Originally Posted by
ringhunter
Great. So we agree that your previous reply was all wrong, right? The film itself doesn't relate to the resolution, it's the way it's converted to digital viewer media, and it's the dependence on the quality/accuracy of the scanner that dictates its final resolution.
Since you started with the hostility, allow me to retort at a similar level.
I'm not really the one who needs to do the learning, now, am I?
The question in this thread was clear. He wanted to understand how film pre-HD-fanatic era can still be scaled to a "high definition" resolution. Arguing that it's because those movies were made for big screens (which is a property of light, by the way), and comparing them to digital cameras only highlights an outstanding mind.
Well well my pedantic asshole, friend. You appear ruffled?
A fellow mental midget: "Film resolution is specified in resolving power in c/mm (cycles per millimeter) or lp/mm (line pairs per millimeter). Diferent stocks have different resolving power. Normally finer grained (slow) film has more resolving power, higher sensitivity (faster) film has less resolving power, etc, all else being equal.
A simplified triangle of image quality capability is made by grain-speed-resolution. If you try to get more speed, graininess usually increases and/or resolution decreases, etc. With advances in film emulsion technology the triangle gets bigger. You get higher speed with the same fine grain, equivalent sharpness, etc.
If you have coarse big grain you get more speed (sensitivity) but the resolving power is decreased, while if you have finer smaller grain, packaged in a more uniform way into a thinner emulsion layer, you get better sharpness and the ability record finer detail per millimeter, but less sensitivity (you need more light) somewhat similar to having more pixels packed into a sensor.
The lens on the camera also has a resolution limit and the combined resolution of the film emulsion and the lens resolution that ends up on the final image on the negative is less than each's.
So having the resolving power of the final image (c/mm) and the size of the image (mm) you can multiply both and get what the resolution of the film/camera/lens system is capable of.
Also what we perceive as grain on photographic images is actually grain clumps as the grains are randomly distributed in irregular patterns within the film emulsion. (The smoothing and more uniform distribution of grain in film emulsions is one of the ways film quality has improved over the years) We're not looking at the individual grains themselves when we look at images in normal picture and movie viewing magnifications. To see the real individual grains you have to use those microscopic enlargements where the image is blown up so much you can barely make any of it.
Additionally, as Penton-Man mentioned in his thread, in color photography today, you normally bleach out the silver grains after development, and what remains are the color dye "clouds" of magenta cyan and yellow that formed and clumped together around them when the film was being developed."
My first comment was possibly a bit flippant and not thought out. Although, film gets discussed this way very often and using these terms.
http://pic.templetons.com/brad/photo/pixels.html
Notice this quote "It's the way it's converted to digital viewer media, and it's the dependence on the quality/accuracy of the scanner that dictates its final resolution." P-E-D-A-N-T-I-C. Yes, by all means let us skip a convenient way to discuss such in order to violate his parenthetic dictum about not "getting too technical".
Frankly, I hadn't given it a great deal of consideration. Cf. prior post.
As for my prior post being all wrong, well. . .
I wrote: "Old films are still higher resolution than 1080p, they were made for giant screens."
Well, you can't add information that wasn't there in the first place. Film has more image information than HD video and can hence be represented in HD video really well. The amount of information present was actually what I was attempting to express.
As for my citing a frame of film for comparison, yes that is truly the notions and meanderings of a dolt. What kind of idiot would think in search terms? Perhaps the guy on AVS that I quoted from or perhaps others? Lots of them? Perhaps this fellow, would take a frame as a reference?:
"Old movies and most new movies are shot in 35 mm wide negative film. Film negative is a very high resolving medium. Resolution in film is measured in cycles/mm (or line pairs per millimeter one pair consisting of one black line and one white line so one cycle (or one line pair ) could be said to be equivalent to 2 pixels, one black and on white) (It's more complicated than that but that's good enough for the example). Film by itself can commonly resolve from 50 c/mm to 400 c/mm (100 pixels/mm to 800 pixels/mm) depending on emulsion stock. But since the image on film is formed by exposing it through a lens and this lens also has it's own resolution limits, the final resolution on the photographed negative is always less that each component's resolution.
For example 70.7 c/mm (141.4 pixels per mm) for photographed fine grained film. Now to the film formats. Depending on the year and format a movie was made in, the image can vary on 35mm shot film from as big as 24mm x 36 mm for VistaVision/Technirama 8 perforation cameras (same as 35mm still photo film) going down through 18mm x 24mm for Silent Films or Full Frame 4 perforations cameras to as small as 9mm x 21mm in Academy Sound Aperture cameras modified for the Techniscope 2 perforation format. There's also a few films made with bigger than 35mm cameras, like 70mm films (22mm x 48mm) and the couple of times used used 55mm and CINERAMA.
So multiplying the four mayor formats dimensions that have been used in 35mm by the pixels per millimeter gives you approx:
A) Academy Sound (Sound movies before 1955): 15mm x 21mm (1.375) = 2160 x 2970
B) Academy camera US Widescreen: 11mm x 21mm (1.85) = 1605 x 2970
C) Current Anamorphic Panavision ('Scope"): 17.5mm x 21mm (2.39) = 2485 x 2970
D) Super-35 for Anamorphic prints: 10mm x 24mm (2.39) = 1420 x 3390
In the process of making prints for exhibition this negative is copied onto other film (negative -> interpositive -> internegative -> print) so the resolution gets decimated with each emulsion copying step and when the image passes through a lens (for example, on a projector) it's reduced once more. Sometimes the resolution is reduced down to 1/6th of the original negative's resolution, and that's with doing things correctly.
So depending on what film element is used for scanning and with what method, the resolution of the image used in the transfer from film can be from less than that of the 1080p x 1920 Blu-ray format to much more. If they use a properly stored and preserved original negative, the BD probably will end up looking better than what you might have seen elsewhere."
Interesting also"
http://www.kodak.com/US/en/corp/rese.../dCinema.shtml
Property of light, eh? I guess you typing of projection? Anyway my comment was in reference to the amount of data to fill up a large screen without washing out.
While this reply hasn't reflected what I really wanted to express, (unless, of course you have hear the word CUNT screaming at you) it roughly approximates my thoughts.
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