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Kodak resurrects Super 8

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Re: Kodak resurrects Super 8

#111

Post by SwellJoe »

I watched the analog-to-digital-to-analog trend happen in professional audio (I was going to school for audio as ProTools was beginning to be a thing, we worked on analog tape machines...but the year after I finished my degree, they brought in digital ADAT machines for the small labs, and eventually went digital in the 24 track room, as well). It's amusing how superstitious people can be, especially in industries that are mostly subjective but happen to bump up against a lot of technology. Audio, photography, video, and now film have all been through this.

The final product will be delivered digitally for 99.9% of consumers. Why fight it? Why spend so much money, time, and effort, to work with inferior media? I dunno. I worked on analog tape machines (I was even a hold out, for a while, having a 1" 16 track machine, as big as a mini fridge, in my house for several years after digital multitracks were the smart choice), but there really is no good argument for it today.

There was a brief window where the best digital equipment was inferior to the very best analog equipment, but it didn't last long. Maybe five years. We may still be in that window for film when comparing 70mm film to the best digital equipment...but, on the low end? Hell no. This janky little camera from Kodak will be a joke compared to digital equipment in the same price range. And, the film/processing costs will be outrageous comparatively speaking, limiting ones options when shooting to a significant degree.

In short: This is just hipster bullshit. Just like analog audio is hipster bullshit.

Re: Kodak resurrects Super 8

#112

Post by tracker1 »

kalleboo wrote: post #76
colechristensen wrote: post #58

Earlier 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.

I still like real wood... It's never "perfect" the processing can never be as precise as metal, plastic or other composite materials can get. For that matter, I like glass, which oddly will often show some material imperfections, such as in a table top.

As for books, I simply learn better from the physical book... every time I try e-books I wind up in a blur.. can sometimes happen with very long online articles too. There's no context or position to it all.

Don't get me wrong, I'd rather never again have to lug around an 80# monitor, or use a typewriter again... for that matter, I don't much see the point of film over digital capture.

All of that said, there's something to like about natural flaws.

Re: Kodak resurrects Super 8

#113

Post by plaguuuuuu »

lectrick wrote: post #89

Is there an actual double-blind study that proves that digital still cannot beat analog in certain realms? Because I'm having a hard time believing that this "analogue renaissance" isn't just pure marketing hokum.

If nothing else, it's a stylistic choice. Choosing how a film should look, the colours and tonality etc, is a creative process and has aesthetic and therefore subjective goals. You can't really say which one is 'better', only that they're different.

Re: Kodak resurrects Super 8

#114

Post by nitrogen »

SwellJoe wrote: post #111

I watched the analog-to-digital-to-analog trend happen in professional audio (I was going to school for audio as ProTools was beginning to be a thing, we worked on analog tape machines...but the year after I finished my degree, they brought in digital ADAT machines for the small labs, and eventually went digital in the 24 track room, as well). It's amusing how superstitious people can be, especially in industries tha…

It's the same thing as using Polaroid cameras with Impossible film, or vinyl records. It's to find some tangibility in an era of intangibles. The low fidelity is the point.

Re: Kodak resurrects Super 8

#115

Post by plaguuuuuu »

SwellJoe wrote: post #111

I watched the analog-to-digital-to-analog trend happen in professional audio (I was going to school for audio as ProTools was beginning to be a thing, we worked on analog tape machines...but the year after I finished my degree, they brought in digital ADAT machines for the small labs, and eventually went digital in the 24 track room, as well). It's amusing how superstitious people can be, especially in industries tha…

With photography, film and audio alike, it's easy to prove that digital has orders of magnitude more precision and accuracy. That's great, but it's not the whole picture.

Mixing desks are said to colour the sound in certain ways, and in doing so, introduce harmonics and other sorts of imprecision that would be anathema to digital components, for which THD and SNR are paramount and utter precision is the ultimate goal. Then, in the end, people listen to the source material with their own ears, which have totally different frequency responses anyway and the eardrum is basically an analogue device that will color the sound in the end anyway :D

But then you start getting into things like guitar sounds. It's not that digital guitars sound better or worse - all you can really say is that they sound different. The real issue is that there's no objective sound that it should have - the electronics, whether digital or analogue, are effectively part of the instrument. And in the same way that analogue amps and effects colour the signal in specific ways that a guitarist or engineer might prefer, film imparts its own aesthetic qualities that a director or cinematographer might prefer.

Re: Kodak resurrects Super 8

#116

Post by dietrichepp »

sitkack wrote: post #100
nickbauman wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Black and white film? It's very hard, but doable. Probably comparable difficulty to building your own computer out of logic ICs. You'll buy cellulose acetate stock, a bunch of chemicals, and build a coating machine yourself. You'll also need some chemical engineering skills. Your film might be comparable to that from the 1950s.

Alternatively, you can buy a film factory when it gets shut down, but these tend to produce film in large batches, and it might be difficult to repair the machines. People have done this before.

Color film? Basically impossible. Probably comparable difficulty to building your own ICs. Only a handful of companies were ever successful at it.

Re: Kodak resurrects Super 8

#119

Post by ddingus »

SwellJoe wrote: post #111

I watched the analog-to-digital-to-analog trend happen in professional audio (I was going to school for audio as ProTools was beginning to be a thing, we worked on analog tape machines...but the year after I finished my degree, they brought in digital ADAT machines for the small labs, and eventually went digital in the 24 track room, as well). It's amusing how superstitious people can be, especially in industries tha…

Where there are limits, there is art.

Re: Kodak resurrects Super 8

#120

Post by mikepurvis »

plaguuuuuu wrote: post #115
SwellJoe wrote: post #111

I watched the analog-to-digital-to-analog trend happen in professional audio (I was going to school for audio as ProTools was beginning to be a thing, we worked on analog tape machines...but the year after I finished my degree, they brought in digital ADAT machines for the small labs, and eventually went digital in the 24 track room, as well). It's amusing how superstitious people can be, especially in industries tha…

With photography, film and audio alike, it's easy to prove that digital has orders of magnitude more precision and accuracy. That's great, but it's not the whole picture. Mixing desks are said to colour the sound in certain ways, and in doing so, introduce harmonics and other sorts of imprecision that would be anathema to digital components, for which THD and SNR are paramount and utter precision is the ultimate goal…

I don't think anyone disputes that. The real question is, can a digital filter provide a close enough approximation of that colouring that going through the analogue path is no longer necessary? Are Instagram and Photoshop an adequate substitute for real life film grain?

I say yes, but I'm a software guy. And I've had this argument with a serious pro audio engineer who has a Pro Tools workstation built around a Neve 8816— even though every track is digital, and dozens of digital filters are applied, the tracks each pass through their own DAC connected to this old-school analogue summing mixer, and then are re-recorded on the other side. It seems totally foreign to me, but there are definitely recording professionals still spending a lot of money to set up and maintain these workflows.

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