Are E6 Films actually sharper than c41?

MattKing · Mar 5, 2023

At one time National Geographic had their own in-house, Kodak supported Kodachrome line, and it processed the largest volume of 35mm Kodachrome slide film of any Kodak or Kodak supported Kodachrome line in the world! They exposed massive amounts of film, and their systems were set up for transparencies.
Most Kodachrome labs depended on movie film for much of their volume.
It was a different world .....

Steven Lee · Mar 5, 2023

I am not sure if digital projectors even matter anymore, IMO they've always been seen as a budget large flat TV replacement, and the prices for those have plummeted. So I wonder how a well-scanned slide looks on a modern high-end LED TV. Last time I tried the experience was not competitive with a classic projection but my TV is 9 years old. In terms of resolution mine offers more than enough for the typical viewing distance, the problem is the manufacturer's obsession with trying to "enhance" the picture by cranking contrast and saturation to ridiculous levels. There are several viewing profiles (computer, game, movie, HDR) and all of them look grotesque to me. Not even close to even the cheapest computer monitor.

MattKing · Mar 5, 2023

Alan and I are referring to what one gets if one goes out to see a movie in a cinema. In most cases, it is the product of a really big, 2K projector on a big screen.

Truzi · Mar 5, 2023

I watch movies in the theater for the story; so as long as the image is decent I don't really care that much. It's different than viewing a still image (but even then, the subject and composition matters more to me). Yes, I've seen and appreciated some good cinimatography, but the entertainment is the important part. That said, the first few digitally projected theater movies I saw were distractingly poor. Constant pixelation (here and there would be okay, like splices, but this was continuous). Muddied and splotchy complexions were also annoying. In the beginning when everyone was raving about how good they were, the did not seem as sharp to me.

Steven Lee said:
I am not sure if digital projectors even matter anymore, IMO they've always been seen as a budget large flat TV replacement, and the prices for those have plummeted. So I wonder how a well-scanned slide looks on a modern high-end LED TV. Last time I tried the experience was not competitive with a classic projection but my TV is 9 years old. In terms of resolution mine offers more than enough for the typical viewing distance, the problem is the manufacturer's obsession with trying to "enhance" the picture by cranking contrast and saturation to ridiculous levels. There are several viewing profiles (computer, game, movie, HDR) and all of them look grotesque to me. Not even close to even the cheapest computer monitor.

Over the lock-down my 25+ year old 31" tube TV finally died completely. I could not find a replacement with at least the same vertical screen height and inputs for my legacy media equipment that was NOT a Smart tv. So now I have a 4k TV that has worse quality than the mid-1990s tube. However, this isn't the TV's fault, it's the feed from the cable company. Internet streams are better, but then I run into the problems you mention. I just got an amplified "digital" antenna to toy with. That should be fun.

I've not viewed any of my photos on the TV yet.

Alan Edward Klein · Mar 5, 2023

Steven Lee said:
I am not sure if digital projectors even matter anymore, IMO they've always been seen as a budget large flat TV replacement, and the prices for those have plummeted. So I wonder how a well-scanned slide looks on a modern high-end LED TV. Last time I tried the experience was not competitive with a classic projection but my TV is 9 years old. In terms of resolution mine offers more than enough for the typical viewing distance, the problem is the manufacturer's obsession with trying to "enhance" the picture by cranking contrast and saturation to ridiculous levels. There are several viewing profiles (computer, game, movie, HDR) and all of them look grotesque to me. Not even close to even the cheapest computer monitor.

Steven: I make slide shows and videos for my 75" Sony 4K UHD smart TV. The shows are saved now on a memory card plugged into the USB jack on the TV for instant showings. I used to save them on DVDs but theyl;ve gotten too long. They're all on that same card which the TV can select with the remote. There are set profiles (about 8 on mine). But these can each be adjusted to my preferences. You can select one of them for slide shows and set the preferences to your liking to use with slideshows.

Scanned slides are great as are digital pictures. I never had a digital projector so I can't tell you which is better. But the LED TV is great and convenient. I create videos for my still slide shows because I can add in music, narratives, titles, credits, etc to make it into a real "show", not just a still slide show. That makes them more entertaining, especially for visitors, who don't seem to want to blow their brains out anymore having to watch my vacation shots like in the old days with a slide projector.

