XL2 - 2.35:1

[Jestorius]

If you are using an anamorphic lens with the xl2's nativ 16:9 than you should get something like an almost 2.35:1 frame? Is it right?

[Guest]

Precisely :)

[Guest]

How does that work out in the end? Does that mean a 2:35:1 image is recorded on a 16:9 frame in 720x480 streached.

So you would streach it out in the edit system and what - could you output to film or something at and it would look better than 16:9? For widescreenTV, would a 2:35:1 image would look any better than a 16:9 image?

Just trying to think of a reason to want that...

[Gary_McClurg]

Have D.B if your the actor I used to love your show on Fox I think a few years back. If not hello anyway.

[J_Barnes]

Hmm...to view it correctly, you'd have to stretch it back out in your edit, but you'd want to output it as the squeezed version for transfer to film. The physical 35mm frame size is the same regardless of whether it's 1.85 or 2.34. Normally the anamorphic footage is recorded on the film anamorphic and is corrected by a lens in projection.

I'd go as far as to say that 2.34 would look worse on a television, simply because of the fact that you end up using even fewer lines then you do for academy apeture, so in effect...you wind up with less resolution.

There are some DP's who hate 'scope because the lenses required actually reduce resolution, so it's a matter or personal taste for a particular aspect ratio rather then any resolution gains.

[Mike_Donis]

If you knew you were going to film though - forgetting the fact that you'd then likely shoot on film - and you wanted a 2.35 image, it would yeild slightly better quality to go the 16:9 in-camera XL2 in conjunction with a 16:9 adaptor. That way you're getting a 2.35 image using the whole available CCD.

I re-iterate though, you'd really see a benefit going to film, and that's it. Going to DVD, you'd be in 16:9 anyways, and be decompressing the image, rather than slapping bars on the top and bottom (which leaves the middle section at full resolution).
And if you *know* you're going to film, then you'd likely be shooting on film, so I can't see many people using this method...

[J_Barnes]

Well...I'd expect a lot of productions to end up using this method, but not for the right reasons.

It's still significantly cheaper then shooting on film. And unfortunatly, a lot of people sell their film to investors with the idea of picking up distro deals to cover the film-out, that way they can dump the most amount of money into production and just hope that some benefactor will come along and salavage their project by paying for the film out based on the merrits and quality of their production.

For that business model, an anamorphic XL2 is perfect. It's cheap enough to invest in, and you can sell your investors on the idea that it's high enough quality for distribution (which it really isn't).

[Neil Rowe]

the above method of getting your low budget film transferred to film does make sense though.. if your not going to be distributed.. theres no reason to waste money to have your digital movie transferred to film. you can project digital at most festivals that anyone cares about. if your going to get distributed.. they wil pay for the transfer.

thank goodness the new generation of cameras (dalsa origin.. viper filmstream)are still way cheaper to shoot than film, and can even shoot 2.37:1 Native! and they are really indistiguisheable from 35mm.. eventually that technology will trickle down.. I plan on jumping up stream like a salmon instead of waiting for what at the top of the stream to come to me though. .. anyway .. check out this.. youll like it.. :P

heres an image from the viper filmstream(same camera uised to shoot 80% of the new film "Collateral" with Tom Cruise)->

http://www.pixelmonger.com/vip2

heres the site for the Viper filmstream:

http://www.thomsongrassvalley.com/products/cameras/viper/

heres the Dalsa Origin site:

http://www.dalsa.com/dc/dc.asp


very very cool.. digital is going to surpass film aquisition quicker than most people think.. IMHO, in many aspects of the production process it already passed it by miles.. ;)

[Gary_McClurg]

Yes but what is the cost of renting the Viper or Dalsa? How much to convert the tapes so you can edit or the hard drive in case of the viper I belive? What do you edit these films with? FCP or a high end system that you have to rent and what's the cost, plus what's the cost of the operator?

[J_Barnes]

Well, I can safely say that I'm "Old school" despite my youngish age. I've been shooting film far longer then I've been shooting video, so I'm certainly not born of the "shoot it now and filter it later" digital film school. Also, I've been working in photography for close to 15 years now, processing my own film and printing my own enlargments.

I was one of those people who said that film would never be surpassed by digital sensors...BUT, given the choice between my trusty old Nikon FE and a Canon D1s...I'm going to take the canon every day of the week now. I didn't think it would happen, but digital is perfecting the physical process of photographic capture to a point beyond the capabilites of film.

