Soon, No More Film Movie Cameras 227
phil reed writes "Creative Cow Magazine reports that manufacturers of movie cameras have quietly discontinued production of film cameras. There are still some markets — not in the U.S. — where film cameras are sold, but those numbers are far fewer than they used to be. If you talk to the people in camera rentals, the amount of film camera utilization in the overall schedule is probably between 30 to 40 percent. However, film usage is dropping fast, which has ramifications up and down the production line. Archivists are worried."
And for good reasons... (Score:5, Interesting)
The good: Film stock is expensive. Being able to play back what you just captured is invaluable. Reloading by slapping in a new hard drive saves downtime. Cutting the size and weight of the camera down by 70-90% gives you flexibility. Recording in any aspect ratio by just pressing a button is awfully convenient. Filming at high frame rates like it's nothing is damned cool. Digital projection in theaters and HD sets at home let you have an all-digital workflow.
Improving: Film has (had?) better dynamic range. Digital cameras are getting cheaper, but still more up front; still, you make it up pretty quickly.
The bad: Film has established reliable procedures for archiving. Data's still iffy.
So yeah, other than nostalgia for film grain, digital is the future. This isn't a surprise to anyone in the industry... A few years back digital gained solidly "good enough" picture quality at an attainable price, and everyone's switching as fast as they can get comfortable with the new toys. The technology just keeps getting better, so this isn't going to reverse.
Re:Why are archivists worried? (Score:4, Interesting)
I was thinking that it is much easier to duplicate and manage digital films... and more specifically perhaps that we will see an industry arise catering for very long term secure digital storage that will last for centuries.
Imagine many data centers spread across the planet, duplicate copies of stored items, offline and online access... we seem to be on this path now with The Cloud..
How many Star Wars reels were archived? (Score:4, Interesting)
The cardinal problem we have with old film reels is not the medium's inherent instability. It's that no one had the foresight to archive the reels properly.
Properly stored and handled, film is quite stable. But if you send out all your reels on the road because each reel is expensive and they get handled by the doofuses in the projection booth that thread them backwards the first time, left in car trunks, etc. and you store your masters in a warehouse with no cooling/dehumidifying apparatus where it is subject to extremes of heat and cold, sure, you end up 50 years later with reels that are barely salvageable.
Re:Why are archivists worried? (Score:4, Interesting)
Loss of (or difference in) color fidelity? (Score:4, Interesting)
Ordinarily, being the geek that I am (and having worked at the very forefront of digital cinema) I'd be pleased that faster, better cheaper technology is replacing film, even in the "capture" (recording) stage.
However, as a wanna-be physicist, I know(?) that color is NOT just the simple mixture of three (or more) primaries; that is in Real Life(tm) it is a continuos spectrum and that film cameras (I think) capture it with some chemicals that are not just sensitive to a narrow slice of this spectrum. I compare this to modern CMOS based cameras in which the sensors, even if they are similarly "broadband", probably have different responses to light than say Kodachrome.
So, does this account for why some people say digital looks different than film? Can it corrected? Do people care? I worked in compression not color but I guess I should have learned this. :(
Those silent films that ate themselves ... (Score:3, Interesting)
.... how many were stored in a climate controlled archive?
Some films do have problems with age. This is especially true of film reels from the early age of the motion picture. But in most cases the degradation is more a function of the film not being stored properly because no one imagined wanting to preserve them for posterity all those years ago. Just like during the studios used to just throw out animation cells, they used to can old reels after they retired them from the box office. Consider one of my favorites, Metropolis. Shortly after its debut, pretty much no one thought it was worth keeping around. The few reels still in existence were found by mistake or in the vaults of private collectors who, fascinated by the movie, bought their own copy when it first came out.
Re:Why are archivists worried? (Score:4, Interesting)
They worried that now movies will be stored in physical mediums that last a lot less than 100 years
You mean, like film? Making film last 20 years is easy. Making it last 50 requires considerable effort. Making it last 100 is really hard. The advantage that film has is that it degrades gradually. A film that's been badly stored (assuming it doesn't spontaneously combust, which is a problem with a lot of old films) will probably be watchable, but the quality will be bad. Digital recording tend to either be perfect or completely unplayable - there isn't much middle ground. The advantage of the digital recording is that, while it is not damaged, copies will be exactly the same quality as the original. This makes archiving a lot easier.
Re:Special offer (Score:2, Interesting)
I guess you've never heard of film grain. Film doesn't have infinite detail as you seem to imply.