I will say that my calibrated NEC monitor displays the colors the best. But there's nothing like watching your stuff on a 75" screen with speakers playing appropriate music that's synced. I also keep some selected video slide shows on YouTube so others can seem them on their monitors, cellphones and TVs. Here's the links if you're interested. The scuba show was scanned 35mm Ektachromes in 2K, not the best. The BW (Fire Brigade) is 35mm Tmax 400. The others are 2k and 4K (Regency Muscle Car) digitally captured originally. I don't know how I wound up with two YouTube accounts. There's a combo video clip and still show (2K called Regency Men's Club at Fire Academy).

If I can make one suggestion. When you upgrade your TV, buy one that's at least one size larger than what you figure you need because after you buy it, you're going to complain that you should have gone bigger.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDzogShfhgCHh2rVvEsFOJQ

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGsByP1B3q1EG68f4Yr2AhQ

Sirius Glass · Mar 5, 2023

Alan Edward Klein said:
Steven: I make slide shows and videos for my 75" Sony 4K UHD smart TV. The shows are saved now on a memory card plugged into the USB jack on the TV for instant showings. I used to save them on DVDs but theyl;ve gotten too long. They're all on that same card which the TV can select with the remote. There are set profiles (about 8 on mine). But these can each be adjusted to my preferences. You can select one of them for slide shows and set the preferences to your liking to use with slideshows.

Scanned slides are great as are digital pictures. I never had a digital projector so I can't tell you which is better. But the LED TV is great and convenient. I create videos for my still slide shows because I can add in music, narratives, titles, credits, etc to make it into a real "show", not just a still slide show. That makes them more entertaining, especially for visitors, who don't seem to want to blow their brains out anymore having to watch my vacation shots like in the old days with a slide projector.

I will say that my calibrated NEC monitor displays the colors the best. But there's nothing like watching your stuff on a 75" screen with speakers playing appropriate music that's synced. I also keep some selected video slide shows on YouTube so others can seem them on their monitors, cellphones and TVs. Here's the links if you're interested. The scuba show was scanned 35mm Ektachromes in 2K, not the best. The BW (Fire Brigade) is 35mm Tmax 400. The others are 2k and 4K (Regency Muscle Car) digitally captured originally. I don't know how I wound up with two YouTube accounts. There's a combo video clip and still show (2K called Regency Men's Club at Fire Academy).

If I can make one suggestion. When you upgrade your TV, buy one that's at least one size larger than what you figure you need because after you buy it, you're going to complain that you should have gone bigger.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDzogShfhgCHh2rVvEsFOJQ

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGsByP1B3q1EG68f4Yr2AhQ

Put the photographs on a memory stick and plug it into the tv. It will hold more photographs than a DVD.

Alan Edward Klein · Mar 5, 2023

Truzi said:
I watch movies in the theater for the story; so as long as the image is decent I don't really care that much. It's different than viewing a still image (but even then, the subject and composition matters more to me). Yes, I've seen and appreciated some good cinimatography, but the entertainment is the important part. That said, the first few digitally projected theater movies I saw were distractingly poor. Constant pixelation (here and there would be okay, like splices, but this was continuous). Muddied and splotchy complexions were also annoying. In the beginning when everyone was raving about how good they were, the did not seem as sharp to me.

Over the lock-down my 25+ year old 31" tube TV finally died completely. I could not find a replacement with at least the same vertical screen height and inputs for my legacy media equipment that was NOT a Smart tv. So now I have a 4k TV that has worse quality than the mid-1990s tube. However, this isn't the TV's fault, it's the feed from the cable company. Internet streams are better, but then I run into the problems you mention. I just got an amplified "digital" antenna to toy with. That should be fun.

I've not viewed any of my photos on the TV yet.

Truzi: Your TV should have a USB jack. You can plug into it a memory card containing your stills and videos that are then selected with the TV remote. The TV should allow you to change the settings for saturation, colors, brightness, etc. on at least one of the profiles that you can then use exclusively for your slide shows. Good luck.

Alan Edward Klein · Mar 5, 2023

Sirius Glass said:
Put the photographs on a memory stick and plug it into the tv. It will hold more photographs than a DVD.

That's what I said. I used to use DVD's. Now I use memory cards.

One thing you can do with DVDs but not with memory cards. DVD's will allow menus where you can index and select different parts of the DVD video to show in whatever order or selection time you want. That's handy in some cases. You can't do that if it's on a memory card. So for example, let;s say you go on a vacation to 8 places. On a DVD, you'd index in the menu the 8 places so you can select whatever place you want to view. But that only works on a DVD. With a memory card, you have to hunt for each of the 8 locations.

