Just because technology can do something, doent meant its always right

[TimFox]

The SMPTE estimates that there are roughly 30 standards in use for digital cinema.
A popular specification (DCI) can be found at  https://dcimovies.com/specification/DCI-DCSS-v141_2021-1013.pdf
That spec references "4k" at 4096 x 2160 pixels, and "2k" at 2048 x 1080 pixels, and specifies that decoders for DCI shall handle both, and be capable of 24 or 48 frames/sec.

2K sounds like a significant step backward compared to old fashioned 35mm film. Frankly even 4K sounds low for a movie theater sized screen, personally I would consider 8K to be about the bare minimum to be called reasonable and given the high dollar movie industry I'm surprised they aren't using something really exotic.

The original film Imax standard used 70 mm sprocketed film transported horizontally, with each (huge) frame approximately 70 mm by 48 mm, at 24 frames/sec.
This is larger than the 70 mm frame with vertical transport.
The digital quasi-Imax stuff is available at 4k, 6k, 6.5k, and 8k, with 12k announced but not yet supported.  Some stuff operates at 48 frames/sec.
A laser version operates at 4k and 60 frames/sec.
These digital versions are evolving rapidly.

[ejeffrey]

The red one camera supported 4k 15 years ago and was basically a standard for digital cinematography.  These days 8K is pretty common I think.  A lot of cameras are also designed to trade resolution vs frame rate so you might get less resolution in 2x or 4x slow motion or higher resolution for stills.

[james_s]

The original film Imax standard used 70 mm sprocketed film transported horizontally, with each (huge) frame approximately 70 mm by 48 mm, at 24 frames/sec.
This is larger than the 70 mm frame with vertical transport.
The digital quasi-Imax stuff is available at 4k, 6k, 6.5k, and 8k, with 12k announced but not yet supported.  Some stuff operates at 48 frames/sec.
A laser version operates at 4k and 60 frames/sec.
These digital versions are evolving rapidly.

I've never seen a digital Imax, does it look anything close to the real deal? 12k doesn't sound adequate for such a huge film size and 4k is frankly laughable but maybe it looks better than it sounds.

[TimFox]

I have not seen one myself.  Check the individual film listing carefully, since digital is taking over everything.

[tooki]

Movies used to be shot on 35mm film, IIRC while analog it is roughly equivalent to 8K.

Yes and no. First, just a quick reminder that the oft-cited figure of 21Mp for 35mm refers to 35mm photographic film, which is run horizontally through the camera, giving a 36x24mm frame, whereas 35mm movie film runs vertically, with a maximum frame size of around 22x16mm.

Either way, though, the maximum resolution and the typical resolution vary wildly. Only the sharpest, slowest of films (low ISO) get the maximum resolutions, but require tons of light. Fast (high ISO) films for low light had markedly lower resolution, and modern digital can easily exceed those.

Additionally, there’s a huge difference between the film negatives and a typical release print, which is many generations removed from the negatives: release prints suck. (I’ve gone to special movie screenings done with fewer-generations-removed prints, and the difference is striking.) If I had to guesstimate, I’d say a typical release print probably tops out at 4K, if that, and many aren’t any better than 2K.

[tooki]

2K sounds like a significant step backward compared to old fashioned 35mm film. Frankly even 4K sounds low for a movie theater sized screen, personally I would consider 8K to be about the bare minimum to be called reasonable and given the high dollar movie industry I'm surprised they aren't using something really exotic.

4K is more than enough for a movie screen, more or less independent of size. Our eyes have finite resolution, and typical 20/20 eyesight can’t resolve more than about 5K when the screen is filling our central field of view. (See attached image from https://www.4kshooters.net/2014/08/11/4k-resolution-and-the-human-eye/ )

Add in the fact that we don’t need as much resolution for moving pictures as for still ones, and it becomes a fool’s errand to strive for more — on the output. It’s more data to distribute, and less efficient to display, since each subpixel needs borders and internal structures, regardless of how large it is, so lower resolutions yield more light transmission.

On the recording side, more resolution makes sense, since it gives more flexibility to crop, etc. in post.

[strawberry]

90deg must be lover optimal resolution than 11K. gausian curve

[NiHaoMike]

A little detail often missed is that while displays have the same resolution for color and brightness, most video formats in common use (at least for content distribution) halve the color resolution. Thus, on a 1080p display, 4K downscaled to 1080p looks a little better than most native 1080p content.

[eti]

Time to just give up and admit it; apart from convenience, film is, and was BETTER, always, in ALL respects.

[TimFox]

Time to just give up and admit it; apart from convenience, film is, and was BETTER, always, in ALL respects.

For stills, the only technical advantage of digital over film is that high-speed film is now hard to find, and high-ASA digital works reasonably well compared with 35 mm film.
However, you will take my 4x5 and 8x10 inch film cameras from my cold, dead hands.

