On 8/18/2011 9:50 AM, David Irisarri wrote:
> As you probably know I have come to NY to live
Welcome to the zoo. :-)
> and today I met a guy who is
> creating movies. I showed him my portfolio and he really likes it and we
> have been taking for a couple of hours to know each other. He loves retaking
> pictures of his movies being projected in a huge wall and he also likes
> cropping them. He told me if I can help him with this issue in a couple of
> weeks and I have been carefully thinking about the right procedure for
> maximizing quality. He normally enlarges pictures a lot to be displayed in
> galleries and I was thinking about several possibilities.
I'll just jump in here, instead of posting at the end.
I'm not sure I understand the intended result of projecting the images, then
photographing them:
1. If the point is highest quality, why project them at all? If video, one may
simply extract the needed frames from the
video.
If film, scan the desired frames on a film scanner. I used to be a
projectionist, long, long ago. No one ever notices if
you splice out a frame (A topless Claudia Cardinale, for example). If that's
not possible, use bellows, roll film copier
attachment and macro lens (80/4 is ideal for 35mm film).
In either case, the result will be truer to the original than anything
projected and photographed. A lot simpler, too.
Projecting huge, then photographing, just re-reduces it to the size of the
sensor. Any such exercise, involving two
lenses, light source, screen surface and the unavoidable loss of some edge
definition of the digital capture will reduce
technical quality of the result.
Although the idea if making a photograph of it huge, so the resulting gallery
print captures everything possible may be
attractive in his mind, it will, in fact, make a poorer quality reproduction.
2. If the point is not the most accurate enlargement, but the artistic result
of exactly the above factors, what's the
point of trying to minimize them? He may not have thought this through. It's
the photographer's job to help the client
determine what he actually is looking for.
See what sort of effect(s) he likes. Look at what he has done before and talk
to him about how he might want future
images to be similar or different. You might find that one or more of the very
things you are trying to avoid, odd WB,
softened edges, blown highlights, etc. may be what he values.
If you find that what he want is artistic interpretation of what's on the
video/film, I'd try some shots with whatever
cameras are available, including something really cheap, aiming for those
effects, and see what does or doesn't please
him, before spending a cent on additional equipment. Probably, the whole thing
could also be done in PS (or whatever
editor one likes), working from video or film frames, without ever involving
photographic equipment. But that might not
fulfill his vision of how to do it.
3. It's possible that he does not understand the limitations of video/film
capture, and wants to get more quality and
detail out of the images than are actually there. I imagine some people don't
realize that the high quality stills,
especially close-ups, that come out with commercial films are not taken from
the film, but taken by a photographer with
still camera as part of film production.
Motion picture frames are just that, shots at relatively slow frame
rates/shutter speeds of things in motion. Individual
frames of subjects in motion usually have more or less blur in them, which is
not noticeable to those watching the
movie, but immediately apparent in a still frame of a video or looking at film
with a loupe.
I can't see any point in thinking about what equipment would get the best
possible shots of projected images without
first determining what sort of result is actually desired.
Stop Frame Moose
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