a format I truly love. One format that I always wanted to harness the power of in a digital cinema camera. VistaVision.
While the physical sensor size of Dragon 6K is a bit smaller than a VistaVision frame, it's resolving power is a bit higher than that format. And the added good there is you can window down to a more traditional Super 35mm format at 5K if you desire to use that format for any reason. It's now multi-format in the truest sense and all focused on delivering at 4K.
Dragon sort of shows the general concept of what's possible in terms of not just a film alternative, but also a film replacement. You get more in nearly every way. Every stop counts. Dragon's way more sensitive and cleaner than film ever was. You can also make it look like anything you'd like if you want to "go retro".
This is why Jim references the "final frontier", because Red has surpassed the technical merits of a standard and medium that built an industry and created memorable stories that will last forever. Where things go from here is truly unknown territory.
JanneJansson
Well-known member
I'm really lookig forward to dragon, don't get me wrong, but I never will belive resolutions is the holy grail. Theare are so many ---things--- that make move magic BUT resolution.
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Heh. I agree it's not the end all and be all when it comes to what makes an image beautiful. Good composition should read at nearly any screen size. However, micro-composition and "happy accidents" often live in the intangible space between the broader stroke and the finer stroke.
Detail in motion and still has often been the same to me as detail in a painting. Typically painters go further into a level of detail in areas that they want you to focus on. Similar to where a cinematographer would selectively place focus and perhaps utilize lighting or depth of field to eliminate the unwanted focus, while still maintaining the "character" and flavor of the whole image.
Here's a John Singer Sargent image that sort of gets across this concept:
This is a fairly loose painting in reality, however, the broad strokes do a good job of defining the composition. The finer strokes however elude to finer details such as the street lamp, which in this case is fairly abstract in it's representation.
Jean-Leon Gerome takes this concept to a similar level with his work containing typically a bit more detail refinement. However, the same focus on color and composition are apparent even with crazier abstract shapes going on in some of the rather "out of focus" objects in the scene.
