#16
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#17
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I think the use of 35mm film for dramatic shows tailed off at the same rate as for theater productions, meaning in fairly recent years.
Back in the early 90s, as the first HDTV tests were being done, CBS wrote into their production acceptance rules that scripted shows had to change from higher speed, grainy negative stock to lower-speed, finer grain stock. The standards committee had a test clip from "Murder She Wrote," made on the fast stock, and not only the grain was visible, but also Angela Lansbury's wrinkles. |
#18
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As far as 16mm, I think it was used for low budget westerns and such, but replaced by video fairly early, except for news footage. Video then replaced 16mm news when compact camcorders became available.
16mm copies were used for syndication for a long time, until distribution via tape became viable. Most stations could not handle 35mm film, which required fireproof facilities the same as theaters due to the use of nitrate film for 35mm. 16 mm was normally printed on acetate "safety" film. |
#19
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I also know for a fact that Sex and the City, Malcom in the Middle, Monk, and a handful of episodes of Will and Grace were shot on 16mm. That would all be early to mid 2000s. |
#20
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The use of 16mm in the 2000s must have been a happy combination of cheapness and a preference for the grainy image look. (Or, of course, it could have simply been cheapness in some cases.)
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Audiokarma |
#21
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I have a collection of 16mm movies, and when it's a good one, and not a crappy reduction or contact print, it looks just as sharp on my 120" screen as my video projector does. Of course the lens quality plays quite a role too, one of my lenses tends to have poor focus around the edges of the screen, but the one I usually use (a Graflex) is nice and sharp. With most films, I don't really see visible grain, such as you would with 8mm home movies. Of course, there's plenty of other defects with used films, like scratches, specs of dirt, or poor registration due to worn sprockets - but I expect that's because I'm using a restored 70 year old projector and heavily used films, in a production environment those problems wouldn't really exist. All things considered, it's pretty amazing that the first home movie format, from the 1920s, lasted so long as a viable product! Not so long from now, 16mm will be 100 years old! The optical sound on the other hand, is not so good, but that's never used in film production. |
#22
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Agree that 16mm can look really good. The average image, though, would introduce some degradation to analog TV pictures compared to live pickup, especially with the early vidicon film pickup gear, which had poor dynamic range compared to today.
With the usual (not best) film quality, analog TV and 16mm film contributed about equally to overall image quality loss. 35mm source (or carefully transferred high quality 16mm), with a modern flying spot or CCD telecine, could be essentially transparent to the analog TV system, until the image moved and 3:2 pull-down effects became visible. Part of this was explained in a classic series of papers by Otto Schade at RCA, who noted that film has a frequncy response limit that is higher than video, but rolls off continuously over the whole range; while video has a more constant frequency response up to its bandwidth limit, and then cuts off more sharply. When you cascade these two systems, you get a response that rolls off gradually at first and then abruptly. The eye can see the difference between these three cases, and the cascade is generally judged to be worse than either individual system. Schade invented the concept of a numerical calculation of "just noticeable differences" (JNDs) to come up with a single number for each case to compare the individual and combined degradations. |
#23
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The very same Otto Schade from RCA who published the paper introducing the 6L6 to the world, in 1938? If that paper is anything to go on, I'm sure his later work on TV is great too.
I think it may be interesting to read his papers, I am going to check American radio history, they have a huge archive of almost everything. Were they in RCA Review? |
#24
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I can't get to my desktop to verify but I think Rca or maybe also SMPTE. A 1975 reprint is available on Amazon. Image Quality: A Comparison...
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#25
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found it, got my bed time reading figured out tonight!
https://www.americanradiohistory.com...w-1948-Dec.pdf |
Audiokarma |
#26
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Good. Do you have access to parts I - III also?
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#27
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Schade received the first SMPTE David Sarnoff gold medal (sponsored by RCA, now by SRI).
1951 Otto H. Schade For his outstanding accomplishments in the fields of television and motion picture science and engineering, in outlining the potentialities of television and film systems as to fidelity of photography and reproduction of images. www.smpte.org/about/awards-programs/sarnoff |
#28
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I went back to the papers online, and the reprint on Amazon is a separate later paper with references to later pickup tubes and numerous example images as well. The 4 original papers plus the publication on Amazon and some others along the way could give you bedtime reading for months.
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#29
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The related topic in film technology is MTF - modulation transfer function.
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#30
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I think so, RCA Review is all online and searchable at American radio history. This is a pretty interesting topic, I can see why Schade won the gold medal. I'm sure he probably had plenty of uncredited people working for him too, as is usually the case.
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Audiokarma |
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