These are all meaningless words without a sample video
Kodak resurrects Super 8
91–100 of 202 posts
Re: Kodak resurrects Super 8
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Sean Mattini .... digital colorist assist Edited and color graded on digital intermediate
The image retains characteristics of film even though it goes through DI, even color quality. (Quality in the sense of 'different', not strictly 'better'.) I think it's the principle of "you can't work with what's not there" - film (especially talking several years ago vs. today) will capture a different and usually wider dynamic range, and lend a different starting point that that might not be possible or easy to si…
Film is beautiful and has a great 'by-default' aesthetic - but many digital imaging systems have been able to capture more dynamic range (and far more resolution) for a few years now, and it isn't that hard to add grain and emulate the kind of image response for popular stocks in post...
These days it's really more of a tactile choice - 'do you want to work with film' - than aesthetic.
Re: Kodak resurrects Super 8
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
We weren't in the company. It can be hard to tell. You could open a beauty therapy shop, and it's revenue increase every year, and suddenly after the introduction of cheap laser treatments and race-to-the-bottom competitors, in one year you could face a reduction of 70% of your revenue.[1] [1] Anecdote.
Kodak certainly did a lot of things wrong--especially with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight. Part of their problem with digital was that they were arguably ahead of curve (and not quite on the right curve) with things like PhotoCD and providing equipment to photo shops to print customer photos. However, the bottom line is that it would probably have been very difficult for even the most brilliant management to replace…
This bit about replacement of the business is exactly true; most people don't realize Kodak was making digital cameras the whole time film was being replaced. As a purely off-the-cuff guess, I'd bet the entire digital camera industry is smaller than Kodak's film processing work at its peak.
I live in Rochester - Kodak was literally one end of the entire city; the scale of the operation was huge.
What I regret was that it was a good place to work, though I was never there. Car dealerships would plan annual sales around bonus time at Kodak, and retirees had health care for the rest of their life, for instance.
Re: Kodak resurrects Super 8
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
We weren't in the company. It can be hard to tell. You could open a beauty therapy shop, and it's revenue increase every year, and suddenly after the introduction of cheap laser treatments and race-to-the-bottom competitors, in one year you could face a reduction of 70% of your revenue.[1] [1] Anecdote.
Kodak certainly did a lot of things wrong--especially with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight. Part of their problem with digital was that they were arguably ahead of curve (and not quite on the right curve) with things like PhotoCD and providing equipment to photo shops to print customer photos. However, the bottom line is that it would probably have been very difficult for even the most brilliant management to replace…
I worked at Kodak as a summer intern in '85. Was the era of the disk camera. Was also my first programming job. Lotus 1-2-3.
Most people today can't comprehend the scale of American manufacturing as it still was at that time. The Elmgrove plant where I worked (one of a dozen facilities in the Rochester area) has over 14 thousand employees. Our start and end times were staggered in 7 minute increments to manage traffic flow.
That none of that would exist 20 years later was inconceivable at the time. The word "disruption" wasn't in business vocabulary. Nor was the phrase "made in China". Some senior technical managers saw the "digital" writing on the wall. But what could they do? What could anyone do? There was no way to turn that aircraft carrier on a dime.
There was no business model in digital cameras that would employ 100 thousand engineers, managers, factory workers, technicians, and staff.
Re: Kodak resurrects Super 8
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there theoretically anything preventing them from putting a line like this from insta's TOS in there? "Instagram does not claim ownership of any Content that you post on or through the Service. Instead, you hereby grant to Instagram a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to use the Content that you post on or through the Service, subject to the Service's Priva…
Why does that text concern you? If you want Instagram to display your photograph back to you (or other users at your request) then you have to grant them a license like this. Where terms get concerning is when they want a redistribution license, or they want to allow unnamed third party "partners" to be able to utilise your photograph royalty free. Neither of which appear in the snippet above.
The sub-licenseable, and transferable parts.
That's pretty much "Screw you we can do what we want now".
Re: Kodak resurrects Super 8
#96You may have not noticed it, but the benefits of film have been going extinct this decade. Check out how many feature films are shot digitally versus on film. Unless you are Spielberg, you are shooting digitally. Currently, there are small digital cameras like the Blackmagic Pocket Camera (BMPCC) camera, under $1k, which have a capability to shoot images that are so similar to 16mm film that the average consumer coul…
You may not have noticed it, but a quite popular movie was recently shot on film. (The Force Awakens)
Re: Kodak resurrects Super 8
#97Interesting to see history repeating itself a bit: "When you purchase film you will be buying the film, processing and digital transfer". Kodak was pursued by the DoJ in the 1950s and ultimately ruled against in an antitrust suit for doing the exact same thing with Kodachrome, the market leader in color (still) photography at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodachrome#Prepaid_processing
Kodachrome was slide film. Very few labs would process it, though the colors were bright and some people really liked it.
E6 was the process that most slide film used (even some of kodaks).
Slide film was always a challenge to expose just right, its dynamic range is pretty narrow compared to negative film. Its what you needed to use for movies though.
I can't see this new revival being more than a niche market. Sending film away and waiting a week might not cut it in todays market when phones shoot hd and can edit.
There are a bunch of these. The "imposible project" [1] bringing back polariod film being another. Polariod though has the advantage of being instant.
Re: Kodak resurrects Super 8
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
It isn't just nostalgia. Digital music can't simulate having a physical album cover, an e-ink screen won't ever be similar to a printed page, no music encoding will physically prevent loudness-wars mastering the way a vinyl record will (the needle would just jump out of the track), no printer will ever be able to fool someone into thinking a document was written on a typewriter. You can tell the difference if a piece…
What gives those things value IS the nostalgia though. A computer printed page has clear crisp letters with advanced fonts and typography compared to a typewriter with smudged, fixed-width fonts. E-ink books allow for notes, search, bookmarks and much more. The new is with few exceptions objectively better.
But it's not just about nostalgia. There's the fact that there is more human work and thought involved with doing something by hand. It is a social signal with some of the objectively "worse" ways that will stick around for awhile.
Re: Kodak resurrects Super 8
#99I grew up in upstate NY and visited Kodak's campus in Rochester in their heyday. It was impressive as hell to a ten year-old. I'm sure the idea that the massive works and the business they represented could almost completely evaporate never occurred to the people working there. It's a little melancholy in some ways. I wish I could see this as more than a desperate attempt to rekindle that dead business, but I can't. How much do the benefits of using analog processes to capture the light really matter when the vast majority of people will access the content downstream through digital delivery platforms? Somewhere along the line the information is going to get sampled and aliased. Tarantino getting all nostalgic for analog content that will be shown to viewers via $100,000 digital projectors is one thing, but most photographs are viewed on phones, and in web browsers.
Re: Kodak resurrects Super 8
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unlike 9.5, they never stopped commercial manufacture and processing of Super8 so all of the commercial infrastructure is still there - its less of a revival, and more a introduction of a new Super8 camera.
Good point, but 9.5 is still kinda amazing format, if only.
What does it take to make film? The camera can't be that difficult. All those Nikon and Canon lenses for small sensors would be ideal.