Uncompressed S8 transfers really work

[steve hyde]

..my cinelab xfers are often soft.. Sometimes out of focus and I often shoot with fixed focus wide angle lenses..It is becoming hard for me to recommend their service.

Steve

[camera8mm]

why do the images look so grainy?
looks as if the video transfer was trying to produce information that wasnt there and created false imagery. look at the "whites"... they have a clear distinct red/green/blue colors in them...and not pure white.

doesnt look so grand.

[Evan Kubota]

"Sometimes out of focus and I often shoot with fixed focus wide angle lenses"

I have a similar issue with my 6mm fixed-focus prime (softer than I'd like) but in that case it's definitely the lens, since footage shot on the same reel with the 10-100 zoom is tack sharp.

[steve hyde]

"Sometimes out of focus and I often shoot with fixed focus wide angle lenses"

I have a similar issue with my 6mm fixed-focus prime (softer than I'd like) but in that case it's definitely the lens, since footage shot on the same reel with the 10-100 zoom is tack sharp.

In my case the same lens produces sharper images when my film is transfered on the Shadow with super 8 gate at FSFT...

Steve

[Nigel]

But is that the machine or the driver??

You can get sharp results from a 15 year old machine with a good colorist.

Make sure that your finger points in the right direction because you will have some pointing back at you.

Good Luck

[Andreas Wideroe]

I'd say the reason why some transfers are too soft is that the transfer company have cranked up their noise reducer to remove grain.

One should be careful using a noise (grain) reducer because they soften the image a lot (atleast they can) which makes the image look a little out of focus. We have stopped using our noise reducer on of of the machines because of some testing I did and I think it made the image too soft and un-focused.

Vision2 films have quite a lot of grain and that's Super8. I like grain and I don't mind seeing them. If you don't want grain, shoot 16 or 35mm instead.

About the stills posted here I think they generally look very nice, except for the compression artifacts. However, I also think the dark areas look a little mush-green-blueish. I'd crank down the blacks some more to give the image perhaps a little more contrast.

Good luck!

Andreas

[steve hyde]

...I agree the visual qualitities of super 8 is the visual presence of grain and the motion created by grain crawl. PErhaps the blue-green bias is the film stock. Fuji reversal films often show a bias for blues and greens whereas kodak reversals bias for reds. Vision 2 color negatives, on the other hand, are remarkably neutral. I am heading into the editing studio today - If I get a chance, I will produce some full resolution .jpgs of some 10bit images that Cinelab did for me and post them here..

Steve

[christoph]

If I get a chance, I will produce some full resolution .jpgs of some 10bit images that Cinelab did for me and post them here..

since JPGs are always 8bit and compressed, the real deal would be to post some 16bit PNG or TIFF files. not that anybody can see the difference on a normal computer monitor anyway, but it helps if somebody wants to examine stuff in depth.
++ chistoph ++

[steve hyde]

...alright - not sure if this will be helpful:

here is an unscientific comparison of two images - both shot on the same day - with the same camera (Nikon R10) and same film stock 7217..(on two different rolls.

Two different transfers: The clown is uncompressed 10bit 4:2:2 made by Cinelab.

The little girl and balloon is DV compressed (4:1:1 or whatever DVCpro NTSC is ??)

NOTE: What really makes this comparisson unscientific is the fact that I shot the clown in single frame mode and shot the little girl at 24fps..



http://www.steve-hyde.com/fsft1.tif

http://www.steve-hyde.com/clown.tif


(sorry I can't get the image to post from the computer I'm on. - If someone else wants to post them that into the thread that would be great.)

I've got to get back to editing....

Steve

[Will2]

I just received a film by Gavin Lim which was transfered with an uncompressed 8 bit PAL transfer by Spectra - all I can say is wow!

Are you talking about Spectra in L.A.? They don't offer hard drive transfers... I just spoke to them today. How did you get an uncompressed transfer? Digibeta?

[Justin Lovell]

many people are transferring super 8 neg with a softer xfer.

This reduces the 'white sparkle' and more importantly helps to deliver a richer blacks.

When you do a very sharp xfer of super 8 negative without clipping the blacks/shadow information, there is an apparent 'white grain' than can be visible. With the detail setting lower, it helps to hide that white grain and provides a smoother, slicker image.

I used to have my detail cranked to really show the sharper end of things, but lately I've opted to have a slightly softer image to give me slicker image with cleaner blacks.

It's all about personal preference.

STEVE- I just paid doug for that 5.9mm wide lens, I hope it works out well!- and PM me, I still want to xfer some of that film for a comparison to my dv8 sniper.

[VideoFred]

Is everybody sure about this sharpness?
This 'filmgrain' looks like -heavy- software 'unsharp mask' to me....

Like this: heavy sharpening, radius 1


Detail from the second npcoombs frame:


Detail from my frame:


Fred.

[steve hyde]

many people are transferring super 8 neg with a softer xfer.

This reduces the 'white sparkle' and more importantly helps to deliver a richer blacks.

When you do a very sharp xfer of super 8 negative without clipping the blacks/shadow information, there is an apparent 'white grain' than can be visible. With the detail setting lower, it helps to hide that white grain and provides a smoother, slicker image.

I used to have my detail cranked to really show the sharper end of things, but lately I've opted to have a slightly softer image to give me slicker image with cleaner blacks.

It's all about personal preference.

STEVE- I just paid doug for that 5.9mm wide lens, I hope it works out well!- and PM me, I still want to xfer some of that film for a comparison to my dv8 sniper.

Justin, I did send a PM. Let's try to connect in Toronto on Tuesday night.

Steve

[DrkAngl]

I asked Spectra for details about the Galvin Lim transfer. Not only did it originate on MiniDV, but it originated in NTSC format as well. It was later converted to PAL by Galvin. With this in mind, the sample pics may have significant compression and artifacts that were not part of the original transfer.

As of yet, Spectra does not offer uncompressed hard drive transfers. They only provide Digi Beta.

Another question is whether the pictures shown came from a MPEG2 DVD copy or not. And, how the pics were converted to jpeg format. This would exagerate any issues even further. In any case, the pictures still seem to hold up nicely.

One of the reasons Spectra has a sharp picture because the picture tube in their telecine is replaced about every 6 months to 1 year. Other telecine places let the pucture tube go much longer because they are so expensive to replace. I much prefer a sharp original to work with that can easily be sofened with grain reduction added later.

[mattias]

Not only did it originate on MiniDV, but it originated in NTSC format as well.

yeah, remember who suggested it first. 4:1:1 resampled to 4:2:0, thus 4:1:0. :-)

/matt