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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 :)

Why film will stay the king...

In 50 years, no one will care about the change from chemical to digital cinema... no one.
 
Christoffer Glans said:
In 50 years, no one will care about the change from chemical to digital cinema... no one.
Click to expand...

I doubt that.
People recreate instruments and tunings from the 15th century to get "that" sound.
People work on different scales and tonal systems from all over history, to manage and create variations and dig into their crafts.
I hope no less for those approaches in film, than in music.

Artistry and craft can be about deep knowledge, too.
And that part will hopefully never go away.

Imagery is no different than music in that respect.
As long as it is an artistic thing, too - there is no absolute "right".
In technical terms, we can speak of optimum. Fortunately that does not translate to "right".

Mankind has been through many revolutions. I have no problem to see a perspective, where analogue again could be the only option.
And 50 years is a long term (relatively) if we talk film-history.

Artists will always strive to go deep in their material.
For some, that means diving into and choosing stylistic and workflow tools. Like instruments.
Or filmstock.

The single two issues I have with digital are (and I am all digital, BTW)

a) predictability (what we want, but also it's achilles heel)
b) the lack of option to choose a different stock once you've chosen your cam.

frankly one of my reasons for seriously considering the DigiBolex and the BM mini are the above.
To me they both gives very pleasing images, but from different parameters than the REDs.

No question the tech quality of a RED image runs circles around both.
But... They are simply "different".

We'll see, of course... :)


And in the same logic, I think no ONE tool is the penultimate "king". Not film either.... :)
 
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Christoffer Glans said:
In 50 years, no one will care about the change from chemical to digital cinema... no one.
Click to expand...


In 50 years I will be able to open a can of film hold it up to the sunlight and see and know what images are on that film. Can I say the same thing about digital images? No. Why? Because as much as you want to believe that electricity is a god given thing, it just isn't. :)

Battistella
 
This topic made me know how crazy and irritables are Red Fanboys people, i've received some really strange Mp's so, let me be clear :

I'm a Red one Mx owner and i truly love my camera, i'm a 26 years old guy so my love for "Film" can't come from any sort of nostalgia, "MY LOVE FOR FILM COMES FROM MY DEEP LOVE FOR QUALITY AND CINEMA".
I'm a part of this new generation people talk about, again, i'm 26 years old, i don't know nothing but digital, and if you had asked me "what the camera of your dreams looks like", i would have answered "the quality of film in a Red epic body with a digital process"

i don't give a f**uck about the chemical process, of course digital is much more convenient, what i'm talking about is "QUALITY, SMOOTHNESS OF THE DYNAMIC RANGE, RICHNESS OF THE TEXTURES AND DEEPNESS OF COLORS", that's why i prefer film!
People who talk about the fact that every "Film movies" are in fact "digital" because of the final product didn't get my point at all, maybe is my english not as good as i thought, excuse me to be french..

More seriously, when i asked for examples about the "superiority" of digital over film, i was asking for "movies examples, movies showing that, in term of "image quality" digital is superior, here is an other style of "Film" (shot by the famous Bruno Aveillan) :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atMAszUnHsI

And here is a digital example that can be close :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUWvtrypGGI

But it was shot in Alexa..

Again, i thank God everyday for putting me in this era where Cinema is no more "A rich little boy's game", digital makes things accessibles, even if, IMO, "if you can make it today, you can make it at any epoch", only rules change, the player stay the same, but let's don't philosophize and get back to the point..

My next camera will certainly be the "Red Scarlet Dragon", because of its price, its form factor and its sensor that hasn't been truly revealed yet (i can't wait for footages that literally blows me away, the David Beckham documentary did but it was graded by an extreme talented colorist..


mikeburton said:
Okay but that wasn't what he asked, was it? Regardless of all the wonderful conveniences that digital brings us, film at its best and digital at its best is not much of a comparison in my eyes. Film looks incredible and can't be touched by any digital cinema camera...yet.
Click to expand...

That's what i'm talking about bro'..

Let's be clear again, my point wasn't to spit on digital, i just truly and deeply wish the coming of a digital camera that comes close to Film in terme of quality and richness. Cinema is an art, and i don't want to sacrifice quality for convenience when it's about Art, that's where Brands like Red have an important role.


The world didn't evolve thanks to "Fanboys", but thanks to people that asked the right questions, even if these questions ain't sweet to hear, even if these questions lead to some "heartbreakers answers", i'll finish with a "Let's shut the f**ck up and let's tell our stories, let's write and let's shoot people"

Have a great day all
 
First one of the top of my hat - Skyfall? Shot on Alexa and Epic. Can't imagine it looking any better if it was shot on film.
Specifically the aerials shot on Epic exceed the quality of anything else I have seen on film (in terms of aerial), save for 65mm IMAX...
Just saying...
My point is that there are already digital tools that in the right hands match or even exceed the "quality" and "what-ever-personal-feeling-preference-you-put-here" of film...
Everything else is just pixel-peeping...

:sifone: Peter
 
35mm samples

10415757_10203488849277337_1095028159_o.png



10422687_10203488849317338_222849819_o.png
 
Mendes,

You are right. I was responding to what I was reading that was turning this into a Film vs. Digital thread, of which there are thousands and they are boring.

What is not boring is how the DRAGON sensor responds to light, especially highlights.

When more of these cameras are in the wild and a few films come out that have been shooting on them, I think that you are going to understand that you will get what you are asking for.


Here is my cutline about Dragon so far, and I am not finished testing yet.

"All the magic of film, all the convenience of Digital" and I am talking, DR, highlights and colour rendering and tonality.

Fucking great storytelling tool.

