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No one makes film cameras anymore


BurgaFlippinMan

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I dont know if this has been posted, but it seems that the 3 camera makers (Arri, Panavison and Aaton) who were the remaining film camera makers have all stopped making them.

http://magazine.creativecow.net/article/film-fading-to-black

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Sooner than I expected. Of course, the cameras that are around now are not going to stop working all of a sudden but it's only a matter of time before they will become a faint memory.

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I watched CEO3K last night and there scene were Gillian was using a film camera, was rather nostalgic. Wind Wind, Click. Wind Wind, Click.

One good thing is that you no longer have to be concerned about aggressive x-ray scanners in remote airports, that destroyed rolls of film.

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Sooner than I expected. Of course, the cameras that are around now are not going to stop working all of a sudden but it's only a matter of time before they will become a faint memory.

How does the resolution of current digital movie cameras compare to that of 35 mm film?

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Sooner than I expected. Of course, the cameras that are around now are not going to stop working all of a sudden but it's only a matter of time before they will become a faint memory.

How does the resolution of current digital movie cameras compare to that of 35 mm film?

try watching the shootout videos Zacuto have made

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Sooner than I expected. Of course, the cameras that are around now are not going to stop working all of a sudden but it's only a matter of time before they will become a faint memory.

How does the resolution of current digital movie cameras compare to that of 35 mm film?

The RED Epic camera (being used to shot The Hobbit and Prometheus among others) shoots at 5K resolution. I believe 35mm has an estimated resolution of somewhere between 4 and 5K so in terms of resolution alone, the newest digital cinema cameras are a match for 35mm. I suppose we'll know if everything is up to the same quality when films shot on the Epic and similar systems become more common place.

I think the Epic's predecessor, the RED One shot at 4K.

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I watched CEO3K last night and there scene were Gillian was using a film camera, was rather nostalgic. Wind Wind, Click. Wind Wind, Click.

One good thing is that you no longer have to be concerned about aggressive x-ray scanners in remote airports, that destroyed rolls of film.

If Sarah Harding had had a digital camera, she wouldn't have been nearly killed by a Stegosaurus.

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Sooner than I expected. Of course, the cameras that are around now are not going to stop working all of a sudden but it's only a matter of time before they will become a faint memory.

How does the resolution of current digital movie cameras compare to that of 35 mm film?

The RED Epic camera (being used to shot The Hobbit and Prometheus among others) shoots at 5K resolution. I believe 35mm has an estimated resolution of somewhere between 4 and 5K so in terms of resolution alone, the newest digital cinema cameras are a match for 35mm. I suppose we'll know if everything is up to the same quality when films shot on the Epic and similar systems become more common place.

I think the Epic's predecessor, the RED One shot at 4K.

Did Lucas film the prequels at higher than 1080p? I'm sure I read somewhere that the cameras back then were 1080p, full stop.

This was the main reservation I've had about digital filmmaking; that film has future-proofing built in, as you can keep scanning at higher resolutions. But obviously there's a limit to that, beyond which the image gets too soft.

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There was an article recently on Roger Deakins using the Arri Alexa for In Time. One of the reasons he ended up using it was because it could pick up more detail in low light, moreso than film, and he didn't need to use as many lighting setups.

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If anyone is interested in watching a bunch of webisodes, here are the aforementioned Zacuto ones. While a bit technical at times with the jargon,I think they do quite a good job explaining it to the laymen if you arent too well versed in photography terms. They stack up the latest digital cameras against 4k scans as well as a few DSLRs.

The 2010 one

http://www.zacuto.com/shootout

The 2011 one

http://www.zacuto.co...011/episode-one

http://www.zacuto.co...011/episode-two

http://www.zacuto.co...1/episode-three

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I wouldn't worry about the directors who still shoot film. A lot of productions rent out film cameras, so as long companies like Chapman/Leonard keep renting them out, 35mm isn't going the way of the dinosaur yet.

I would say the days of 35mm would be limited when Kodak and Fujifilm stop producing film stock. That's not for a couple more years...

