Hello, it's time for crazy experiments in
the Media Division Today we are going to build a digital film camera with a sensor twice the size of an IMAX original film... ...and it's gonna have 200 Megapixel –
that is 16K for crazy crazy image quality The zoom you are experiencing
here is purely digital, the cameras is not moving and no optical zoom is applied We are going to achieve this with the help of an old large format photo camera that
will allow us to effectively use the huge image projection that a large
format lens delivers And the full frame Kinifinety MAVO LF as a scanning device As always we're going to upload this in 8k, so you can see a little bit of this amazing quality Are you gonna use this in your next production?
Hell no! Why are we doing it then? Well, because we can and I'm curious about the results myself By going to the extreme we can also reveal whether the trend to larger formats and more resolution bring something good to the table or are we on our best way to overshoot the sweet spot that a smaller format offers Are we going to just burn our hard-earned money for little to no meaningful effect? We are going to compare the beyond IMAX frame with the exact same shot taken in
a full frame, super 35, and micro four third formats and we're going to find out if
there's an inconvenient truth to be found Of course, we're going to let you download
the original file to play with but now, let's put a saddle on your inner nerd and give him the spores... this is beyond IMAX Let's get right into how we're going to
achieve an image that is twice the size of IMAX First of all, an image is not
created by sensor but by the lens first so the only lenses that have an image
cycle that is large enough to cover a sensor of that size is a lens built for
large format cameras this is a Sinar large format camera, large format cameras are basically just huge bellows with adjustable front and back elements The elements can be precisely adjusted in all sorts of ways like distance, pan, shift and tilt Instead of a viewfinder the back element contains a ground glass the ground glass is a natural optical monitor that shows that the image of a
lens is always upside down what a stranger thing right? The ground glass allows to frame and focus before inserting a negative In the front element we have a Fujinon 180mm f5.6 It is a large format lens but it's
very larger than a full-frame prime the reason for that is that it doesn't have
to contain the necessary distance to the negative the bellows of the camera will
do that job At f5.6 it is slow like all large format lenses are the shutter is a leaf design built right into the lens above the iris There's nothing magical about a large format lens it is just designed to project an image on on a plane it is further away and more spread out... that is all Of course there's no sensor at this time that is remotely large enough or delivers 16K, so we're
going to use the largest and best sensor is available to us and that is the
full-frame sensor in our Kinefinity MAVO LF a large format cinema camera
allowing us to record our ultra-high resolution in 12 bit ProRes 4444XQ Let us prepare the camera for shooting First, we remove the bellows, then we remove the ground glass and insert the MAVO instead one of the best features of this
camera is that it has a sub mount that will allow it to attach a variety
mounts... if we remove that mount we can make sure, that when we move the camera around
to scan the part of the image the mount will not cast a shadow... perfect Of course you could use the Brenizer Method if you were just going for the resolution but what it doesn't do is it doesn't emulate the properties that a larger
sensor would actually have The frame that we want to cover has the size of 104 x 70 millimeters so to scan that with 35mm full frame we have to
split that into nine segments that wil also leave just enough overlapping for minor inaccuracies during the positioning, because in this realm a millimeter is a lot The resulting frame will have a resolution of 17.200 x 11.420 so it is more than 16K and roughly 200Megapixel at 24 frames per second Our setup is in readiness, the room is hazed we now just move the sensor successively to film the different portions of the frame one after another... we film each portion
for about 30 seconds... ...giving us enough wiggle room for a reasonably long 10-second clip as it is hard to cut right through a moving object, we cheat and film the rare reel in one piece as an extra segment After we have all the segments together we import everything in After Effects where we edit out a clean 10-second sequence of each segment put them on separate layers... and in the places they belong If everything went right, the puzzle should
give you a near perfect final image This is the 16K file and depending on
the stream you are watching and the resolution of your display it is massively
oversampled... 10x if you're watching at FullHD We start of digitally zoom into the picture and along the way we are going to display smaller frame sizes
and resolution thresholds Our first stop is the IMAX size. Everything within this frame would be covered by an analogue IMAX camera at the same position and focal length 8k is our first resolution threshold, after this point the content needs to be upscaled If watched on an 8k display We are approaching 35mm full frame or VistaVision format Next up is the super35 format... as there
are many variations we will display the 4-perf size We hit the 4k threshold and right after that the Micro Four Third frame size The Full HD threshold is the last major
thresholds we are passing lower resolutions become increasingly rare in broadcast as well as on online platforms but it's still interesting to see how
large a common phone camera sensor would be... ...and what resolutions standard definition TV would have in this context you might have realized that the 16K
sample is displayed at half-speed the reason for that is simple...
