lordjedi said:zombie84 said:But this notion that grain is inherantly bad is not only wrong, it completely misunderstands the argument in the first place.
And I'm not saying it's bad. It's a part of the medium. I get it. I totally do. What I was asking, and you answered, is that if you could have the image without the grain, would you take it? Apparently some DPs wouldn't. There's nothing wrong with that. But you also stated that DPs can choose film stock that has a very fine grain. So by extension, if they needed as little grain in the image as possible, would they not choose a medium that provided no grain if it was available? Since they can have difference levels of grain in the same movie, I can imagine that if they wanted something with nearly no grain, they would take it. And if something was available that gave them the same image without the grain and they didn't want any grain, why wouldn't they take it?
Probably some would. Whenever you have a choice given, there's going to be someone taking it. But movies today don't really have visible grain. The choice is already there--They don't need video to give them the option. Look at a typical big-budget movie--Iron Man, Incredible Hulk, etc. You won't find visible grain. If you were to take a microscope you WOULD find grain, of course--the grain that actually composes the image itself. Film without grain is impossible because thats what the image is--its like a "painting" without paint. But in terms of "visible" grain--like in Schindler's List or Minority Report, or Aliens--most modern movies don't have it. So DP's don't need video for this. As I mentioned earlier, many DP's believe that film stocks have gotten so fine-grain that they look like video and are deliberately trying to shift emphasis back to the older aesthetics because grain texture is no longer part of the visual art.
Photographers use chemical emulsions because that was the only way to do it for 100 years.
Hmm, yet they still do it. I wonder why that is? Let me guess, they are all old luddites afraid of change who cling on to what they are familiar with. Yeah, sure.
I know plenty of photographers. The ones that still use traditional film do it because even though it costs them more, they view photography as an art form. They actually don't like the ability to take 100s of pictures on a single shoot, find that killer shot, and then discard the rest. They like to take their time and wait for that one killer shot. They pay for it too. They have to conserve their film and they have to pay all the costs for processing and storage (they don't throw bad shots away). Most of them don't do it for anything more than a full time hobby any more since they can't compete with the photographers who are using digital and don't have the same costs they do. This is what I've heard from photographers and read in photography magazines.
But this is the fundamental part of the issue you're apparently not quite understanding--film LOOKS different. I'm not talking about resolution or versatility or economics--the QUALITY, by which i mean the characteristics, of the image is different. The blacks and colors work differently. The edges look different. The gradients are different. The dynamic range is different. The way whites and blacks get captured is different. Its a subtle difference but its there. Thats why people still shoot on film. Because it looks different, and, most agree, better. I compared it to records vs CDs earlier because of this--records give a different quality, by which i mean different characteristics, to the sound; vinyl records are described as being "warmer" and more "live" sounding, while film has been described as "softer" and more "organic" looking, as opposed to the "harsh" digital counterparts for both mediums.
HD was made for news. AOTC was shot using a news camera that had a cine lens frankensteined onto it.
Pardon me for saying this, but AOTC is a horrible example to use. Hell, any Star Wars prequel is a horrible example to use. I 100% agree that those movies should not have been shot with "HD cams" simply because they'll never look any better than they do. They are maxed out right now at 1080p. If there's something better 10 or 20 years from now, they'll never look any better. At least with 35mm, they can take the raw 4k scan and give us a 2k HD video (if something like that comes along). That'll never be available for the prequels.
Again--resolution is not what I'm talking about. Resolution is the least of the issues. AOTC looks like shit not because its 1080p, but because of the way the digital sensor captures the image. The quality--the characteristics--are ugly. There's no black detail, shadows break up and even show digital artifacts, theres really high depth of field, the edges are really sharp and harsh, everythings way too crisp (despite the low resolution), colors bleed, theres not a very nice pallete, theres noise galore, especially in dark scenes, and everything simply looks mushy and gross. This has nothing to do with resolution. And much of these issues continue to this day. THATS why most photographers refuse to go digital, THATS why, when you are spending millions of dollars on a production you shoot on a chemical emulsion.
But, as I said, a lot of these problems are in the process of being worked out. But its still a decade away before it can even begin to compete with film. Thats why people still widely use 16mm--the resolution is relatively low (ie the same as HD), but the quality of the image is gorgeous and cannot be replicated by anything else.