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I’m unsure if this is possible, but with internal electronic ND filters, it would be awesome to ND isolated parts of the sensor at different strengths. Essentially having built in graduated ND
A modern 4k digital camera with a Super 16mm sensor.
Technically you could get that by using an 8K 35mm sensor camera cropped to Super-16 area… But sure, if a Super-16 sensor allowed one to build a particularly small camera, that could be cool using the old 16mm optics to keep things smaller overall. But I’m not sure of the market demands for a smaller sensor camera, the trends are in the opposite direction.
This is pretty minor, but I wish an ND.30 filter was part of the filter wheel inside an Alexa… I’d rather the internal wheel went .30, .60, .90, and 1.2 and let me use glass ND above that when outdoors because in changing light, you are generally pulling or adding one-stop of ND. And indoors, I sometimes have to add a .30 ND in to reduce depth of field.
I currently don’t own a camera but if I’d buy one I’d want it to be a S35mm equivalent sensor.
Especially affordable entry cinema cameras gravitate towards large format sensors nowadays, which is a bummer for me personally. So:
+ S35mm sensor
+ large dynamic range
+ internal RAW recording
+ internal ND
I don’t know about all camera technology but I remember Leica releasing a film SLR that had an attachable digital back that had a sensor so you could effectively shoot film or digital on the same camera…
Now imagine that with a cinema camera having the ability to shoot both mediums without needing to completely switch over to another system and being able to keep your build.
Ohh–and optical viewfinders as I prefer them to digital ones 🙂
In the early days of HD, Joe Dunton built a digital back for an Arri-SR16 I believe so one could switch between a film magazine or a S16-sized HD sensor block. And I think Aaton was planning on building a 35mm camera that was switchable to a digital back. One issue with Dunton’s approach was that 2/3″ 3-sensor HD cameras at the time delivered better images than a single S16 sensor with a Bayer pattern.
There are all sorts of reasons why these ideas never caught on, including optical viewfinders — which so many DPs insisted on as being necessary that ARRI made the Alexa Studio, only to barely sell any of them, and the rental houses that did buy one found it sitting unused. There are too many advantages to dropping a spinning mirror reflex system between the lens and a sensor, from weight to size to cost… and with more and more remote-head operating and Steadicam / gimbal work, most of the time the operator was looking at an electronic image anyway. I think Red Camera in the late-2000s basically dared the industry that if enough people ordered a camera with an optical viewfinder, they would build it.
As for the combo film/digital camera, there aren’t enough owner/operators out there who shoot both formats regularly, plus with digital tools improving every year or so, you have the issue of the film-side of the camera never needing updating but the digital-side of the camera needing regular updating. It’s like the trend of building VHS decks into TV sets back in the 1980s — at some point, the deck needed replacing before the TV did, or then DVDs came along and the VHS portion of the TV wasn’t being used.
David, I find that super fascinating and am not surprised at the outcome of such inventions. I think on paper it would seem like an idea would make sense but not every scenario is an all-use one. I think of it like the Sony Rialto to some extent. You can use it when you decide to (although it does take some time to build) and leave it in the case when you decide not.
I see a lot of productions where mixed media is used: VHS, Super8, 16mm, digital but perhaps it’s just the trends at the moment and we don’t know what the next decade will be.
I know for myself that I grew up in the digital age, even coming to own an Alexa system– but find myself gravitating towards wanting to shoot film more as it’s a medium that I wasn’t ever familiar with. I also think there is something quite mysterious and fun to it with all the chemical reactions and physicality and what-not.. sound silly, I know.
So interesting that the analog/digital debate in film is the same as in music.
Major mix engineers like Andrew Scheps mostly work with software plugins today. But in my personal experience, their skills determine how good the music sounds.
I tried every possible software synthesizers the past 15 years until this year I finally got a small, analog hardware synth and to me it’s a fundamentally different. Anything I play instantly sounds satisfying, no chain of plugins needed anymore only to get to a satisfying base sound. One could also re-record a soft-synth through a speaker or amp: the way sound moves the air is unique in every room and setup and can never be replicated digitally.
In film/video I think it’s similar. There are countless film emulation plugins, LUTs and power grades but none magically turns video into film with the press of a button.
There’s a reason filmmakers crave to get their hands on Roger’s excellent film emulation Alexa LUT or that colorists crave to replicate Steve Yedlin’s display preparation.
In my opinion there is no visual or audible benefit of analog over digital anymore but it requires more skills to get as satisfying results as with analog.
It’s less about ‘benefit’ and more about working preference I think. If two cars can get you from A to B at the same amount of time as well as other factors (fuel, comfort, etc.) but you just enjoy driving one more than the other, you more than likely will choose that. Not the best analogy but I feel people work in this way. Similarly, you might decide to use both depending on a project. I won’t open a debate about film v. digital though as I’m just as tired of it as everyone else I assume ha!
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