[BrianHG]

I think a desktop 8k, with that stupid cleartype disabled, is just perfect for reading .pdf documents with 2 facing pages.
At least I imagine so.as cleartype still has a minor enhancement on large 4k monitors and does improve 2k displays at the cost of that annoying color fringing around the fonts with fine vertical lines.

[tooki]

Time to just give up and admit it; apart from convenience, film is, and was BETTER, always, in ALL respects.

Honestly? No, at least not for 35mm and smaller.

Digital has surpassed film, especially in low light, where there’s no comparison. A modern DSLR or digital cinema camera can produce great images at ISO speeds film could only dream of.

[Miyuki]

Movies used to be shot on 35mm film, IIRC while analog it is roughly equivalent to 8K.

Yes and no. First, just a quick reminder that the oft-cited figure of 21Mp for 35mm refers to 35mm photographic film, which is run horizontally through the camera, giving a 36x24mm frame, whereas 35mm movie film runs vertically, with a maximum frame size of around 22x16mm.

Either way, though, the maximum resolution and the typical resolution vary wildly. Only the sharpest, slowest of films (low ISO) get the maximum resolutions, but require tons of light. Fast (high ISO) films for low light had markedly lower resolution, and modern digital can easily exceed those.

Additionally, there’s a huge difference between the film negatives and a typical release print, which is many generations removed from the negatives: release prints suck. (I’ve gone to special movie screenings done with fewer-generations-removed prints, and the difference is striking.) If I had to guesstimate, I’d say a typical release print probably tops out at 4K, if that, and many aren’t any better than 2K.

Exactly
35mm capture can be around that 6-8Mp, it is also near the optics limit
But digital capture way outperforms it, and most movie grade 4-8k cameras will have bigger sensors giving way better quality than film
And when you project from prints, they degrade pretty fast. If you have just a few passes then you are surpassed by 4k, even if it was made to this high quality at start. And can end up worse than HD after a few weeks 

[f4eru]

Perhaps you can do a realistic 8K representation of the mushiness of a CRT picture
That yould really be pleasing to the eye, more than sharp pixels.

[Psi]

cant see difference between 1280x720 and 2560x1440 on cellphone only battery usage is different

The difference is night and day between 720P and 1440p on a phone watching youtube.
You can tell between 1080p and 1440p however it's much less obvious and you kinda need high bitrate native content which you almost never have on a phone.

[eti]

Anyone saying “digital is better than film” Can sit for hours and type many paragraphs, and say all they like about it, but they clearly don’t understand physics and how film works.

Film is better. Period. It’s physics, not an opinion. Dynamic range is almost infinite too

[bd139]

Anyone saying “digital is better than film” Can sit for hours and type many paragraphs, and say all they like about it, but they clearly don’t understand physics and how film works.

Film is better. Period. It’s physics, not an opinion. Dynamic range is almost infinite too

Absolutely no way. It really doesn't actually matter which is superior from a physics perspective or any theoretical side because photography is 80% subjective art and 20% technology.

Now the important bit is digital is far far better because of the opportunities it creates post capture which cannot be replicated by any film workflow in the art department. The end product is what is important.

A fine example here. I blew the sky out on this completely



But it was shot in 14-bit RAW which meant the sky could be pulled back out again



Try doing that with an enlarger and some colour paper...

Have been doing photography for about 30 years through 35mm film, large format and digital and at film is as dead as anything. Film is good fun but that's about it.

Now for the kick in the teeth. Most smartphones are better now than any 35mm body on the market. The only poor area is the lenses. In fact the most important bit of photography are the lenses and the post production workflow. Everything else is moot.

Shot on a iPhone. It even mustered some bokeh...



The real point is that you can argue about physics until the world implodes but you can take really damn good photos with a potato if you know what you are doing. And good is subjective and not related to physics at all. I've printed stuff out of my old 6MP D70 fairly large and it looked great.

[ebastler]

Anyone saying “digital is better than film” Can sit for hours and type many paragraphs, and say all they like about it, but they clearly don’t understand physics and how film works.

Film is better. Period. It’s physics, not an opinion. Dynamic range is almost infinite too

Rather than making categorical statements, it would help if you define what "better" means to you.

With photographic film you get a tradeoff between resolution (grain size) and sensitivity and dynamic range (ISO value and the range of gray values which a "spot" on the film can assume). With digital cameras you get a similar tradeoff (larger pixels have a larger full-well capacity, hence larger dynamic range). For digital cameras the physical pixel size and dynamic range are "hard-coded" in the sensor, while in analog photography you can use different film types. But digital cameras can adjust the resolution vs. dynamic range balance too, by binning pixels together.

If you use "spatial resolution * pixel dynamic range" as your performance critierion, I am pretty certain that digital sensors beat analog film for any chosen balance of resolution vs. dynamic range. If you choose "spatial resolution * low-light sensitivity" as your performance criterion, I am very certain that digital beats analog.

Don't take my word for it: See e.g. https://www.imaging.org/site/PDFS/Papers/1998/PICS-0-43/622.pdf; the key figure is attached below. Hint: That is a 1998 paper. Digital sensors have made more progress than film since then...

