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Awesome video, the Achtel guy knows what he's saying. Imax doesn't want to admit that a 2,000 camera with a high end lense will look sharper than Imax , photographers know this fact, > sensor size has nothing to do with sharpness, if you crop a 150mm image from a top lens and compare it to a 300mm budget lense the image will look similar or better om the 150mm lens crop. This Is the same effect as stretching an image on a larger screen. I say IMax is about 8K BUT!!! That's only if the Lens used on imax was made in recent years. OLD LENSE ARE AWEFUL.
Great explanation of why the IMAX format is so special! The first IMAX movie I saw was about the pyramids in Egypt, and I felt so real that I could have reached out and touch the stones. My sister has a friend who came out of "retirement" to operate the IMAX projector when "Dunkirk" was released because he was the only person in town that knew how to operate the system. We were given a tour of the projector room, and to see it in real life is mind blowing. The scale of everything is so much bigger than what you imagine from looking at the pictures. We had to leave before he started the projector because he said it is as loud as a jet engine, and a fire extinguisher was kept nearby because if the the film stopped in the projector, the heat from the lamp would instantly melt the film with a potential of causing a fire! Sadly, it was the last film movie to be shown at the theatre as it was replaced with a digital IMAX projector a few months later. I'm glad I got to see it off with such an amazing movie.
In my city we have about 2 theatres capable of projecting IMAX film, but one time I went to one for some school trip and we saw a documentary. I didn't care what the documentary was about, but seeing true IMAX was absolutely insane. At times it felt unreal. At this point it was like 10-15 years ago and I've suddenly had an urge to watch every movie I can in real IMAX just because.
i saw top gun maverick in dolby cinema and imax and the dolby cinema completely blew away the imax experience. cramming everyone in to view a slightly taller 4:3 image of yesteryear old tvs is not a pleasurable experience whatsoever.
The projection issue is honestly the biggest one. I love the idea of large formats, but basically no theatres around me can even get regular format 35mm to look *and* sound as good as my home theater lmao. I’ve been to a local theatre that projected 15 perf 70mm. It looked incredible, but the whole experience was kind of tainted by the fact that the speakers were old and blown out.
A good 35mm print projected properly can easily look better than 4k. If they can't get 35 to look good, they either have a bad print with lines through it, or they don't know what they're doing.
Unless it was IMAX You didn't see 15/70. They're the only ones that do that. Also part of the IMAX experience is good sound. They have their own sound system. So you probably just saw regular 70mm. Was it the Music Box? They have notoriously bad speakers...idk why they don't upgrade them...
The fact there are very few film processing labs that can process that special IMAX film is why movies like _Oppenheimer_ could be very niche projects. Especially now that within a few years we could get extremely high quality digital IMAX cameras that meet the standard proposed by the video.
Exactly. At the end of the day this is just an indulgence that most can’t afford and one that seems rather pointless in terms of ROI for both filmmaker and the viewer.
And that’s a 10/10 on how to incorporate a sponsor to a video. I’m aware it’s hard to get it to work with most brands or products but this one was a great execution 👏🏻 Really enjoyed the video, thanks. Now I want a video of the Achtel 9x7 camera! I wasn’t aware of it
I think the problem will always be that digital sensors do not have the insane highlight rolloff abilities of film. Where digital sensor blow out the image, film is able to maintain information. Unless that part is solved ... having bigger sensors is kinda pointless cos you still won't get the true organic film feeling.
Highlight rolloff depends on how you process the image in post, but yes digital sensors do have a bias of being cleaner in the shadow area which is usually muddy on film, as long as you light a scene properly, digital sensor can compete toe to toe with film.
@@Dennis94913 decent cameras without tons of NR with dynamic range measured 12 stops at SNR=2 can easily be underexposed to prevent that nasty digital clipping indeed. With some post the roll-off of film can be emulated for sure :)
Honestly, I enjoy watching movies adapted to digital IMAX just fine. Theatres usually are way bigger than normal, the sound system its also better and to top it off its the amount of extra frame and detail that can be seen. I remember watching Endgame in normal theatre and enjoyed it. When I went to rewatch the movie a week later there was only IMAX available and I never had seen IMAX before so I went for it and oh boy, ever since I try to watch as much movies in IMAX as I can
Things the video didn’t get right: Says 15/70 film, shows a strip of 5/70. The last movie finished in 15/70 was Tenet. It only got about 13 prints world wide though because of the pandemic. Filmconvert is an insufficient film emulation since it only uses grain overlay and doesn’t have halation. Or like half the stocks actually used in modern movie productions. Film emulation is more than color and grain and Filmconvert doesn’t really put any effort into doing any kind of scientific emulation, which is very much possible. You can emulate at least 35mm film, by mathematically analyzing it and making a film emulation as a visual effect. You can mathematically translate the colors, write an algorithm that creates RGB grain in response to the light, build a halation algorithm to respond to light, build a gate weave simulation. Even Filmconvert nitrate is a joke in the world of real film emulation. Also emulating IMAX film with digital is much more complex than having a high enough resolution source. The Alexa 65 has about the same scanned resolution of 15/65 Kodak Vision3 500T (5219). The issue then is that the pixels are larger than some grain would be. Same for 8K. No 8K cameras has a low enough signal to noise ratio to be actually able to resolve the grain. Also no digital projection, even IMAX dual laser, can really resolve the fine detail a pice of 70mm film can. That’s also why Roma was released in 70mm. Talks about 15/70 projecting and shows digital laser projectors. Btw an 8K digital camera doesn’t have the same resolution as an 8K scan from a an IMAX frame would have. All digital movie cameras that record color now use a Bayer filter to achieve color. So the only real 6.5K Alexa 65 or 8K RED cameras are the black and white and only versions of these cameras because the don’t have a Bayer filter. If you want to know the actual resolution of a digital color recording camera, take the resolution and multiple it by 0.7. So a RED V-Raptor has an effective resolution of 5.6K at best. That is if you assume you won’t get any reduction in resolution from other factors in the cameras image pipeline like sensor noise or compression. All the lenses he shows when talking about a digital 15/65 camera. The lenses used for 15/65 are already resolut enough. They’re excellent medium format Hasselblad lenses. Alternatively, Leica-S or Schneider Kreuznach digital medium format lenses should be able to be adapted for a digital 15/65 sensor. Again, Filmconvert is not a high end film emulation tool, like at all! The 9x7 guy is wrong about depth of field. 65mm IMAX is the shallowest motion picture format in existence. Resolution or micro contrast have nothing to do with blur circles and depth of field. The tolerance for the circle of confusion might be lower on a higher resolution camera, but that doesn’t change the physical depth of field. You’d need to shoot on a 19mm T0.75 to achieve the same maximum shallow depth of field as the 50mm T2 on IMAX 65mm has. That’s a 25mm T1 in full frame terms. You might be able to come close with longer lenses on full frame but not on APS-H. Look at the first time Batman appears in The Dark Knight Rises, you can see the lights in the tunnel being blurred even though the subjects 3-5m away from the camera at times. And all that on a 25mm equivalent. So maybe there’s a way with speciality lenses to achieve a shallower depth of field, but not with standard cinema lenses. He’s absolutely right that resolution is not the most important factor. IMAX film both for capturing and projecting is important because it’s an absolutely unique experience. The colors and contrast on a photochemically finished print (like Nolan still does) are more beautiful than anything else and the level of detail that is being able to be perceived on an IMAX screen is so far unmatched by dual laser projection. It’s important because it’s the most premium format we have that when used right gives us something we don’t get from digital. IMAX film is not something to be pursued to be digitally recreated, but to be kept alive in the few places it still exists. I’m very grateful that Nolan still shoots and finishes he’s films in IMAX 15 perf and that he keeps pushing it. Next year with BW large format photography for the first time ever.
Btw, in the video we are not suggesting that this actually happen. More of an exercise in if it's even achievable and if it is, is it even worth doing it? Thanks for your response though!
interresting part abbout resolution and grain size. i didnt think about that. would add to the coulour reading and actuall resolution part, that different cameras read a different ammount of combined pixel of the sensor. 8 Bit 4.2.0 (one pixel saved = 4 pixels on the sensor combined) like consumer cameras, phones and the videos we look at on TH-cam etc.) 10 Bit 4:2:2 (one pixel saved = 2 pixels on the sensor) like Sony, RED 12 Bit 4:4:4 (one pixel saved = 1 pixel on the sensor) like ARRI RAW i think, you could translate this for example to 2,7K ARRI RAW got a higher actuall resolution than 4K RED RAW
@@BobbyGeneric145 Because why should someone be immune from being told they're getting shit wrong just because they're on TH-cam? Too many people worship too many TH-camrs and other social media "stars" without doing any kind of thinking or research for themselves. Deflecting an excellent reply with "do better" is whataboutery at its finest.
First of all, fantastic video- so well researched and detailed But for me the whole discussion is a bit nonsensical, the filmmakers that shoot on IMAX film today are smart enough to know that people won‘t see the movie as intended, they don‘t shoot on IMAX for the pixels, Tarantino doesn‘t shoot on film for the grain, they shoot on film and IMAX film because they want to and wouldn‘t shoot on the best digital camera in the world even if they had it Part of the fun there is that you know that YOU are the one person shooting a movie on real IMAX that particular year, people love you for the effort you put in and the hard work and dedication Nolan, Peele, Bird and Fukunaga aren‘t shooting on IMAX for the resolution but because no one else is shooting on IMAX, because the spectacle is rare and it‘s to difficult imagine if everyone could shoot on a comparable format, then these movies couldn‘t fascinate us anymore „When everyone is super, no one is“
Thanks! And totally agree. Not trying to say we need this camera, more of a question of "what if" We noted this question was highly debated in our discord about how it would actually have to work. So highly engaging content to make with a fun question! But totally agree. I don't want IMAX film to die 😅
Appreciate it! We try to make the content interesting for people in the industry and outside of it! It's all pretty fascinating even if you're not into it
I worked for IMAX as part of the PV (Playa Vista) crew. I've never worked with people who are actually passionate about their jobs as the Millennium office. Just wish we had more office screenings.
Great video. When it comes to the resolution max of film I think the limiting factor is not the film but the lenses used. I have a 60mp full frame camera and I quickly realized that none of my lenses maximize the resolution. One of my clearest lenses is rated at about 42 megapixel max.
Even the ISF (Imaging Science Foundation) doesn't have resoultion in the top three most important image quality characteristics. (It ranks 4th.) Color volume, brightness, and contrast all matter more. It's why I'd probably rather see a movie in a Dolby Cinema. Better contrast makes a bright image feel brighter, and while the screen size isn't quite as big, all of the other qualites (Typically better sound, better seats, and better overall image quality) make it an on average better experience for me vs an IMAX presentation. The video is still a fun thought experiment though!
I don't understand the argument about needing to make new lenses that would have an image circle big enough for the sensor... What lenses do they use to shoot on current IMAX film? Wouldn't the image circle be the same size and we could just use the same lenses? I probably missed something in the video but I can't find it.
Then you ad in "Showscan" which is a process developed by Douglas Trumbull where the 70 mm film is photographed and projected at 60 frames per second (twice the normal speed). I have seen it twice. Once at a theatre at the top of a chairlift in New Zealand displaying a film about the country. A second time it was being used as the display for a simulated scifi world ride in Las Vegas. It IS A VERY STUNNING visual experience.
The closest I’ll ever get to imax quality might be a short (expensive) time lapse shoot with my tlr medium format film camera. Also Fantastic explanation on everything!
My local cinema (IMAX Melbourne, Australia), just happens to be the only IMAX location in the Southern Hemisphere to run both 1570 film & twin 4K laser projectors... I recently saw 'Dunkirk' 1570 (which was epic) & I'm booked to see 'Oppenheimer' 1570 on the 6th August - can't wait!
Very surprised to not see any mention of Omnimax domed screens as opposed to IMAG square screens. A domed screen stretches that same 70mm frame a LOT further than a big square screen, and keeps more of it closer tot he viewer. Making actual recorded resolution, and edge to edge sharpness more important than with a big square screen 2-3x further away.
