Re:Kodak Alaris warns the TSA's new airport CT scanners can ...
by kgoltsov on Thursday January 30, 2020 @01:26PM
(#22193817)
Once you get into 70mm film or 70mm IMAX, you're better off just leaving it alone and projecting it directly. I think 70mm could be scanned to 8K, and I'm not sure there's even a equivalent for 70mm IMAX yet.
That's why Nolan still screens his films with 70mm IMAX projectors. He might use digital for effects, but I believe he preserves the analog film in the final prints instead of using a digital intermediate.
Re:Kodak Alaris warns the TSA's new airport CT scanners can ...
by fsh on Thursday January 30, 2020 @02:18PM
(#22194421)
I don't see any objective reason for choosing 70 mm analog over 4K digital. Sure, the resolution of 70 mm is higher, but does it really make a difference? A lot of digital cinema is "only" 2048×1080 and you usually don't see the pixels at normal viewing distances. On the other hand, when it comes to linearity and color reproduction, analog film doesn't stand a chance against a digital sensor. 2001: A Space Odyssey might look sharp, but the colors are definitely off.
I guess the real reason why Nolan and Tarantino still use 70 mm is not quality, but personal preference and a bit of self-marketing.
In the past, stuff on film meant you could rescan the originals and remaster them in 4K, which you can't do with 1080p digital recordings (like Star Wars ep1 .. they used other digital techniques to upscale them). But there are limits to that. Trying to rescan old film at 8K often results in a lot of noise, and you don't gain much even after trying to clean it up .. so there are limits to the resolution of the analogue medium that we are just now surpassing with digital sensors.