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I'm not even really worried film won't be used anymore in the future. Speaking as a stills enthusiast, 35mm film has been quite irrelevant for a while now imo and even medium format film is no longer worth the effort in most cases. And I'm one of the 'film lovers' of my school's photoclub

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Sooner than I expected. Of course, the cameras that are around now are not going to stop working all of a sudden but it's only a matter of time before they will become a faint memory.

How does the resolution of current digital movie cameras compare to that of 35 mm film?

The RED Epic camera (being used to shot The Hobbit and Prometheus among others) shoots at 5K resolution. I believe 35mm has an estimated resolution of somewhere between 4 and 5K so in terms of resolution alone, the newest digital cinema cameras are a match for 35mm. I suppose we'll know if everything is up to the same quality when films shot on the Epic and similar systems become more common place.

I think the Epic's predecessor, the RED One shot at 4K.

Did Lucas film the prequels at higher than 1080p? I'm sure I read somewhere that the cameras back then were 1080p, full stop.

Yep, they're 1080p.

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Didn't the early digital recordings have a very low resolution compared to that of traditional analogue recording technology.

I mean even now we are basically still using 16 bit 44.1 as a standard in our CD players, while an analogue recording can actually be converted to a far higher digital resolution, as SACD proved.

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AOTC and ROTS are 1080p, so are most of the other digitally shot movies up till recently such as Apocalypto and Sin City. 28 Days later is not even HD.

It was shot with a cheap Canon camera, and it looked awful. I realize the production had little money, but they should've gone with 16mm or something. The video look really cheapened the movie's look.

28 Weeks Later looks wonderfully film-like without sacrificing that raw feel, and they used several kinds of cameras on that one.

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Didn't the early digital recordings have a very low resolution compared to that of traditional analogue recording technology.

I mean even now we are basically still using 16 bit 44.1 as a standard in our CD players, while an analogue recording can actually be converted to a far higher digital resolution, as SACD proved.

well, technology has to be pushed at some point for it to gain some momentum.

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It was shot with a cheap Canon camera, and it looked awful. I realize the production had little money, but they should've gone with 16mm or something. The video look really cheapened the movie's look.

No! The fact that is was shot on DV is probably the film's biggest asset.

Boyle certainly did this with 28 Days Later. Shooting on cheap DV cameras not only kept the budget down but also created a raw and chaotic atmosphere -- DV may not look as "good" as film (and it never will), but use DV to its strengths and it can do things film can never do (and we don't mean just being able to fit into the kind of tight corners that giant film cameras can't). Video gives a sense of immediacy, of uncensored reality, something that also worked with The Blair Witch Project -- use video right and you can make the audience really believe that most of London got wiped out by a "rage virus"... without actually seeing that large-scale devastation. - Bryan Enk

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Absolutely agreed about 28 Days. The low grade of the video gave it a grimness and a reality that you just can't get using film. It's very easy to imagine that someone within that epidemic grabbed their camera and started filming.

In fact it's because of these quality issues that I find it a hard to watch film. It's terrifyingly realistic.

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  • 2 weeks later...

In a very nice post on his blog, Ebert has admitted the day has come where he can no longer tell the difference between film and digital despite being adamant that he always could in the past.

http://blogs.suntime...th_of_film.html

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Absolutely agreed about 28 Days. The low grade of the video gave it a grimness and a reality that you just can't get using film. It's very easy to imagine that someone within that epidemic grabbed their camera and started filming.

It's very effective within that respective, but visually it's just a nightmare. The harsh lighting and quality of the lighting is just distracting. I wish the Red One or Arri Alexa had been invented much earlier, because the production could've achieved a similar look with a better camera.

Danny Boyle shot the second-unit scenes for 28 Weeks Later (primarily the Infected attack on the cottage) -- maintaining that grimy, raw feel from the first film but the scenes were crisp and well-shot. Still frighteningly realistic, but at least the camera quality didn't kill my eyes.

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