TychoCelchuuu

It can never be 24 frames per second? Is there a reason why? What's the difference between a digital camera recording at 24FPS and a film camera recording at 24FPS? Yes, the 35 mm film has the highest resolution, but if viewed on a digital projector digital movies look great. I'm no camera expert, so I can't talk about depth of field, but if it's absolutely essential to the movie and absolutely impossible to get with a camera, you can do it with a computer.

I know you're going to say it looks horrible, but a lot of people reject computer imaging out of hand without doing any comparison. Special effects really haven't realized their full potential yet, but there are some parts in Episode 2 and Episode 3 where I imagine people would have trouble telling a digital actor apart from a real actor. Obviously there will always be people who can see through it, and there will always be little differences, but the point is suspension of disbelief.

It's the same thing when it comes to digital cameras vs film cameras. If you watch something that you know is digital, but it has been processed to look like film, you are most likely not going to notice the difference unless A. you spend all day staring at film or B. you're specifically looking for it. I'm not sure why you're so attached to something like film grain, but when it comes to cost effectiveness low resolution digital cameras have a big advantage over true 35mm film. There's a tradeoff, yes, but at least the movie gets made the way the director wants it to instead of forced into something that the movie studio wants to see.

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leejo

70mm is highest resolution used in reg. motion pictures. With regard to which looks best, I'm pretty sure that film still holds the title. When you take a picture with film, the negative captures all light that hits it. When you take a picture with a digital camera, you capture all light that the camera's computer decides to capture. The two aren't the same thing. Though they may appear to be very close to untrained eye, to a pro the difference is stark.

The analogy with which I'm most familiar is the CD/LP comparison. On cheap stereos, CDs sound excellent when compared to a vinyl LP, but on the best systems, the analog LP blows the doors off of what CDs can deliver.

This is a pretty esoteric discussion though. For practical purposes, it makes little difference if I'm shooting a gay cowboy scene, for example, using film or digital video. Both look fabulous.

ScratchMonkey

The difference is only partly due to "what the computer decides to capture". A digital device has a finite resolution, dynamic range, and accuracy, but so does film and vinyl.

CD's are worse than vinyl by design: The number of bits per sample is less than that required to accurately reproduce the range and precision of signal that can be recorded with vinyl. But you can sample with better A/D's and get equivalent capability.

Similarly, you can record video with high-resolution high-dynamic range imagers and get quality equivalent to 70 mm. Theater-quality CGI is imaged at high resolution so that it doesn't look grainy and pixelated when set behind live action.

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CingularDuality

Ironically, this isn't exactly an accurate analogy. Film records a finite number of color differences. So does digital imagery. An analog LP records an infinite number of sound differences. A CD records a nice large number of sound changes, but it's very finite.

With film, you've captured an image and that's it. It doesn't get any better (although your ability to perceive the subtle differences might), regardless of what you use to view it or blow it up. With an LP, the better your equipment, the more sound changes you can hear. With both digital video and audio, you've got a file that has a certain amount of information and that information can't get any better at all.

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leejo

The only thing ironic around here is your face. Wait. No, that's not it.

Your skills have improved, Cing, but your kung fu is still no match for my puppy style. Exactly like the film picture, the LP's quality doesn't improve, but better equipment may reveal more of its detail. Fool!

theoriginalblankman

Simple answer: digital cameras dont have frames. Atleast not real frames. Most digital cameras run at 29.97 frames per second and can be changed to 24 but the image is sketchy and it doesn't flow.

I was actually going to post this in my last thread but decided we weren't talking about it, but now: I'm not exactly sure if this transfers to digital cameras because they really haven't been around long enough for a comparison. But when speaking for cgi effects - No matter how good you make cgi look now in 20 years it's still going to look fake. The goal with cgi is to use it sparsely and only apply it when it directly relates to the story, some of the best examples of this are A beautiful Mind and Forest Gump. THe cgi in those movies are blatantly obvious and still you don't notice them because they are part of the story.

What not to do is what George Lucas did in 1997 when he redid the original star wars. The effects are obvious and distracting, it's as if he had no self control at all. in 97 they looked decent but now they just look like crap.

But, if you do something real, something that's actually there and take time and consideration with it you get something like 2001: A space odyssey. It was made almost 50 years ago and it still looks like kubrick was actually filming real spaceships in that great black sea.

I kind of got off on a limb there, but it was a point that needed to be made.