Battistella
 
And here are a few shots for the pile. I'm not even going to say what they were captured on.

film_001.jpg


film_002.jpg


film_003.jpg
 
I shot motion 35mm, 70mm, 5x4 inche and 10x8 inche film most days for almost 30 years... And I don't miss it one little bit.
Well.... 10x8 inche was pretty amazing.

In the motion picture side of things, I'm getting better images now than I have had. The last time i ran 35mm through a camera a couple of years ago, i thought I had a back focus problem, everything looked soft! I shit myself ! I completely forgot how bad film actually was.
Yes its soft, yes its got grain, yes there is some sort of old school love affair with it. But seriously... I for one, am not really that good at walking backwards.

Makes me laugh every time this conversation pops up.

Hey, Everyone for them selves :) Digi Vs Film. Does it really mater, so long as the content is great, i don't really care what things are shot on.
 
David Battistella said:
Mendes,

You are right. I was responding to what I was reading that was turning this into a Film vs. Digital thread, of which there are thousands and they are boring.

What is not boring is how the DRAGON sensor responds to light, especially highlights.

When more of these cameras are in the wild and a few films come out that have been shooting on them, I think that you are going to understand that you will get what you are asking for.


Here is my cutline about Dragon so far, and I am not finished testing yet.

"All the magic of film, all the convenience of Digital" and I am talking, DR, highlights and colour rendering and tonality.

Fucking great storytelling tool.

Battistella
Click to expand...

Battistela, i love you my friend! You point the right question, "Highlights"! Alexa is the more "filmic" digital cinema camera thanks to its highlights (smoothness and color too), when you talk about dragon and say "All the magic of film, all the convenience of Digital", it just makes me impatient, i can't wait to see more footages, and better than that, i can't wait to get mine ..

I know it's pretty "TABOO" here but, have you already shoot with Alexa? How does it compare to Dragon in term of color and highlights?

"Fucking great storytelling tool", we run the same holy war my friend..
 
Mendes,

I have shot the Alexa and it is good in the highlights, no doubt. But I own a RED. I think that people are very comfortable with the ARRI name and with the ALEXA, ARRI brought a lot of colour science knowledge from their film scanners to the table as well so they were in a good position to emulate certain film stocks. Does that mean I could not match the RED to that, no. In fact you see both cameras on set a fair bit. ARRI gave DP's the look they were used to seeing out of the film scanner in their camera.

But the DRAGON is a completely different situation. It really is. I know, I read it here before I started testing mine and I can only confirm what others have been saying.

In terms of colour and highlights it's just amazing. It's very hard to see the "hard clip" on dragon that we would see on MX and have to work with. Now, I am quite shocked at the big fat histogram and the detail in the highlights. You notice it right away in the sky and in white objects, even the rolloff of skin is over exposed is quite smooth.

I have not been this excited since my original RED ONE M.

And, as we know, it will only get better.

But you know. It's not about sensors and film stock.

It's about how we make the light hit them.

Battistella
 
Organic sensors is what you're looking for. Having seen a prototype sensor last month i can say it looks very good. Much, much better than anything CMOS/CCD has to offer.
Not just DR and lowlight, but also the texture of the image looks more like film.
 
David Battistella said:
Mendes,

I have shot the Alexa and it is good in the highlights, no doubt. But I own a RED. I think that people are very comfortable with the ARRI name and with the ALEXA, ARRI brought a lot of colour science knowledge from their film scanners to the table as well so they were in a good position to emulate certain film stocks. Does that mean I could not match the RED to that, no. In fact you see both cameras on set a fair bit. ARRI gave DP's the look they were used to seeing out of the film scanner in their camera.

But the DRAGON is a completely different situation. It really is. I know, I read it here before I started testing mine and I can only confirm what others have been saying.

In terms of colour and highlights it's just amazing. It's very hard to see the "hard clip" on dragon that we would see on MX and have to work with. Now, I am quite shocked at the big fat histogram and the detail in the highlights. You notice it right away in the sky and in white objects, even the rolloff of skin is over exposed is quite smooth.
Click to expand...

:-)

G
 
What I find really interesting about the debate is that the film samples we're all looking (which do look amazing)... have all been digitized. That process was done by essentially taking pictures of each frame of the film... with a digital camera. Now field cinema cameras may not quite yet be able to surpass the visual impact of film... but clearly SOME digital image acquisition tech. has already done so or we'd not be able to really see the difference on our youtube feeds. That would seem to say that it's possible... so if it's possible it will eventually happen. The more interesting debate to me would be : are both the film and digital images we're arguing over (when created by a master) already so far beyond the display medium (youtube, vimeo, even blu-ray and commodity lcd displays) that most viewers are looking at the content with as to make the quality argument a moot point? The color redition capabilities of most LCD panels are lets face it... poor. Black levels are equally abyssmal. Seems to me it's not much different than the resolution equivelant of watching 4K content on a 1080p display... you're crippling it just to get it into a form that users can display. I've got a Monster Pelican case that's a HUGE PITA to take with me but it's worth it to have a 31.5" 4k display and Redray player with me to show content at near full res. to my customers.
 
Gunleik I like your point about the inconsistency of film. No matter how much digital matches film, the inconsistencies of film create their own artistic richness. In a similar way that an LP record has its own inconsistencies, that produces an intangible quality that can hit the spot in a way that a digital recording can't.

BTW Peter - guns kill people AND people kill people more readily when they have access to guns.
 
Filip Orlandic said:
Of course you can get something similar but not the same look and not in 5 seconds ;)
Click to expand...

Does that 5 seconds include having the film processed at the lab? ;)
 
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