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Great video on Film and Digital


plasticman

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KodakShootFilm on Primer on Film and Digital Capture by Rob Hummel at Cine Gear Expo 2011

 

@ time 08:00

"There's a problem with digital cameras, I promise you. Anyone ever taken their digital cameras on an airplane? Ok, every take kills can kill photocites in the camera. Because Canon, Nikon, Panasonic, Casio ships cameras to North America they ship cameras by BOAT. That's because you need an altitude of 20.000 feet.. to shield from gamma rays.. The gamma rays frye out photo cells [on the sensor and you end up with dead pixels].. The films are imune to gamma rays..

 

--

 

Now I'm worried and perhaps I should leave my new M9 at home at take the film camera instead when going to Thailand (from Europe)? :confused:

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Thanks for that lead, Mani. Very informative. I had little idea about the detail and knowing that makes me feel short changed, but as the speaker says, just look at the images. :)

 

I've little doubt that film will be around forever, but the infrastructure that surrounds colour filmt is under a great deal of pressure around here. Fortunately, B&W provides enough pleasure to last me till the end of time.

 

Cheers.

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<snip>because you need an altitude of 20.000 feet.. to shield from gamma rays.. The gamma rays frye out photo cells [on the sensor and you end up with dead pixels].. The films are imune to gamma rays..

<snip>

No and no. Films can detect gamma rays just as well as digital senors. Pixels do not normally die due to radiation, at least not at the still low levels in an airplane. How could anyone make digital images at Tchernobyl/Fukushima if that were the case? You get some radiation noise in the images, thats all.

 

A gamma ray causes an avalanche of electrons & holes in a semiconductor that subsequently recombine and disappear. However to get a reasonable chance of actually capturing gamma rays you typically need 5 cm of semiconductor, like in germanium detectors. For the same reason, laptops, mobile phones, and the fly by wire electronics of the plane itself stay alive (& that is what we all hope and rely on).

 

Digital cameras are shipped because it saves cost.

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No and no. Films can detect gamma rays just as well as digital senors. Pixels do not normally die due to radiation, at least not at the still low levels in an airplane. How could anyone make digital images at Tchernobyl/Fukushima if that were the case? You get some radiation noise in the images, thats all.

 

A gamma ray causes an avalanche of electrons & holes in a semiconductor that subsequently recombine and disappear. However to get a reasonable chance of actually capturing gamma rays you typically need 5 cm of semiconductor, like in germanium detectors. For the same reason, laptops, mobile phones, and the fly by wire electronics of the plane itself stay alive (& that is what we all hope and rely on).

 

Digital cameras are shipped because it saves cost.

 

 

...Stephen, if you are correct then there is some serious misinformation going on out there, courtesy of Group 47, LLC.

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KodakShootFilm on Primer on Film and Digital Capture by Rob Hummel at Cine Gear Expo 2011

 

"There's a problem with digital cameras, I promise you. Anyone ever taken their digital cameras on an airplane? Ok, every take kills can kill photocites in the camera. Because Canon, Nikon, Panasonic, Casio ships cameras to North America they ship cameras by BOAT. That's because you need an altitude of 20.000 feet.. to shield from gamma rays.. The gamma rays frye out photo cells [on the sensor and you end up with dead pixels].. The films are imune to gamma rays..

 

Very, very interesting statement. Even though Rob says that the digital camera manufacturers use software to hide those dead pixels, surely the cumulative effect for regular air travellers would eventually lead to blank images ? I'm not technical, but I would love to hear some more opinion on this from the digital techies in the forum.

 

Overall, a very educational presentation.

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"do not take your electronics on a plane" - it defies logic and moreover would make air-travel illegal for health reasons.

 

As stated above all a gamma ray does is create transient hole-electron pairs. Semiconductor materials can handle this - in fact it their mode of operation anyway. With a film all the gamma rays will lead to permanent "noise", with digital by the time you have landed everything is back to normal.

 

Small disclaimer - there are cosmic rays out there that defy all normal rules with energies substantially higher than the present particle accelerators can (ever) reach. If you get struck by one of those you will be unhappy (not only your camera). I have never heard any reports of that however, they are very, very, rare events. "a subatomic particle with kinetic energy equal to that of a baseball (142 g or 5 ounces) traveling at 96 km/h (60 mph)"

 

EDIT: Just to add some numbers a transcontinental flight will give an additional radiation exposure of about 70 microSievert (Paris to SF, London-Tokyo), annual natural radiation exposure is typically about 2.8 milliSievert, so about 40x more. Bury your camera in lead and concrete when not in use.

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Interesting indeed, something I had really never worried about and probably never will. It is the x-ray scanners that keep me wondering. Both film and digital cameras have gone through many times without ill effects - but I would sure like to know why.

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The film - sorry, video - clip is interesting. I found the info fill-factor esp. so as I wonder how that translates into some claims that film has a smoother gradation than that of digital captures. Or is the fill-factor of a high-end film scanner, e.g., Nikon 9000ED, much better than found on digital cameras? To what extent does fill-factor matter visually?

 

I use my M film cameras primarily because I enjoy the process. I don't have to worry whether I charged my battery recently, there's no sensor cleaning issues, I actually like the look of film for what may be a love of grain, and I can tweakout a bit more of info from the negative than a digital capture if necessary.

 

Thanks!

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I love film but do not find the presentation that great. While it started quite interesting and promising it ended in a disappointment for me. The slides presented some theory but were sadly not backed by real life shots comparing the performance of film vs digital.

 

Steve

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Those who choose to professional digital video conventional with still cameras do not know squat about producing professional video. It's a complete degradation of the craft. It is to medium format to large format as mini-sensors in fixed focus are. It is just stupid. Y'all are regressing to the fifties of snap shooting. Crap. All crap.

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