Arri Alexa 65 6K Camera

[singhcr]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Brain challenge:

The size difference between a 35mm/4perf Academy frame (22mm. wide) and a 65mm/5perf frame results in a x% increase in resolution for the 65.

x = what?

35mm film has an aspect ratio of 1.37:1 for an Academy frame.

x=1.37y
x=22mm -> y=(22mm/1.37)= 16.05mm. y= 4 perfs, 1 perf=(16.05mm/4)= 4.013mm
Total negative area= 22mm * 16.05mm= 353.1 square mm.

65mm film has an AR of 2.20:1.

x=2.20y
y= 5 perfs
x=2.20(5*4.013mm), -> x=44.138mm.
y= 44.138/2.2=20.062mm
Total negative area= 44.138 mm * 20.062mm = 885.5 square mm.

Difference= 885.5- 353.1=532.4
% increase= (532.4/353.1)*100=150.8%

[schan1269]

Originally Posted by ZoetMB

When I saw "The Master" at the Ziegfeld in NYC, not only did it have end-to-end dirt (which is the fault of the lab or theatre, not the film's makers) but none of the shots had the sharpness and depth of other films that I've seen that were shot in 65mm. Films shot in 65mm generally jumped off the screen at you and had a three-dimensional quality. The visuals had no warmth to them.

I haven't seen "The Master" on BD. If it looks great there, it's certainly possible that the problem was the print. It may be that aside from IMAX 70mm, the labs don't know how to deal with 70mm anymore.

I used to think that I only saw the screen door effect when the background of a scene was white. But I was at a local art house the other day to see "The Drop" and it was obvious the entire time not just on the feature, but on all the trailers as well and it wasn't even a very large screen - probably well under 30 feet. I found it so annoying that I took my glasses off.

When audiences were polled after "Far and Away", no one really perceived that it looked better than a film shot in 35mm and blown-up to 70mm as was common practice back then. The fact that it wasn't reviewed well didn't help either. If "Far and Away" had been a big success, other directors would have rushed to shoot their films in 65mm. That never happened. Panavision created a new camera for that film and gave the process a new name: "Panavision Super70" as opposed to the previously used "70mm Super Panavision". As I wrote, aside from IMAX, only four films have been shot in 65mm since that time in the last 22 years and one of them, "Samsara", has never been shown in 70mm.

"Far and Away" netted $28.9 million in rentals. IMDB claims it grossed $58.8 million (including the 35mm showings). That translates to about $49 million in rentals and $100.1 million gross in 2014 dollars. The budget was estimated at $60 million ($102 million in 2014 dollars), so when you add marketing, the film lost substantial money. Probably one of Ron Howard's worst showings. I actually didn't think it was all that bad. When I saw it theatrically, I knew it wasn't going to be a classic, but I enjoyed it.

A long time ago a friend wrote for the Indianapolis Star. He did the weekend movie blurbs with a short "his take "...

Regarding the Ron Howard film...

"Far and Away...a great way to start a nap."

[singhcr]

Originally Posted by schan1269

A long time ago a friend wrote for the Indianapolis Star. He did the weekend movie blurbs with a short "his take "...

Regarding the Ron Howard film...

"Far and Away...a great way to start a nap."

Ouch!

I really don't understand why people dislike this movie so much. It's not a groundbreaking masterpiece, but it is overall an entertaining film and I like the time period. Plus, who can resist Colm Meaney?

[in2video2]

Originally Posted by Kris Deering

The IMAX camera is pretty unimpressive from a 4K capture point of view, pretty old tech. Plus I LOVE that the Arri is 2D, anything to stop the 3D trend is fine with me. I hate what 3D has done to commercial cinema. From ruining 2D showings due to lazy projectionists that don't take their projectors to 2D mode to the horrible silver screens that look like crap with hot spotting, sparkles and obvious texturing, there is NOTHING I like about the 3D trend of Hollywood.

I agree with you as well. We have had some time now to evaluate the current 3D trend in movie making. I would welcome this new upgrade in 2D to return the quality we now lack. And any return to 65mm/70mm would be welcome.

[Nicolawicz]

Originally Posted by SillySauce

This camera is going to crush 35mm movies. Only Imax and 65mm films like "The Master" will hold up.

Are you sure? Some say that 35mm should be scanned at around 8K to get all the resolution. But anyway, resolution isn't everything. Even 16mm looks better and has more weight than anything digital, no matter how many K's.

[Spike M.]

Originally Posted by Nicolawicz

Are you sure? Some say that 35mm should be scanned at around 8K to get all the resolution.

Those people would be morons.

[Nicolawicz]

You think Wally Pfister is a moron?

[Spike M.]

Originally Posted by Nicolawicz

You think Wally Pfister is a moron?