[eti]

My late friend, Peter Whitehead, was tour cameraman for the Stones and was friends with, and did promos for Pink Floyd (He lived next door to them) and also The Dubliners.  He worked extensively with the BBC, and when he told me something, I’d take his word for it over anyone alive, as he REALLY knew his stuff. He was no “ amateur photographer“, you can Google him if you like.

Film is better. He’s got cans of unseen footage, many many stacks of which I lifted with my own hands when he moved house. Each can was worth a MINIMUM of circa £50,000 to any number of media outlets, and he had around 200 of them.

I’ll take his word on film being best, apart from it being my own informed view too. Colour range of natural substances cannot be anywhere NEAR “emulated” by pixels.

Google him, he was falconer for the King of Saudi Arabia, and friends with Howard Marks, David Hockney, Michael Caine, ex boyfriend of Marianne Faithfull… yes I’m name dropping, because he’s a legend of pop music video production, he KNEW his stuff back from when he began.

Sorry and all that, but he was an authority on film and that’s how I see it. 

>> https://www.independent.co.uk/obituaries/peter-whitehead-film-counterculture-swinging-london-rolling-stones-led-zeppelin-beat-poetry-a8964856.html

I’ll always take his word over armchair amateurs (and this isn’t even a photography forum!!)

[bd139]

You're confusing photographic nostalgia with reality.

The subject is more important than the media and you just confirmed it.

[eti]

You're confusing photographic nostalgia with reality.

Prove it.

[ebastler]

My late friend, Peter Whitehead [...] was an authority on film and that’s how I see it.

OK, I took your advice to Google him. Sorry, but I doubt his being an authority on digital cameras:

In 1969, he abandoned film making and escaped to the desert in Morocco, at which time his career as a falconer began.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Whitehead_(filmmaker)

[bd139]

You're confusing photographic nostalgia with reality.

Prove it.

If you take the celebrities and the money points out of your argument it looks like:

My late friend, Bob, was cameraman for the Joe Bloggses and was friends with Dave from the pub, and did promos for the Stinky Pinks (He lived next door to them) and also The Dumbells.  He worked extensively with the Gordon Bleus, and when he told me something, I’d take his word for it over anyone alive, as he REALLY knew his stuff. He was no “ amateur photographer“, you can Google him if you like.

Film is better. He’s got cans of unseen footage, many many stacks of which I lifted with my own hands when he moved house. Each can was worth a MINIMUM of circa £2 to any number of media outlets, and he had around 200 of them.

I’ll take his word on film being best, apart from it being my own informed view too. Colour range of natural substances cannot be anywhere NEAR “emulated” by pixels.

Google him, he was cleaner for the local council estate, and friends with Bill, Mike, ex boyfriend of Shelley… yes I’m name dropping, because he’s a legend of snuff video production, he KNEW his stuff back from when he began.

Sorry and all that, but he was an authority on film and that’s how I see it. 

This is a stream of emotions with nothing factual or relevance in a temporal scale.

[eti]

My late friend, Peter Whitehead [...] was an authority on film and that’s how I see it.

OK, I took your advice to Google him. Sorry, but I doubt his being an authority on digital cameras:

In 1969, he abandoned film making and escaped to the desert in Morocco, at which time his career as a falconer began.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Whitehead_(filmmaker)

He’s owned more cameras (film and digital) than you’ve worn socks. He had an Ampex splicing/editing suite in his front room. I worked extensively with him for MANY years, and he was and is adored by film and media societies worldwide, because he was widely regarded as the pioneer of the pop video.

Your cursory research doesn’t tell you anything. Keep learning old bean.

[eti]

You're confusing photographic nostalgia with reality.

Prove it.

If you take the celebrities and the money points out of your argument it looks like:

My late friend, Bob, was cameraman for the Joe Bloggses and was friends with Dave from the pub, and did promos for the Stinky Pinks (He lived next door to them) and also The Dumbells.  He worked extensively with the Gordon Bleus, and when he told me something, I’d take his word for it over anyone alive, as he REALLY knew his stuff. He was no “ amateur photographer“, you can Google him if you like.

Film is better. He’s got cans of unseen footage, many many stacks of which I lifted with my own hands when he moved house. Each can was worth a MINIMUM of circa £2 to any number of media outlets, and he had around 200 of them.

I’ll take his word on film being best, apart from it being my own informed view too. Colour range of natural substances cannot be anywhere NEAR “emulated” by pixels.

Google him, he was cleaner for the local council estate, and friends with Bill, Mike, ex boyfriend of Shelley… yes I’m name dropping, because he’s a legend of snuff video production, he KNEW his stuff back from when he began.

Sorry and all that, but he was an authority on film and that’s how I see it. 

This is a stream of emotions with nothing factual or relevance in a temporal scale.

Facetious mockery doesn’t negate a thing. You lose any credibility automatically from that churlish response.