I dont know about these HD cameras. What happens when the new HD, say super HD comes out. Right now any film movies have more than enough data to be remastered to HD and beyond, but if you film in HD, the best you can do with a new format is a lousy upsampling job. Very much un-future-friendly if you ask me.

Larry's holiday movies ran 1.2 million dollars overbudget.

NEVER hire Tom Arnold.

One thing that film has over digital is color and more importantly dynamic range.

I can always tell the difference between a Digital Camera and film, even when there is digital post-processing to make digital look like film.
Things are even worse for video than for pictures (stills).

Dynamic range for sensors is nowehere near that of film. HDR techniques were pretty much useless before digital.
TO match film dynamic range, you must take 2 or 3 pictures withj digital at different exposures.
Yeah digital sucks.
Yay film

Yeesh... you run into fanboys no matter what the topic. Film has its strengths. HD has its strengths. Both have their weaknesses. Try talking to a real filmmaker and not a fanboy and you'll see why so many are pushing so hard for HD. _PROPERLY_DONE_ HD is pretty indistinguishable from film. Pointing out poor examples doesn't mean that the medium itself is totally pointless. There are plenty of techincally poor films out there if you bother to look past your prejudices.

A lot of people are pushing hard for HD becasue it is so cheap (compared to film).
Shooting rollls of film is actually very expensive.
Then you need to telesync the film to digital which in itself takes time and costs loads.

Not to mention that shooting on HD gives you 40+ minute loads which can be crucial if you're actors are struggling to get that emotional moment, and then you run out of film and have to do a mag change, just as they were hooked in and you were about to get the shot.

HD, you don't ever have to worry about that.

It's how you light your scene. Yeah film rules, but HD has it's benefits. Look at Michael Mann's Collateral for a good example, which was shot in both HD and film.

I think film is becoming less and less necessary. HD rental, production, and post is way cheaper than film. Now days, with all the treatment and post effects that footage goes through, its pretty hard to tell the difference if at all.

Not to mention its all about the content. There has been stuff that has been shot with DV that has become an awesome move, spot, etc...

sure HD looks great and all, but it's still only 1080 lines of resolution. film on the other hand has the equivalent of around 4000 lines of resolution, and the human eye has the equivalent of 16000. obviously film and eyes dont have lines of resolution, but this is just to give you some perspective as to where the quality of video fits into things.
so as long as you're projecting movies onto screens in cinemas, it's imperative to have as much definition as possible, for such a large image. imagine a 480p video image on a cinema screen. you could fit your head in between the fields.

it's kind of like recording digital audio at 12-bit 32kHz. once it's recorded, you can equalize it and fix it up a bit, but theres no way itll ever sound as nice as 24-bit 192kHz.

Companies like Panavision and Dalsa have been working on 4K cameras for over 2 years now, and have their products available. Sony's HD is not state of the art, but 4:4:4 at 60fps is very nice. Panavision's Genesis tech, for example, maxes out at 50fps and bumps down to 4:2:2 at frame rates over 24p.
Apocalypto was shot with the Genesis camera system. It looks nothing short of amazing. Richness, depth and indistinguishable from film, IMO.

Benko-
The "p" in 480p means progressive, so there are no fields to stick your head into :-P. Also, digital projectors don't display interlaced fields.

The Genesis camera contains a 35mm sized 12.4 megapixel true RGB sensor, although I don't know how far it can be utilized. Clearly, however the potential is there.

A 35mm film still rules the filmmaker world now and then. There is no high end resolution ever compares to a 35mm film what-so-ever! The word ALMOST doesn't count.It got to be exactly the same resolution.Nothing more,and nothing less.

Sure! film is expansive. Yes! high digital still cheaper.The potential all of these high digital,or ultra high definition camera still way behind film even those the truth motion color film were born more then forty years ago. Just keeps trying! You're will be there..........

oh you film/hd nerds.

everyone needs to realize that it's going to be the best of both worlds for some time.

doing high end commercials w/ photosonics? shoot film.

doing something where you want to light w/ firelight...rent the millenium (if you can get it :P -- apocalypto was shot 60% on millenium 40% film...if you can guess the differences then you're either lucky or were there shooting it).

just wait till they develop sensor 'paper' that's the thickness of film and has the same surface area as 35mm or 16mm and runs through a regular film camera like film....

or even better, a regular 16/35mm camera with an HD mag you can slap on in replacement of a film mag...oh wait, they've already been made!

the what's better war will never win. HD is crisper, you can see everything...which isn't such a good thing. film is expensive, hard to work with, bad for the environment, expensive...but it's got such depth and instead of a hard drive you've got an actual product and not a hard drive that's got to be burned out via laser to negative for 100 grand.

live with it.

@Benko:

dude benko, i'm not sure where you're getting your info from, but you've no idea what you're talking about. yeah i'm late to the party...but you're comparing hd pixel lines with film "pixel lines". film has no pixels, there is no measurement or comparison for this. you're comparing two completely different mediums. yes they're both visual and record data, but do so in completely different states. electronically and chemically.

for example...back in something like 1999 Kodak was running anti-digital ads saying a frame of film was worth 16mp. not much at all by todays standards. i doubt they'd run that same add today ...

and on top of that, have you SEEN a film w/ a 4k or 2k projector? it looks nothing short of amazing. have you ever taken a blu ray disc and projected it on the side of a building? i guess i'm saying you won't ever need to.

RED ONE! FTW

the movie still sucked

This all kind of reminds me of the "But vinyl sounds so much better than cd" crowd.. yes in theory an analogue medium can hold more information.. but practically, analogue medium looses data at every transitional step, editing, duplication, distribution and additionally there becomes a point at which even the theoretical benefit of any analogue format becomes indistiguishable to human beings imperfect senses.. having seen 4K (4096x2160) projection on a large cinema screen, I would suggest the optimimum perceivable encoding is somewhere below that.. the only difference I see between that and 35" film - is the digital is too clean/perfect.
When this is brought into a living.. I'm not sure there's going to be much demand for quality above 1080p for a long long time.. much as audio quality above 44K has not gained much gound.

I loved that movie, but it was terrible. Camera is a good camera, but really shows how far HDCAMs have to go in terms of latitude. Some of the low light shots were pretty abysmal.

@Hoffen: Apparently you have no idea what you are talking about . . .

Isn't anyone here aware of 'Red' camera- digital format that shoots 12 megapixel at 60 fps? Anyone stuck a few generations ago in film technology should check it out before embarassing themselves here

RED camera looks really good. JUMPER was shot on it and the images looked just as good as film. The new movie WANTED is also shot completely on RED.

JUMPER was shit though, WANTED will probably be garbage also. Curving bullets? cmon. K off topic.

RED ftw