{"id":43,"date":"2007-01-23T02:31:16","date_gmt":"2007-01-23T10:31:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fox-gieg.com\/tutorials\/2007\/comparing-film-and-video\/"},"modified":"2021-09-04T09:00:06","modified_gmt":"2021-09-04T17:00:06","slug":"comparing-film-and-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fox-gieg.com\/tutorials\/2007\/comparing-film-and-video\/","title":{"rendered":"Comparing Film and Video"},"content":{"rendered":"

Update (2011): This was written just before the release of the Red camera. 4K acquisition in high-end video is now routine.<\/i><\/p>\n

This graphic compares acquisition resolution<\/b>, the best image you can acquire through a camera (in other words, the quality of your input<\/b>). 35mm film, benefiting from about 175 years’ worth of improvements in chemical photography, comes out the clear winner:
\n<\/p>\n

However, the gap between video and film narrows considerably when it comes to storage resolution<\/b>, the best image you can extract from your storage medium (the quality of your output<\/b>). That’s because the perceived quality of an image is influenced more by acquisition resolution than by storage resolution.<\/p>\n

Consider the extreme ends of our scale–an image shot on a 35mm film camera and then transferred to VHS tape will, subjectively, look far better than an image shot on a VHS camera and recorded straight to VHS tape, even though the actual storage resolution is in each case the same.<\/p>\n

And when you consider that an image stored on analog film must be copied several times before it’s incorporated into a finished work, with accompanying generation loss, you can argue that a lower-resolution but lossless digital storage medium can still hold a final product of comparable subjective quality.<\/p>\n

In other words, the current limitations of video are mostly the fault of the video cameras<\/i>, not the video formats themselves.<\/b> As a result, animators have a handy way to “cheat.” If you acquire your images with an ordinary multi-megapixel digital still camera, or render them straight from software, you can output to HD video and achieve a result that compares favorably with 35mm film.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Update (2011): This was written just before the release of the Red camera. 4K acquisition in high-end video is now routine. This graphic compares acquisition resolution, the best image you can acquire through a camera (in other words, the quality of your input). 35mm film, benefiting from about 175 years’ worth of improvements in chemical […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[30],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fox-gieg.com\/tutorials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fox-gieg.com\/tutorials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fox-gieg.com\/tutorials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fox-gieg.com\/tutorials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fox-gieg.com\/tutorials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/fox-gieg.com\/tutorials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1105,"href":"https:\/\/fox-gieg.com\/tutorials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions\/1105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fox-gieg.com\/tutorials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fox-gieg.com\/tutorials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fox-gieg.com\/tutorials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}