Super 8 vs miniDV comparison shots posted

[Scottness]

On our first day of shooting In My Image alot of miniDV footage was taken side by side with the Super 8 for the purposes of comparison - and now I've finally managed to get it all captured and posted if anyone wants to have a look - it makes for an interesting comparison.
http://www.mango-a-gogo.com/inmyimage/comp.htm


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[MovieStuff]

High Scott!

Is the vignetting on the super 8 images from the transfer? I see rounded undercut corners. What's up with that?

Just curious...

Roger

[mattias]

very cool. you know, the main reason you think the video looks "clearer" is because the "timing" is different. if you increase the contrast slightly (to push the black level to true black) and take out some blue from your super 8 footage, i bet it'll look even better. what was very obvious to me was how "real" the video looked and how "movie" the super 8 looked. just what you wanted, right?

/matt

[mattias]

ok, here's an example of what i mean:



/matt

[This message has been edited by mattias (edited October 21, 2001).]

[MikeBrantley]

Thanks for sharing those images, Scott. Very interesting. I wonder how the comparison would be if both the video and film had been B&W.... and if the video had some sort of digital post technique applied to it to simulate film grain.

Matt, your changes to the film still image look good. Was that done with Photoshop?


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--Mike Brantley

[mattias]

final cut pro actually, although the exact same thing can be done with any software that allows you to adjust the color balance of shadows, midtones and highlights individually. i increased the contrast slightly, took out some blue and added some red (a little too much i notice now) to the midtones, and removed the pretty heavy green cast (foliage reflections) from the shadows. highlights loooked good already.

/mr color timer ;-)

[Alex]

Even though I'm going to mercilessly critique your examples, thank you for going to the time and effort to do them.


Background, Background, Background.

First of all, every comparison is deeply flawed.

the backgrounds are too disparate to warrant a true comparison.

Comparison #1, the Super-8 has been underexposed..how can I tell, look at the white slate, not even a hint of overexposure on it, why expose the shot for white? nothing else in the shot is white once the slate is removed! Clearly the Super-8 is at least one stop underexposed.

Comparison #2 Note the dark tree with the three dark branches...

ON the video side, it is in the center background of the picture, looking just as dark as on the once again underexposed super-8.

But the rest of the background on the video frame is very bright, but you used a darker background on the Super-8 that was to the right of the dark tree.

The video side has blown out areas on the mans pants and in certain highlights in the background, the Super-8 side HAS NOTHING blown out...again, an unfair comparison.

Comparison #3, I'm very suspicious of the shadow on the ground in the super-8 image, whereas in the video image there are NO SHADOWS on the ground at all.

This is the closest example you have of both images being similar in framing and time of day...both images apear to be properly exposed, but for some reason, the Super-8 shot was taken when the lighting was more contrasty than when the digital was taken.

If you look at the man's sleeve on the super-8 shot, you can clearly see very defined shadow patterns, on the digital side, there are no shadow patterns on the mans sleeve.

Plus, the super-8 shot is a wider shot, combined with the additional contrast from the direct sun, you have created two additional factors NOT FOUND in the digital version.

The digital shot is more telephoto on the, thereby "flattening" out the contrast differences...the lighting is much more even on the digital shot as compared to the Super-8 shot.

Comparison #4

Again, the Digital Video has a couple of "hot-spots" right where they should be, on the background, the super-8 shot has NO hot spots anywhere, and the angle is different enough to make this not be a fair comparison.

Comparison #5

Again, the backgrounds don't match, exposure on the super-8 seems close to optimal, the vignetting on the super-8 is noticeable, and if you had zoomed in a little bit on the Super-8 image, the Super-8 film would have handled the contrast better.

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By the way, I agree 100% with you that the video has a "nowness" and Super-8 has a "story" or "thenness" to it.

I just saw some ektachrome shot outdoors that was developed at Yale Labs that looked spectacular.

I think Ektachrome is getting too bad of rap on this forum.

In your ultra-contrasty location, Ektachrome would have served you better.

....and your super-8 video transfer is overall too blue.

due to the thick lush area where you shooting it, that additional contrast of the environment means ecktachrome might have given you a better look, especially if you used a very slight warming filter (1/2 stop loss at most) in addition to the 85 filter.