These videos are always done with such high quality editing. You could seriously put these videos on other streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime and others. I love the quality of your videos and the editing work. Amazing stuff. We are spoiled on TH-cam. :)
I just wish I lived in the timeline where the old school IMAX short films hadn't gone the way of the dodo. I remember about 25 years ago spending the day at my (at the time) local IMAX theater watching movie after movie after movie, not even caring what the subject was, and enjoying the hell out of the experience. I must have spent about 80 bucks on tickets that day, but it was well worth it. Sadly, that theater is no longer IMAX, but simply a "large format" screen which is part of the nearby theater. The last movie I watched there was the second Hobbit movie and I was so disappointed in the presentation that I've never felt the desire to return. Bring back 15-70! Bring back the documentaries!
I think the confusion is that one question is "What digital resolution would be required to capture the film grain of the IMAX film?" and that number is quite high to make out the grain details in a square pixel system. Another question is, "What digital resolution matches the sharpness and contrast of IMAX film?" and that number is rather modest. This value is where you can make out the same amount of detail in what was shot, but it doesn't _look_ the same. With an intermediate value, you can use software to convincingly fake the appearance of IMAX film. And according to the woman interviewed, with existing 8K cinema shot anamorphically, they could match the appearance and it would probably be sharp enough. At 12:47 we get the only scientific measurement answer in the whole video: Although it depends on the film base and lenses etc. a typical figure for Contrast MFT is 8K. I'm not sure if he said that this is in the short direction; what we normally call 8K video is 7680 in the _long_ direction. This means that an 8K cinema file _could_ have all the detail we wanted to capture, and a software process could emulate the film grain and other "look", but to save the result would require higher resolution. Now just because a 8K cinema file that you made via VFX with a solid black pixel next to a solid white pixel can exist, doesn't mean a camera sensor with that same resolution could capture such an image. The real scene could never align perfectly to the pixels, and you have diffraction of light. You would need to have this resolution but with an overall sensor size to match the IMAX negative. That is, the pixels are larger, so that the circles of confusion from the lens of one unit of detail can hit one pixel and not overlap several pixels. Doubling the linear resolution to 16K means that we don't have to worry about the test scene containing sharp fine black and white stripes lining up exactly with the image sensor pixels, either. So, that is consistent with what the woman said at the beginning: Given 16K cinema, their software can then emulate the look of IMAX film.
It's not about digital resolution, it's simply about creating a camera that can use a digital sensor big enough to use the same medium format Hasselblad lens(with same FOV) that the current IMAX cameras use. That would require a massive CMOS sensor. They already exceeded this size with the new Big Sky camera which is 18k.
yes depends on all those other variables. I've scanned in a ton of 35mm film and I used around 40mb scan setting which is a little more than 8k resolution and I found that a 10 mp camera with 1/2" size sensor was sharper and yielded better resolution than the 35mm slides. I would say 35mm is definitely 4-5k or 8-10 mega pixel but not much more. 70mm or medium format film, I haven't scanned a lot of it but given it's so much larger I would say it's at least 8k or 35mp but 16k I doubt even close to that. The big difference like they mentioned is digital sensors are naturally sharper.
I'm a dude who likes to shoot large format. ON a $1000 scanner I can easily get 200 megapixels from a 4x5 inch scan. An 8x10 inch scan is a monstrosity that exceeds 500 megapixels and I don't expect to see this level of detail from a digital camera in my lifetime.
Not at those megapixels but the computing power exists for such a camera that can output 8x10 or 4x5 level of detailed video. Someone just needs to build it. Storage is really the issue. edit: To clarify the camera that exists are called Lightfield cameras. The problem is the storage of course.
Me too! I get about 320 megapixels out of my Howtek on a 4x5 sheet. I think the only way we’re going to see something comparable out of digital is if we keep buying Betterlight scanning backs and they make an 8x10 back. And hopefully then it’ll be USB-C or better because the time to copy 1GB over USB2, your film is out of the fixer.
A 40x60mm sensor should be enough. Basically Medium Format+ a bit of width. It's even almost the same aspect ratio as standard IMAX, PLUS if you throw a 1.5x anamorphic on it, it'll be a 2.25:1 aspect ratio image, which is perfection IMO, unless you wanna count 2:1 Univisium, which can be achieved with a 1.33x anamorphic.
i once claimed that digital resolution would never match film resolution because film resolution is determined by the size of silver halide crystals, which varies by sensitivity but is nonetheless molecular. Fast films have large crystals to respond quicker but slow films have a density close to an AgBr molecule. Fortunately, with motion picture, you don't need the full resolution, but storing the data would require a serious system.
Being an IMAX connoisseur, this video helped me internally organize a LOT of information I knew about the facts and even the possibility of an ideal digital IMAX camera. Superb stuff!
@@cubertmiso I personally have never been to an actual IMAX theater. Just a couple LieMAX ones (Xenon IMAX). But I'm super passionate about it and want to visit one some day. (I live in India so that's close to impossible for now). Regarding the OLED panel, I've been watching movies on a 15 year old 32" Samsung LCD. But again, very passionate about technology and OLED. Just dreams... :)
Working in tech and thus having a fairly good understanding of what can be done, to me it sounds like they could definitely build a 15/70-equivalent digital IMAX camera if they wanted to. I think we have the technology to build it already, and I hope IMAX does so sooner rather than later. I mainly want this so that distribution and projection will be less complicated, so that I can actually get to see IMAX in the incredibly high resolution I'm longing for as seeing Oppenheimer in an IMAX theater in digital 1080p (I could clearly see the pixels) was a major disappointment to me. I think camera manufacturers, as most tech companies, are deliberately holding back technology so they can make more money. Why sell an 18K camera now when they can instead sell 8K cameras, and then 10K, 12K, 14K and 16K before that? They'd lose out on all the sales leading up to the "ultimate camera".
Not that I disagree, i.e. milking the cow until it's dry, but I think at the moment the issue is probably not making a say, 16K sensor, but being able to make a robust enough storage capacity system that can easily store all of that information, (part of the 15/70mm issue: a single reel can only film like 3.5 minutes at a time, then needs to be swapped) that can also be used over and over and over again, without degradation. RED right now charges $1500 for a 4TB SSD. "One hour of 8K RedCode Raw 75 amounts to 7.29 TB. That's 121.5 GB per minute for raw 8K footage." So, a 16K sensor, which is 4x the pixel count would require 29.16 TB for one hour of footage (or 486 GB per minute): Which means with a 4TB SSD, you could shoot about 8.23 minutes of 16K RAW footage before you need to swap out the drive. That's A LOT of data, and that's going to be an expensive proposition, considering for a movie with say 150 minute runtime, up to hundreds of RAW hours can be shot before it's edited down to a viewable film.
@@rsr789 If I'm not mistaken 486GB per minute should mean you need about 64.8 gigabit per second. There are to my knowledge network cards with at least 100 gigabits. If you build a portable raid ssd server connected to the camera over fiber optic cable you should at least be able to record at 16K RAW. Edit in an intermediate lower resolution format and render it all on a render farm.
At the mentioned 10GB/s rate, i agree it's quite possible. But it would not be a solution similar to other digital cinema cameras with plug n play SSDs. Maybe a fiber channel from the camera to an external recorder (backpack or nearby cart). 10GB/S is beyond common interfaces, but a purpose build solution would handle this easily. The recorder could be as simple as a PC with PCIE gen4 BUS. 1-2 fiber interfaces on the PCIE bus that offloads 10GB/S to the CPU which splits the 10GB/S into 2 x 5GB/s or 4 x 2.5GB/s streams. As it's just data (cineDNG images) that can be sorted without decoding. Now you're looking at 4 x 2.5GB/s, which can easily be handled by gen4 NVME SSD's (as they top out of 5-8GB/s atm). Highspeed enterprise grade SSD's hover at around 150usd per TB. At 10GB/s, 1TB gives about 100seconds of filming. That's already a lot cheaper than using film, and unusable footage can be deleted immediately. An array of 20 x 16TB discs would cost 40.000USD, that would allow over 8 hours of filming. That's peanuts for a large film production, especially considering it's not a consumable medium like film A storage PC like this could fit in a pelicase. Easy to just have a stack of cases with 8 hours of storage in each. Alternatively, by using some of the most modern gen5 enterprise SSD's, it could be possible to squeeze past the 10GB/s requirement. Connected directly to the camera's PCIE bus, this would take 10GB/s directly without need for fiber converters or extra PC's. The SSD's would cost 1500-2500usd each and contain 26 minutes of recording (though it can be wiped and re-used quickly). Honestly i think bandwidth and storage requirements is not the issue.
Imax format (71 x 52 mm) is about four times as large as full frame (36 x 24 mm). With full frame film, a resolution around 10 to 12 MP is achievable, so IMAX should reach about 50 MP in the best case. And that would be almost 10K - as stated in the video. Anything more is just a fantasy.
Why would you need new lenses for digital IMAX instead of using already existing IMAX lenses? Also why would you film IMAX anamorphic as mentioned at 7:00 ? And lastly you don't need film convert to process digital IMAX - A) you can hire a colorist to process the image B) you don't have to make it look like film but make something new, find a new way
I saw plenty 70mm IMAX movies at ONE theatre close to where I used to live the last one being Dunkirk and it was beautiful! IMAX is still great but I do miss the classic auditoriums with the big square screen. Most IMAX theatres now are just regular movie auditoriums converted to "IMAX" but instead of having a square screen it's more rectangular. the seats are also further away - the TRUE IMAX auditoriums have seats closer to the screen.
To determine IMAX's spacial resolution, why not film a frame of an optometrist's Snellen chart at a certain distance, and then compare it to digital images of the same chart at various resolutions? In my mind, this is will pretty convincingly determine the spacial resolution where details can be resolved.
Because apples and oranges. For example, we measure EV using hp. Which isn't exactly true. And since you brought it up, neither is an ICE an equivalent to hp. Its all really arbitrary. A 200hp car is not the equivalent of having 200 horses. Is it?
We used to have an IMAX theater at The Henry Ford. But after 2015 or so, they converted it to the "Giant Screen Experience" and they very rarely show anything new there. All they show nowadays are just documentary movies.
@@FrameVoyager IMAX for me was a whole other experience than that of normal theaters. It felt like the kind of screen that movies like _Star Wars_ and _Lord of the Rings_ should be viewed on.
Whilst I love these deep dives into the most expensive and unwieldy cameras ever created. I'd love to see some videos on the polar opposite. Films that were made with the lowest end equipment such as movies like Tangerine that were filmed on an iPhone S5 or Inland Empire that was filmed on Sony DSR-PD150
IMO…the most important aspect of creating a digital version of IMAX is the sensor size which directly affects the apparent DOF. Special lenses dont need to be made…they already exist. We’ve been shooting with them for a 100 years all the way up lenses that cover an image size of 20x24 inches(polaroid 20x24). All that grain/resolution talk has really such minimal input into why IMAX looks the way it does. Its all about the focal flange distance.
True! The only reason I would say we would need to make new lenses is with the backend elements of the lens itself. A lot of time the one's created for formats like these wouldn't fit on a digital sensor because the backend elements go in too far on the mount. Which is fine for film but not for sensors. They had a lot of issues with this early on converting from film to digital. Especially George Lucas and the Attack of the Clones movie.
Maybe a fiber channel from the camera to an external recorder (backpack or nearby cart). 10GB/S is beyond common interfaces, but a purpose build solution would handle this easily. The recorder could be as simple as a PC with PCIE gen4 BUS. 1-2 fiber interfaces on the PCIE bus that offloads 10GB/S to the CPU which splits the 10GB/S into 2 x 5GB/s or 4 x 2.5GB/s streams. As it's just data (cineDNG images) that can be sorted without decoding. Now you're looking at 4 x 2.5GB/s, which can easily be handled by gen4 NVME SSD's (as they top out of 5-8GB/s atm). Highspeed enterprise grade SSD's hover at around 150usd per TB. At 10GB/s, 1TB gives about 100seconds of filming. That's already a lot cheaper than using film, and unusable footage can be deleted immediately. An array of 20 x 16TB discs would cost 40.000USD, that would allow over 8 hours of filming. That's peanuts for a large film production, especially considering it's not a consumable medium like film A storage PC like this could fit in a pelicase. Easy to just have a stack of cases with 8 hours of storage in each. Alternatively, by using some of the most modern gen5 enterprise SSD's, it could be possible to squeeze past the 10GB/s requirement. Connected directly to the camera's PCIE bus, this would take 10GB/s directly without need for fiber converters or extra PC's. The SSD's would cost 1500-2500usd each and contain 26 minutes of recording (though it can be wiped and re-used quickly). Honestly i think bandwidth and storage requirements is not the issue.
