Originally posted by: Karyudo

Where? I see camera to digital tape (no loss); digital tape to computer (no loss); computer editing (no loss); digital projection. That's how I saw Ep II, for example. The only generational losses you have indicated are film based. Without introducing crappy old film back into the equation (like Lucas wants to avoid, for example), it's lossless until it's projected.

The act of digitizing it is lossy and the act of transmitting it back to data for digital projection is lossy as well--obviously though the loss is very minimal. However, digital projectors currently cannot even faithfully render the image properly so this is moot. One day however, HD will be lossless in this manner--but not yet. I am not arguing that HD will never be good, ever--obvious digital video is the future, and one day it will rival and more-or-less replace film. But not for a while.

I actually prefer HD transfered to film rather than projected directly--it hides the inherant ugliness of the HD image by softening it and introducing some grain.

And all of this ignores the fact that 35mm film is still higher quality even with the loss introduced through duplication. The loss from negative to release print, while notable, still yields an image much higher quality than anything HD can give us, even if you were projecting the original HD footage straight from the original tape. The only instance where the two are about equal is in the case of the early 2K DI's from years ago.

But this is all besides the point. Because even though HD is not up there as far as resolution goes, the detail level still holds up fairly well--but this is not the issue. The issue is the inherant flaws of digital video that have not yet been fixed. The sharpness, the unnatural clarity, the colour space issues, the small lattitude. These IMO are more important than resolution, which is currently at a level that is acceptable for most people (including myself--but of course it would be preferrable to have more). This is why most still prefer 16mm over HD--the resolution is almost the same (16mm actually has a bit more) but the inherant beauty of 16mm makes it more preferrable.

I would say it will be at least five to ten years before the playing field actually gets levelled--once we start seeing 2K HD cameras that have acceptable image characteristics then the film versus HD argument will begin to evaporate but even then film will still be technically superior and still preferred and used by most productions who spend millions of dollars to make the film look good and who are used to working with film. My estimation is twenty to thirty years before film actually begins to go away, and even then there will still be those who prefer it.