NASA's #Gravity Outreach Impresses/Inspires SFX Pros
We spent years poring over @NASA photos to get #Gravity right, now they've released real shots in honour of the film http://t.co/tvcJJ21Z9T
— Framestore (@Framestore) March 4, 2014
We spent years poring over @NASA photos to get #Gravity right, now they've released real shots in honour of the film http://t.co/tvcJJ21Z9T
— Framestore (@Framestore) March 4, 2014
The digital filming of Gravity is very impressive. I had read about the first digital professional film camera that matched the performance of film. Called the Red One. It shoots 4096 x 2304 with all the imaging control capability one has with film. That format matches the effective quality of the best emulsions for film (Panavision Millenium XL-2). It marked the final beginning of the end for film-based movie recording.
The Red camera is priced at ~$10K to $50K whereas old film cameras were rented for about $25K/month. Digital has just simply overtaken both still and now motion picture in quality, cost and ease of use. Almost every digital film to-date has been in HD or 2K formats. Red is twice is good. Gravity was shot using the camera Arri Alexa which has about a 2K format with formats between 2K and the Red’s. There are now several pro digital cameras for filmography, a couple that match Red. Quality will continue to improve. Pixel counts for movies might max out at maybe about 8192×4608 based on limits of the human eye. Cost will drop even lower, some already within range of amateurs.