Given all the difficulties with shooting and projecting the True IMAX format . It is the best we got in terms of sheer scale and quality. Until we find an alternative or better solution to all problems listed in the video, filmmakers and production houses should encourage the current existing IMAX Film format whenever possible!!
The DoF thing is nonsense. Sure, you might have a smaller circle of confusion because of the high resolution, but the background blur and subject separation is entirely to do with the lens focal length and aperture. Doesn't matter how high resolution your APS-H sensor is, it's going to have a "deeper" focus than a 35mm sensor or larger with the same angle of view at the same f-stop.
@@Dennis94913 Assuming equivalent sensor technologies used in manufacturing, there isn't really a difference. You can simply stop down the larger sensor to match the DoF and increase the ISO to match the exposure, giving you a nearly identical image.
@@Dennis94913 I have been recently liking B4 because of this. Going the full circle, because I first went to EF S35 from MFT. However, B4 lenses are much nicer physically than anything you can mount on MFT :)
But there is kinda empirical fact to that focus with high resolution lens + high resolution sensor is "harder" to nail. Obviously it's just perception(?) and a bad lens is technically equally hard to focus but it will always look more blurry. This is very easy to test either way, using a low quality lens or a low resolution sensor. The latter makes you feel kinda incredibly stupid because you know that there should be that super sharp sweet spot but you can never hit it :D
@@hbp_ Correct, that's what the circle of confusion is. The higher your resolution the harder it is to get "perfect" focus. But the amount of background/foreground blur, thus the "separation" that you see, is the same.
The highest practical resolution can be determined from the properties of our eyes. Our field of stereoscopic vision is 120 by 60 degrees. Multiply those figures by our normal visual acuity of 80 pixels per degree, and 9600x4800 is what you get. That means, when viewing a 9600x4800 screen from the distance where it just barely fills your field of vision, you will be at the "sweet spot" where you're close enough to see all the detail but far enough away that you can't distinguish the individual pixels. Higher resolution is impractical, since this just moves the "sweet spot" closer, to the point where someone close enough to see all the detail won't be able to see the whole screen at once. For reference, the "sweet spot" for 4K is a viewing distance equal to the screen size, for 1080p it's twice the screen size, and for 8K it's half the screen size, already close to the practical limit.
The Achtel 9x7 is super high res but has a much smaller sensor than the Alexa 65. Packing so many pixels in an APS-H sensor should increase noise significantly, particularly in low light shooting. And if they employed aggressive noise reduction they would blur the image. I mean APS-H? Not even full frame? As for a digital large format 18K IMAX sensor how much would it cost to design and fab? A lovely idea, but would it be practical? And would Hollywood adopt such cameras?
10:56 it just relates to how fine the grain is, it literally can be all of those numbers. If I remember right though the finer the grain the less sensitive the film is to light. It goes into the weeds very fast.
Maybe I missed it, but I don't understand how the lenses would be a problem for a hypothetical 70mm sensor. Since there's already IMAX camera's shooting on 70mm film wouldn't the same lenses be able to be used?
Film grain is not an orthogonal pixel grid. The grains act kind of like dynamic pixels, so they fill a given area with more information over a few frames.
I calculated that to fully realise the resolution of Imax film at 70 x 48.5 mm you would need a digital sensor of 8000 x 6000 pixels. This is based on the film resolution being no more effective than 3000 dpi in real terms. If you make it over kill at 4000 dpi then that would give a sensor requirement of 11,000 x 8000 pixels. Certainly nothing like 20K.
Great video! I wish you got a little more into the concept of IMAX as a capture format vs finishing a film in IMAX as a display format, like the use of Super35 Alexa Mini’s and XT’s for films shown in IMAX, which is usually just a 1.9:1 or 1.43:1 aspect ratio. Nonetheless, I know this is about IMAX Cameras. Great work!
For sure! Yeah, videos like these are so hard because it's SO MANY rabbit holes you could go down. So we really focused on "what would it take to make this." But yeah, this video could have easily been 2 hours long 😅
I know Jonathan Bird did an A/B blind test between the Red 8k camera and IMAX camera footage for Ancient Caves. When the test audience (wrongly) said the 8k footage was the best so it had to be the 15/70 footage, the documentary became possible to do. No way to drag in the 300lb behemoth underwater IMAX camera into a tight cave to get only 3 minutes of film.
Filmconvert will not have to wait too long for the 17k Blackmagic camera to be out... then, we will find out how it all comes together... exciting times!
I made a specific effort while in LA for a business trip to go see Dunkirk in the only film print version showing. It was good however I was lost in the chaos of Dunkirk to really note that the look of the film. I did try though as the movie began to see if I could tell the difference. I can't say that I did but I'm just a film buff and not an expert. What I do miss are the OmniMax shows of old with the truly stellar sized screens. When I can find one I love watching those Imax films.
you could use the same lenses as with the 70mm film with a digital sensor as long as the flange distance to the film/sensor is the same so thats not an issue I guess, but the massive bandwidth is a nightmare
4K-8K are already enough for me, The thing I wanted to have is dynamic range and color. It's only Alexa, Alexa35 currently that could capture film like dynamic range which make such pleasing HDR mastering. Those sharp imagery with poor color and ugly clipped highlight are unbearable to me.
@@FrameVoyager So bad that the only one theatre here in Thailand already move to digital bc that film projector broken too frequent, BTW Dunkirk in real IMAX 70mm is insane!!!
The point is to get folks back into theaters by giving them something they can't get at home. That's always been the intent since TV was introduced. Resolutions have gotten higher, and screens have gotten larger. But no home theater can match IMAX. That's still somersetting you can't recreate at home.
I love that a lot of spokespeople for imax omit how all "IMAX" movies are edited digitally and also finalized and mastered entirely in the digital space at much more reasonable resolutions than 18k
Loved the video! My BS alarm is going off about the claim that the 9x7 can produce a more shallow depth of field than an IMAX camera though. Everything I’ve learned about DOF has been explained in terms of sensor (or film) size and the physics of how apertures work. Without more information, I can’t wrap my head around how he could possibly be correct about this unless he’s trying to claim that the size of his system accommodates massive lenses with massive apertures.
yea going from apsc to ff i don't get how it would be ever possible for apsc to have less dof then a ff ? always thought that the large the sensor the less dof you get and the reason phone cameras have so much dof and have to fake it using AI or some nonsense
I'm interested to know more about how a higher resolution sensor can have a shallower depth of field even with a smaller frame than a large format sensor. It goes against anything I've learned, but it sounds plausible. I wonder if the bokeh is comparable or if it has more to do with discernable detail.
16:45 For anyone wondering, Assuming the 9x7 camera had a data rate of 10gb/s: 400 seconds for 4 TB (6 minute, 40 seconds) 800 seconds for 8 TB (13 minute, 20 seconds)
@@krane15 I didn't really have a point when I posted the comment. I just like numbers lol. Flash storage has been getting less expensive as time goes on, but if you were shooting an indie-movie lets say, then it would cost a lot of $$ just to store the raw footage. Just to get an hour of footage, you need 36 Terabytes of storage. At this point, making a high-res movie digital or not, is going to cost a lot.
@@PixelGaming_2020 Good news, few cinema cameras actually use true RAW data that high. The truth is, even RAW is not totally RAW; rather, merely a less compress version of their compressed video codec. In addition, traditional RAW data is very efficient nowadays, such as ProRes, with several even more efficient compressed versions if space is still a factor. The final benefit is as you say, storage keeps getting less expensive with each generation, and continues to decrease in price as total storage space increase. The exception would be individual the internal storage cards, which are still pretty expensive. Particularity if they're proprietor card such as those used by RED, and a number of Sony high-end products. One more thing, you do want to transfer the footage from the cards to a more economical medium for long-term or archival storage.
@@krane15 That's very helpful, thanks. There is no need to have 8k+. 4K is good enough for most scenarios. There's a point where your eyes can't even distinguish between something projected at a high quality vs something at marginally higher quality. The technology for storage is no doubt getting more efficient and less expensive as time goes on.
I love the thought experiment of digital Imax. I take some issue with purpose built lenese. If the digital plane has the same dimensions as the film plane, you could use the same lenses already used in Imax. Furthermore lenses from medium format cameras could also be used.
Thanks! And for the lenses, I guess I was just thinking more of the backend elements of older lenses might go in too far. Maybe that's not as much of an issue now but I know early digital cameras had issues with lenses being to large and would hit the sensors
Well, yes. In fact, that was the case during the first transition from film to digital. But the digital format typically requires a higher quality "digital" lens to match that capability.
What does Achtel mean exactly when he says he can achieve a shallower depth of field than than 15 perf 70mm film? DOF is a combination of F-stop and sensor size. So I assume he means the 4/3 ratio format sensor his camera uses is covered by lenses that have wider apertures than are available in 70mm, even taking equivalency into account? Theoretically 15 perf 70mm should always be able to achieve narrower depth of field.
Having used and scanned 120 film, I estimate that the real IMAX resolution (in terms of resolving the same amount of detail in a digital camera) is about 40Mpx. Beyond that, the scans only show the same grain but bigger.
@@jon4715 Mirrorless scanning. I have some updates, since then I got a Mamiya 7 and its lenses truly take advantage of all the resolution the film is capable of holding. So far a sharp frame requires a 10000x80000 scan to really show everything in there. Sadly I can’t compare it directly to a high resolution full frame camera, but maybe someday I will
IMO, it should be renamed the EYE-SMAX camera, because the format has such a powerful visual impact, that the audience leaves the cinema with swollen black and bloodshot eyes.
hm.. idk, feel like the focus is too much on the resolution. bigger film/sensor size gives you a different depth of field and i think can capture better the "large" waves from red light.
For sure! but also comes with other issues as well. Resolution was a big focus because it's so hard to determine what the effective resolution of film is because there are like 100 variables and then you're converting a chemical process to a digital one. So we wanted to be thorough on that front!
Dunkirk was tedious and an utter waste of time, on a decent sized home screen/4k/hdr. It would have been prettier on an Imax, but it'd still be boring. Nolan is hit-or-miss. Hope Oppenheimer is good. Trailer looks great. But man when he misses it's just a big pretentious splat on the screen.
Loved video and agree with everything in it. Great work sir. Film grain… it is there because of same reason digital noise is. Sensors like light and so does the film. Give it less of it and you will be awarded with all that charming junk on screen. It is crap just as glitches of vhs or all compression artifacts from early digital video. But people get nostalgic and look at those things differently once they are gone. Just as in digital you can have all megapixels in the world it is mostly lenses that are bottleneck. And i seen few movies shoot on 70 mm and they not look as sharp as even modern 2k movie. Filmstock mabe had potential of capturing all those nice detials if it wasnt for optical limitations. And it is still very challenging to get any lens to output very fine detials at 8k let alone anything higher then that. You need to stop down fstop to get image as sharp as possible and even more as your sensor/film grow. And ideally even your shutter speed need to get higher and with more fps in order to get rid of that motion blur and you will need much much more light or sensor would have to be extremely good at light sensitivity whitch they kind of are now days . We probably have technology to build all components for perfect imax camera but would that be economicaly feasable? We need to build sensor that is at least 16k and that part would be easy but then probably new mount too with as short flange as possible and to design all new lenses. That camera would have to cost couple millions body only just to cover up the development cost and then set of lenses too.