Of course, the DVD is limited in size. Also, high speed 4K works too fast for the DVD. So today, it's best to keep them on memory cards which hold a lot of data and are a lot faster reading the data.

DREW WILEY · Mar 5, 2023

Ivo - movies are movies. Nothing surpassed the color quality and impact of old Technicolor, and none of that looked sharp even from way at the back of the theater due to the inherent registration issues of that technique. And today's digitized flicks? - why bother even going? I still have my own 35mm slide projector, and nothing on any computer or TV screen can compare to a well done old-fashioned slide show, especially if one steps up to med format projection. But prints on walls in frames are a different topic. It really has zero to do with pixel-peeing or seeing grain. Detail is just another important compositional tool, and a significant one. And printing from large format originals certain gives one a lot more leverage in that respect. Depends on one's priorities as well as equipment and format preferences. I'm personally multi-format, all the way from 35mm to 8X10, so can pretty much pick and choose as I need.

Steven Lee · Mar 5, 2023

@Alan Edward Klein thanks for the advice!

Truzi · Mar 6, 2023

Alan Edward Klein said:
Truzi: Your TV should have a USB jack. You can plug into it a memory card containing your stills and videos that are then selected with the TV remote. The TV should allow you to change the settings for saturation, colors, brightness, etc. on at least one of the profiles that you can then use exclusively for your slide shows. Good luck.

I've not used the USB that way yet. I have have connected a mouse and keyboard to mess around with the TV (and I'm fighting the urge to hack it... it's an LG). I could also upload photos to somebody else's computer (aka: The Cloud) and use the TVs web browser to view it, lol.

My next step is to eventually just hook the TV to a dedicated computer and use Kodi for movies and such.
At some point I'll view photos on the TV just for fun, but I prefer to hold my 4x6 prints in my hand.

Brad Deputy · Mar 6, 2023

4K equates to 8-9 megapixels, then you deal with compression artifacts if you store them in JPG. Some graphic editing tools allow you to adjust the compression efficiency to minimalise this effect, or if you're lucky, your TV supports uncompressed TIFF or another lossless format and 10 bit color.

Cinema on 35mm is literally a 20mm x 12mm size for each video frame (give or take), which is challenging to hold a true 4k size. Kodak Vision3 50D is best up to the task, with a resolution that meets or beats TMAX 100 in comparison. This I've seen in still shots with my sharpest lens. It goes way beyond what my scanner can pull from it.

One exception is the original Star Wars films from the late 1970s. They ran the film horizontally and used almost the same frame size as the 35mm still camera. George Lucas wanted this so the visual effects would look more convincing.

I concur, when cinema first went digital, the viewing experience lacked detail and color vividness but it varied from theater to theater. That's when most films were still shot in film and the scans were poor. Nowadays, almost all theaters (and most movies) use 4k and if done right, looks truly superb. Remember that 4k cinema cameras didn't come to vogue until the early-mid 2010s.

Ivo Stunga · Mar 6, 2023

Alan Edward Klein said:
Do they have multiplex theaters in Latvia? IMAX? Etc.?

We have a couple of them, yes. But I've never bothered to see an IMAX or competing film size movie - it getting here to Latvia coincided with my loss of interest in mainstream Cinema at all, and you don't get food for your brain put in IMAX, you get this in small cinemas and movie festivals. Plus I haven't followed the scene for a while due to the said loss of interest.

MattKing said:
More importantly, do they have film projectors.

Yes, there are a couple of film cinemas around here. I happen to translate and dub movies live on film, so I get to see this. The visual fidelity, dancing grain and atmosphere, the "cigarette burns", the reel loading erors - all that good stuff

brbo said:
So that they could print it without photographer's input on actual colour balance?

This was my hunch that it had to do with color, haven't educated myself on this topic, so I asked.

Alan Edward Klein said:
But there's nothing like watching your stuff on a 75" screen with speakers playing appropriate music that's synced.

Well, if digitized (converted) film yields satisfactory results to put on your 75" TV, why on Earth wouldn't unconverted original projected at the same size perform the same or better? Yes, you can show processed/sharpened film on TV screen, but that's the only advantage I can imagine - and only when done properly. It might seem cocky to some, but I solve my processing needs in camera and development, so I only need to crop, to pull some highlight/shadow details back from the scanning, and sharpen a bit my slides before I put them online.
And I do have 52"OLED screen just under my vinyl screen - the only benefit of using OLED is said sharpening in post, but it yields a completely different experience, so I just roll down my screen in front of my OLED, and enjoy the shit out of fully analog workflow and projection, appropriate background music (Dark Ambient/Industrial usually) emanating from the speakers behind the screen...