it took 60 hours to render this sequence to do it at full speed would have simply
been impossible due to time limits in a production system but normal speed looks
like this As promised you'll find a link to the
original file in the description But I have to warn you, it's a 20 gigabyte ProRes444 file and if you download it and just open it, you will not be able to play it
at least my computer can't QuickTime is just a blank black screen, I think it's because... The GPUs are just not designed to play anything close to that resolution What you can do, is you can put it into a software like After Effects that uses CPU for rendering and there you can actually see
the content of the file and you can zoom in, you can zoom out, you can
play it.... not in real time of course, but you can play with it to your heart's
desire.... you can even use it in your non-commercial work, all you need to do is to mention my channel and link to this video Before we go ahead and
compare this scene with full frame, super 35, and Micro Four Third... pitch different large formats used in movies against each other and against standard size formats here are some channel related informations As you might have noticed, YouTube has changed his algorithm so just subscribing will not make sure that you
see our next episode so if you're really interested and you want to see the next
episode you will have to not only subscribe but click the notification
bell as well NO! I suggest you reconsider I won't do it! Then you leave us no alternative I'll do it! We also have an Instagram
account under the handle media.division where you can see what we are cooking
for the next episode and give you some behind the scenes if you interest in how we lit the projector for today's episode or how we film the macro shots of the
lens you'll find photos and descriptions of the setups right there So, follow us on Instagram – please give us a like if you think we deserve one … and don't forget to "bing" that bell for notifications I understand… bless you my son BING! We would like to give a shout out to
Soonwell the FB-21 flexible LED light has a place in most of our setups, because it's just so practical and it was part of our "ultra portable lightning kit" that we described in our last epic lighting episode Link is up in the corner Soonwell liked that episode so much, that they surprised us by sending us the little brother of the FB-21... the FB-11 It has all the cool features that make the
FB-21 so nice to work with but it has half the size... and it's a bit cheaper it is the ideal companion to the FB-21 for example as a fill light, but it's
easily bright enough to work the key as well I just love how easy it is to add a
quick fill light... you don't even have to use a light stand... there's a practical light
in the corner clamp the FB-11 right on there... done! Want it soft? Add the included softboxwith or without the grid or just clamp a
diffuse on a stand in front It is just so easy to use and the light that it
generates is really good... so, thank you Soonwell Is a large sensor always better than a small one and let's put aside the financial and the practical aspects for now It is a polarizing subject and I can almost hear half of you guys screaming "of course it is you numbskull" The other half screaming "no, of
course it's not… the results are just indistinguishable" At least for me… and I've
been talking about it a lot lately… I can say that my opinion about the
whole subject is evolving constantly which I consider a good thing because as
long as I keep exploring the subject the more likely I am to come to a true
solution You often hear that perspective is only a matter of the cameras position and distance and it's not influenced by the sensor size or
the focal lengths… you can just use equivalents. well that should mean that
the following test should deliver the exact same results. Let's see… We start with the Beyond IMAX framing and after that we switch our setup to an ordinary zoom lens to compensate for cropping further and in It is helpful to watch what the background is doing especially the white cabinet We cropped to full frame and set the lens to 70mm We can see that we were not able to hit the exact same camera position so we get minor changes in perspective We cropped a super 35 and zoom out to 50mm to compensate We cropped a Micro Four Third and again zoom out to compensate… this time
to 35mm Side-by-side, all formats look pretty identical. Differences in color are due to the inconsistent haze and the change in
lenses If we zoom in, the vastly different resolutions of the images become apparent… but this is due to the sensor cropping. When we compare the normal formats to each other it seems there is practically no difference in perspective or magnification of the background so, the thesis that it's only the distance seems to be true but maybe, the difference in sensor size is just too small to give a noticeable effect So, let's compare the smallest – the Micro Four Thirds – to the beyond IMAX frame As we can see there is a difference in the