It's only logical that digital motion cameras will slowly adapt the gains made in digital still cameras and surpass their film counterparts.

That being said, the hurdle is still storage and transfer. Unless there are monumental leaps in storage capacity and throuput, coupled with vast drops in price, fully uncompressed full-frame digital aquisition isn't going to be practical in any way.

Film is still cheaper then hard drives in terms of raw storage of information, and unless it becomes practical for everyone in the production chain to work with the volume of data generated by digital aquisition...it will be a complete novalty.

[Mike_Donis]

I thought the costs of renting all that jazz end up being about the same as shooting on film in the first place...

Bottom line is, for most of us, we aren't getting film prints. Realistically. So few films get these done, and so we might as well plan for the worst (which is the most realistic) - that being a DVD transfer, most likely that we author ourselves.

I don't want to sound like a pessimist, I'm just wanting to be realistic. If a film we shoot is good enough, it'll get the print regardless of the format (just look at Open Water).

[Neil Rowe]

.. the dalsa is not out yet..only pre-production, but its coming out very soon expected to rent at normal 35mm rates. im pretty sure that the *viper you can buy. *you need to have a storage and editing system for either camera. but they also both output in regular HD (with very high fidelity) but keep all the lattitude and other nice camera features. *

its *the same as operating for 35mm for either camera so the operator should cost the same. * *the up front cost of the system is really a moot point, because they arent much more than a good film camera.. in fact they are probably less.. *and you would have to copmpare it *to the cost of a very good 35mm camera. .. and then factor in the cost of a machine .. or use of the film scanning machine to scan in the film, and do all the digital effects, or coloring that you can do straight from digital with the viper or dalsa. .. you also have to wiegh in the cost of all the film your shooting on, and the cost of developing it, and everything else that is eliminated with the digitals. the digitals also stor metadata that saves hundreds of hours in post so the digital technicians dont suck up nearly as much money either. .. and you can cross off the time spent on dailies from film and blah blah blah.. basically your getting all the benefits of digital.. with the same or better qualitys than film. * its almost a no brainer unless anyones stuck on analog, or your have to do big time overcranking and such with actual film. *but my point is that with the rate at which technology is growing even these cameras will soon be old hat, and probably sell for the cost of the HD cameras around today. * the future is in digital.. film has gone about as far as anyone cares to take it. *and the new possibilities available through digital are endless, and exciting.

for example if the current viper compares to 35mm like this:

http://freespace.virgin.net/shaw.clan/dpviper35mm.html

and can shoot 2.37:1 native.. then just think of what well have a few years from now.. ..mainly that if you want it to look like film and have the res and all that.. there are now some better options than actually shooting on film :) *

anyway lets get back to the XL2 :-[

[Mike_Donis]

Interesting. The Viper parts of the image looked higher resolution - though the film was scanned at 2K rather than 4K, that's still pretty impressive!

[J_Barnes]

It's also incorrect to think of production costs being solely in rentals and stock. Labor costs more then materials, and you can't save labor costs by shooting digital over film.

A modern Arri 35mm camera costs over 100k, pre-lenses and accessories, I can't imagine any of these uncompressed digital film cameras breaking that price barrier in the first couple of generations. Either way, we're not going to be buying them, we're going to be renting them, and if HD is any barometer of rental costs, then digital cinema won't cost less to rent then 35 when it first lands.

As far as storage, anyone even care to guess how many TB's the average feature length film is going to take up...including shooting ratio? I can't see that cost being significantly less then buying and processing film.

Also, the majority of films being released don’t have a ton of visual effects in them, so the average production wouldn’t be saving a lot of cost on transfers and film-outs, not to mention that digital color correction is overkill for most stuff being released.

Editors are typically working with one-light transfers also, so you can’t project a full high-resolution transfer of your entire shoot. And metadata wont' save any time in post, as all the data that would be advantageous to post is already being recorded in camera logs. They're not referenced enough to really extend your production costs on the average film, so you don’t save any labor by having a digital file of the information.

The quality of digital cinema isn’t the same or better then film…the resolution is still below film for the viper…I don’t know anything specific about the other camera. The quality difference is imperceptible to the naked eye, but it’s still less then film (although it should be nearly noise free comparatively).

Finally, film studios are not going to want to adopt this system immediately because they want to control access to film prints. As soon as the shoot is on a hard disk, that footage can be transferred anywhere in the world in it’s native resolution. With all of the IP struggles going on out there, the film industry isn’t going to do anything that will make piracy easier.

