Davesrose
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Oct 20, 2006
- Posts
- 5,542
- Likes
- 383
Cool, I was curious if camera tech improved from the 90''s to what it is today. Any videos or links on that? Or can you go into that? How about dynamic range, noise improvements? It seems old films seem to lack in those respects. Perhaps better productions now?
Yeah, I think the most limiting factor for releasing movies on 4K (and you know 8K will come out sometime) is that the early digital cameras were limited to HD resolutions with limited dynamic range (some of the earliest ones were even below 1080P). DxOMark is a pretty popular site for camera sensor scores. The RED Helium 8K cinema camera is their highest score for dynamic range: the sensor gets close to 16 stops of light at base ISO, and records at 16bit RAW (RAW is like a digital negative). Many mirrorless/DSLR camera sensors can capture over 14 stops of light, but RAW tends to be 14bit (as the 14+ stops is just at base ISO). Processors have gotten better at handling noise, but it's always going to be a factor that if a scene is filmed in a dark environment, they have to raise ISO (and there will be more apparent noise/film grain). One of my HD demos has been the movie Baraka: it was a film made in the 90s, and filmed throughout the world (lovely scenery and photography). They spent great care in filming everything on quality 70mm. The telecine they did was 8K, and the BD track is 96khz....so I know it will look awesome on UHD. I'm interested in seeing 2001: Kubrick was also a photographer and the movie was filmed on 70mm to be shown on very large screens. Barry Lyndon would be another interesting movie: he filmed in dark environments, but used low ISO because he had a Zeiss specialty lens that had a whopping f/0.7 aperture (lets in several stops of light more then regular lenses). But I think films from the 80s and 90s started getting more grain because they assumed it was adequate for smaller multiplex screens. I recently saw Starship Troopers in 4K: the soundtrack was very good, and being involved with 3D animation, I was interested in seeing how early CGI looked. Colors and sharpness was good, but most all shots had grain. Maybe lots of grain will be considered by some to be aesthetically be pleasing...like lomo photography (collecting cheap cameras that produce odd, inferior images).
Last edited: