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IMAX vs. IMAX 70mm: The difference between these two cinema formats

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Re: IMAX vs. IMAX 70mm: The difference between these two cinema formats

#51

Post by xdertz »

zos_kia wrote: post #42
mariusmg wrote: post #29

>To understand IMAX, it helps to know how movies are captured in the first place. Many are shot digitally, as it's cheaper and more convenient than using film. However, many filmmakers still want, well, film The illogical part about this process is that they convert the shot film to digital, they add CGI and color correction and then they print back the digital version to....film. So the whole point of shooting a Hol…

I don't think it's as illogical as it sounds. The qualities of the signal you feed your digital pipeline are very important to the finished product. And i'm using the plural intentionally here : not quality as in "it's better" but qualities as in "it has specific characteristics". I can more easily relate to music production which i have passing experience with. The analog would be : if you plug your guitar directly…

The guitar claim is not true anymore. Companies like NeuralDSP have reached the point where it is indistinguishable from analogue. Virtual amps have pretty much completely replaced analogue amps in live setups and many studio recordings.

Re: IMAX vs. IMAX 70mm: The difference between these two cinema formats

#52

Post by chris_va »

dbspin wrote: post #33
mariusmg wrote: post #29

>To understand IMAX, it helps to know how movies are captured in the first place. Many are shot digitally, as it's cheaper and more convenient than using film. However, many filmmakers still want, well, film The illogical part about this process is that they convert the shot film to digital, they add CGI and color correction and then they print back the digital version to....film. So the whole point of shooting a Hol…

Some directors like the appearance of film... Given that the spectacle is a large part of the reason we go to the cinema, the colour fidelity and (and in the case of IMAX) unique scale and aspect ratio are the point... Not sure why practicality or cost would override that? As a director who doesn't shoot on film - I still see the appeal, there's a particular quality to skin tones - especially in response to older arc…

I know extensive thought goes into filters in front of the camera and the lighting, but one can probably change the bayer filter transmission function to get them to match better (and maybe add one or two channels at the cost of shot noise).

I see this in industrial cameras, do you know if any filmmakers use non standard Bayer filters?

Re: IMAX vs. IMAX 70mm: The difference between these two cinema formats

#53

Post by bob1029 »

I find the sound system to be more compelling than the projection system.

The audio amplification in some IMAX venues are rated for more power consumption than their projector lamp. 15kW across 12 channels in some cases. You could never recreate this part of the experience at home. The power you could replicate but not the acoustics of a gigantic auditorium combined with that power. You can get 20hz floor shaking in small parts of your living room where the standing waves build up, but at imax it works smoothly across every seat.

Re: IMAX vs. IMAX 70mm: The difference between these two cinema formats

#54

Post by Tarq0n »

jagged-chisel wrote: post #40
dbspin wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some directors like the appearance of film... Given that the spectacle is a large part of the reason we go to the cinema, the colour fidelity and (and in the case of IMAX) unique scale and aspect ratio are the point... Not sure why practicality or cost would override that? As a director who doesn't shoot on film - I still see the appeal, there's a particular quality to skin tones - especially in response to older arc…

I don’t understand how even the preference for shooting on film makes any sense if you’re digitizing, heavily processing, adding entirely digital elements … I get putting the final edit to film. If you’re not doing all that additional garbage, then capturing on film, going digital for basic editing, then back to film might make sense.

This is out of my area of expertise a bit, but digitization quality loss often depends on whether you quantize things, at what level of fidelity and also what kind of transformations you apply (stepped discrete or continuous for instance).

Consider how music production is often done on audio recorded at a higher sample rate, so when effects are applied artifacting is reduced for the eventual export sample rate. For video, one analogy is recording slow-motion shots at a higher framerate rather than slowing down regular footage.

