Making our own 35mm preservation--my crazy proposal — Page 38

SWEET! 

And as always, I'm very excited that this is happening. Thanks for your hard work and for your clarification! 

I just found this.

Thought I would post the link.

The Truth About 2K, 4K and The Future of Pixels

^ That article explains perfectly what I was concerned about when I heard these guys were using an off-the-shelf digital camera instead of a professional scanner.

Bayer filter chips use fancy algorithms to cheat on image resolution, leading to colour inaccuracy. It's not horrible, but it's not the real thing.

Top-of-the-line film scanners use three sensors, one for each color. No cheating, full accuracy. But they cost millions of dollars, thanks not only to the extra sensors, but elaborate film gates, precise alignment of the sensors, an elaborate prism to split the colours between the sensors, and most of all, insanely good build quality.

The next best thing that can be done is something that the article touches on - oversampling. Simply, if you use a 12 megapixel digital camera to capture a 4K image, it will turn out almost as good as a 3-chip scanner. Today's DSLRs do 12 megapixels.

EDIT: My mistake. 12 megapixels is not the same thing as 12,000 pixels per line. That would be 48 megapixels, beyond what any off-the-shelf camera can do ATM.

Just popping in here to say how much I appreciate what you guys are doing. This is such an awesome project, and I can't thank you enough!

lurker77 said:

^ That article explains perfectly what I was concerned about when I heard these guys were using an off-the-shelf digital camera instead of a professional scanner.

Bayer filter chips use fancy algorithms to cheat on image resolution, leading to colour inaccuracy. It's not horrible, but it's not the real thing.

Top-of-the-line film scanners use three sensors, one for each color. No cheating, full accuracy. But they cost millions of dollars, thanks not only to the extra sensors, but elaborate film gates, precise alignment of the sensors, an elaborate prism to split the colours between the sensors, and most of all, insanely good build quality.

The next best thing that can be done is something that the article touches on - oversampling. Simply, if you use a 12 megapixel digital camera to capture a 4K image, it will turn out almost as good as a 3-chip scanner. Today's DSLRs do 12 megapixels.

 

EDIT: My mistake. 12 megapixels is not the same thing as 12,000 pixels per line. That would be 48 megapixels, beyond what any off-the-shelf camera can do ATM.

Millions of dollars??  What scanners are those, I'd like to read about them.  That's obviously not practical, but this project will provide us with great results that will sustain us for years, and by the time house sized tv's are common maybe scanners will have advanced too and gotten cheaper.  When I worked at a camera store in 2000 a one megapixel digital camera cost hundreds of dollars.  You could have gotten a nikon f100 for not much more (which was much much better).

The only improvement I would suggest to their current setup is to use a slr, if only because they shoot faster and have larger apertures (and arguably better focus).  And you can get 18mp slrs now for $800 or so.  I got my 8mp rebel xt for $200 used and that was years ago.

Lucasfilm will not do it that is the problem.

But -1’s work will be much better than GOUT.

As for colour inaccuracy. The colour in the faded film

is vary much inaccurate it self, and will have to be manually

Corrected.?

From what I understand, and that is not much.

This process is not perfect but is pretty darn good.

And at the leased, if Harmy ever gets a computer that can do 1080p,

He will not need to use GOUT, for Despecializing.

SilverWook said:

negative1, I think your amazing contraption needs a name. :)

Agreed, maybe a variation on "The Dykstraflex". The NegaFlex? The later-Flex?

lurker77 said:

EDIT: My mistake. 12 megapixels is not the same thing as 12,000 pixels per line. That would be 48 megapixels, beyond what any off-the-shelf camera can do ATM.

Not sure what you mean by off-the-shelf, but there are a few medium format digital cameras in this range available today or even as of several years ago.

They will set you back a few tens of thousands of dollars, but probably still much less than the pro equipment (which I don't know anything about).

Check  this out.

How High a Resolution is 21.1 Megapixels?

http://rolandlim.wordpress.com/2008/12/07/how-high-a-resolution-is-211-megapixels/

Canon - Canon EOS 5D Mark II 21.1-Megapixel DSLR Camera with EF 24-105mm Lens - Black   Sale: $2,749.99

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Canon+-+Canon+EOS+5D+Mark+II+21.1-Megapixel+DSLR+Camera+with+EF+24-105mm+Lens+-+Black/9909482.p?id=1218193384679&skuId=9909482

lurker77 said:

The next best thing that can be done is something that the article touches on - oversampling. Simply, if you use a 12 megapixel digital camera to capture a 4K image, it will turn out almost as good as a 3-chip scanner. Today's DSLRs do 12 megapixels.

EDIT: My mistake. 12 megapixels is not the same thing as 12,000 pixels per line. That would be 48 megapixels, beyond what any off-the-shelf camera can do ATM.

Even 12 megapixels seems like overkill for this project. A typical 1.85:1 35mm release print (a 3rd generation copy of the camera negative) has roughly 1000 lines per picture height (examining the print directly)... so that works out to about 88 lines per mm.

Since the Anamorphic Projection Aperture dimensions are 20.96 x 17.53 mm, that works out to about 1844 x 1542... or about 3 megapixels.

http://www.cst.fr/IMG/pdf/35mm_resolution_english.pdf

yes it is overkill.
But I just thought I would see what overkill looked like.
From the look of that leaf if you used a 21.1 Megapixel DSLR
With a good Lens at close range.
You could start to see the film at a molecular level.

Great job -1.  The contraption you are using to do this is pretty amazing!  As Harmy mentioned, the video is interlaced for some reason, but otherwise looks great!

Regarding higher than 1920x1080 resolution, on my 2560x1600 monitor, my WQHD version of my trailer is slightly noticeably better (just a bit clearer looking), but it is fairly minor.  If it was on 70mm film, that would probably make a big difference (70mm does make a difference with blu-ray movies such as the Sound of Music which is stunning looking).

I hate all those fake download links on sendspace, but the video is awesome!  How did you guys get that motor to time out just right?  It seems like the film moves slowly through the camera part of the contraption but quickly off of the reels.

Man that clip with the machine looks awesome.

So about the trailer.
I assume the interlacing won't be there in the final release? (or is there some technical reason for it)

Also is that about the quality of cleanup we should expect? Or will there stil be more cleanup applied (some kind of digital filter) to clear up even more of the dirt?

Regardless, you guys are awesome and doing great work. Keep it up! :D

I think "ideally" we'd use this copy mostly for backup/archiving. And clean up the scenes that have been altered by Lucasarts really good. That way we can stick them in between the blu ray footage and get the "best" possible experience to date.

Other people with me on that?