Are these pictures film or video - see if you can guess

[Jerome Cain]

the last two pictures must be film as I agreed with you, Jim

[vt220]

the only one that remotely looks like it might be film to me is big beard guy, and i think that's just cause he's the smallest picture. he's also the only one that even remotely looks like he would have been shot on a real BW film stock (noisiest image). and he's pretty iffy on second glance.

if this were to be a valid test, color should not be removed if the images were acquired in a color format. no fair!

. . . but mostly they all look like compressed jpegs to me.

[eddie]

hello

I think in the second batch the first is film, the second is video with a grain added.
I think this is because the first has a softer focus, and also the contrast is more subtle. Ive seen quite a lot of super8 stock and in my opinion they do tend to be soft focus.
Could well be wrong though!

if this is an experiment with 'film look' its pretty interesting!

Be interested in the answers.

[MovieStuff]

Here are my guesses:




Here is my reasoning:

The top row of photos 1-4 are all 720x540 and show no signs of rastering in Photoshop. Hence, I think they're from a digital still camera and not from PAL telecine, which would be 720x576. Photo number 6 IS 720x576 therefore it seems likely to me to be a PAL telecine of a super 8 frame. Photo number 5 is darned close to a 5x7 inch photo and doesn't really match any of the other aspect ratios. So I THINK number 5 is from a print that has been scanned, but it could easily be any photo source, digital or not, and cropped to the new size.

That's my guess!

Roger

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ January 08, 2003 08:56 AM: Message edited by: MovieStuff ]</font>

[Scotness]

Okay well I suppose I better get you all out of suspense

The short answers are:

ONE (2 parrots) - digital still
TWO (sexy woman (won't explain!)) - digital still
THREE (nest) - digital still
FOUR (butt ugly guy with beard!) - miniDV still
FIVE (man looking ahead) - super 8
SIX (same woman) - digital still


So most people got it right - congratulations.

Why have I been doing this? - Just reading a bit about the film look in video and wanted to try it and learn a bit about it. I'm hoping my next film can be on 16mm but if not it may be on miniDV so that's the main reason for starting to look into this.

One, two and three were taken on my recent holidays - this was with a JVC GRDV820EA camcorder which has a still photo function that records to a memory stick. They were all taken in colour and were all underexposed (except perhaps #two) I under exposed them to just try and avoid that burnt out look - but I think I underexpoesed them too much.

Anyway so in photoshop I converted them to greyscale - I think on all three did an autolevels and then added monochromatic noise set at 2% in a gaussian distribution. - Then dropped down to jpegs for the net.

Photo number four - is actually the first one I tried to do to get a film look - this was a month or so ago. This was with the same camcorder but shot in monochrome - I think it was on autofocus - I just put it there and shot myself with it so don't know if it was fully in focus or not - and hence if that's what caused the softer focus. Anyway captured it to the computer and started pulling frames out with premiere - this is when I noticed the interlacing - so deinterlaced it and fiddled with the brightness and contrast a bit. I read somewhere that you should never use brightness and contrast settings because it actually destroys the data - but maybe here it was a good thing if it softened the focus a bit. Maybe this is something the interpolation in the deinterlacing did as well - perhaps useful here again too. I added noise to this one too in photoshop before I posted it. It's interesting too that the soft focus is the main thing most people have noticed with it in terms of thinking it could be film. And I've got to say too yes it is me - and no I normally don't look like that! - that was a very preliminary test shot for my next film - some of you may be familar with an Australian outlaw in the 1870's called Ned Kelly - anyway I'll be playing him in my next film and so I'm growing the beard for that. There's a big budget film coming out about him this year with Heath Ledger playing him, you'll probably get that sometime soon - it premieres here in March. Well done Mattias for picking me in those shots! I don't really care what people say though - I hate the look, but I think it's a going to be a good film and a great role to play so I'm putting up with it - my wife (photos 2 and 6!) bless her soul has some how managed to put up with it - though she keeps reminding me every now and again that it is actually grounds for divorce ;-) BTW there is a great web site on Ned Kelly at http://www.ironoutlaw.com/ if anyone's interested.

Okay so after posting these I started to read the comments - and noticed the edge enhancements were mentioned alot - something I forgot about so I went back to a few super8 frames that weren't on the In My Image site and just dropped them to grey scale to look at - it's these pictures here:





And what really struck me is the soft focus and how pronounced the grain is - and how it seems to hug the image or the contents of the image - which is the main difference I think between grain and the added noise which seems to go across the whole frame flatly.

So anyway how to get rid of edge enhancements when you can't turn them off in your camera? - so I grabbed another photo - the second one of my wife - and did the same thing with grey scale, autolevels then fooled round with blurring and settled on a gaussian blur (can't remember the parameters) and then added noise - 3% this time. I felt too I should have put at least one film originated one up (and should have doen this with the first set) so put this one up of Peter (photo #5) - it's a still taken from In My Image - and since the faces were about the same size etc I thought it would be good for comparison - the street photos seemed too non descript.

Everything's in black and white by the way because that's what I'll be shooting the next film on - and I haven't got the knowledge yet to even attempt to deal with the colour component in the video as film thing.

I did this to learn a bit and to test how good my knowledge of it all so far is (which is pretty average) and of course to do this I needed some willing guinea pigs! So thanks everyone - your comments have taught me alot.

Also too the depth of field issue is interesting and I was trying to get that with a number of shots.

