Comment by newman314
14 years ago
Obviously, I am not claiming infinite detail. There is going to be a limit based on the grain and the size of the film (35mm, Super, IMAX). 65mm film shot is going to be of higher quality than what digital is capable of today.
While I have no doubt that digital will eventually catch up and surpass film, there inevitably is going to be a transition period where quality films were recorded (let's just say at 2k) where the input is constrained and extrapolation be the only available option.
4k is the current state of the art. It will not be so forever and because it's recorded at 4k, we can't go back and extract more dynamic range due to the limitation of the sensor. Whereas you can go back, redigitize an IMAX film (say Chronos shot in 1985) that is in good condition and get way more info than something shot on 4k yesterday.
TL;DR IMO input still absolutely matters. 35mm is not the upper limit. We went through this with photography and am now doing the same with video/film.
EDIT: After thinking more about it, here's a more extreme example. I purchased a Kodak DC20 back in the 90s (early adopter yay!), even if the camera had decent glass, there's no way I can go back to an image captured by that camera and magically get the equivalent of 22mp 5D camera by resampling. If I had used a film camera, I can get a much improved scan.
EDIT2: Here's a good example. Slumdog Millionaire was mostly shot on a SI-2K which recorded at 2k. You can't go back and get 4k output on the digital portions. So generations later, we will be stuck enjoying an Academy Award winning film at that level of quality.
http://www.siliconimaging.com/DigitalCinema/News/PR_01_31_09...
And we'll never be able to go back and "re-film" "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" on 32mm, it'll forever be marred by grain and poor low-light performance of 16mm. I guess I'm not sure what your point is. The best digital can present is currently worse than the best film can present, yes. That doesn't mean we shouldn't use it.
My original response was to the effect that the output should be high quality so that data is preserved if sampled.
Digital is the future. Hence it behooves us to have the maximal input & output possible at this time. Unfortunately, this is not common now and the price paid is that content created during this period will be stuck at the same quality level.
I'm entirely in favour of increasing the resolution/bit-depth for video, but I think the general problem is more complicated by external factors.
The cost of renting a red one and recording straight digital vs hiring a film camera, process lab, and all the other parts needed quite possibly means that some films might never have been produced due to filming costs.
What measure of quality can compare X against X, if it was never made?
I imagine (I have very little actual experience here, so it's perfectly possible I'm wrong) that digital recording might make it easier/cheaper to retake shots/scenes repeatedly to get them right as well, offering another 2nd order quality effect.