My point being that you’re right…digital is exciting and promising and it’s the wave of the future. I just suggest that for many reasons, that future’s a decade away before it’s really adopted.

Also, returning to the topic at hand, I think it’s hilarious that Canon makes strides to put out a widescreen camera to satiate all of the whining filmmakers out there…and one of the first things we think about is slapping a lens adapter on the front of the camera to change the aspect ratio again.

How long until we start begging for a native digimascope camera?

[Mike_Donis]

;D

Everyone can be shooting in Ben-Hur's aspect ratio of 2.76:1 :o

[Jestorius]

Ok, I was just playing with aspect rations. I'm in Norway and the norwegien film industry is like 1.85:1. A nativ 16:9 can be used to output the video to film. I'm using a Sony PD150 with a Century optics 16:9 and a 16:9 magnifier. I was did a mistake and recorded a few minutes with the 16:9 adapter and the sony's 16:9 mask. And the result was a 2.35:1 in the 16:9 magnifier. That's why I'm focusing on 2.35 now. I'm not going to use this kind of setup with the Pd150.

I 'd like to buy a second camera and can't deside what to do. A XL2 or the 100A with an anamorphic lens.

If this setup with the 16:9 adapter on a XL2 gives a 2.35 than I 'm going for Canon, otherwise Panasonic... I don't know. Thanks for the replay.

[Barry_Green]

Using an anamorphic adapter on an XL2 will indeed give you a 2.35:1 image...

... but then what? What do you do with it? You can't display it on any TV, you can't make a DVD of it, and if you transfer it to film, you'll need some film transfer house that knows how to deal with it and can optically resize the image to a film 1.2:1 frame with 2:1 compression (as opposed to the XL2's 1.33:1 frame with 1.78:1 compression).

If you want to display it on a widescreen TV, you'll have to digitally resize the image, giving away all that you "gained"... you'll end up with a 16:9 letterboxed image when you're done. So why not just shoot 16:9 letterboxed in the first place?

Everyone gets excited about the idea of 2.35:1 shooting, but it's just not practical.

[Jestorius]

the 16:9 adapter should give you a wider picture like on the 4:3 chip. The picture is more wider then with a 16:9 mask.

16:9 on the nativ xl2 16:9 should give you a wider image in the 2.35:1. It isn't just to crop to the size. There is actually more information in the picture. Of course only if it works the same way as it does on the 4:3 ship.

Check it out on the Century optics web.

[XCheck]

Well, it took some time for me to read all these messages - a lot of good discussion going on...

First, I am really excited by the Dalsa. Living in Toronto, I think I know where I will be hanging out during next month TIFF...

I remember the same kind of talk about future ten/fifteen years ago, when the PC revolution REALLY started - mass adoption by IT departments was the critical mass needed. Object-oriented was the buzzword of the day, and one of the going arguments was that 'technology is not there yet' - too memory intensive, too slow, ... that was when my 33 MHz PC with 8MB RAM and 128MB HD was a bigger machine than my employer of the time could afford to put on its 20,000+ employees desktops...

I don't have a crystal ball and wouldn't dare to predict how long it will take before the GB/s transfer and storage technology is there, but I bet it's going to be much less than a decade.

As for motion picture studios' resistance, it will be as relevant as your average Canadian bank resistance to internet in 1994 (not much). Early adopters pay a price, but hey - no pain, no gain.

For independents, the main benefit will be that a simple availibility of high end technology will make everything lower than the top end more accessible and affordable. Now if you only could buy talent, that would be a wonderful thing ::)

High technology aside: 2.35:1 aspect ration has a very specific aesthetics to it, and I am sure there is a project or two out there that would get enhanced benefits even if shot on XL2 for a DVD distribution that would get letterboxed on a 16:9 screen...

Am I making sense, or am I dreaming?

Jerry

[Gary_McClurg]

Just looked at the Dalsa. I know this sounds crazy but some actors are more comfortable with a camera that looks like a film camera which this does. So what format can we edit on? Also any rumors about the cost? So Jerry if you go to TIFF keep us informed.

[XCheck]

...So Jerry if you go to TIFF keep us informed.
Sure will - if I manage to make it for the 9am screening! ;)

BTW, of course I meant ratio, not ration. Somehow my fingers were too fast into 'rational' and didnt' know where to stop ;D.

J.