Re: IMAX vs. IMAX 70mm: The difference between these two cinema formats

#55

Post by Tarq0n »

lemoncookiechip wrote: post #6

This is purely my opinion. I see 70mm as mostly a movie scam to extort exorbitant amounts of cash from a ticket for something that's vaguely noticeable outside the aspect ratio itself. Note that I'm not disputing that there is a visual difference, there is, the image is clearer, shaper, with better darks, but the entry fee paired with how out of the way 70mm is, it's just ends up feeling like FOMO. My opinion doesn't…

I don't think the extra production cost, for the Odyssey at least, is likely to be offset by extra box office income. If you read about it, the massive cameras and limited running time of one load of film (less than five minutes) sounds very burdensome. That's not to mention the obscene cost of the film stock, as well as developing dailies and having to edit from film (they actually cut and pasted film together for the Final Cut of the IMAX version).

The trailers also looked much worse than the film which I suspect is related to difficulties with this whole process.

Re: IMAX vs. IMAX 70mm: The difference between these two cinema formats

#56

Post by mchristen »

derbOac wrote: post #27
davidferguson wrote: post #14

If you want a very in depth technical look at the differences between IMAX 70mm, 70mm and 35mm for _The Odyssey_, I wrote an article about this last month. https://www.theppt.org/rewind/articles/where-can-you-watch-t... But here are my nit-picks from the article linked here. I'm only commenting on the 15/70mm IMAX parts, because I'm not knowledgable enough about the digital IMAX foramats. > The extra resolution, up t…

Not a complaint about your post but this stuff about film formats and aspect ratios has always had me scratching my head. For years I heard people arguing that wider aspect ratios were preferable because they afforded a wider view, and that narrower aspect ratios were too restrictive horizontally. This always seemed confusing to me because theoretically they should allow for more vertical space for the same width. No…

It can definitely be confusing.

For example, traditionally still film cameras used 35mm film, but cinema cameras also used 35mm film. However the cinema cameras capture the image vertically instead of horizontally on the film, otherwise known as a Super 35. Literally the film runs through the camera vertically instead of horizontally.

In order to make an image work that is understandable to our brains you either need to do heavy cropping and waste tons of film, or you use an anamorphic lens to "squeeze" more light onto the film. You then have to reverse that when you go to project the film.

Re: IMAX vs. IMAX 70mm: The difference between these two cinema formats

#57

Post by martinald »

It's interesting to me when I go to the cinema how poor the quality is compared to at home on an OLED TV. The blacks are so grey and dark stuff is hard to make out.The resolution is far less noticeable than that (but obviously worse).

Seems to me the real improvement in cinema would be OLED-style contrast ratio panels. Is this a thing being worked on?

Re: IMAX vs. IMAX 70mm: The difference between these two cinema formats

#58

Post by sgt »

gempir wrote: post #39
sgt wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tried both, 70mm (65mm is video, 5mm is audio) is just superior in every way. There's nothing out there that compares, digital projections are still far behind.

Hmm are you sure 5mm is audio? This article claims Audio is added via USB Stick or CD https://www.theppt.org/rewind/articles/where-can-you-watch-t...

I was referring to regular 70mm, in which 65mm is for the picture and 5mm is to allow for the sound channels. I am not surprised - squeezing even more out of the film, that IMAX would just put audio separately.

Re: IMAX vs. IMAX 70mm: The difference between these two cinema formats

#59

Post by sgt »

rpdillon wrote: post #44
sgt wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tried both, 70mm (65mm is video, 5mm is audio) is just superior in every way. There's nothing out there that compares, digital projections are still far behind.

Knowing nothing about this, it's a little bit wild to see two comments on the same page making diametrically opposed claims. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49122568 Does anybody have the technical knowledge to compare a RED video camera to 70mm IMAX (or maybe you just meant 70mm?)

I wonder if he has ever watched e.g. Lawrence of Arabia in 70mm? Not blurry

Edit: and yes, I meant 70mm super panavision

Re: IMAX vs. IMAX 70mm: The difference between these two cinema formats

#60

Post by hcfman »

danielthor wrote: post #26

An IMAX 70mm drama is by necessity blurry because of the low depth of field you get with such a large image frame. IMAX is great for flyover films, but a movie filmed in it will look amateurish compared to a standard RED digital camera. That said, the Odyssey is a perfectly decent film. It would have looked better if captured with more appropriate technology, but it's an entertaining and uniquely American spin on the…

Isn't it just a film about a lot of fighting ?
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