
R.I.P., the movie camera: 1888-2011 - RyanMcGreal
http://www.salon.com/2011/10/13/r_i_p_the_movie_camera_1888_2011/singleton/
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trimbo
Ex-VFX guy here. For me it's more like "don't let the door hit you on the way
out."

Consider all of the issues:

* A toxic chemical process for development. Both the source negative and the (thousands of) projected copies.

* Weave, both during filming and projection.

* Aspect ratio madness because of legacy formats. For example, academy formats have an offset center thanks to the audio track.

* Light leak, and other physical film issues you don't have with digital.

* Film is very inconsistent, and between projects, stock choices can make the source material really bad to work with. Take the legendarily bad Vision 500T that many cameramen would use even on critical bluescreen/greenscreen shots it had no place in.

* For IMAX, going digital has the added benefit of losing weight. IMAX reels can only go about 90 seconds at a time. That'll also help high speed. Filming 500-1000 fps will tear through a 35mm reel in about 5 seconds. Again, pretty wasteful when you think about it compared to using a Phantom.

Now it's just a matter of getting all theaters to use digital projection.

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pluies
I am at the moment working with a guy whose job is to digitalise old (usually
amateur) movies filmed on 8mm and 16mm reels.

It's a bit of a shame to see these go, because the quality of 50-yo footage is
quite incredible, even without any post-processing. The sheer simplicity and
sturdiness of some old mechanical Russian camera is also amazing.

What will happen of the videos we are shooting now? I'm pretty sure we'll be
losing a lot more of it to hard drive failures or simple mistakes. Digital is
a lot harder to store away in the attic to be re-discovered by your
grandchildren.

~~~
Klinky
People have lost troves of footage & pictures due to fire & water damage
thanks to physical formats. People will also lose footage & pictures to
digital media loss/damage, though it's much easier to duplicate a hard drive
or a couple thousand data files than it is to duplicate a physical format.

While it may be sad that the grandkids aren't going to find 8mm film in the
attic, there's nothing really stipulating that even if they did find it they'd
have the ambitiousness to track down the proper equipment to view the footage.
It's not like you can walk into most any store & find an 8mm or 16mm player.
If the fear is that people won't be able to play the content a previous
generation created, that fear has already been realized with 8mm & 16mm film.

~~~
codedivine
On the other hand, I am hoping people won't be storing content in proprietary
formats without a spec, or heaven-forbid with some DRM restrictions, or you
might not have the proper software (or the proper rights if DRMed) to play it
back 50 years later.

~~~
InclinedPlane
In the realm of master copies for films the issue isn't so much DRM as merely
encryption. There's likely to be some pressure to ensure that the master is
"secure" from "thievery" regardless of where the bits physically reside, which
will probably manifest itself in the use of strong encryption. Which, of
course, brings up the question of what happens when the files are still around
but the encryption keys are lost.

The bigger problem is the classic fundamental problem of data retention. The
people responsible for retention probably do not value the retention of the
data independent of other developments to be of sufficient value to guarantee
that retention with robust measures. For example, they could leave unencrypted
copies (or encrypted copies with the encryption keys separate) in the custody
of the library of congress. Or they could use some sort of N of M keys
encryption system and distribute copies and keys to numerous individuals or
institutions around the world. Etc. However, while such things would retention
of the media would be valuable to the world at large even after, say, a global
catastrophe (asteroid impact, nuclear war, etc.) or merely the bankruptcy of
the company that created the media such concerns the company itself would tend
not to share those ideals.

~~~
Klinky
This is more of a management issue than anything to do with the format your
information is stored in. Lots of physical reels of film, photographs &
documents have been lost due to poor management & I am sure this trend will
continue into the digital age.

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bprater
I knew the film camera was dead when I saw the first video coming from the
Canon 5D Mark II. It wasn't perfect, but it was close. All coming from a
package that fits in your fists and uses no film.

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mark_l_watson
I used conventional movie cameras for most of my life (videographer for my
high scholl movie club, family stuff), but you would have to forcefully pry my
Sony EX1 from my hands (unless you were swapping in an EX3).

A good hidef digital video camera is a joy to use, and great software like FCP
is so much better than splicing film when editing.

Even digital cameras are adequate (<http://youtu.be/zIe3EKO43Sg> \- I took
this last week with my Canon T2i) and in some cases when you want a very
narrow in-focus zone, better than a digital video camera.

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trafficlight
At my previous employer we had a Red One (<http://red.com>). 5 minutes with
that thing and you could see the writing on the wall.

~~~
stephen_g
And now cinematographers (like John Schwartzman, DOP on the new Spiderman
reboot) say the RED Epic has picture quality like 65mm film, and it shoots
full resolution at up to 96 frames per second! All onto a 2.5mm SSD drive.

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cromulent
James Jannard's Red obviously had something to do with this. If you can buy a
Red for less than the cost of renting a film camera from Panavision, then
that's the way it will go.

[http://www.wired.com/entertainment/hollywood/magazine/16-09/...](http://www.wired.com/entertainment/hollywood/magazine/16-09/ff_redcamera?currentPage=all)

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mathattack
I am frequently the crotchety old man in these situations but video (and
sound) are ripe for digital technology. New technologies in these fields won't
replace good stories, but they will replace old technologies.

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antidaily
I'll miss the grain.

~~~
thwarted
There are filters for that.

~~~
paganel
They're fake, just like Instagram is a fake.

~~~
pavlov
In that sense, the letters you're looking at on this webpage are also "fake"
because these letterforms were not achieved by using hot-metal typesetting.

Art constantly reinvents its methods while retaining forms derived from the
past. That's cultural heritage.

If efficiency on a particular medium were the only concern, it wouldn't make
any sense to use Latin letters on a computer screen, with all these awkward
shapes derived from Roman stonecutting and Medieval handwriting... (The
Braille alphabet would probably be the most suitable for digital displays.)

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wegwegerg
So film has an digital equivalent resolution of 4k If you don't shoot in 4k
digital you are screwing yourself badly, and most people are...

~~~
Keyframe
Actually, I've read somewhere (somewhere credible, maybe it was cinefex) that
35mm 2-perf has a maximum equivalent resolution of 8.5K, 4-perf is probably
then a double or quadruple of that? 2K in output is more than enough today,
but there are technical reasons on some cameras to shoot in 4K - for example
on RED One. If you don't shoot in 4K, you're not using the whole area of
sensor, which results in odd behavior of lenses you're using.

~~~
stephen_g
You can scan film at whatever resolution you want, but on average (and this
varies between different stocks, different film speeds, different processing)
you won't get that much effective resolution from 35mm beyond 4K - you just
start seeing the grains in more detail! And that is assuming a camera
negative. A 3rd generation release print that has been played a few times can
have less than 1.8K resolution.

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RandallBrown
It's pretty funny that the youtube video the guy posted wasn't even filmed
with a camera. Brakhage just put moth wings on film and projected it.

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protomyth
I'm pretty sure IMax still uses a film camera.

~~~
bradleyland
Current IMAX cameras use 70 mm film, but they're looking to go to 4K digital
with new equipment. Cameras like the RED Epic can already capture at 5K
resolutions. There's not much reason to stick with the 70 mm format.

~~~
protomyth
I seem to remember from an interview on the rc podcast that 4k would not be
enough for them.

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suivix
Fascinating read. It's amazing to see such established things become obsolete.