Haha appreciate it! And some do 😅 more just a fun "what if" video exploring it all. But yeah, I knew this video would get good engagement because everyone has an opinion 🤌
@@FrameVoyager I think as the technology movies forward and people have more control over the image pipeline provided by digital technology, I think cameras, at least in the professional sphere will tend towards a very technical skill. In the past, it would be the guys that handled the chemical process would be the guys with a remotely clear view into the intricacies of the process. But now, because of the increasing quality and complexity of digital cameras and easily accessible high-end editing software, it's only natural there's a lot of questions. And thanks to your videos and others' like Yedlin, you clear the fog in a space rife with mistruths. So, thanks
watched dunkirk in 1570 at the universal city walk imax - one of the three true imax theaters left in california - then dune in digital imax in the same theater, and the digital projection doesn't even come close to look and feel of film. either we redefine what is highest possible resolution, or digital imaging still has a ton of work left to emulate imax film.
Superficial. IMAX is not "10 times as big as 35mm" in a classical photography school sense. In order to predict the human perception of image quality differences, we need to make linear comparisons. In digital we use MP but that is an area unit. As long as "we" can see the differences, between an image of X*Y=MP and twice linear that, in 2X*2Y=4MP, we see the 4MP as twice as good. In photography we talked about "linear enlargement" or linear magnification. Todd-AO - 70mm - vertically run For large "Hollywood" productions, especially in the sound-movie era, the format called "Todd-AO" may have been the norm. Like all classical film, it ran vertically through the projector and it had a gross width of 70mm (76.2mm equal 3 inches). As it needed width for perforations and sound tracks, it used "only" 48.5 for the image frame width - losing 70-48.5=21.5mm to that (25.4mm constitute 1 inch). 35mm - many standards - vertically run Before WW2, 35mm could be the reportage handheld run-and-gun format. 70mm was too big for that. The maximum frame size would be 24mm wide and 18mm high. It loses a max 35-24=12mm width to perforations (about 0.5in). "Academy format" goes to 22mm wide frames of 16mm high where the freed up space is used for sound. "Super35" creeps up to the perforation and can go as wide as 24.9mm wide by 18.7 mm high. "Techniscope" saves on film again, and uses 22mm width with 9.5mm height. "CinemaScope" does 22mm wide by 18.6 high and needs anamorphic shooting and projection. VistaVision - 35mm horizontally run As all film needed per batch testing with development chemicals and development process (temperature, replenishment, motion) in order to derive sensitivity and correct exposure, Leitz started development of a stills camera for testing 35mm movie film. Assessing shot quality at 24*16 was not so convenient and Leitz's developer Barnack decided to run the film horizontally and double the 35mm movie film frame size to 36*24. Turn the pages of your pre-WW2 NatGeo magazines and you'll see the Leitz Camera "Leica" advertised as "double frame" size. Decades later this idea was turned into a movie camera under VistaVision name, and we can see this as the ancestor of IMAX, again. IMAX - 70mm film - run horizontally The actual frame size is 69.9mm wide by 48.5mm high. Linear comparison As all these frame sizes have different aspect ratios, it's unfair to compare one of the sides in X*Y, say X, to the other format. So "we" would take the diagonal. Academy format: 27.2mm Super35: 31.1mm VistaVision: 43.3mm Todd-AO: 53.3mm IMAX: 84.8mm In linear comparison, IMAX is 3.1 times as good as Academy format. That's a lot, by the way. Because of aspect ratio differences, we cannot simply square that number for the area difference, but in area, IMAX is 9.6 times as large as Academy format, or 3.9 times VistaVision. The area comparison in recent decades is caused by MP comparisons between digital sensors. The MP number is relevant to required processing power, bandwidth, and storage capacity, but for image quality we need to always go back to "linear" again.
the only reson film is expensive is because of the scaning the cost of film itself and prossesing is not that bad, what kills you is the scaning to digital.
Resolution estimates never factor in how digital cameras all use bayer patterns to detect color, so the color resolution is much less than the number of pixels.
While film folk love to tout the resolution of the original camera negative, we should always remember that in a cinema, evena 35 or 70mm one, we never look at the projected negative. Most of us have not seen a first generation print. By the time we see it, the image would have gone from camera negative, to interpositive, to internegative to maybe a release print. Can even be another couple of generations when international distribution is involved. This all assumes it's an all analog process. Each new generation copies over the grain and fuzziness that the last generation introduced. It's why VFX houses for decades opted to shoot VFX on higher gauge film so the added generations of the composites won't add unnecessary softness and grain compared with the regular footage. Take all this into account and I've read of tests that showed that a typical release print of 15/70 IMAX at best barely could resolve 4K of detail. A 35mm release print can sometimes be rivalled by a decently mastered DVD and even be succeeded by a BluRay. There are other things that make 15/70 IMAX compelling. Like the sheer projection size, the taller aspect ratio and the massive sound system. I also recommend Steve Yedlins writeups and videos that show that the size of the gate is not anything magical and that given the right setups and image chain you visually cannot distinguish 15/70 from an Alexa. Or as I've had as a mantra for a few years now... Treat your camera like an IMAX camera... And it will give you IMAX images. Or at least something so close we cannot really tell the difference. The real difference is in how you use the camera. Not what the camera is shooting.
Unless you're doing something wrong, a DVD should not be looking comparable to a 35mm print. If you put lines through it or don't keep it clean then of course, but a clean print that is projected properly should never be looking that bad. A good 35 print in sharp focus through a good projector can be comparable to 4k. Lose the sharp focus or run it through a projector that isn't stable though and yeah, might be DVD quality.
All true, but many of the stage are by passed nowadays, and you can scan the negative. What's really pertinent is the theaters project is in 2k. So anything above that is irrelevant.
Saying to solve the problems of IMAX film with a digital camera is blasphemy IMAX film is IMAX film because it’s film. Instead of trying to figure out a way to make a digital IMAX camera we should try to innovate the delivery systems and camera systems to handle the film better
With TVs becoming so good, it's going to be harder and harder to sell those ridiculously expensive IMAX tickets with the selling point of "amazing resolution", especially if it's not one of those 300 degree surround screens.
The thing with TVs is that people don't typically sit close enough to get their full benefit. Assuming normal vision, a 4K TV needs to be viewed from a distance equal to its screen size to see all the detail in a 4K image, and an 8K TV needs to be viewed from a distance of half its screen size for all the detail in an 8K image to be visible. Home viewing distances tend to be about twice the screen size, which is actually the ideal viewing distance for 1080p. From that distance and any further away, 1080p and 4K are indistinguishable, ignoring HDR. Now, in a theater, you can optimize the seating for the resolution. This is actually a defining trait of true IMAX theaters. Say you've got the largest one in the world, which is 145 feet. The back row will be about 145 feet away from the screen, the front row will be about 72 feet away. These are, respectively, the ideal viewing distances for 4K and 8K. You can effectively see a 4K image _at minimum_ no matter where you sit.
@@FrameVoyager Why would they do that when the cameras they shoot with are garbo and not cinema cameras(tv cameras prioritize utility over quality). Not to mention it's like 1080p on streaming service like paramount.
Kudos to you for talking about quality loss when it comes to 15/70 films where it's almost guaranteed that something is about to go wrong and never hit the theorical specs 👍 I love the idea about that digital TRUE IMAX digital camera, it was a wonderful adventure to follow 😯It took me entire weeks to investigate what you found in your condensed video therefore I should have been lazier and randomly stumble on your video so I wouldn't have lost so much time 😅 Too bad that 9x7 camera which indeed looks like the chosen one is in 4:3 aspect ratio again because I am personally not fan of anamorphic lenses.
Haha glad you enjoyed the video! Yeah, film not being exactly repeatable in quality for every frame makes it very speculative with how to treat it in a conversion to digital. Which makes it a great topic 😅
There is a bigger quality loss on digital medium, the bayer sensor. Where 2/3rds of the data is interpolated and this interpolation can never be removed. This is why film scans look so good, as they are produced with scanners that create true 3 channel files. For 8k for example, you need 3x33MP. Scanners can produce these files. But bayer cameras only produce 1x33MP and then interpolate the missing 66MP worth of data.
I used to shoot with Fujichrome Velvia and nothing digital has come close when projected. 32mb or 64mb sensors have long been surpassed but still there is no comparison. It will happen, no doubt. But not now, RIP Velvia.
since CRT Monitors are gone many people would think something is broken when watching film. The flickering in Oppenheimer was so annoying this was the last time i would go in a analog film.
Im looking at a 100mm x 100mm image sensor on my desk right now. Even though these sensors can be made the optics still introduce losses that cannot be avoided. There is no technical challenge to making higher resolution, we make 36k + products. Cost is the biggest issue. The cost is truly bonkers and for cinema you dont really get a cost benefit that makes sense. In other industries where there is a legitimate need for higher resolution and money is available it can be done. ie. Space telescopes
![[TH] 2024 PMGC League | Survival Stage วันที่ 1 | PUBG MOBILE Global Championship](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/FVFT-PFwU80/mqdefault.jpg)
Would you use this Digital IMAX for your next wedding video shoot? 😅😅😅
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I’ll stick to my blackmagic ursa pro cameras.
I've got 2! 😂
@@A10Jedi I just got the Canon R7 and also use my Canon 90D as my 2 primary cameras. That works plenty well enough for me.
Sony Pd170p \□/
It's weird how good video even dslr cam's could took, no matter that those never meant to be for video recording..
Awesome video, the Achtel guy knows what he's saying. Imax doesn't want to admit that a 2,000 camera with a high end lense will look sharper than Imax , photographers know this fact, > sensor size has nothing to do with sharpness, if you crop a 150mm image from a top lens and compare it to a 300mm budget lense the image will look similar or better om the 150mm lens crop. This Is the same effect as stretching an image on a larger screen. I say IMax is about 8K BUT!!! That's only if the Lens used on imax was made in recent years. OLD LENSE ARE AWEFUL.
The irony that the camera quality experts interview was such a low frame rate was hilarious
think it was a connection issue…
Great explanation of why the IMAX format is so special! The first IMAX movie I saw was about the pyramids in Egypt, and I felt so real that I could have reached out and touch the stones.
My sister has a friend who came out of "retirement" to operate the IMAX projector when "Dunkirk" was released because he was the only person in town that knew how to operate the system. We were given a tour of the projector room, and to see it in real life is mind blowing. The scale of everything is so much bigger than what you imagine from looking at the pictures. We had to leave before he started the projector because he said it is as loud as a jet engine, and a fire extinguisher was kept nearby because if the the film stopped in the projector, the heat from the lamp would instantly melt the film with a potential of causing a fire!
Sadly, it was the last film movie to be shown at the theatre as it was replaced with a digital IMAX projector a few months later. I'm glad I got to see it off with such an amazing movie.
Cool story, thanks for sharing
All technology created by men, but the girl with the nose piercing has to tell the story.
Disgusting times of exclusion.
@@nnnnnn3647 Christopher Nolan transitioned and got a nose piercing?
In my city we have about 2 theatres capable of projecting IMAX film, but one time I went to one for some school trip and we saw a documentary. I didn't care what the documentary was about, but seeing true IMAX was absolutely insane. At times it felt unreal. At this point it was like 10-15 years ago and I've suddenly had an urge to watch every movie I can in real IMAX just because.
i saw top gun maverick in dolby cinema and imax and the dolby cinema completely blew away the imax experience. cramming everyone in to view a slightly taller 4:3 image of yesteryear old tvs is not a pleasurable experience whatsoever.
The projection issue is honestly the biggest one. I love the idea of large formats, but basically no theatres around me can even get regular format 35mm to look *and* sound as good as my home theater lmao.
I’ve been to a local theatre that projected 15 perf 70mm. It looked incredible, but the whole experience was kind of tainted by the fact that the speakers were old and blown out.
Poor guy. You need to hit up a better theater
A good 35mm print projected properly can easily look better than 4k. If they can't get 35 to look good, they either have a bad print with lines through it, or they don't know what they're doing.
@@kamikaze2613 Wish there were better options around Vancouver! Tried many different theatres and all of them are missing something.
@@SplicesAndCelluloid The few times I've seen properly projected 35mm it looked good, but usually the sound was lacking.
Unless it was IMAX You didn't see 15/70. They're the only ones that do that. Also part of the IMAX experience is good sound. They have their own sound system. So you probably just saw regular 70mm. Was it the Music Box? They have notoriously bad speakers...idk why they don't upgrade them...
The fact there are very few film processing labs that can process that special IMAX film is why movies like _Oppenheimer_ could be very niche projects. Especially now that within a few years we could get extremely high quality digital IMAX cameras that meet the standard proposed by the video.
