telecine

[Lazlo]

Basically, I have two questions regarding the process.

-Is there any quality discrepency between the original footage shot on film (16mm in this case) and the digitized product after the scan?

and

-I have heard it is an expensive process, but have no idea what it would or should cost... Any ballpark rates or anything... (obviously it depends on how much film your processing, but it terms of per foot or anything?) This would be black and white by the way.

thanks.

 

[DBXMe2]

yes you loose some quality in the transfer, because you cant scan for everything... and it costs about 320$ per hour.. thats canadian.. if you are NOT a student...

usualy

and the quality loss is different to each transfer.. there are 3 types of transfers that can be done.. the most expencive one is the Best Light transfer.

A best light is where the colorist stops the film at every shot and color corrects for that one shot.

then there is a One Light.

A one light is when they scan your film through and make an average correction for the entier roll... usualy this one sucks the most because you tend to change locations in a roll... maybe? who knows.. light's different..

And then a Tech Light. This is what I would recommend because it gives you the most detail in all regions of the image. Shadows, highlights, mids etc. its still a 5:1 loss of quality, because you are scanning your negs after all.. its not the highest quality... nothing is good enough to scan those circles of confusion! lol

BUT anyway.. A Tech Light is great because afterwards in Post, you can do your own color correction to bring out the mids or highlights or shadows LIke you want them. And you have more image information to work with, compaired to a one light or a best light.... those you're stuck with what you get... but anyway..

thats my 2 cents about telecine transfers...

Hope that answers you're question.. OH and dont forget to factor in your development cost for the film.

GL
Mike

 

[David Mullen ASC]

It's a rather broad question since a scan gives you a digital version of the film, so it's no longer the same thing as the film. Unless you mean that you then record the scan back to film, and how that compares to the original film -- in that case, it's a matter of how you scan it and at what resolution.

In theory, a good 2K scan of a 16mm frame (or a good 4K scan of 35mm), recorded back to film using a laser recorder, should give you a new negative that is fairly similar to the original film, assuming you don't color-correct it to look different in terms of gamma, color, contrast. The main thing is that the scan has to be high enough in resolution to capture every grain in detail on the original, and then the post process can't reduce that detail.

In practice, of course, a lot of things happen that can reduce quality, lose resolution, or change the inherent character of the film original.

And a lot depends on the quality of the original photography too.