s35 film stocks in the 1970s is about the same as 1080p in terms of resolution

[zlfan]

just watched the godfather and dune on amazon on a 50 inch Sony 4k tv. dune 1 seems significantly clearer than godfather 1 2. 

film stocks in the late 1990s and early 2000 seem at 4k level. 

it is overkill to use a 8k camera to scan even the latest negative. significantly more storage, very little gain.

 

the fashion of using the film seems nostalgia, in stead of true technical advantage. 

 

 

[MrSMW]

Dune should. It's been nearly 50 years!

I can't remember, what did they do with this? Shot it on film, scanned it, made the tweaks, put it back to film...or something?

[eatstoomuchjam]

Does anybody make the argument that film has higher resolution than digital?  In full frame 35mm photo terms, I thought it was generally accepted that 24 megapixels or so was equal to (or greater than) the resolution of most film.  That means 6k is closer to Vista Vision.  There are a few exceptions that people will cherry pick to show it - but if using a high-quality film scanner with around 4,000dpi resolution (4000x6000 - 24 megapixels) - and if using a glass carrier to keep the negative perfectly flat, the grain on almost any film stock is easily visible at 100%.  If using ISO 400 or above, it's even more obvious.

With that in mind, the actual resolution of even a very modern 35mm film stock (academy) is about 8 megapixels at 4,000 dpi - so 4k.

But even with a fully digital pipeline, I'll choose my C70 (4K S35) over my EOS R5 (8K FF) almost every time.  Resolution is far from the most important quality of an image and there are plenty of reasons (including much better highlight rolloff) that people shoot on film.  Plus if we're talking cinema, it might surprise you how many theaters are still using 2K projectors, rendering the capture resolution even more moot.  😄

[Clark Nikolai]

1 hour ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

With that in mind, the actual resolution of even a very modern 35mm film stock (academy) is about 8 megapixels at 4,000 dpi - so 4k.

But even with a fully digital pipeline, I'll choose my C70 (4K S35) over my EOS R5 (8K FF) almost every time.  Resolution is far from the most important quality of an image and there are plenty of reasons (including much better highlight rolloff) that people shoot on film.  Plus if we're talking cinema, it might surprise you how many theaters are still using 2K projectors, rendering the capture resolution even more moot.  😄

I think the main reason to scan film at a super high resolution is to see the individual grain particles. It once was a thing to try to avoid but now it's a cool thing to have (and there's all this interest in fake film grain plug ins).

When shooting digital for narrative cinema, 2K is plenty (if the camera is good in other ways.) Shooting at a higher resolution in order to punch in of course is useful.

[Benjamin Hilton]

Yeah digital's been able to easily match and/or exceed that of film stocks here for a while. 

[JulioD]

I think the argument is that the original film probably has more resolution.  That’s not what you’re watching though.  
 

i have seen many home film scanners now are based on using a Fuji GFX cameras…
 

 

[Benjamin Hilton]

Yeah the original film probably has more resolution than what you're seeing in the final production today. That being said, I think we're long past the argument that film has any technical advantage over digital. It's a look, one that can be nearly replicated in post with the right technicians to perfection, or a look that can be partially copied while still retaining some of the advantages of digital. I think that's the future right there for most projects personally. 

I really have very little interest in perfectly replicating the "film look" in many of my projects. I bring in some of the characteristics of film in my grading, but leave out others. This "hybrid" look is what we're seeing in a lot of modern films and such and I think it's working really well. 

[inde]

There's the scan and then there's the film as has been noted above. I remember in the early thousands being told by an emeritus prof in astronomy that they were finding digital was sharper than film. These were low resolution dgital sensors but worked better in low photon capturing. Remember, digital doesn't suffer from failure of reciprocity. I was shocked at the time.

My guess is today, above 100 iso, digital is better than s35 at 1080p for resolution on a sensor without an OLPF. However, digital colour is not as rich generally and much worse on a standard sony sensor. Dynamic range is better on film even if just because it has a proper toe and shoulder. There I said it.

[Benjamin Hilton]

44 minutes ago, inde said:

There's the scan and then there's the film as has been noted above. I remember in the early thousands being told by an emeritus prof in astronomy that they were finding digital was sharper than film. These were low resolution dgital sensors but worked better in low photon capturing. Remember, digital doesn't suffer from failure of reciprocity. I was shocked at the time.

My guess is today, above 100 iso, digital is better than s35 at 1080p for resolution on a sensor without an OLPF. However, digital colour is not as rich generally and much worse on a standard sony sensor. Dynamic range is better on film even if just because it has a proper toe and shoulder. There I said it.

Dynamic range was certainly better on some of the best film stocks for quite a while, but I don't think you're seeing much of an advantage over the Alexa sensors these days. (most other high end digitals aren't far behind) Plus with most decent cameras a good highlight rolloff isn't hard to pull off in post if you know what you're doing

[Fatalfury]

Wrong. When it comes to 4K releases compared to blu-rays, I see a significant difference in favor for 4K. Pre 1990 film can easily fill 4k.