magnification of the background There is definitely some effect that the
different angle of the camera generates but the scale of the white cabinet
should not be affected by that It seems that it is incorrect the distance is all that matters but as the size difference has to be massive to make a noticeable
difference is neglected comparing full frame to Micro Four Third already shows that there is no meaningful difference at all… in terms of perspective Looking at the origins of large format cinematography, it seems obvious that 65mm and IMAX film deliver superior detail and less grain… let's
have a look at some iconic scenes shot on 65mm film and IMAX side by
side with other formats this should reveal if that is true. Here are some scenes from 2001: A Space Odyssey and from Lawrence of Arabia while both scenes are just marvelous grain is quite apparent in hardly superior to super 35 film in comparable situations The overall detail doesn't seem to be massively better either Christopher Nolan mixes 65mm
and IMAX all the time in Dunkirk While both are large formats, the IMAX frame has a significantly larger surface then 65mm Still, even if he put similar scenes shot on the different formats right next to each other they are virtually indistinguishable with Shutter Island we can do the same comparing 65mm to super 35mm... ... as one scene in the film has been shot with 65mm This time I will not tell you which one it is right away… can you tell? Try to find out the answer without
researching it… …and let me know in the comments what you think and why I think what is happening here is that the light is spread out further to cover the larger negative also, to get a reasonable depths of field, the f-stop has to be relatively high every crystal in the emulsion is getting less photons and the effect is, that the gain in
resolution is canceled out by the lack of light All this is applicable to digital sensors ... and yes, these nutjobs did carry an IMAX camera up Mount Everest So, if… and only if all of this is true… why was large-format invented for cinematography at all? I want to bring up something that most of you might not have thought about… yet and that has to do with a quite recent
development we can now produce cold light sources but not so long ago that was impossible so if we had a very very bright light it would always be a light
that would emit a lot of heat Let's take a look inside the guts of my 16mm projector with the help of a LAOWA probe lens Projector lamps are extremely hot because of high wattage and the infrared radiation is focused
along the visible light through the celluloid even with a moderate power of the lamp inside this projector of only 500 watts you can see what heat radiation does to dust… …or even a sheet of paper Celluloid melts immediately when it's not transported through the hellish heat fast enough You can't imagine what would happen if we would apply a lamp with thousands of watts you would start to need active cooling in the gate and that's what 35mm projectors and cinemas do but that has its thermal limits and that
actually limits the effective size of your projection if you want to have a
larger projection that has the same brightness overall you would need to
push more light and if you can't you are stuck and this is where large format
come into the equation the larger format allows the light to be less focused and
the larger surface can be cooled more efficiently So, i'm expell 'ip be able to shoot more light to gigantic screens but why didn't they just film with 35mm and upscale to the large format during development I don't know can just assume that with the reproduction methods of that time a blow up would have been too soft and that grain and floss and the negative would have
been amplified too much Does this mean that large format in cinematography and cinemas today is nothing more then marketing? is the trend to larger formats
in in film cameras just a way to sell more cameras I don't know it looks a bit like it but I'm totally open for evidence that shows otherwise I would really like to hear from filmmakers that actually use large format movies what they see in in it that is makes it worthwhile more than
the feelings something tangible so Mr. Scorsese, Mr. Tarantino, Mr. Nolan
and if you should stumble across this please tell me what makes large format
worthwhile for you I hope you find this interesting and useful and if you subscribe don't forget that subscribing is almost useless today if you don't
push the notification, so, press that bell too If you are interested in the lighting setup for the projector or the talkie, you can go to instagram
and put a link in the description and you can always drop me a message on
Instagram or here in the comments I always love to socialize with you guys… that's what it's all about see you soon here in the Media Division I am Nikolas signing out with nerdalicious wishes… shoot something amazing
bye
