Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/10/11

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Future of film
From: "Bill Larsen" <ohlen@lightspeed.net>
Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 16:24:05 -0700

Steve Le Huray writes (with big snips by me):

I was told to embrace video because film would be dead in 5 years. But now
16mm, Super16mm Aaton and
|Arriflex cameras have a 3 to 6 month waiting list for a camera package that
|runs about $150,000.

A couple of months ago, I had the opportunity to tour a "state of the art" 14
screen theater in my capacity as an economic development planner.  I paid the
most attention to the tour of the projection corridor where fourteen films
were running at one time.  The major state of the art was in the digital sound
tracks.  They are still splicing together the film rolls that were from the
film distributors.  The film projection was very similar to what could be
found in the 30's except that since the rolls were all spliced together, the
projectionist did not have to change rolls during the projection of the film.

What struck me was that there were two areas of major capital investment in
equipment.  The first was in the sound systems for the digital sound track.
The second was in the projection equipment.  The projections equipment was
quite state of the art.  Each of the projectors had bulbs, filters, and lenses
matched to the screen size and projection throw.  The costs of these items
were commensurate with their limited market.

While I can see future enhancements of the sound track, I am somewhat limited
in my vision as to what benefit would be derived from digitization of the
picture track.  Without some great artistic or cost benefit, why should the
theaters swich from film to digital tracks?

If I am wrong, then the niché market I will look for is showing old art films
and slides (perhaps I could make slides of all of the negatives in the US
National Archives) with old projectors.  Ought to keep me $$$ occupied until
the end of my life.

Regards, Bill