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Alex



[This message has been edited by Alex (edited October 21, 2001).]

[Scottness]

Hi Alex - I tend to agree with you in as much as all the variables weren't the same and just the mediums themselves are left to be compared - I made a reference to this in terms of the angles not being the same and the last two pairs probably not being from the same take - but perhaps I should have mentioned in terms of the exposure - I have no idea what Alan did when he was shooting the miniDV in terms of the exposure and how closely or not (obviously) that is to what the Super 8 camera was doing --- but anyway just a few replies to some of your points on each comparison:

Pair One: I don't know if the Super 8 was underexposed or not - it probablywas we tended to do that intentionally alot - but I'm sure it wasn't set for the slate - we lit for the scenes with the actors inthem and then stuck the slate in beore we shot - making alot of theslates unreadable! - the factthat this one is well lit is just co-incidence

Pair Two - Sure I agree - it's not showing miniDV at it's best - I don't know what the exposure settings were for it there - we just let Alan do what ever he liked -- our purpose in doing this shoot was to get the Super 8 images - this was just a side thing getting the miniDV to compare - and certainly not as constructive as it could have been if we went to the lengths of getting all the variables the same for each camera - but I think it still is revealing in a number of ways - some things show out fairly I think

Pair Three - yeah you might be right here - I thought these were of the same take, but maybe not - I won't unfortunately be able to go back and check or recapture the images for some tome now - but the shadows and the exposure levels are quite problematic here - unfortunately it wasn't as easy as I had hoped it would be to pair up the takes between the dv and the s8 - because the dv didn't take all the takes, and didn't get the slate in alot of the ones it did -- and going on sound I haven't paired the s8 sound to it's images yet so can't use that as a reference point at the moment

Pair Four - I'm so sure that these two were from a different take that I wasn't even sure whether to include them or not myself - but from memory most of the dv of this shot looked burnt out - an exposure problem I guess and again not showing dv at it's best

Pair Five - Sure but I think if you take the exposure levels of Simon on the left as a reference point (and they both seem about the same) then it's interesting to see how the different mediums handle the rest of the scene - but that as a comparison can only tgo so far because again I'm not sure if these were of the same take or not, and hence the same surrounding light - but if not they wouldn't be that far apart (but then that's not exacting is it) - the colour registration is interesting too - but then the telecine has alot to do with that

So in the end - how do you compare apples with apples? - I don't know I'd just rather eat them!

But I think most of your points are quite valid Alex and it's not an even comparison, though some things I think do show through -- certainly for me the feel and texture of the film is far more preferable


Anyway Mattias that was good work on the colour correction - we'll be doing a fair bit of that once editing is further developed

And on the Ektachrome - I did look into that but found I just couldn't afford it and didn't wantto mix stocks - so it was all or nothing - I was worried about the grain size too - so I decided to live with K40 and it's small exposure lattitude and Australia is very contrasty - which is actually quite beautiful - it really is a sun drenched place - but you do need more exposure lattitude than we had - but some degrees of blacks and burn outs does capture the feeling here

Anyway thanks for you input guys - hope the images clarify something! Perhaps someone could set up a fair dinkum comparison where all the variables are locked down and it really is apples with apples

Scot M



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[Matt Pacini]

Alex, I think you must be insane!
Ektacrhome looks terrible.
Sure, everything looks great on an awesome broadcast monitor playing off of a digibeta deck, but I want to see how it holds up after going to VHS and playing on an average system... it doesn't!
My Ektachrome in Lost Tribes looked pretty good under those conditions also, until I got home and plugged in my VHS dupe tapes.
You coudl say that's irrelevant, but I think it's totally relevant, because your audience is NOT going to be watching your video on DigiBeta on a broadcast quality monitor.
Plus, Ektachrome is more expensive, so it's really stupid to shoot on it.
Scott, you did the right thing shooting the whole movie in K-40.
I wish I had...

Matt Pacini

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[Matt Pacini]

By the way, you did the right thing by underexposing, as I've said many times before.
K-40 renders detail well in the shadows, as you can see, but it blows out in the highlights and that's when it starts looking like a home movie.
When you expose like you did, you have detail everwhere, and you can tweak it to look any way you want.
If you overexpose, you're hosed... if you increase contrast, it just looks aweful.
Good job...

Matt Pacini

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