John Wendell

I said I wanted the cinematic medium to be transparent, like looking through a window as Trumbull discusses. Now I don't watch soap operas so I wouldn't know, but if it's a fact that soap operas have achieved this, that would be even more reason for Cinematographers to be imbarrassed by the gross inadequacy of their antiquated medium.

It is extremely dismaying to me to see so many filmakers (and wannabees) speaking out against HFR as if there was something fundamentally undesirable about it. Let me be clear, I am not a filmaker, just someone fascinated by the technology and a passionate consumer. As I consumer, I absolutely despise the 24fps standard. I remember very distinctly as a young boy watching Predator with my father and being irritated by the choppiness as the camera panned across the scene very early in the movie and how disorienting it was and how it made the whole experience less immersive. As a consumer, I want exactly what Trumbull talks about, a window. I DON'T want film grain, which I hate. I don't want a slow choppy frame rate. I want everything sharp and smooth and immersive. Just when it looked like the DREADFULLY ANTIQUATED 24fps standard was on the verge of seeing it's loooooong overdue replacement, "The Hobbit" single handedly derailed the whole HFR movement. It's a terrible tragedy that this ONE turd of a movie was used to judge the efficacy of the emerging new standard. I remember reading peoples complaints that the resolution was too high, that you could see the make-up and the limitations of the set that before would have been invisible. This is nonsense. There is NOTHING immersive about a movie like this anyway. That writing, the acting, the CGI, EVERYTHING is cartoonish and turning up the resolution can only reveal that cartoonishness more clearly. The reality is, people who actually like cartoonish movies like this aren't going to care either way. But what is it like to watch a movie that doesn't suck in HFR? Thanks to this one stupid movie and the rampant ludditism of fillmakers, our chance to find out has been pushed back yet again. I don't give a damn about CGI and big explosions. Give me a low budget but well written character study and I am happy but don't give it to me with film grain (real or artificial) and pitifully slow FPS. IMMERSE ME! The medium should be transparent. This is 2014 not 1914. Leave the past behind and immerse me.

To me it's exciting. Advanced, programmable autofocus would already be standard if not for the rampant ludditism of filmmakers.

First, a disclaimer, my monitoer is crummy. At first I thought "A" was the video because there seemed to be less color detail. But when I pixel peeped, it was clear that "A" was MUCH sharper. Yet "B" seems to have more detailed color information. It remindes me of the difference between sRGB and Adobe RGB. I don't understand color space that well but when I export an image from Lightroom as sRGB and then Adobe RGB, this is the type of difference I see where the sRGB has more saturated colors but obviously less color detail. Now I think it is a trick question. I'm supposing Andrew deliberately blew focus on "B" to confuse us. So I'm sticking with my first guess. "A" is video and "B" is from RAW but out of focus.