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Im reading Peter Inovas book and im rather awed by his observation of 16/35mm motion film having ample resolution to fill a huge cinema screen, and still be visually sharp!

How true - but how/why is it possible?!!

Why is that when you try to blow up a 35 mm image larger than a 1mtr it gets so soft as to loose appeal and yet the movie is >10 mtrs and very tolerable? It cant just be because were so far back that it looks sharp ...

I don't know about you, but I've seen quite a few 35mm images that go over 1m with no problems and look fantastic.

A lot of it can come down to the speed of the film and how it's processed.

The reason is "persistence of vision". Motion picture film does not have to be sharp...and in fact individual frames are not sharp. The frames flick past at 24 frames per second, or whatever the rate is, and the human brain perceives them as being sharp. That's how motion pucture films work. Even the lenses don't have to be as sharp as lenses from a still 35mm camera...hence they can provide greater zoom ranges.

Nnnnsic wrote:I don't know about you, but I've seen quite a few 35mm images that go over 1m with no problems and look fantastic.

A lot of it can come down to the speed of the film and how it's processed.

sure have - but the general opinion is that 35mm is too low res to be acceptable for professional photography - unless its for 'lowly" press
photos. or magazine work - ads stock etc must be medium to large.

So then why is it totally accepted as the format for mega bucks motion pictures? (huge blowups)
Or it just a hangover from when the 35mm gear and film just couldnt cut it as it does today?

Matt. K wrote:The reason is "persistence of vision". Motion picture film does not have to be sharp...and in fact individual frames are not sharp. The frames flick past at 24 frames per second, or whatever the rate is, and the human brain perceives them as being sharp. That's how motion pucture films work. Even the lenses don't have to be as sharp as lenses from a still 35mm camera...hence they can provide greater zoom ranges.

Sounds like the brains version of VR.

lejazzcat, not sure that you cant blow 35mm up. Have you been into Rugby League headquarters in Fox? They have a whole wall as a picture, a mate of mine shot that, pretty sure he shot it at 35mm, though could be one of his medium format cameras, and that is about 3m by 6m. Will check in the next couple of days what it was shot on, but pretty sure it was his 35mm Canon.

Glen wrote:lejazzcat, not sure that you cant blow 35mm up. Have you been into Rugby League headquarters in Fox? They have a whole wall as a picture, a mate of mine shot that, pretty sure he shot it at 35mm, though could be one of his medium format cameras, and that is about 3m by 6m. Will check in the next couple of days what it was shot on, but pretty sure it was his 35mm Canon.

I have to be more careful not to oversimplify my statements/questions.
Yep there will always be exceptions to every 'rule' .
Im speaking in fairly general terms .

I recently saw Bill Henson exhibit and apparently his large prints were also done on 35- but modern art photography has always been more forgiving of technical limitations like soft underexposures etc

Thanks for the tip about the image a fox - ill take a look - i work near darling harbour...

What Matt said is correct.

Also, we're viewing these images from a far greater distance than we might view a print from.

Big difference.

Matt K is indeed correct.


If you have a "pause" button on your tv you will also notice that the image is not sharp yet when viewing the image in motion everything looks sharp.

Plus, I remember when people took stills from video cameras. They absolutly stunk with pixelation where a cheap little camera did 10 times the job.

Lejazzcat, I was wrong about that image coming from a 35mm, saw my friend on Monday whilst doing a little business and he said it came from his Noblex which produces 6x12cm negs, just a bit bigger than 35mm

Reading a book on the life of Damien Parer the WWII Australian war cameraman (PNG was his best work) and he used still shots quite successfully from movie camera shots. The grainy stills added to the realism of the war photos some said. Composition, subject matter and the moment are of more importance in many famous photos.

The resolving power of the human eye is fairly poor. The image that falls upon the retina is inverted, (upside down), and very blurry around the edges...only sharp in the very centre like a certain brand of camera lens. The image is also grossly barrel distorted. The reason we percieve our world as being sharp is because the eyes are always moving, scanning our field of view. The brain, or more correctly, the cerebal cortex, takes this information and processes it into a continuous sharp image. If you want to test this then sit at a table and fixate your gaze upon a vase of flowers. Don't allow your head to move and don't move your eyes. After a few minutes you will "see" the appalling fall off in your ability to hold focus at the edges of your vision. If we were cameras then we would be "Zeniths".

I always thought it was the occipital lobe's job to process visual information.

Onyx
Yes. The cerebral, (I spelt it wrong the first time), cortex is more to do with perception. I was writing from memory and broadly speaking. I have never studied brain surgery but will do that tonight.

Having to perform stereotaxic neurosurgery on mice in 3rd year uni and all I got was this lousy trivia knowledge....