zombie84 said: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.
But that's not at all what I said. What I said was that they like the way film feels. What I meant was that they do in fact like going through all this trouble because they feel more connected to the images they're taking. Unlike the person who'll just shoot and shoot and shoot hundreds of photos and not worry about running out of space on the memory card, the person shooting on film has to stop and think about exactly what they're doing. They have to consider how much film they have left, is this really a good shot, should I wait and maybe get a better one. That's not to say the digital photographers are just shooting willy nilly hoping to land a shot, but the film photographer has to take a lot more into consideration.
I've seen this myself when I've been out with my wife and son. I'll take a bunch of photos, say 5 to 10, of them in one spot. I get home and it turns out that maybe 2 of them are good shots. If I was still using film, I'd probably take one or two pictures and just deal with the results (which would hopefully be decent). In a given day, using film, I'd say I end up with maybe 5 good shots. Using digital, I usually end up with 20 or so. If I were a professional photographer, having an increase like that would be a godsend.
That is why it's referred to as a dying art form. The majority of photographers are not willing to spend that much time thinking about what they're shooting. They just want the shot. The quicker they can get it, the better.
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 doesn't some of that have more to do with the color correction and other things that were done after it was shot? We know the 04 DVDs had all the whites turned to blue, so who's to say that the prequels didn't have reds and blues totally blown out at certain points, making it look like shit.
Obviously the cameras weren't ready for primetime either. I think everybody, including Lucas, knew that. Lucas, being the hard head he is, just didn't want to admit it. After all, he was going to usher in a new era of filmmaking, just like he did with the OT.