One of the many reasons why Chris is my hero

[thrice]

Last night I caught a bit of "Date Night" on tv. It looked horrible. Awfully cold colors, soft and motion blur. The cinematographer is the guy who won an oscar for Dances with Wolves.
Deakins is a genius but his newer digital work isn't even comparable to his older work. I cannot understand why a DP of his caliber shoots with low shutter speed. The ugly motion blur is so apparent in the Skyfall teaser
Although Fincher admittedly uses digital quite well, it's still far away from stuff like Fight Club or Se7en

[Crazy Eight]

I love Chris to death (obviously), but his outdated knowledge on digital technology is... embarrassing, for a filmmaker of his caliber. It really is quite sad.

I bet he knows more about this than a kid/teenager on the internet. I trust that people like P.T Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, Christopher Nolan, Sofia Coppola and Joe Wright know what their doing. And he's so right that people are striving way to hard to push technology (Fincher and Lucas, I'm looking at your ugly looking films) for no other reason than being on the forefront.

Nolan compared pieces of revolutionary camera equipment to the camera on an iPad/iPhone... not even someone as out of date with digital technology as Wally (as exemplified by trying to encourage young filmmakers to shoot on 16mm as opposed to RED cameras, when 16mm is objectively inferior) has said something like that. The Sony F65 and Red Epic has, factually, the same resolution, and an even higher perceived resolution than the best of 35mm stock. It's also an objective fact that digital technologies such as the Red Epic and Arri Alexa have more latitude in darks then 35mm, ie: digital sensors preform better in low light, and the two technologies are equal in terms of highlights (as mentioned by Roger Deakins, and proven by this past years Zacuto Camera Shoot Out). As for color, all of these cameras have 4:4:4 color sensors, which is par with the best of film stocks. Color is made or broke with the films colorist and cinematographer, not the camera.

As for Nolan's comment about digital projection- even a 2K digital projector will offer a better image than 90% of 35mm projected images. Why? No scratches, dirt, shutter, deterioration, and the films master file has one less step to go through. Even when the film doesn't have a DI, the films master print still has to be scanned digitally and then re-printed on film stock for distribution. During the process, resolution and color accuracy is diminished greatly. This is a well documented fact. Whereas with digital systems, the re-printing step is eliminated, thus giving the viewer a much purer viewing of the film. With the newish 4K projectors, which are being rolled out quickly, the resolution argument for film dies. In the end you're left with no objective advantage to seeing a film on 35mm stock, aside from nostalgia.

Deakins is a genius but his newer digital work isn't even comparable to his older work. I cannot understand why a DP of his caliber shoots with low shutter speed. The ugly motion blur is so apparent in the Skyfall teaser

If you're seeing a motion blur that isn't native to the use of 24 fps, then something is wrong with your display. Deakin's doesn't shoot with low shutter rates.

[Allstar]

Crazy rises.

[Tourmie]

As for Nolan's comment about digital projection- even a 2K digital projector will offer a better image than 90% of 35mm projected images. Why? No scratches, dirt, shutter, deterioration, and the films master file has one less step to go through. Even when the film doesn't have a DI, the films master print still has to be scanned digitally and then re-printed on film stock for distribution. During the process, resolution and color accuracy is diminished greatly. This is a well documented fact. Whereas with digital systems, the re-printing step is eliminated, thus giving the viewer a much purer viewing of the film. With the newish 4K projectors, which are being rolled out quickly, the resolution argument for film dies. In the end you're left with no objective advantage to seeing a film on 35mm stock, aside from nostalgia.

Exactly. I wish somebody would set up a roundtable with Nolan, Pfister, Tarantino, PTA, Deakins, Jackson, Cameron, Lubezki, etc. and have them address/argue this point.

[Vader182]

It's undeniable even the most beautiful digitally shot films can often scream digital and look inherently unfilmic, Drive being a prime example. Dragon Tattoo and Social Network are both absolutely gorgeous, but they don't look/feel like film, which takes something away for me.

That said, a friend's friend's dad is a second unit cinematographer (seriously, haha), and he prefers film. He mentioned recently there's a new camera coming out that actually looks very close to actual film, which saddens him as it means shooting on film will become substantially less common even amongst the hold-outs.

I'd still take the best of 35mm over the best of digital today since honestly, I strongly feel it does produce a more dynamic image with more depth. I'm sure that will change in at the most a few more years given the rapid rate in which this technology is advancing, but I think these are points worth noting.

-Vader