Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/02/14

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Subject: Re: [Leica] WKs 7,8 Includes picture of new film camera fromFrance
From: Martin Howard <howard.390@osu.edu>
Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2001 00:09:24 -0500

Austin Franklin jotted down the following:

> Just FYI (speaking of HDTV), IMAX is at 4096 x 3072, next down from that is
> feature film work which is done at 2048 x 1536, and HDTV is 1920 x 1080.  DV
> is only 720 x 480.

I didn't know that DV was a format: I thought it was merely a storage
medium.  I don't know the exact aspect ratio of 16mm film and how it
compares to 35mm motion picture (which is 18x24mm, right?) but from the list
above it looks like it might be in the HDTV ballpark, so I'm guessing that
loss of quality wouldn't be the major issue.

> Beyond just the camera, the processing equipment requirement necessary to
> deal with this kind of data is pretty stiff I would think.

Yeah, but if the camera body alone sets you back some $15,000 that buys a
lot of stuff.  Something like a Mac G4 with their non-linear movie editing
software (not iMovie, the Final Cut pro stuff) would surely be enough.  I
think the software is around a grand, by comparison.

Or maybe there's just an order of magnitude better quality in there
somewhere when working with chemical film...  I just thought it odd that
someone was making a high-end 16mm film camera, when I thought 16mm film was
pretty much dead.

M.

- -- 
Martin Howard                     |
Visiting Scholar, CSEL, OSU       |    "That's sad, but that's poker."
email: howard.390@osu.edu         |
www: http://mvhoward.i.am/        +---------------------------------------