Exactly. At the end of the day this is just an indulgence that most can’t afford and one that seems rather pointless in terms of ROI for both filmmaker and the viewer.
And that’s a 10/10 on how to incorporate a sponsor to a video. I’m aware it’s hard to get it to work with most brands or products but this one was a great execution 👏🏻
Really enjoyed the video, thanks.
Now I want a video of the Achtel 9x7 camera! I wasn’t aware of it
Appreciate it! Yeah it's so freaking rare to actually have a sponsor that can contribute actual value to your video. They were great!
It is like 150k lol
GRRR no sponsor. Kickback referral program.
I think the problem will always be that digital sensors do not have the insane highlight rolloff abilities of film. Where digital sensor blow out the image, film is able to maintain information. Unless that part is solved ... having bigger sensors is kinda pointless cos you still won't get the true organic film feeling.
That's true! Though with dynamic range we are definitley getting closer every year. But your totally right
@@FrameVoyager ARRI Alexa 35 should be there, 12 usable stops of latitude, 15 stops of measured DR SNR=2.
True!
Highlight rolloff depends on how you process the image in post, but yes digital sensors do have a bias of being cleaner in the shadow area which is usually muddy on film, as long as you light a scene properly, digital sensor can compete toe to toe with film.
@@Dennis94913 decent cameras without tons of NR with dynamic range measured 12 stops at SNR=2 can easily be underexposed to prevent that nasty digital clipping indeed. With some post the roll-off of film can be emulated for sure :)
Honestly, I enjoy watching movies adapted to digital IMAX just fine. Theatres usually are way bigger than normal, the sound system its also better and to top it off its the amount of extra frame and detail that can be seen. I remember watching Endgame in normal theatre and enjoyed it. When I went to rewatch the movie a week later there was only IMAX available and I never had seen IMAX before so I went for it and oh boy, ever since I try to watch as much movies in IMAX as I can
Things the video didn’t get right:
Says 15/70 film, shows a strip of 5/70.
The last movie finished in 15/70 was Tenet. It only got about 13 prints world wide though because of the pandemic.
Filmconvert is an insufficient film emulation since it only uses grain overlay and doesn’t have halation. Or like half the stocks actually used in modern movie productions. Film emulation is more than color and grain and Filmconvert doesn’t really put any effort into doing any kind of scientific emulation, which is very much possible. You can emulate at least 35mm film, by mathematically analyzing it and making a film emulation as a visual effect. You can mathematically translate the colors, write an algorithm that creates RGB grain in response to the light, build a halation algorithm to respond to light, build a gate weave simulation. Even Filmconvert nitrate is a joke in the world of real film emulation.
Also emulating IMAX film with digital is much more complex than having a high enough resolution source. The Alexa 65 has about the same scanned resolution of 15/65 Kodak Vision3 500T (5219). The issue then is that the pixels are larger than some grain would be. Same for 8K. No 8K cameras has a low enough signal to noise ratio to be actually able to resolve the grain. Also no digital projection, even IMAX dual laser, can really resolve the fine detail a pice of 70mm film can. That’s also why Roma was released in 70mm.
Talks about 15/70 projecting and shows digital laser projectors.
Btw an 8K digital camera doesn’t have the same resolution as an 8K scan from a an IMAX frame would have. All digital movie cameras that record color now use a Bayer filter to achieve color. So the only real 6.5K Alexa 65 or 8K RED cameras are the black and white and only versions of these cameras because the don’t have a Bayer filter. If you want to know the actual resolution of a digital color recording camera, take the resolution and multiple it by 0.7. So a RED V-Raptor has an effective resolution of 5.6K at best. That is if you assume you won’t get any reduction in resolution from other factors in the cameras image pipeline like sensor noise or compression.
All the lenses he shows when talking about a digital 15/65 camera. The lenses used for 15/65 are already resolut enough. They’re excellent medium format Hasselblad lenses. Alternatively, Leica-S or Schneider Kreuznach digital medium format lenses should be able to be adapted for a digital 15/65 sensor.
Again, Filmconvert is not a high end film emulation tool, like at all!
The 9x7 guy is wrong about depth of field. 65mm IMAX is the shallowest motion picture format in existence. Resolution or micro contrast have nothing to do with blur circles and depth of field. The tolerance for the circle of confusion might be lower on a higher resolution camera, but that doesn’t change the physical depth of field. You’d need to shoot on a 19mm T0.75 to achieve the same maximum shallow depth of field as the 50mm T2 on IMAX 65mm has. That’s a 25mm T1 in full frame terms. You might be able to come close with longer lenses on full frame but not on APS-H. Look at the first time Batman appears in The Dark Knight Rises, you can see the lights in the tunnel being blurred even though the subjects 3-5m away from the camera at times. And all that on a 25mm equivalent. So maybe there’s a way with speciality lenses to achieve a shallower depth of field, but not with standard cinema lenses.
He’s absolutely right that resolution is not the most important factor. IMAX film both for capturing and projecting is important because it’s an absolutely unique experience. The colors and contrast on a photochemically finished print (like Nolan still does) are more beautiful than anything else and the level of detail that is being able to be perceived on an IMAX screen is so far unmatched by dual laser projection. It’s important because it’s the most premium format we have that when used right gives us something we don’t get from digital. IMAX film is not something to be pursued to be digitally recreated, but to be kept alive in the few places it still exists. I’m very grateful that Nolan still shoots and finishes he’s films in IMAX 15 perf and that he keeps pushing it. Next year with BW large format photography for the first time ever.
✍️✍️✍️
Btw, in the video we are not suggesting that this actually happen. More of an exercise in if it's even achievable and if it is, is it even worth doing it? Thanks for your response though!
interresting part abbout resolution and grain size. i didnt think about that.
would add to the coulour reading and actuall resolution part, that different cameras read a different ammount of combined pixel of the sensor.
8 Bit 4.2.0 (one pixel saved = 4 pixels on the sensor combined) like consumer cameras, phones and the videos we look at on TH-cam etc.)
10 Bit 4:2:2 (one pixel saved = 2 pixels on the sensor) like Sony, RED
12 Bit 4:4:4 (one pixel saved = 1 pixel on the sensor) like ARRI RAW
i think, you could translate this for example to 2,7K ARRI RAW got a higher actuall resolution than 4K RED RAW
Why aren't you doing better as opposed to pointing out the flaws of others?
@@BobbyGeneric145
Because why should someone be immune from being told they're getting shit wrong just because they're on TH-cam? Too many people worship too many TH-camrs and other social media "stars" without doing any kind of thinking or research for themselves. Deflecting an excellent reply with "do better" is whataboutery at its finest.
First of all, fantastic video- so well researched and detailed
But for me the whole discussion is a bit nonsensical, the filmmakers that shoot on IMAX film today are smart enough to know that people won‘t see the movie as intended, they don‘t shoot on IMAX for the pixels, Tarantino doesn‘t shoot on film for the grain, they shoot on film and IMAX film because they want to and wouldn‘t shoot on the best digital camera in the world even if they had it
Part of the fun there is that you know that YOU are the one person shooting a movie on real IMAX that particular year, people love you for the effort you put in and the hard work and dedication
Nolan, Peele, Bird and Fukunaga aren‘t shooting on IMAX for the resolution but because no one else is shooting on IMAX, because the spectacle is rare and it‘s to difficult
imagine if everyone could shoot on a comparable format, then these movies couldn‘t fascinate us anymore
„When everyone is super, no one is“
Thanks! And totally agree. Not trying to say we need this camera, more of a question of "what if" We noted this question was highly debated in our discord about how it would actually have to work. So highly engaging content to make with a fun question!
But totally agree. I don't want IMAX film to die 😅
They do it to get people onto theaters. That has always been the intent.
I have next to zero knowledge about photography, cinematography, etc., but this channel is still fascinating.
Appreciate it! We try to make the content interesting for people in the industry and outside of it! It's all pretty fascinating even if you're not into it
I’ll probably never get to see a 15/70mm film… So I guess 8K will have to do 😊
Dude ur doing research about imax ive seen ur commments on quit a few videos related to imax
There are theaters that play film 35mm and 70mm everywhere
there are a few. Look up which imax cinemas screened 70mm copy of oppenheimer and there you have a list. 2 in europe, several in US, several in Asia.
@@janvalis727 There is also a difference between 70mm IMAX and normal 70mm screenings
Try harder
Pawel invents the best camera in the world, can't get his webcam to work
I worked for IMAX as part of the PV (Playa Vista) crew. I've never worked with people who are actually passionate about their jobs as the Millennium office. Just wish we had more office screenings.
I bet! Can imagine that's a pretty cool place to work
Great video. When it comes to the resolution max of film I think the limiting factor is not the film but the lenses used. I have a 60mp full frame camera and I quickly realized that none of my lenses maximize the resolution. One of my clearest lenses is rated at about 42 megapixel max.
Even the ISF (Imaging Science Foundation) doesn't have resoultion in the top three most important image quality characteristics. (It ranks 4th.) Color volume, brightness, and contrast all matter more. It's why I'd probably rather see a movie in a Dolby Cinema. Better contrast makes a bright image feel brighter, and while the screen size isn't quite as big, all of the other qualites (Typically better sound, better seats, and better overall image quality) make it an on average better experience for me vs an IMAX presentation. The video is still a fun thought experiment though!
Oh, totally agree! I think some people missed that this video was just like... "What if you could just build it to the max?" Just for fun haha
I don't understand the argument about needing to make new lenses that would have an image circle big enough for the sensor... What lenses do they use to shoot on current IMAX film? Wouldn't the image circle be the same size and we could just use the same lenses? I probably missed something in the video but I can't find it.
You are not missing anything in fact you are 100% correct
Then you ad in "Showscan" which is a process developed by Douglas Trumbull where the 70 mm film is photographed and projected at 60 frames per second (twice the normal speed). I have seen it twice. Once at a theatre at the top of a chairlift in New Zealand displaying a film about the country. A second time it was being used as the display for a simulated scifi world ride in Las Vegas. It IS A VERY STUNNING visual experience.
The closest I’ll ever get to imax quality might be a short (expensive) time lapse shoot with my tlr medium format film camera.
Also Fantastic explanation on everything!
My local cinema (IMAX Melbourne, Australia), just happens to be the only IMAX location in the Southern Hemisphere to run both 1570 film & twin 4K laser projectors... I recently saw 'Dunkirk' 1570 (which was epic) & I'm booked to see 'Oppenheimer' 1570 on the 6th August - can't wait!
How was it to see Oppenheimer there?
@@marcelobulhoes6180 what a movie & what a difference it makes to viewing resolution in 1570 - AMAZING!!!
@@markhormann I watched it in digital imax here, sadly there isn’t imax with film in Brazil
Very surprised to not see any mention of Omnimax domed screens as opposed to IMAG square screens. A domed screen stretches that same 70mm frame a LOT further than a big square screen, and keeps more of it closer tot he viewer. Making actual recorded resolution, and edge to edge sharpness more important than with a big square screen 2-3x further away.
These videos are always done with such high quality editing. You could seriously put these videos on other streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime and others. I love the quality of your videos and the editing work. Amazing stuff. We are spoiled on TH-cam. :)
Appreciate it! These kinds of videos are always interesting edits haha. LOTS more to come like this!
I just wish I lived in the timeline where the old school IMAX short films hadn't gone the way of the dodo. I remember about 25 years ago spending the day at my (at the time) local IMAX theater watching movie after movie after movie, not even caring what the subject was, and enjoying the hell out of the experience. I must have spent about 80 bucks on tickets that day, but it was well worth it. Sadly, that theater is no longer IMAX, but simply a "large format" screen which is part of the nearby theater. The last movie I watched there was the second Hobbit movie and I was so disappointed in the presentation that I've never felt the desire to return.
Bring back 15-70!
Bring back the documentaries!
You wouldn't need custom lenses. You could also make a focal expander/extender that sacrifices a stop of light to fill the sensor frame.
I think the confusion is that one question is "What digital resolution would be required to capture the film grain of the IMAX film?" and that number is quite high to make out the grain details in a square pixel system.
