"Capturing Life and Light"
(Click on the image to get a good look)
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Going down?...
Another film shot. Mundane I know. But if you like this stuff, the smoothness of the contrast changes and the amount of detail. It's amazing how we hate "noise" in our images but when it comes to film, it becomes wonderful "film grain".
Hey, Steve! Your comment on film grain versus noise reminds me of the attitudes of certain "audiophiles" who prefer analog processing, tube electronics and now vinyl records because of the "warmth" to the sound. When these arguments first surfaced with solid state amplifiers, various experts pointed out that tubes create even-order harmonics (2x, 4x, etc.) while transistors create odd-order harmonics (3x, 5x, etc.). All processing, reproduction and amplification produces harmonic distortion and other sources of electrical noise, and acoustic tesing has repeatedly shown that humans tend to like the even-order distortion better than the odd-order. The point is that any known method of capturing and reproducing sound will never accurately recreate the live version. I think the same is true of any method for reproducing a visual. What I find interesting is that one can view a scene through a film photograph or a digital image, and see things that were completely oblivious to the same viewer when the image was captured. By the same token, a well-mixed recording of a live event can present much better balance and detail than one hears when sitting in a particular location at that event. We should all just be happy that we can provide these besutiful experiences to virtually anyone anywhere in the world, and to viewers and listeners not yet here. We should also be happy that artists such as yourself have the vision to capture the amazing things right in front of our eyes that we so often ignore. That is a wonderful thing!
Hey, Steve! Your comment on film grain versus noise reminds me of the attitudes of certain "audiophiles" who prefer analog processing, tube electronics and now vinyl records because of the "warmth" to the sound. When these arguments first surfaced with solid state amplifiers, various experts pointed out that tubes create even-order harmonics (2x, 4x, etc.) while transistors create odd-order harmonics (3x, 5x, etc.). All processing, reproduction and amplification produces harmonic distortion and other sources of electrical noise, and acoustic tesing has repeatedly shown that humans tend to like the even-order distortion better than the odd-order. The point is that any known method of capturing and reproducing sound will never accurately recreate the live version. I think the same is true of any method for reproducing a visual. What I find interesting is that one can view a scene through a film photograph or a digital image, and see things that were completely oblivious to the same viewer when the image was captured. By the same token, a well-mixed recording of a live event can present much better balance and detail than one hears when sitting in a particular location at that event. We should all just be happy that we can provide these besutiful experiences to virtually anyone anywhere in the world, and to viewers and listeners not yet here. We should also be happy that artists such as yourself have the vision to capture the amazing things right in front of our eyes that we so often ignore. That is a wonderful thing!
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