DREW WILEY said:
I still have my own 35mm slide projector, and nothing on any computer or TV screen can compare to a well done old-fashioned slide show, especially if one steps up to med format projection.

Agreed. Medium format projection is too rich for my blood, but completely agreed.

Alan Edward Klein · Mar 6, 2023

Ivo Stunga said:
...

Well, if digitized (converted) film yields satisfactory results to put on your 75" TV, why on Earth wouldn't unconverted original projected at the same size perform the same or better? Yes, you can show processed/sharpened film on TV screen, but that's the only advantage I can imagine - and only when done properly. It might seem cocky to some, but I solve my processing needs in camera and development, so I only need to crop, to pull some highlight/shadow details back from the scanning, and sharpen a bit my slides before I put them online.
And I do have 52"OLED screen just under my vinyl screen - the only benefit of using OLED is said sharpening in post, but it yields a completely different experience, so I just roll down my screen in front of my OLED, and enjoy the shit out of fully analog workflow and projection, appropriate background music (Dark Ambient/Industrial usually) emanating from the speakers behind the screen...
...

There's nothing wrong with projecting the original movie film or slides with projectors. But I've found that converting and displaying them digitally is easier to combine video clip and stills. When I travel and make a vacation show, I combine video clips and stills in the same video show. I can add background music, titles, credits, narration, etc, just like a real movie. There's nothing to set up as the show resides in a memory card in the TV. I don't have to find a place for a slide projector and a movie projector working at the same time and a screen.

This digital recorded show from a cellphone includes stills and video clips to give you an idea of what Im referring too, how both are combined. Of course you can scan film as well. Or just do movie clips or stills by themselves.

Alan Edward Klein · Mar 6, 2023

Brad Deputy said:
4K equates to 8-9 megapixels, then you deal with compression artifacts if you store them in JPG. Some graphic editing tools allow you to adjust the compression efficiency to minimalise this effect, or if you're lucky, your TV supports uncompressed TIFF or another lossless format and 10 bit color.

Cinema on 35mm is literally a 20mm x 12mm size for each video frame (give or take), which is challenging to hold a true 4k size. Kodak Vision3 50D is best up to the task, with a resolution that meets or beats TMAX 100 in comparison. This I've seen in still shots with my sharpest lens. It goes way beyond what my scanner can pull from it.

One exception is the original Star Wars films from the late 1970s. They ran the film horizontally and used almost the same frame size as the 35mm still camera. George Lucas wanted this so the visual effects would look more convincing.

I concur, when cinema first went digital, the viewing experience lacked detail and color vividness but it varied from theater to theater. That's when most films were still shot in film and the scans were poor. Nowadays, almost all theaters (and most movies) use 4k and if done right, looks truly superb. Remember that 4k cinema cameras didn't come to vogue until the early-mid 2010s.

After editing the stills, I adjust my still photo compression to about 92 out of 100 on Lightroom or something similar when using Elements. That's very little compression. When I put those still files in my Premiere Elements video editing program, it handles the final output as far as bit quantity per frame. Premiere Elements video app creates a final file to H264, XAVC-S, MP4, 3840x2160, bitrate 60mbps. Audio: AAC, 160bps, 48KHz, stereo.

For 4K stills, you don't see artifacts even when sitting right up to the screen. Of course, with 2K uprezed by the TV to 4K, you will see artifacts. But you have to sit really close to the TV. You won't see the artifacts otherwise if sitting away at a normal distance. For example, I sit 14 feet away from my 75" TV. I'd have to get up closer than 5-6 feet to see 2K artifacts. With 4K, there are none at all. You could show stills on TV with their original format of jpeg. The TV program will present the slide show directly, which should be a little clearer than converting to a slide, movie show. But then you can't create a "show" with music, video clips, etc. So, there's that tradeoff.

DREW WILEY · Mar 6, 2023

Old school film movies, as well as new film movies, are a really big thing around here. UC Berkeley has a giant new art and film complex that cost over two hundred million dollars, which now houses the Pacific Film Archive as well as its new gallery venue. But if you don't want to pay twenty bucks to sip a glass of wine and watch new experimental films on a big screen, or classic older ones that way, you can just walk around the corner to the plebe version in an old hotel ground floor for two bucks, plus the cost of popcorn. We don't go to either, and make popcorn at home instead.

Are E6 Films actually sharper than c41?

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Truzi

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Are E6 Films actually sharper than c41?

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