As far as his love affair with film, yes. The random K numbers he arrives at in interviews aren't consistent with any scientific findings. Testing generally shows that an anamorphic 35mm image peaks at around 4K, with a spherical one closer to 3.2 and 3.5K, according to RED's tests. You can scan it at whatever you want, but those are the points you hit a diminishing return. You could argue that RED has motivation to shortchange 35mm, but they arrived at these numbers back when they were trying to convince everyone that 1080p capture wasn't good enough to replace film. At the time, if anything, they had reason to be generous about their measurements.

[Nicolawicz]

What do you think of the new Texas Chain Saw Massacre transfer, for instance? Do you think it wouldn't be different scanned at 2K? Not to mention that grain today is much finer than in the 70s. I'd say Super 8 is close to 2K (it's a fact that Super 8 film looks much better transferred in HD than in SD). So I don't find it hard to believe that 35mm could be around 8K.

[Spike M.]

Originally Posted by Nicolawicz

What do you think of the new Texas Chain Saw Massacre transfer, for instance? Do you think it wouldn't be different scanned at 2K? Not to mention that grain today is much finer than in the 70s. I'd say Super 8 is close to 2K (it's a fact that Super 8 film looks much better transferred in HD than in SD). So I don't find it hard to believe that 35mm could be around 8K.

You should tell IMAX that then, since they seem perfectly content using 8K as their standard scan resolution for 15/70mm. Obviously Super 8 looks better in HD than SD, everything does. You're getting that extra bit depth and color space. I haven't seen the Chain Saw remaster, but scanning/uprezing lower resolution sources at 4K is pretty common place. Skyfall, a 2.8K digital capture, was mastered in 4K. Judging from the stills of Chain Saw, as long as they kept a high bit rate, they could've scanned it at 2K without any perceptible loss in fidelity. It's a fairly soft image.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Spike M.

As far as his love affair with film, yes. The random K numbers he arrives at in interviews aren't consistent with any scientific findings. Testing generally shows that an anamorphic 35mm image peaks at around 4K, with a spherical one closer to 3.2 and 3.5K...

Spike’s correct, not Wally, and it actually varies with the ISO….

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

The measured resolution of 35mm film is about 3.2 – 3.4k….when referring to slow stock, i.e. ISO 50 film. For faster film, ISO 500, in particular, it drops even lower, being around 3.0 k.

This has been known for quite some time by studios which have done tests...

In the real world with real content, a Northlight 2 scanner producing 4K files -

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

...I’d say, with a project in which a facility scans 35mm film at ‘4K’ (which is actually somewhat misleading because the Northlight 2 has an 8K CCD array which produces 4K files), they’ll output at 10bit log DPX.

Now, best practice that some cutting edge facilities (which have the storage capacity) follow? Scan the OCN and output at 16bit DPX. From there, uncorrected content intended for theatrical presentation is graded in DCI P3 space and for theatrical deliverables, P3 is converted to XYZ color space (12 bit pixel depth). For home deliverables (like for instance HD Blu-rays), I’ve already posted the color management pipeline explaining about the ODT and trim pass even revealing typical booking times reserved by Producers for the process here...https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread...im#post9623181

Regarding best practice for a DI workflow? That be 16 bit OpenEXR ACES…http://www.oscars.org/science-techno...ESOverview.pdf starting from 16bit RAW digital camera imagery.

4K files will get you what you want off a 35mm frame. It’s only when you have locked down camera frames, no filter, prime/ultra prime lenses that you may push this. The more significant decision-making involves when you have to scan Vision 3 stock, since 10bit log DPX output may not be sufficient, will the facility go to 16bit? That would be better to harvest everything but, it incurs substantially more cost.

[Nicolawicz]

Originally Posted by Spike M.

You should tell IMAX that then, since they seem perfectly content using 8K as their standard scan resolution for 15/70mm.

I guess that's because they haven't been able to build a scanner with higher resolution.

Originally Posted by Spike M.

Obviously Super 8 looks better in HD than SD, everything does. You're getting that extra bit depth and color space.

I mean just in terms of resolution, obviously.

[Nicolawicz]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

4K files will get you what you want off a 35mm frame. It’s only when you have locked down camera frames, no filter, prime/ultra prime lenses that you may push this.

Well, some shots may be sharper than others, but is 4K enough to fully define the form of the grain itself?

[Spike M.]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Spike’s correct, not Wally, and it actually varies with the ISO….

In the real world with real content, a Northlight 2 scanner producing 4K files -

4K files will get you what you want off a 35mm frame. It’s only when you have locked down camera frames, no filter, prime/ultra prime lenses that you may push this. The more significant decision-making involves when you have to scan Vision 3 stock, since 10bit log DPX output may not be sufficient, will the facility go to 16bit? That would be better to harvest everything but, it incurs substantially more cost.