Another question is, "What digital resolution matches the sharpness and contrast of IMAX film?" and that number is rather modest. This value is where you can make out the same amount of detail in what was shot, but it doesn't _look_ the same.
With an intermediate value, you can use software to convincingly fake the appearance of IMAX film.
And according to the woman interviewed, with existing 8K cinema shot anamorphically, they could match the appearance and it would probably be sharp enough.
At 12:47 we get the only scientific measurement answer in the whole video: Although it depends on the film base and lenses etc. a typical figure for Contrast MFT is 8K. I'm not sure if he said that this is in the short direction; what we normally call 8K video is 7680 in the _long_ direction.
This means that an 8K cinema file _could_ have all the detail we wanted to capture, and a software process could emulate the film grain and other "look", but to save the result would require higher resolution.
Now just because a 8K cinema file that you made via VFX with a solid black pixel next to a solid white pixel can exist, doesn't mean a camera sensor with that same resolution could capture such an image. The real scene could never align perfectly to the pixels, and you have diffraction of light. You would need to have this resolution but with an overall sensor size to match the IMAX negative. That is, the pixels are larger, so that the circles of confusion from the lens of one unit of detail can hit one pixel and not overlap several pixels.
Doubling the linear resolution to 16K means that we don't have to worry about the test scene containing sharp fine black and white stripes lining up exactly with the image sensor pixels, either. So, that is consistent with what the woman said at the beginning: Given 16K cinema, their software can then emulate the look of IMAX film.
It's not about digital resolution, it's simply about creating a camera that can use a digital sensor big enough to use the same medium format Hasselblad lens(with same FOV) that the current IMAX cameras use. That would require a massive CMOS sensor. They already exceeded this size with the new Big Sky camera which is 18k.
yes depends on all those other variables. I've scanned in a ton of 35mm film and I used around 40mb scan setting which is a little more than 8k resolution and I found that a 10 mp camera with 1/2" size sensor was sharper and yielded better resolution than the 35mm slides. I would say 35mm is definitely 4-5k or 8-10 mega pixel but not much more. 70mm or medium format film, I haven't scanned a lot of it but given it's so much larger I would say it's at least 8k or 35mp but 16k I doubt even close to that. The big difference like they mentioned is digital sensors are naturally sharper.
I'm a dude who likes to shoot large format. ON a $1000 scanner I can easily get 200 megapixels from a 4x5 inch scan. An 8x10 inch scan is a monstrosity that exceeds 500 megapixels and I don't expect to see this level of detail from a digital camera in my lifetime.
Not at those megapixels but the computing power exists for such a camera that can output 8x10 or 4x5 level of detailed video. Someone just needs to build it. Storage is really the issue.
edit: To clarify the camera that exists are called Lightfield cameras. The problem is the storage of course.
But "large format" on video side is only the size of 120 film.
Me too! I get about 320 megapixels out of my Howtek on a 4x5 sheet.
I think the only way we’re going to see something comparable out of digital is if we keep buying Betterlight scanning backs and they make an 8x10 back. And hopefully then it’ll be USB-C or better because the time to copy 1GB over USB2, your film is out of the fixer.
@@MyPartytime69do Betterlight still exist?
A 40x60mm sensor should be enough. Basically Medium Format+ a bit of width. It's even almost the same aspect ratio as standard IMAX, PLUS if you throw a 1.5x anamorphic on it, it'll be a 2.25:1 aspect ratio image, which is perfection IMO, unless you wanna count 2:1 Univisium, which can be achieved with a 1.33x anamorphic.
i once claimed that digital resolution would never match film resolution because film resolution is determined by the size of silver halide crystals, which varies by sensitivity but is nonetheless molecular. Fast films have large crystals to respond quicker but slow films have a density close to an AgBr molecule. Fortunately, with motion picture, you don't need the full resolution, but storing the data would require a serious system.
The time and effort that went into making this is much appreciated.
Being an IMAX connoisseur, this video helped me internally organize a LOT of information I knew about the facts and even the possibility of an ideal digital IMAX camera. Superb stuff!
excellent stuff but a bit jealous of you, I have never been even close to IMAX theater, you must have giant OLED panel at home?
@@cubertmiso I personally have never been to an actual IMAX theater. Just a couple LieMAX ones (Xenon IMAX). But I'm super passionate about it and want to visit one some day. (I live in India so that's close to impossible for now).
Regarding the OLED panel, I've been watching movies on a 15 year old 32" Samsung LCD. But again, very passionate about technology and OLED. Just dreams... :)
The 9x7 camera guys are based about 40 minutes drive from my place!! I gotta jump in and see them sometime.
I'd love to see the camera in action 👀
im sure they'll welcome U with open arms
Working in tech and thus having a fairly good understanding of what can be done, to me it sounds like they could definitely build a 15/70-equivalent digital IMAX camera if they wanted to. I think we have the technology to build it already, and I hope IMAX does so sooner rather than later.
I mainly want this so that distribution and projection will be less complicated, so that I can actually get to see IMAX in the incredibly high resolution I'm longing for as seeing Oppenheimer in an IMAX theater in digital 1080p (I could clearly see the pixels) was a major disappointment to me.
I think camera manufacturers, as most tech companies, are deliberately holding back technology so they can make more money.
Why sell an 18K camera now when they can instead sell 8K cameras, and then 10K, 12K, 14K and 16K before that? They'd lose out on all the sales leading up to the "ultimate camera".
Not that I disagree, i.e. milking the cow until it's dry, but I think at the moment the issue is probably not making a say, 16K sensor, but being able to make a robust enough storage capacity system that can easily store all of that information, (part of the 15/70mm issue: a single reel can only film like 3.5 minutes at a time, then needs to be swapped) that can also be used over and over and over again, without degradation. RED right now charges $1500 for a 4TB SSD. "One hour of 8K RedCode Raw 75 amounts to 7.29 TB. That's 121.5 GB per minute for raw 8K footage." So, a 16K sensor, which is 4x the pixel count would require 29.16 TB for one hour of footage (or 486 GB per minute):
Which means with a 4TB SSD, you could shoot about 8.23 minutes of 16K RAW footage before you need to swap out the drive. That's A LOT of data, and that's going to be an expensive proposition, considering for a movie with say 150 minute runtime, up to hundreds of RAW hours can be shot before it's edited down to a viewable film.
@@rsr789 If I'm not mistaken 486GB per minute should mean you need about 64.8 gigabit per second. There are to my knowledge network cards with at least 100 gigabits.
If you build a portable raid ssd server connected to the camera over fiber optic cable you should at least be able to record at 16K RAW.
Edit in an intermediate lower resolution format and render it all on a render farm.
At the mentioned 10GB/s rate, i agree it's quite possible.
But it would not be a solution similar to other digital cinema cameras with plug n play SSDs.
Maybe a fiber channel from the camera to an external recorder (backpack or nearby cart).
10GB/S is beyond common interfaces, but a purpose build solution would handle this easily.
The recorder could be as simple as a PC with PCIE gen4 BUS.
1-2 fiber interfaces on the PCIE bus that offloads 10GB/S to the CPU which splits the 10GB/S into 2 x 5GB/s or 4 x 2.5GB/s streams. As it's just data (cineDNG images) that can be sorted without decoding.
Now you're looking at 4 x 2.5GB/s, which can easily be handled by gen4 NVME SSD's (as they top out of 5-8GB/s atm).
Highspeed enterprise grade SSD's hover at around 150usd per TB.
At 10GB/s, 1TB gives about 100seconds of filming.
That's already a lot cheaper than using film, and unusable footage can be deleted immediately.
An array of 20 x 16TB discs would cost 40.000USD, that would allow over 8 hours of filming.
That's peanuts for a large film production, especially considering it's not a consumable medium like film
A storage PC like this could fit in a pelicase. Easy to just have a stack of cases with 8 hours of storage in each.
Alternatively, by using some of the most modern gen5 enterprise SSD's, it could be possible to squeeze past the 10GB/s requirement.
Connected directly to the camera's PCIE bus, this would take 10GB/s directly without need for fiber converters or extra PC's.
The SSD's would cost 1500-2500usd each and contain 26 minutes of recording (though it can be wiped and re-used quickly).
Honestly i think bandwidth and storage requirements is not the issue.
Imax format (71 x 52 mm) is about four times as large as full frame (36 x 24 mm). With full frame film, a resolution around 10 to 12 MP is achievable, so IMAX should reach about 50 MP in the best case. And that would be almost 10K - as stated in the video. Anything more is just a fantasy.
Why would you need new lenses for digital IMAX instead of using already existing IMAX lenses? Also why would you film IMAX anamorphic as mentioned at 7:00 ? And lastly you don't need film convert to process digital IMAX - A) you can hire a colorist to process the image B) you don't have to make it look like film but make something new, find a new way
I saw plenty 70mm IMAX movies at ONE theatre close to where I used to live the last one being Dunkirk and it was beautiful! IMAX is still great but I do miss the classic auditoriums with the big square screen. Most IMAX theatres now are just regular movie auditoriums converted to "IMAX" but instead of having a square screen it's more rectangular. the seats are also further away - the TRUE IMAX auditoriums have seats closer to the screen.
To determine IMAX's spacial resolution, why not film a frame of an optometrist's Snellen chart at a certain distance, and then compare it to digital images of the same chart at various resolutions? In my mind, this is will pretty convincingly determine the spacial resolution where details can be resolved.
I would if I owned an IMAX camera 😅
Because apples and oranges. For example, we measure EV using hp. Which isn't exactly true. And since you brought it up, neither is an ICE an equivalent to hp. Its all really arbitrary. A 200hp car is not the equivalent of having 200 horses. Is it?
We used to have an IMAX theater at The Henry Ford. But after 2015 or so, they converted it to the "Giant Screen Experience" and they very rarely show anything new there. All they show nowadays are just documentary movies.
Oh that's sad... Tbh, I really like IMAX theaters for the sound system 😅
@@FrameVoyager IMAX for me was a whole other experience than that of normal theaters. It felt like the kind of screen that movies like _Star Wars_ and _Lord of the Rings_ should be viewed on.
Whilst I love these deep dives into the most expensive and unwieldy cameras ever created. I'd love to see some videos on the polar opposite. Films that were made with the lowest end equipment such as movies like Tangerine that were filmed on an iPhone S5 or Inland Empire that was filmed on Sony DSR-PD150
Sure! I did one a while back on everything everywhere all at once. But I'll probably be doing some of that again in the future
@@FrameVoyager Oh! Sorry I didn't watch that one because I didn't want to get spoilt for the movie haha. I will watch it now.
@@FrameVoyager that movie was awesome and now I have to go find this video 📹
IMO…the most important aspect of creating a digital version of IMAX is the sensor size which directly affects the apparent DOF. Special lenses dont need to be made…they already exist. We’ve been shooting with them for a 100 years all the way up lenses that cover an image size of 20x24 inches(polaroid 20x24). All that grain/resolution talk has really such minimal input into why IMAX looks the way it does. Its all about the focal flange distance.
True! The only reason I would say we would need to make new lenses is with the backend elements of the lens itself. A lot of time the one's created for formats like these wouldn't fit on a digital sensor because the backend elements go in too far on the mount. Which is fine for film but not for sensors. They had a lot of issues with this early on converting from film to digital. Especially George Lucas and the Attack of the Clones movie.
Maybe a fiber channel from the camera to an external recorder (backpack or nearby cart).
10GB/S is beyond common interfaces, but a purpose build solution would handle this easily.
The recorder could be as simple as a PC with PCIE gen4 BUS.
1-2 fiber interfaces on the PCIE bus that offloads 10GB/S to the CPU which splits the 10GB/S into 2 x 5GB/s or 4 x 2.5GB/s streams. As it's just data (cineDNG images) that can be sorted without decoding.
Now you're looking at 4 x 2.5GB/s, which can easily be handled by gen4 NVME SSD's (as they top out of 5-8GB/s atm).
Highspeed enterprise grade SSD's hover at around 150usd per TB.
At 10GB/s, 1TB gives about 100seconds of filming.
That's already a lot cheaper than using film, and unusable footage can be deleted immediately.
An array of 20 x 16TB discs would cost 40.000USD, that would allow over 8 hours of filming.
