Kodak Film and Digital Capture by Rob Hummel at Cine Gear Expo 2011

[georg16nik]

Some positive vibes

[tomalophicon]

'Film is the best'.
'Film's gone, it's gonna go away'.
Is he embarrassed by what he's saying?

[georg16nik]

nope, 'film is cool'

[btaylor]

Interesting additional videos to browse as well, some of the discussions on format choices are worth viewing, especially if you are a fan of 2.40:1 wide screen. One thing you'll notice about all the panelists is that they're old. Young cinematographers know almost nothing about recording on film, most don't know how the cameras operate when face to face with one. It has a different on-set tone too, as digital capture allows the camera to run and run. I think we'll really be in trouble when digital projection takes over. Once the prints stop being struck there won't be enough mp film being produced and processed to justify the relatively small amount used during actual television or motion picture production.

[Gerald C Koch]

Thank you for this very informative post. Now I know why I don't like digital. Maybe if more people saw this presentation they would go out and buy film.

[tomalophicon]

According to a mate doing some work with them, our small town cinema is getting a digi projector in 2 weeks. Our town has only 20,000 people. It won't be long till film is gone in cinemas.

[AlbertZeroK]

Loved it.

[BetterSense]

It seems like there should be more...is there a part II or something?

[Aristophanes]

Watch the vid on YouTube and read some of the intelligent comments about the presentation and its facts. His facts are somewhat slanted.

[semi-ambivalent]

I think an interesting point one of the speakers made was digital's succeptability (sp!) to file format changes. My very nerd co-workers dismiss this with a casual 'just copy it over' as if that solves everything. But how many people can even read a 5 1/4" floppy? It's not just the format but the devices to mount, copy and store. 5 1/4" floppies aren't even that old if you look at time as I was raised to look at it. People lose really important stuff all the time, even when they *know* they should make backups. (And yes, I know about that 15 year old file you have on the IBM-pc2 you have in your basement. I also know about the thousands of new disks that fail every year in Google's clusters.)

Personally I don't really care if the three Star Wars prequels go poof but what I see is a culture accepting (or being groomed to accept) all products as ever more temporary. From the now worthless digital camera dumped on Craigslist to the wireless sprinkler system rain sensor with the non-changable batteries. Things designed and built with longevity in mind are in many circles deemed old fashioned or over-built. Those are pejoratives these days. Over-built is defined of course as whatever decreases repeat sales of replacement product in the next quarter.

It's hard not to be impressed, for example, by 25M+ pixels and so forth, but the turnover rate of such things disturbs me. I like the shiny too, but it's like, as Auden said, something is trying to scratch its way into my brain. Maybe just a bad curry...