Yeah, I didn't want to jump into too much rambling detail about how assigning film a general resolution is sort of nonsense given how many variables there are, so for the purposes of responding to Nicola, who seems fresh to how K's work, I went with general numbers. Your more nuanced and tech heavy posts fascinate me though; thanks for providing those links. I have some reading to do.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Nicolawicz

Well, some shots may be sharper than others, but is 4K enough to fully define the form of the grain itself?

Even under the absolutely most ideal conditions (in a lab shooting a test pattern at 25fps with Eastman ESR 50D color negative rather than more typical resolution-robbing real world cinematographic conditions) and scanning theorem of Nyquist and Shannon, the maximum amount of spatial information that a Super 35 mm negative can carry for digitization = 4,153 pixels (width), meaning a tad more than 4K with the perfect camera shooting conditions… that calculation coming from the 2009 SMPTE Journal Award paper - https://www.smpte.org/about/awards-p...ournal-winners

In order to transfer the maximum information found in film negative without aliasing and as little noise as possible, Arri prefers to accomplish this with their 3K sensor scanner, which through ‘mechanical micro-scanning’ yields a 6K scanning resolution, and a 4K final image size. (here a pdf from Kodak advertising Arri’s concept of how much harvesting is needed for film…http://motion.kodak.com/motion/uploadedFiles/arri4K.pdf )

Filmlight’s Northlight (1) scanner prefers a more direct approach (its optical resolution consists of a 6K CCD array) to yield a 6K scanning resolution and a 4K final image size.

I would say that the Northlight (1) outputting 4K files is sufficient in order to capture the proper intensity of grain from Super 35 and that the Northlight 2 is plenty sufficient for full frame 35mm.

[Richard Paul]

From what I have read 4K resolution for 35 mm film is sufficient and that is before frame rate is mentioned. With 24 fps recording even moderate movement reduces the resolution of 35 mm film to 3K or less.

Originally Posted by Nicolawicz

But anyway, resolution isn't everything. Even 16mm looks better and has more weight than anything digital, no matter how many K's.

I would mention that color space and dynamic range are limited in the DCI standard (the standard for digital cinema). Modern digital cameras can do far better than the DCI standard.

[murphywmm]

Don't feed the troll, people. This Nicolawicz guy is on just about every movie forum I post at and on all of them he posts nothing but endless rants against digital video. Don't expect any logic whatsoever from him.

[Nicolawicz]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Even under the absolutely most ideal conditions (in a lab shooting a test pattern at 25fps with Eastman ESR 50D color negative rather than more typical resolution-robbing real world cinematographic conditions) and scanning theorem of Nyquist and Shannon, the maximum amount of spatial information that a Super 35 mm negative can carry for digitization = 4,153 pixels (width), meaning a tad more than 4K with the perfect camera shooting conditions… that calculation coming from the 2009 SMPTE Journal Award paper - https://www.smpte.org/about/awards-p...ournal-winners

In order to transfer the maximum information found in film negative without aliasing and as little noise as possible, Arri prefers to accomplish this with their 3K sensor scanner, which through ‘mechanical micro-scanning’ yields a 6K scanning resolution, and a 4K final image size. (here a pdf from Kodak advertising Arri’s concept of how much harvesting is needed for film…http://motion.kodak.com/motion/uploadedFiles/arri4K.pdf )

Filmlight’s Northlight (1) scanner prefers a more direct approach (its optical resolution consists of a 6K CCD array) to yield a 6K scanning resolution and a 4K final image size.

I would say that the Northlight (1) outputting 4K files is sufficient in order to capture the proper intensity of grain from Super 35 and that the Northlight 2 is plenty sufficient for full frame 35mm.

Thanks. Which do you think is better, the Arriscan or the Northlight 1? They both also scan 16mm at 4K, right?

[Penton-Man]

For those unaware, over the past several years I’ve mentioned happenings at CAMERIMAGE which is an international film festival on the art of Cinematography...
http://vimeo.com/100096260
http://vimeo.com/111403592

held in Poland. Well, this year (past November) a special workshop was held to preview the ALEXA 65 camera featuring the first public recording and image processing of 65 mm ARRIRAW images, as well as live creation of a 4K DCP.

Nice blurb on the new camera (scroll down past the glass info)….http://www.rogueelementdigital.com/news.php

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

http://vimeo.com/100096260
http://vimeo.com/111403592

Speaking of parodies, e.g. the 2nd vimeo linked above ^ , the Hitler Downfall YouTube parodies (made famous during the Blu-ray vs. HD DVD war) live on …

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vI7x...ature=youtu.be