I think in summary personally for me the only reason I'd shoot on video is for economic reasons - which of course are a fact of life - but if I can I'll do it on 16mm.

From what I've learnt so far - these are the most important things when trying to make video look like film:

1 Don't ovew expose or blow out - but don't underexpose too far either
2 Get shallow depth of field
3 Get a soft focus --- preferraably in shooting (no edge enhancements - filters as Basstruc reccomended)- or possibly in post (deinterlacing - Gaussian blur)
4 Adjust levels - brightness contrast to match film
5 Add grain - if you can afford it through something like Grain Surgery which by the looks of the demos on their web page http://www.visinf.com/gs/ does a great job - not at all like noise - but if you can't afford that do it through noise

Of course there's more you can do than this - and I wouldn't say I've got it to look like film - and I don't know if you ever really can - it's something to do with the grain I think - but it's interesting

So anyway thanks to all the participants! Hope you learnt something too!

Here's the originals for comparison - I'm afraid I don't have the original of the miniDV one - I saved over it with the changed one





contd.... (you're only allowed 4 pics per post!)

[Scotness]

And here's the parrot one just gone over again but with a gaussian blur and a median blur factored in to soften the focus a bit more. The grain/noise is still problematic.



The grain/noise is still problematic.Here's an example from the Grain Surgery site where the grain structure of another photo is laid onto a digital one - looks better I think.

contd.....

[Scotness]

If anyone can do better with these originals I'd be keen to see it and hear how. The interesting thing is all of this was done with just photoshop - but if anyone has Cinelook or Magic Bullet or Grain Surgery I'd be interested to see the results.

Scot M
www.mango-a-gogo.com

[MovieStuff]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><table border="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#333333" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FF9900"><tr><td width="100%" bgcolor="#DDDDDD"><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by Scotness:

From what I've learnt so far - these are the most important things when trying to make video look like film:

1 Don't ovew expose or blow out - but don't underexpose too far either</font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>

Unless that's the look you want!

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><table border="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#333333" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FF9900"><tr><td width="100%" bgcolor="#DDDDDD"><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by Scotness:
2 Get shallow depth of field

</font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>

Unless you want more depth of field!

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><table border="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#333333" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FF9900"><tr><td width="100%" bgcolor="#DDDDDD"><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by Scotness:
3 Get a soft focus
</font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>

Unless you want your image to be sharp!

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><table border="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#333333" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FF9900"><tr><td width="100%" bgcolor="#DDDDDD"><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by Scotness:

4 Adjust levels - brightness contrast to match film</font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>

Agreed.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><table border="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#333333" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FF9900"><tr><td width="100%" bgcolor="#DDDDDD"><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by Scotness:
5 Add grain - </font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>

Only if you want to emulate a smaller format under 35mm.

At the risk of seeming argumentative (who me?) I feel that one has to decide what type of production they are trying to emulate. For instance, if you look at a really big budget film on video like Lawrence of Arabia, you will find few shots with visible grain nor shallow depth of field. In fact, that's pretty much true of all major motion pictures shot in 35mm that have a large lighting package and the time to screw with the lighting to accomodate depth of field and ASA needs.

Certainly big films have scenes with shallow depth of field but only when they want it so. For the most part, constant shallow depth of field is a trait found in low budget 35mm films and not big budget 35mm films. Therefore, if one's goal is to emulate the look of a low budget 35mm film, then have shallow depth of field on all the shots.

Likewise, the presence of grain is also something more visible in lower budget films working with higher ASA stocks. Also, the grain is going to be far more noticable on a 35mm print projected than a 70mm print projected because the grain you see in the theater is mostly coming from the lousy print stock and not the negative. The same negative Ranked directly will have far less visible grain for a variety of reasons. One is that the viewing size is so reduced that the 35mm grain is practically non-existant. Also, grain suppression is more often used in the transfer. However, films shot on a higher ASA stock or films shot in a smaller format like 16mm and S8mm can't really afford to use much grain supression or the image goes very soft very quickly. As a result, smaller format productions will seem naturally more grainy than virtually grainless big budget 35mm productions.

So that means if you want to emulate the look of a low budget film, you not only need shallow depth of field, but you also need to add grain to emulate either the higher ASA stock and/or the smaller format.

However, if you want to emulate the look of a big budget film, then keeping the grain at a minium and having good depth of field when you need it will go a long way toward increasing the apparent production values. Super 8 has a ton of natural depth of field due to the shorter focal length lenses. To me that's an asset. Depth of field can always be made shallow by using a longer focal length lens and/or ND filters. But having shallow depth of field on EVERY shot will slow the production down to a crawl, guaranteed, and the final results will look like a low budget film.

Regarding exposure or soft focus, I think that can be what ever you want. Big budget 35mm films have both soft focus and sharp focus shots as well as a huge range of exposures depending on the feel one wants to convey.

My two cents....

Roger

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ January 08, 2003 10:28 AM: Message edited by: MovieStuff ]</font>

[Actor]

Both are film.

[Scotness]

(Just quickly) I agree Roger - it's not something you would always weant - i was just going for the most obvious to see if I could get it - and then you'd be a bit judicious about what you'd use - and why -- BTW wasn't Lawrence shot on 60mm - or 65mm - imagine the lack fo grain in that! - but aren't the colours a bit muted because of the technicolour process - a friend of mine told me that - is that true?

gotta fly

Scot