Comment by kalleboo
14 years ago
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.