Oh, and also about depth of field. There is no way that can be created with a computer. Depth of field is the range of focus on the camera lens. Say a camera was filming someones face in a library. A smaller depth of field would only have the face in focus, a larger one would have the shelfs and books behind the face aswell as the face itself. It's important because certain elements in a story you want to block out by putting them out of focus. Say this character had nothing to do with the books in the background then you would keep them out of focus, but if the characters personality reall reflected the books and the library then you would keep everything in focus.
That's a pretty basic example but I hope you get the point.

CingularDuality

Yes, but the film picture is limited by the media recording it. Analog sound is not limited in the same manner (although our perception of it is limited by our own ears...).

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leejo

Both are limited by the recording media. A disposable camera's photo is a sad copy of the same picture taken with a high-quality camera. Mobile Fidelity takes an album's original master tapes and re-presses the lp on extra-heavy vinyl, using state-of-the-art equipment, and produces an LP that is noticibly better than the same album on a mass-produced lp. They do the same thing with CDs and make CDs that sounds better too!

I must be missing your point or something because what you're saying seems plain stooooopid and probably racist too.

RandomGuy

This thread has taken a crazy turn rather close to home: dalsa.com/dc/origin/dc_design.asp

I'm part of the design team.

leejo

Holy crap someone's in the Sandbox who actually knows what they're talking about, Texas won the national championship, and I just saw 4 horsemen riding down Louisiana St.

So RandomGuy, your site seems to confirm what several of us have been saying - that currently film reigns supreme but your team is working to fix that? Cing is a fool who doesn't know anything? Is that basically your gist, mmm?

theoriginalblankman

So am I understanding that you guys only rent out the origin? I hate to be a naysayyer and It does look like a very good camera but for $3,000 a day you might aswell go out and shoot something on film. Or did I read that wrong? I noticed those numbers were inconspicously removed of all dollar signs but I don't know what else they would be.

leejo

you guys seem to know what you're talking about, but from what I understand a fully-rigged professional 35mm motion picture camera can hit $250,000 fast so $3k/day doesn't seem out of whack to me. Pricey, but nobody renting one is spending their own money anyway, right?

IceCold

It seems to me that you're confusing some concepts. When talking about digital sound, think in terms of samples per second. If you have ten seconds of music and it's sampled ten times per second, you have one hundred different sounds to play back. Ten seconds of analog music has an infinite number of sounds. Obviously we can sample at a much higher rate, but this finite number applies regardless of the number of samples. Think in terms of one of the letters of text that is being displayed from this post on your computer screen. If you enlarge it, you'll see that the "O" isn't a circle at all, but rather a bunch of squares arranged to look like a circle. If you could draw a perfect circle freehand with a pen (analog), that circle would not have any ninety degree angles regardless of how much you enlarge it to look at it.

CDs can only hold so much data. Some people can tell the difference between CD quality music and a good analog recording. Some people can't. There are new formats competing right now (think VHS vs. BETA) that are supposed to be of a high enough quality that no human ear will be able to detect that it's digitized. I think it's come down to DVD-Audio and Super Audio CD. I can't wait to see one of them win and a standard to emerge.

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RandomGuy

That's the gist especially about Cing Note that a lot of high budget special effects type movies are using digital intermediate (scanned film). There is nothing about storing the information digitally that is inferior to storing it chemically on film. The points raised earlier about DV and HD cameras being inferior to film cameras are about image aquisition, not the medium. Of course when your talking about film the medium is part of the aquisition and better film makes better images. With a digital camera it's just the camera.

You are describing discretization error. The problem you are describing is not a question of how fast the samples are made but rather of how many bits are used to represent the sample. The sampling rate for CD audio is high enough for anyone who can't hear tones over 20kHz. Regardless, I can't hear the quantization error on CDs and I have my doubts that others can either. Besides, if the quantization noise can be compared to the noise from the needle on a turntable (I don't know how this comparison stacks up).

IceCold

No, they're seperate problems. The sampling rate has nothing to do with the frequency of the sound. That's bit rate. When thinking of bit rate, think in terms of how many different levels of sound any particular sample might represent. So, the bit rate refers to the number of sounds capable of being produced and the sample rate refers to how smooth (how often) the transitions occur. Both will have an effect on how close a digital recording can come to an analog recording.

Turntable noise, is of course, only an issue when discussing the quality of equipment. It's a practical issue, not a theoretical issue. I suppose you when comparing overall quality of music, that you could introduce turntable/needle noise as a comparison to the limitations of sampling rate/bit rate, but they aren't something that can otherwise be directly compared. One is a limitation of the format, while the other is introduced in playback.

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