I agree with David if you are talking a really fine grained negative in great shape, that was exposed well.
Ah yes of course. I was enjoying reading all those threads too much I forgot about that. Does the old nitrate stock Wizard of Oz was struck on have a fine grain too?
The blotchiness on the SSE isn’t because it was scanned in ‘only’ 4K (I thought it was done @2K, but I could be wrong)
Yeah 2K, I didn’t mean to say it was scanned at 4K. Have you seen Deep Red 4K by chance? That restoration looks stunning, even better than Robocop 4K in my opinion! Robocop seems to have more of that blotchy grain in the darker areas.
had a less than ideal dynamic range,
Yeah I’ve noticed that issue. The 2002 Telecine also had many color issues, and has those warped film distortions which the SSE doesn’t. The distortions are relatively minor, but a new transfer on modern equipment would eliminate them entirely.
A lot of what people think of as grain in that release is actually a combination of sensor noise, dupe grain and processing issues.
What’s interesting is that the grain on release prints, at least from what I’ve seen, when projected in a cinema is really faint and when more visible usually indicates an optical effect.
I’m not even dissing the 2002 Telecine, I was reading this thread on Home Theatre Forum and everyone in it seemed to love the new transfer when it was first released on DVD. It just an old out of date transfer now, intended for home video and broadcast, not for DCP/film-out. I don’t understand how they were happy to slap that onto the 2011 Blu-ray while every other watershed film gets a new pristine 2K or 4K restoration, and even less important Giallo films of the same age now look better than Star Wars!
As a few of you know, I have health issues, and I am away from Monday through Friday for treatment, so may or may not be able to answer PMs etc. until the weekend, depending how hard it all hits.
Ouch, I hope your treatment is going well and you stay safe with all the travelling that must be involved. 😃