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Old 06-06-2018, 11:42 AM
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maxhifi maxhifi is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by old_tv_nut View Post
The use of 16mm in the 2000s must have been a happy combination of cheapness and a preference for the grainy image look. (Or, of course, it could have simply been cheapness in some cases.)
16mm film can look really good, lots of movies have been filmed in 16mm and look very good on the big screen... it's of course not 35mm, but it is darn good. I don't think anyone could tell the difference between 35mm and 16mm on a conventional NTSC TV screen (especially the old ones we collect), unless it's a really fast film which is overly grainy. In the hands of a pro though, that condition would only happen intentionally, or due to an extreme low budget which didn't permit proper lighting. For projection I've heard 10-12 feet as the approximate screen size where it's a good idea to move to 35mm from 16mm.

I have a collection of 16mm movies, and when it's a good one, and not a crappy reduction or contact print, it looks just as sharp on my 120" screen as my video projector does. Of course the lens quality plays quite a role too, one of my lenses tends to have poor focus around the edges of the screen, but the one I usually use (a Graflex) is nice and sharp. With most films, I don't really see visible grain, such as you would with 8mm home movies. Of course, there's plenty of other defects with used films, like scratches, specs of dirt, or poor registration due to worn sprockets - but I expect that's because I'm using a restored 70 year old projector and heavily used films, in a production environment those problems wouldn't really exist.

All things considered, it's pretty amazing that the first home movie format, from the 1920s, lasted so long as a viable product! Not so long from now, 16mm will be 100 years old!

The optical sound on the other hand, is not so good, but that's never used in film production.
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