That's peanuts for a large film production, especially considering it's not a consumable medium like film
A storage PC like this could fit in a pelicase. Easy to just have a stack of cases with 8 hours of storage in each.
Alternatively, by using some of the most modern gen5 enterprise SSD's, it could be possible to squeeze past the 10GB/s requirement.
Connected directly to the camera's PCIE bus, this would take 10GB/s directly without need for fiber converters or extra PC's.
The SSD's would cost 1500-2500usd each and contain 26 minutes of recording (though it can be wiped and re-used quickly).
Honestly i think bandwidth and storage requirements is not the issue.
Given all the difficulties with shooting and projecting the True IMAX format . It is the best we got in terms of sheer scale and quality. Until we find an alternative or better solution to all problems listed in the video, filmmakers and production houses should encourage the current existing IMAX Film format whenever possible!!
The DoF thing is nonsense. Sure, you might have a smaller circle of confusion because of the high resolution, but the background blur and subject separation is entirely to do with the lens focal length and aperture.
Doesn't matter how high resolution your APS-H sensor is, it's going to have a "deeper" focus than a 35mm sensor or larger with the same angle of view at the same f-stop.
True, but i prefer smaller sensors since you can shoot at wider apertures and not sacrifice DoF.
@@Dennis94913 Assuming equivalent sensor technologies used in manufacturing, there isn't really a difference. You can simply stop down the larger sensor to match the DoF and increase the ISO to match the exposure, giving you a nearly identical image.
@@Dennis94913 I have been recently liking B4 because of this. Going the full circle, because I first went to EF S35 from MFT. However, B4 lenses are much nicer physically than anything you can mount on MFT :)
But there is kinda empirical fact to that focus with high resolution lens + high resolution sensor is "harder" to nail. Obviously it's just perception(?) and a bad lens is technically equally hard to focus but it will always look more blurry.
This is very easy to test either way, using a low quality lens or a low resolution sensor. The latter makes you feel kinda incredibly stupid because you know that there should be that super sharp sweet spot but you can never hit it :D
@@hbp_ Correct, that's what the circle of confusion is. The higher your resolution the harder it is to get "perfect" focus. But the amount of background/foreground blur, thus the "separation" that you see, is the same.
The highest practical resolution can be determined from the properties of our eyes. Our field of stereoscopic vision is 120 by 60 degrees. Multiply those figures by our normal visual acuity of 80 pixels per degree, and 9600x4800 is what you get. That means, when viewing a 9600x4800 screen from the distance where it just barely fills your field of vision, you will be at the "sweet spot" where you're close enough to see all the detail but far enough away that you can't distinguish the individual pixels. Higher resolution is impractical, since this just moves the "sweet spot" closer, to the point where someone close enough to see all the detail won't be able to see the whole screen at once.
For reference, the "sweet spot" for 4K is a viewing distance equal to the screen size, for 1080p it's twice the screen size, and for 8K it's half the screen size, already close to the practical limit.
Love how Pawel’s B roll is at 10fps
Yeah we had weird connection issues between the US and Australia 😅 might have to just go down there next time lol
@@FrameVoyager All good buddy - was just ironic about such an amazing camera being spoken of while being filmed on a potato lol
@@UXXV 😂 right?
The Achtel 9x7 is super high res but has a much smaller sensor than the Alexa 65.
Packing so many pixels in an APS-H sensor should increase noise significantly, particularly in low light shooting.
And if they employed aggressive noise reduction they would blur the image. I mean APS-H? Not even full frame?
As for a digital large format 18K IMAX sensor how much would it cost to design and fab? A lovely idea, but would it be practical? And would Hollywood adopt such cameras?
10:56 it just relates to how fine the grain is, it literally can be all of those numbers. If I remember right though the finer the grain the less sensitive the film is to light. It goes into the weeds very fast.
Maybe I missed it, but I don't understand how the lenses would be a problem for a hypothetical 70mm sensor. Since there's already IMAX camera's shooting on 70mm film wouldn't the same lenses be able to be used?
Film grain is not an orthogonal pixel grid. The grains act kind of like dynamic pixels, so they fill a given area with more information over a few frames.
FYI Dehancer plugin separates your digital image into virtual dye grain layers in its processing… makes a huge difference in believability.
I calculated that to fully realise the resolution of Imax film at 70 x 48.5 mm you would need a digital sensor of 8000 x 6000 pixels. This is based on the film resolution being no more effective than 3000 dpi in real terms. If you make it over kill at 4000 dpi then that would give a sensor requirement of 11,000 x 8000 pixels. Certainly nothing like 20K.
That's a great idea to actually interview the sponsor instead of just a plug, nice work dude
Great video! I wish you got a little more into the concept of IMAX as a capture format vs finishing a film in IMAX as a display format, like the use of Super35 Alexa Mini’s and XT’s for films shown in IMAX, which is usually just a 1.9:1 or 1.43:1 aspect ratio.
Nonetheless, I know this is about IMAX Cameras. Great work!
For sure! Yeah, videos like these are so hard because it's SO MANY rabbit holes you could go down. So we really focused on "what would it take to make this." But yeah, this video could have easily been 2 hours long 😅
I know Jonathan Bird did an A/B blind test between the Red 8k camera and IMAX camera footage for Ancient Caves. When the test audience (wrongly) said the 8k footage was the best so it had to be the 15/70 footage, the documentary became possible to do. No way to drag in the 300lb behemoth underwater IMAX camera into a tight cave to get only 3 minutes of film.
Filmconvert will not have to wait too long for the 17k Blackmagic camera to be out... then, we will find out how it all comes together... exciting times!
I made a specific effort while in LA for a business trip to go see Dunkirk in the only film print version showing. It was good however I was lost in the chaos of Dunkirk to really note that the look of the film. I did try though as the movie began to see if I could tell the difference. I can't say that I did but I'm just a film buff and not an expert. What I do miss are the OmniMax shows of old with the truly stellar sized screens. When I can find one I love watching those Imax films.
you could use the same lenses as with the 70mm film with a digital sensor as long as the flange distance to the film/sensor is the same so thats not an issue I guess, but the massive bandwidth is a nightmare
4K-8K are already enough for me, The thing I wanted to have is dynamic range and color. It's only Alexa, Alexa35 currently that could capture film like dynamic range which make such pleasing HDR mastering. Those sharp imagery with poor color and ugly clipped highlight are unbearable to me.
They really are plenty! This video was merely an exercise in what if you just built one? haha
@@FrameVoyager So bad that the only one theatre here in Thailand already move to digital bc that film projector broken too frequent, BTW Dunkirk in real IMAX 70mm is insane!!!
So the Blackmagic Ursa pros aren’t good cameras? Have you compared them to Arri? I’m so tired of the Arri fan boys.
No I own a couple of URSAs and love them 😂
The point is to get folks back into theaters by giving them something they can't get at home. That's always been the intent since TV was introduced.
Resolutions have gotten higher, and screens have gotten larger. But no home theater can match IMAX. That's still somersetting you can't recreate at home.
7:27 well happy birthday. Blackmagic URSA Cine 17k is a thing soooo
Very informative video, however @5:30 I was distracted by Hennessy Griffiths’s MF Doom T-Shirt 🤣
Thank you for this video: I’d love a follow-up interview with Achtel and his camera. The tech itself and the insight he can provide on all this is 🙏
For sure! We had more to the interview and will definitely cover it in the future!
@@FrameVoyager Don't forget to ask him to increase the framerate a bit next time...
Appreciate the integration of your sponsor as an expert interview. Good idea.
Thanks! Felt like a great way to do that
Hennessey with the MF DOOM shirt 😍
I love that a lot of spokespeople for imax omit how all "IMAX" movies are edited digitally and also finalized and mastered entirely in the digital space at much more reasonable resolutions than 18k
not true
This makes me sad as my IMAX Dome closed in 2017. I'm glad I got to see it I went there monthy to see films. In imax dome since 1995,
Loved the video! My BS alarm is going off about the claim that the 9x7 can produce a more shallow depth of field than an IMAX camera though. Everything I’ve learned about DOF has been explained in terms of sensor (or film) size and the physics of how apertures work. Without more information, I can’t wrap my head around how he could possibly be correct about this unless he’s trying to claim that the size of his system accommodates massive lenses with massive apertures.
seems like the obvious step to take?
yea going from apsc to ff i don't get how it would be ever possible for apsc to have less dof then a ff ? always thought that the large the sensor the less dof you get and the reason phone cameras have so much dof and have to fake it using AI or some nonsense
Loving all the Tenet clips.
A great example for the banana curve problem for the quality effort and quality results, thanks!
I'm interested to know more about how a higher resolution sensor can have a shallower depth of field even with a smaller frame than a large format sensor. It goes against anything I've learned, but it sounds plausible. I wonder if the bokeh is comparable or if it has more to do with discernable detail.
16:45
For anyone wondering,
Assuming the 9x7 camera had a data rate of 10gb/s:
400 seconds for 4 TB
(6 minute, 40 seconds)
800 seconds for 8 TB
(13 minute, 20 seconds)
Point being?
@@krane15 I didn't really have a point when I posted the comment. I just like numbers lol.
Flash storage has been getting less expensive as time goes on, but if you were shooting an indie-movie lets say, then it would cost a lot of $$ just to store the raw footage. Just to get an hour of footage, you need 36 Terabytes of storage.
At this point, making a high-res movie digital or not, is going to cost a lot.
@@PixelGaming_2020 Good news, few cinema cameras actually use true RAW data that high. The truth is, even RAW is not totally RAW; rather, merely a less compress version of their compressed video codec.
In addition, traditional RAW data is very efficient nowadays, such as ProRes, with several even more efficient compressed versions if space is still a factor.
The final benefit is as you say, storage keeps getting less expensive with each generation, and continues to decrease in price as total storage space increase.
The exception would be individual the internal storage cards, which are still pretty expensive. Particularity if they're proprietor card such as those used by RED, and a number of Sony high-end products.
One more thing, you do want to transfer the footage from the cards to a more economical medium for long-term or archival storage.
@@krane15 That's very helpful, thanks.
There is no need to have 8k+. 4K is good enough for most scenarios. There's a point where your eyes can't even distinguish between something projected at a high quality vs something at marginally higher quality.
The technology for storage is no doubt getting more efficient and less expensive as time goes on.
I love the thought experiment of digital Imax. I take some issue with purpose built lenese. If the digital plane has the same dimensions as the film plane, you could use the same lenses already used in Imax. Furthermore lenses from medium format cameras could also be used.
Thanks! And for the lenses, I guess I was just thinking more of the backend elements of older lenses might go in too far. Maybe that's not as much of an issue now but I know early digital cameras had issues with lenses being to large and would hit the sensors
Well, yes. In fact, that was the case during the first transition from film to digital. But the digital format typically requires a higher quality "digital" lens to match that capability.
@@krane15 a what now?
Agreed, the only sensible way to design such a camera would be to have the same backfocus as IMAX cameras so that the lenses could be shared.
What does Achtel mean exactly when he says he can achieve a shallower depth of field than than 15 perf 70mm film?
DOF is a combination of F-stop and sensor size. So I assume he means the 4/3 ratio format sensor his camera uses is covered by lenses that have wider apertures than are available in 70mm, even taking equivalency into account? Theoretically 15 perf 70mm should always be able to achieve narrower depth of field.
Having used and scanned 120 film, I estimate that the real IMAX resolution (in terms of resolving the same amount of detail in a digital camera) is about 40Mpx. Beyond that, the scans only show the same grain but bigger.
For reference, 8K is 33.17 Megapixels.
Yeah, but how are you evening scanning your 120 film?
@@jon4715 Mirrorless scanning. I have some updates, since then I got a Mamiya 7 and its lenses truly take advantage of all the resolution the film is capable of holding. So far a sharp frame requires a 10000x80000 scan to really show everything in there. Sadly I can’t compare it directly to a high resolution full frame camera, but maybe someday I will
@@javixo1997 I shoot a mamiya 6 cool
IMO, it should be renamed the EYE-SMAX camera, because the format has such a powerful visual impact, that the audience leaves the cinema with swollen black and bloodshot eyes.
The depth of information here is incredible - hats off to all of you
hm.. idk, feel like the focus is too much on the resolution. bigger film/sensor size gives you a different depth of field and i think can capture better the "large" waves from red light.
