[MacDV] Re: The quality of 8MM film

[Steven Rogers]

On Wednesday, July 23, 2003, at 05:57 PM, Mark M. Florida wrote:

>  . . .  To use an example of why I believe the transmissive process 
> works better, scanning negatives or slides at a high resolution is 
> *ALWAYS* better than scanning a printed photo (even if the printed 
> photo is perfectly color balanced).

My experience with this method is that light colors are way overdriven 
and there's quite a hot spot in the center of the image that makes the 
transfer less desirable than a reflected image.The hot spot comes from 
the way the film is lit in the projector. The severity of the problem 
depends on the quality of the projector, but projecting a larger image 
and using a reflected image minimizes it.

Part of the problem with the copy is that the latitude of film is 
*much* better than the camera, particularly with Kodachrome. In other 
words, if you project a movie on the wall of people filmed standing in 
full sun through deep shade, you can probably see detail all the way 
into the shade. The film can handle that range of brightness, but video 
cameras cannot get anywhere near that latitude. When you shoot the film 
transmissively, you're making the light colors really bright, and 
making it just that much harder for the video camera to cope with the 
range of light and dark in the image.

In the end, it all comes down to which way looks better using your 
particular projector. It is certainly good to have both techniques in 
your bag of tricks, because you'll probably have to use both to get 
good copies of all the scenes in your movie.

SR