Digital vs Film

[AnnaCarrington]

Im writing an essey on digital vs film and need some technical specifications of new cameras - does anyone know where I can find them?

[Jon Taylor]

Try requesting sales and technical literature from Sony. They have heavily invested in developing HDCAM technologies, ie. HDCAM is designed for transferring to 35mm print for projection.

Jon.

[miker]

I'd take a look at some of the more serious STar Wars sites ... no, really.

I think theforce.net ran the press release from Yahoo 'bout EP2 being shot on digital cameras. Went into the spec, too.

[miker]

http://cgi.theforce.net/theforce/tfn.cgi?storyID=6568

for a first lead

[Eric Jones]

Hi Anna,

Currently Sony's solution to digital cinema is the HDW-F900. The camera's they are using to Shoot E2 are modified by Panavision. Here are some specs.

Sony HDCAM Tape
1920x1080 Pixel Resolution
HDCAM is compressed at 2:1
It's color depth is 10-bit
24 frames a second
Progressive Scanned

Panavision has developed some great lenses based off of the Primo Lens Series. Leitz makes the glass Panavision the mechanics and housing etc. There is currently a 11:1 Zoom and a 4:1 zoom. One note the image sensors in the camera is approx. 2 1/2 times smaller than 35mm! SO think of it as super 16 almost. Also the widest apeture on these digital camera's lenses are T1.6. That is equivelent to an T4 in 35mm. If your shooting low-budget think about the cost of additional lighting package required to shoot "Digitally".

If you shoot 5279-500 ASA Film stock at around a 2.8 you need only 20fc of light to get an exposure. The digital camera has about an equivelent ASA of about 200. That means you need 100fc for an exposure(200ASA at a T4).

Sure you can crank up the video gain to try to get a "faster ASA" but the signal builds up noise which will equal grain.

Another note T1.6 Digital has the equivelent depth of field of a T4 in 35mm. More depth of field that you can't take away except by using really long lenses. Impractical in tight locations. DOF can be used quite creativly in all formats though to help tell a story.

Also the cost of tranferring HDCAM to 35mm film stock is aprox. $2/frame U.S. Dollars using a reputable film recording facility like EFILM in Hollywood. They have state of the art laser recorders to Kodak 5244 intermediate color stock. For a 100 minute feature the film-out will cost aprox. $288,000! (That's 100min X 60sec/min X 24fps X $2 frame)

I have read other quotes on crt based recorders at approx $500/minute that is still 50,000 for a film out.

So more lights, expensive film out and it's still not film. It doesn't make economic sense. Untill digital projection is in every corner of the world, I don't think it makes much sense either aestetically or financially.

One of the reasons E2 is shooting digitally is the amount of digital manipulation that is going on after the shoot. Since the image is recorded digitally Lucas is bypassing scanning the 35mm negative and also the cost of filmstock and processing. Pretty neglible on $100 million dollar movies. The tapes are still going to have to be digitized into the machines and stored on massive disk arrays.
One cool note is that Panavision/Sony camera is embedding metadata in a track on the tape. This is going to record focal length, apeture, focus and the camera settings on a frame by frame basis making matchmoving and tracking shots in 3D much easier for the CG guys.

No matter what format you shoot 35mm, 35mm Anamorphic, 16, Super 16 or Digitally (MiniDV,DVCAM,DBeta,or HD 24P) there are many technical and creative decisions to be made for what is best for the particular film. There is no easy and cheap way out of making good movies. No matter what the format.

Kind regards
Eric Jones
Los Angles, CA

[Mark Jury]

make your movie using a borrowed digital camera. Make lots of copies of your movie and send it everywhere. If it's that good the distributer will pay for it to be transferred onto 35mm, etc. Don't worry about it.