For sure! but also comes with other issues as well. Resolution was a big focus because it's so hard to determine what the effective resolution of film is because there are like 100 variables and then you're converting a chemical process to a digital one. So we wanted to be thorough on that front!
Wow that is an awesomely integrated Sponsor. I wish Those Sponsor Segments where more often like this
Same! Sometimes though you just take the sponsorships available. Have to find a lot of our research for these videos 😉
Dunkirk was tedious and an utter waste of time, on a decent sized home screen/4k/hdr. It would have been prettier on an Imax, but it'd still be boring. Nolan is hit-or-miss. Hope Oppenheimer is good. Trailer looks great. But man when he misses it's just a big pretentious splat on the screen.
The MF Doom shirt is pretty cool.
Loved video and agree with everything in it. Great work sir.
Film grain… it is there because of same reason digital noise is. Sensors like light and so does the film. Give it less of it and you will be awarded with all that charming junk on screen. It is crap just as glitches of vhs or all compression artifacts from early digital video. But people get nostalgic and look at those things differently once they are gone.
Just as in digital you can have all megapixels in the world it is mostly lenses that are bottleneck. And i seen few movies shoot on 70 mm and they not look as sharp as even modern 2k movie. Filmstock mabe had potential of capturing all those nice detials if it wasnt for optical limitations. And it is still very challenging to get any lens to output very fine detials at 8k let alone anything higher then that. You need to stop down fstop to get image as sharp as possible and even more as your sensor/film grow. And ideally even your shutter speed need to get higher and with more fps in order to get rid of that motion blur and you will need much much more light or sensor would have to be extremely good at light sensitivity whitch they kind of are now days .
We probably have technology to build all components for perfect imax camera but would that be economicaly feasable?
We need to build sensor that is at least 16k and that part would be easy but then probably new mount too with as short flange as possible and to design all new lenses.
That camera would have to cost couple millions body only just to cover up the development cost and then set of lenses too.
Brave of you to give a well balanced a researched look into the topic. It would be a shame if someone misconstrued it to mean you think IMAX is dead 😈
Haha appreciate it! And some do 😅 more just a fun "what if" video exploring it all. But yeah, I knew this video would get good engagement because everyone has an opinion 🤌
@@FrameVoyager I think as the technology movies forward and people have more control over the image pipeline provided by digital technology, I think cameras, at least in the professional sphere will tend towards a very technical skill.
In the past, it would be the guys that handled the chemical process would be the guys with a remotely clear view into the intricacies of the process. But now, because of the increasing quality and complexity of digital cameras and easily accessible high-end editing software, it's only natural there's a lot of questions.
And thanks to your videos and others' like Yedlin, you clear the fog in a space rife with mistruths. So, thanks
watched dunkirk in 1570 at the universal city walk imax - one of the three true imax theaters left in california - then dune in digital imax in the same theater, and the digital projection doesn't even come close to look and feel of film.
either we redefine what is highest possible resolution, or digital imaging still has a ton of work left to emulate imax film.
Nope! Film always has that nice warm organic feel to it. But it's an interesting question to ponder
Great video! I can imagine an MFA in cinematography deep diving all of this.
I love the look of the Arri 65, looking forward to a digital Imax sensor :D
Superficial. IMAX is not "10 times as big as 35mm" in a classical photography school sense. In order to predict the human perception of image quality differences, we need to make linear comparisons. In digital we use MP but that is an area unit.
As long as "we" can see the differences, between an image of X*Y=MP and twice linear that, in 2X*2Y=4MP, we see the 4MP as twice as good.
In photography we talked about "linear enlargement" or linear magnification.
Todd-AO - 70mm - vertically run
For large "Hollywood" productions, especially in the sound-movie era, the format called "Todd-AO" may have been the norm. Like all classical film, it ran vertically through the projector and it had a gross width of 70mm (76.2mm equal 3 inches).
As it needed width for perforations and sound tracks, it used "only" 48.5 for the image frame width - losing 70-48.5=21.5mm to that (25.4mm constitute 1 inch).
35mm - many standards - vertically run
Before WW2, 35mm could be the reportage handheld run-and-gun format. 70mm was too big for that.
The maximum frame size would be 24mm wide and 18mm high. It loses a max 35-24=12mm width to perforations (about 0.5in).
"Academy format" goes to 22mm wide frames of 16mm high where the freed up space is used for sound.
"Super35" creeps up to the perforation and can go as wide as 24.9mm wide by 18.7 mm high.
"Techniscope" saves on film again, and uses 22mm width with 9.5mm height.
"CinemaScope" does 22mm wide by 18.6 high and needs anamorphic shooting and projection.
VistaVision - 35mm horizontally run
As all film needed per batch testing with development chemicals and development process (temperature, replenishment, motion) in order to derive sensitivity and correct exposure, Leitz started development of a stills camera for testing 35mm movie film. Assessing shot quality at 24*16 was not so convenient and Leitz's developer Barnack decided to run the film horizontally and double the 35mm movie film frame size to 36*24. Turn the pages of your pre-WW2 NatGeo magazines and you'll see the Leitz Camera "Leica" advertised as "double frame" size.
Decades later this idea was turned into a movie camera under VistaVision name, and we can see this as the ancestor of IMAX, again.
IMAX - 70mm film - run horizontally
The actual frame size is 69.9mm wide by 48.5mm high.
Linear comparison
As all these frame sizes have different aspect ratios, it's unfair to compare one of the sides in X*Y, say X, to the other format. So "we" would take the diagonal.
Academy format: 27.2mm
Super35: 31.1mm
VistaVision: 43.3mm
Todd-AO: 53.3mm
IMAX: 84.8mm
In linear comparison, IMAX is 3.1 times as good as Academy format. That's a lot, by the way. Because of aspect ratio differences, we cannot simply square that number for the area difference, but in area, IMAX is 9.6 times as large as Academy format, or 3.9 times VistaVision.
The area comparison in recent decades is caused by MP comparisons between digital sensors. The MP number is relevant to required processing power, bandwidth, and storage capacity, but for image quality we need to always go back to "linear" again.
Henessey Griffiths talking about film scans while wearing a damn MF DOOM tee tho.... friend of my dreams
the only reson film is expensive is because of the scaning the cost of film itself and prossesing is not that bad, what kills you is the scaning to digital.
Resolution estimates never factor in how digital cameras all use bayer patterns to detect color, so the color resolution is much less than the number of pixels.
While film folk love to tout the resolution of the original camera negative, we should always remember that in a cinema, evena 35 or 70mm one, we never look at the projected negative. Most of us have not seen a first generation print.
By the time we see it, the image would have gone from camera negative, to interpositive, to internegative to maybe a release print. Can even be another couple of generations when international distribution is involved. This all assumes it's an all analog process. Each new generation copies over the grain and fuzziness that the last generation introduced. It's why VFX houses for decades opted to shoot VFX on higher gauge film so the added generations of the composites won't add unnecessary softness and grain compared with the regular footage.
Take all this into account and I've read of tests that showed that a typical release print of 15/70 IMAX at best barely could resolve 4K of detail. A 35mm release print can sometimes be rivalled by a decently mastered DVD and even be succeeded by a BluRay.
There are other things that make 15/70 IMAX compelling. Like the sheer projection size, the taller aspect ratio and the massive sound system.
I also recommend Steve Yedlins writeups and videos that show that the size of the gate is not anything magical and that given the right setups and image chain you visually cannot distinguish 15/70 from an Alexa.
Or as I've had as a mantra for a few years now... Treat your camera like an IMAX camera... And it will give you IMAX images. Or at least something so close we cannot really tell the difference.
The real difference is in how you use the camera. Not what the camera is shooting.
Unless you're doing something wrong, a DVD should not be looking comparable to a 35mm print. If you put lines through it or don't keep it clean then of course, but a clean print that is projected properly should never be looking that bad. A good 35 print in sharp focus through a good projector can be comparable to 4k. Lose the sharp focus or run it through a projector that isn't stable though and yeah, might be DVD quality.
@@SplicesAndCelluloid There's a lot wrong because the supposition leave out enough information to fill a database.
All true, but many of the stage are by passed nowadays, and you can scan the negative. What's really pertinent is the theaters project is in 2k. So anything above that is irrelevant.
Saying to solve the problems of IMAX film with a digital camera is blasphemy IMAX film is IMAX film because it’s film.
Instead of trying to figure out a way to make a digital IMAX camera we should try to innovate the delivery systems and camera systems to handle the film better
With TVs becoming so good, it's going to be harder and harder to sell those ridiculously expensive IMAX tickets with the selling point of "amazing resolution", especially if it's not one of those 300 degree surround screens.
Did you see they are looking to do live premieres of shows like Survivor in IMAX theaters? 😂
The thing with TVs is that people don't typically sit close enough to get their full benefit. Assuming normal vision, a 4K TV needs to be viewed from a distance equal to its screen size to see all the detail in a 4K image, and an 8K TV needs to be viewed from a distance of half its screen size for all the detail in an 8K image to be visible. Home viewing distances tend to be about twice the screen size, which is actually the ideal viewing distance for 1080p. From that distance and any further away, 1080p and 4K are indistinguishable, ignoring HDR.
Now, in a theater, you can optimize the seating for the resolution. This is actually a defining trait of true IMAX theaters. Say you've got the largest one in the world, which is 145 feet. The back row will be about 145 feet away from the screen, the front row will be about 72 feet away. These are, respectively, the ideal viewing distances for 4K and 8K. You can effectively see a 4K image _at minimum_ no matter where you sit.
@@FrameVoyager Why would they do that when the cameras they shoot with are garbo and not cinema cameras(tv cameras prioritize utility over quality). Not to mention it's like 1080p on streaming service like paramount.
@@KingdaToro Let's not start this debate again. The scientific studies on this have poor methodology and use upscaled resolutions instead of native.
No idea 😂
Kudos to you for talking about quality loss when it comes to 15/70 films where it's almost guaranteed that something is about to go wrong and never hit the theorical specs 👍
I love the idea about that digital TRUE IMAX digital camera, it was a wonderful adventure to follow 😯It took me entire weeks to investigate what you found in your condensed video therefore I should have been lazier and randomly stumble on your video so I wouldn't have lost so much time 😅 Too bad that 9x7 camera which indeed looks like the chosen one is in 4:3 aspect ratio again because I am personally not fan of anamorphic lenses.
Haha glad you enjoyed the video! Yeah, film not being exactly repeatable in quality for every frame makes it very speculative with how to treat it in a conversion to digital. Which makes it a great topic 😅
There is a bigger quality loss on digital medium, the bayer sensor. Where 2/3rds of the data is interpolated and this interpolation can never be removed. This is why film scans look so good, as they are produced with scanners that create true 3 channel files. For 8k for example, you need 3x33MP. Scanners can produce these files. But bayer cameras only produce 1x33MP and then interpolate the missing 66MP worth of data.
I used to shoot with Fujichrome Velvia and nothing digital has come close when projected.
32mb or 64mb sensors have long been surpassed but still there is no comparison.
It will happen, no doubt. But not now, RIP Velvia.
Oh this video was extremely interesting. More technical stuff like this please.
I absolutely enjoyed this video
Glad to hear it! When we find something like this that has a good technical question behind it we definitley will make more!
@@FrameVoyager yay 😁
This was super interesting, thank you for the deep dive.
No problem! Glad you enjoyed it
That Hennessy is real cute
Came here to say this 👌
😅😅😅
since CRT Monitors are gone many people would think something is broken when watching film. The flickering in Oppenheimer was so annoying this was the last time i would go in a analog film.
Im looking at a 100mm x 100mm image sensor on my desk right now. Even though these sensors can be made the optics still introduce losses that cannot be avoided. There is no technical challenge to making higher resolution, we make 36k + products. Cost is the biggest issue. The cost is truly bonkers and for cinema you dont really get a cost benefit that makes sense. In other industries where there is a legitimate need for higher resolution and money is available it can be done. ie. Space telescopes
7:34 "we just have to wait for 16k cameras"
blackmagic: "hold my beer, ill do ya one better"
Someone get this man a show on Discovery channel.
😅😅😅