Why are modern 50mm lenses so damned complicated?

Re:Why are modern 50mm lenses so damned complicated? by dylan604 on Monday May 10, 2021 @11:13AM (#27106812)

I think 35mm->4k scans can look amazing. There's a lot going on though with film to digital scanning. The film stock itself has a lot to do with it. From the condition it has been stored as well as the actual type of film stock. The choice in a physical scanner also makes a difference. Single pass realtime captures vs slow speed triple flashed scans. Single pass is usually on a CMOS type sensor, where the triple flashes are typically on a CCD sensor. There's a whole list of things that are involved that makes one 35mm->4k transfer not like the next.

Typically, you as a consumer, will be receiving an H.264 or H.265 stream that your cable box or streaming device decodes. These have all been updated with levels/profiles to allow for things like 3D, 4K, HDR, and 10bit encodes. The shoehorn used to shove new features into these formats has been put to heavy use.

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Re:Why are modern 50mm lenses so damned complicated? by pier25 on Monday May 10, 2021 @12:00PM (#27107500)

35mm -> 4K can look amazing in terms of color, but I've yet to see a film where the added detail is not mostly film grain (exaggerated by sharpening). Do you have a good example?

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Re:Why are modern 50mm lenses so damned complicated? by dylan604 on Monday May 10, 2021 @12:26PM (#27107798)

This was the point of the type of film stock used. The film grain is why pretty much everyone will wince when you ask to do a 16mm->4K. Hell, 16mm->HD was rough.

I don't have any examples on hand. But with large amount of time I have found myself with over the past year to watch a lot of content, I too have noticed even some of the last episodics to be shot on film (2005-2010 range) are very noticeable. I have also seen some features from the 90s that looked really clean in comparison. Lots of things go into that, from how much the camera department "cared", what film stock was used, what film processor was used, etc. Towards the end of mass film production, there were fewer and fewer labs left. During they heyday, the soups used in the processing where in constant use. As demand lowered, the soups kind of stagnated especially in the shops financially strapped.

Film is fickle to be sure.

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Re:Why are modern 50mm lenses so damned complicated? by pier25 on Monday May 10, 2021 @12:33PM (#27107866)

Another point to consider is that many 4K 35mm movies, are actually upscaled from 1080p or 2K scans.

Here's a good list to check whether a film is real 4K or not.

https://www.digiraw.com/DVD-4K-Bluray-ripping-service/4K-UHD...

I've now remembered that the X-Men films from 20 years ago did look pretty good in 4K HDR. And apparently they are "real 4K". Also the 4K remaster of The Fifth Element.

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Re:Why are modern 50mm lenses so damned complicated? by dylan604 on Monday May 10, 2021 @12:46PM (#27107995)

Sorry, I was assuming we were not talking uprezing and true film scans. Uprez outputs can look disastorous as people tend to use a heavy amount of noise canceling. Bad temporal noise filters look so bad when you can see residual artifacts from 4-5 frames earlier. shudders. Or someone that did this to content that had a 3:2 cadence, and now want to restore to original frame rate even though the cadence is undetectable by filters. Select fields it is! Ugh. too many flashbacks popping off.

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Re:Why are modern 50mm lenses so damned complicated? by 4ad on Monday May 10, 2021 @01:02PM (#27108207)

Not quite what you ask, but very related: http://yedlin.net/ResDemo/

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Re:Why are modern 50mm lenses so damned complicated? by pier25 on Monday May 10, 2021 @02:14PM (#27109034)

This is awesome. Thanks for sharing.

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Re:Why are modern 50mm lenses so damned complicated? by xdennis on Tuesday May 11, 2021 @04:37PM (#27123199)

But I like film grain. :) Barring exaggerated sharpening, it's closer to how it looks in a cinema film projection.

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