35mm movies to Blu Ray

Here is a "curly" one for some of us. Now with Blu Ray movie titles
available, you need to ask, is the source (35mm) now good enough for a high
standard like 1080P. 35mm has been the accepted standard of movie making now
for many years and to give you an idea of the quality of 35mm in the home,
if you are old enough to have a drawer full of slides, you will notice they
are also 35mm (in most cases anyway). To put it more simpler, I don't
believe 35mm will stack up against 1080P.

I have yet to experience a movie/video recorded in 1080P and played back on
a monitor similar to that of the Sony "X" series. So my point is, until
movies are produced "all the way", right from acquisition, in 1080P, we will
not see the benefits of this magnificent format. I am now shooting in 1080i
and I can assure you that even this lower end HD format, still blows away
DVD quality movies.

Many years ago, I predicted that cinemas will one day become fully digital.
I was told, that it would never happen. My answer then was that nothing was
changing as rapidly as the electronics industry and we would see the quality
improve to the standard that film will become obsolete. Well today, here in
OZ, we see this happening on a growing pattern. Unfortunately, we are not
being subjected to the best HD format and projection equipment being used. I
witnessed one such movie in a Cinema last week and was so disappointed with
the quality, I walked out.

1080P (or higher as it becomes available) will become the accepted standard
of movie making and it is not that far off.

DAVO

"DAvid" <davideo.TakeThisOut@bigpond.net.au> wrote in message
news:PfXPh.7587$M.2621@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
> Here is a "curly" one for some of us. Now with Blu Ray movie titles
> available, you need to ask, is the source (35mm) now good enough for a
> high standard like 1080P. 35mm has been the accepted standard of movie
> making now for many years and to give you an idea of the quality of 35mm
> in the home, if you are old enough to have a drawer full of slides, you
> will notice they are also 35mm (in most cases anyway). To put it more
> simpler, I don't believe 35mm will stack up against 1080P.
>
> I have yet to experience a movie/video recorded in 1080P and played back
> on a monitor similar to that of the Sony "X" series. So my point is, until
> movies are produced "all the way", right from acquisition, in 1080P, we
> will not see the benefits of this magnificent format. I am now shooting in
> 1080i and I can assure you that even this lower end HD format, still blows
> away DVD quality movies.
>
> Many years ago, I predicted that cinemas will one day become fully
> digital. I was told, that it would never happen. My answer then was that
> nothing was changing as rapidly as the electronics industry and we would
> see the quality improve to the standard that film will become obsolete.
> Well today, here in OZ, we see this happening on a growing pattern.
> Unfortunately, we are not being subjected to the best HD format and
> projection equipment being used. I witnessed one such movie in a Cinema
> last week and was so disappointed with the quality, I walked out.
>
> 1080P (or higher as it becomes available) will become the accepted
> standard of movie making and it is not that far off.
>
> DAVO
>

Just a matter of correctness Davo. 35mm slides taken by the average full
frame 135 format camera have in fact a larger area of exposed emulsion (36mm
x 24mm) as opposed to 35mm movie film which uses the same filmstock format
except the frames are not arranged lengthwise along the filmstrip (as in a
typical still camera), but across the filmstrip in a similar fashion the
half frame still 135 photography.

The exception in the movie industry was VistaVision which unlike every other
movie format ran the film horizontally. The idea was to produce a higher
resolution negative than the smaller framed vertical running formats for
widescreen productions. Unfortunately it wasn't very popular, being
introduced by Paramount Pictures in 1954. It did however make a brief
comeback in later years the format was considered albut defunct by the early
1960s, the camera system was somewhat revived for visual effects by John
Dykstra at Industrial Light and Magic, starting with Star Wars, as a means
of reducing granularity in the optical printer by having increased original
camera negative area at the point of image creation. Its usage has again
declined since the dominance of computer-based visual effects.

As for getting an acceptable resolution from 35mm filmstock, that is a
fairly variable thing. There are many high resolution film emulsions out
there being developed especially for the large screen theatre motion picture
industy. Film resolution isn't everything. Some directors choose some
filmstock that is especially grainy or shoot for a particular colour cast
for visual effect. No doubt most HT buffs would prefer as high a resolution
as possible with perfect colour balance, real world film cinemaphotography
is something else again.

No doubt there will still be a swag of movies shot on 70mm filmstock just
aching to be transferred to 1080p. However if transferred in their original
theatrical format Joe Public viewing any of the HR digital formats will
still be missing a bit with black bars on top and below the picture.
Metrovision, PanaVision are just a couple of the movie formats wider than
16:9.

Cheers,
Alan