captainsolo said:
You know, I understand and agree with the numbers that are continually posted, with a standard print starting at 2-4K and then degrading form there but truth be told I have never seen a home disc or digital print look better than 35mm no matter the condition. I've seen the poorly kept only surviving MGM copy of For a Few Dollars More and that is stupendously towering over the DVD/BD. Even all-digital productions printed back to film look better than their all-digital counterparts. Sure you may be able to remove almost every imperfection for a BD master but these eyes it is not the same.
I guess my overall case in point would be my preferred version of Psycho. I've watched the film on everything from VHS to film easily over 50 times throughout my life, sometimes going scene or shot by shot. And now with the fantastically detailed BD....I still prefer the open matte 16mm reduction. Wow, despite the wear and tear talk about razor sharp detail! And on that point, perhaps the sharpest film I've ever seen is Touch of Evil, and the restored cut in 35mm is something to behold.
But I admit to being a crazy celluloid nut.
And the digital TPM being better? IIRC they had some huge issues with getting the digital systems to work properly in 1999 and even then the resolution was quite inferior.
You have to make a distinction between sharpness and resolution.
Erich Heynacher(from Zeiss) concluded that humans attribute more value to the contour defining details that constitute an image as opposed to the finer details that make up this same image----in other words higher contrast in an image can compensate for lack of resolution----something Technicolour prints were famouse for(such as the Star Wars one shown in baltimore)
Regarding 16mm film:
According to ARRI(german fim camera manufacturer) a 16mm camera negative has the capacity to store 2048( a little higher than the 1920 of HDTV/Blu Ray) pixels in the horizontal direction.
But once that 16mm negative is subjected to an anlogue duplication process to produce the positive print(such as your version of PSYCHO) it will lose a lot of this resolution.
Again it may just be that your 16 mm print of Psycho has rich contrast----but the Blu Ray will definately have more resolution.
AS for the digital version of TPM being better than the 35mm print----here was the conclusion of those who saw a split screen comparison back in 1999:
So how is the quality of the digital image? During a press conference held on June 17 at the AMC Burbank 14 multiplex, a short clip was shown in a split screen: Half the image was from a new, high-quality film print, and the other half was from the digital "print." Once the two images were manually synchronized, the difference was remarkably clear: The digital image was much sharper, with much better color fidelity than the film print. For example, the Jedi council room has large windows through which the sky is visible. In the digital image, the sky and clouds were clearly delineated, but they were blurred into a bluish blob on the film side of the screen. Rick McCallum, one of the producers of The Phantom Menace and a press-conference panelist, said the digital version is a much more accurate representation of what they shot than the film version.
http://www.ultimateavmag.com/content/electronic-cinema-debuts-beautiful-downtown-burbank