[JulioD]

It can do more than 4K, but notice, that there really aren't very good ways to scan motion picture commercially at more than 4K.

For a long time in the early days of DI and digital VFX, the thinking was that 2K and 10 bit was good enough.  Because that's all the hardware could do back then.

Funny how everyone thinks 4K is good enough now when that's pretty much all you can easily and commercially scan at...

And yet as I said above, in home enthusiast photo scanning, plenty of home brew scanning setups now just use very high resolution (and DR) cameras to do scans and they're getting much better results than from traditional film scanners.

[JulioD]

Some examples of scanning with higher resolution cameras showing how much more 35mm still holds

https://fstoppers.com/film/youve-never-seen-digitized-film-resolution-using-fuji-gfx100s-597874

[eatstoomuchjam]

I'm not sure if I have the patience to watch the entire video - did he say whether he's using the anti-newton glass carrier for his Coolscan?  That makes an absolutely enormous difference in scanning resolution.  I use an 8000 and when using the glass carrier at 4,000 dpi, I can see grain pretty clearly defined when zooming in (though not as much with some films like Velvia 50, but that's not an especially common stock for filmmakers).  Anyway, the standard carriers for the Coolscan do a pretty piss-poor job of keeping film flat and the scanner has a really tiny DOF - so non-flat film = unsharp scans (but still usually usable for a print or whatever, an 8x10 print at 300dpi is only about 8 megapixels after all).

Either way, it's just plain untrue that most S35 film has much more resolution than 4k.  At the point where the grain structure is clearly visible at 100% (including the bigger and smaller grains), you aren't going to get a lot more detail.

The main reason that most people think 4K is good enough now is that unless you're sitting really close to a huge screen, we're well past the threshold of declining returns on increasing resolution.  The average human eye can't perceive any difference whatsoever between 4K and 8K on a 50" screen viewed from a distance of around 2-3 meters - and the perceived difference, even between 2K and 4K content at that distance is not huge.  Upgrade yourself to a 75" TV and at that distance, the sharp-eyed can perceive a difference between 4K and 8K...  but most people won't notice the difference or care at all.

I'm not sure how things are in every market, but in my local market, I can say that many cinemas are still projecting most content at 2K.  Even on a huge screen, people don't seem to mind the difference when watching from 15 meters away.

Also, also - at 4K, lots of little flaws (make-up seams, etc) become more visible and VFX can take a while to render.  Step up to 8K and those problems are compounded yet again.

[JulioD]

I’m not sure.  
 

But he stopped using his cool scan 9000 which is basically the very best of desktop film scanning tech short of going to a Hasselblad Flextight.  Both of which are now considered obsolete.  
 

I use an inexpensive Plustek only because it’s automated and don’t have time to do individual frames but the consensus is that higher res cameras do producer better results now than most dedicated scanners.

I think there’s a huge difference between exhibition resolution (shitty 2k multiplex projection) and the resolution you capture at.  
 

Seinfeld on 35mm still looks great on SDTV compared to a SDTV video camera of the same resolution. It’s not a complicated idea to acquire at a higher resolution than your distribution format.  
 

Nobody masters using 264.  

[eatstoomuchjam]

1 hour ago, JulioD said:

I’m not sure.  
 

But he stopped using his cool scan 9000 which is basically the very best of desktop film scanning tech short of going to a Hasselblad Flextight.  Both of which are now considered obsolete.

Film flatness is one of the most important things when scanning.  If he moved away from the Coolscan based on the results when using the standard carrier being less sharp than the results when "scanning" with the GFX 100, that's great for him, but it has nothing to do with the actual capabilities of the scanner.

Again, I have the 8000 which is in many ways the same scanner - but much slower due to needing to use "fine" mode to scan and that the 9000 can use digital ICE on Kodachrome.

My biggest issue with the Coolscan is that there are sometimes some funky artifacts in the shadows, especially when using Vuescan.  I might experiment with the my GFX for it at some point, if only for that reason.  I have some sort of copy stand around here somewhere.  I'll need to poke around to see if I have a light table with even enough illumination... If my copy stand is rigid enough, it could also potentially be interesting for scanning larger negatives that currently I need to scan in my flatbed.

[JulioD]

https://shop.filmomat.eu/products/135-autocarrier

 

This seems to be doing some interesting things. 

[inde]

Having spent some years in the early thousands working and owning large format cameras as well a drum scanner I would say there is a softness to film even with transparency film at iso 100. This inherent softness to film is in it's natural scanned (unsharpened) state at the grain/dye level. It's lovely actually. And yes a GFX100s is going to shit all over a 90s coolscan but I stand by what I said before.