Is IMAX Overrated?

Added: 2026-05-11

[00:00:00]Everyone's talking about IMAX and large format these days. So, I wanted to make a movie talking about film formats and sensor sizes, but I don't have an IMAX camera. So, I had to come up with my own solution.

[00:00:21]Welcome back to Maybe Someday. Today we're talking about film formats and sensor sizes.

[00:00:44]I should start by clarifying that I'm not approaching this as an expert on this. I'm very familiar with the systems that I use all the time, which is primarily super 35 and full-frame and occasionally micro four/ thirds, but I've never really had access to IMAX or large format cameras. So, the approach with those is still kind of abstract to me, and I want to have a deeper understanding of it. As a DP, I'm starting to get opportunities where I might be able to use those systems. So, I want to make informed decisions about what the trade-offs are when going from one system to another and why I might pick a larger format or stick with what I know. So, let's start with what I do know.

[00:01:35]Some of you weren't even born yet the last time I opened this box.

[00:01:44]So, I got my start shooting 35mm film in the '9s and I didn't go to film school or photography school. So, everything I learned was from people whose work I admired, which was mostly skateboard photographers. So I was learning a lot just by kind of looking at what they were doing and kind of trying to mimic it when I was just getting started. At the time that meant shooting on slide film 35 mil and eventually I also switched to medium format but that was because of flash sync. So with skateboarding you wanted to freeze the action as much as possible. And with the medium format cameras you could typically do flash sync at 1500th of a second as opposed to like one over 125 I think was a 35 mil flash sync.

[00:02:24]Wow. I really should have done a better job of storing this stuff. I really wasn't thinking too much about the field of view difference between media format and 35. Take this off now. It was really just the flash sync speed and the resolution that you get with a bigger piece of celluloid.

[00:02:41]But yeah, field of view wasn't a big part of the equation.

[00:02:46]So obviously different focal lengths changed a shot. Wow. What would that look like on a long lens? Anamorphic lenses have their own unique look. These are the Blazar Remis 1.5x. So, couldn't we just put a wider lens on a smaller sensor camera to get a similar look as a tighter lens on a bigger sensor camera?

[00:03:05]Well, that's a 17.5 lens. It's a zoom, but it's an L series 28. That's also at 28. They're both That's a 35.

[00:03:16]So, they should be a similar field of view, but I think you'll notice on this camera that things aren't as blurry and out of focus as they are on this camera.

[00:03:26]So, now imagine going to an even bigger sensor and what that might look like. We could probably simulate that with After Effects if I just roto myself.

[00:03:36]Wow, I'm in IMAX now. Okay, so this is simulating the depth of field that we would have on that 35 mil equivalent shot. So this would be a wider shot if it was IMAX. Maybe I can superimpose myself onto the other shot just so you can get a sense of like, okay, it's this wide and it's this shallow at the same time. So it's this but wider. I shouldn't do this. Sorry.

[00:04:02]>> To be honest, on the IMAX movies I worked on, that wasn't the goal of using high resolution cameras. They actually the DPS would stop down because when you're watching IMAX, they wanted the the viewer to be able to look into the background, >> right?

[00:04:18]>> You know, 56 was, I think, as wide as we ever went cuz you want it to be sharp >> and you also, especially in a film like that, you know, Flight of the Butterflies that that we worked on, you want to look into the deep background and see, you know, these hundreds of millions of monarchs flying around in New Mexico. So, it's why would you push?

[00:04:36]That wouldn't be fun. Put it this way.

[00:04:37]We were shooting our establishers on IMAX film. So, let's just call that even just 12K.

[00:04:42]>> But we could shoot our close-ups in those movies on SI 2Ks, which were 2K, because macro already shows such detail that it doesn't you don't actually need extreme high resolution to show macro shots. Where you do really need IMAX shots is you need it for the vistas when you need those wide shots. So aerials or like we'd say wide establishers of the locations, you want that IMAX because it holds the resolution into the details.

[00:05:07]You're zooming in and zooming in and zooming in. You're going like, "Wow, I can see into the distance." When you're in a true IMAX theater, like a true one, which is six stories tall, 60 ft. You need that resolution cuz people are not only really close to the screen, it's like, "Well, your mom told you growing up, like get away from the screen." It's like, "No, no, no. IMAX wants you as close and as immersed because you're not filling the frame with your subject.

[00:05:30]You're putting your subject in a giant frame.

[00:05:32]>> But to return to your question, you shoot 50 mil on 65 mil.

[00:05:37]>> You just have a lot more or a lot shallower depth of field to work with. I can show my my subject waste to the top of their head, but I can get the same shallow depth of field.

[00:05:50]>> Yeah.

[00:05:50]>> And without and without the distortion.

[00:05:52]Exactly. And not to say that's always the look. That whole point of IMAX, though, I would say, is to kind of show the world, you know, so you're not always just going for shallow depth of field.

[00:06:03]>> So, while I was editing this, I noticed that Josh was setting something up and was doing something interesting.

[00:06:09]>> What is this contraption?

[00:06:12]>> This is my absolute favorite lens. So the Mamia 645s are medium format lenses and there are actual speed boosters for 35 mil full-frame cameras to speed boost to the full almost the full image circle of the Mamia 645. Very quickly, a speed booster is an adapter that allows you to use larger format lenses on your camera.

[00:06:37]has a lens that focuses a larger image circle onto a smaller sensor. So, you get that wider field of view because it's also taking more light and focusing it onto a smaller area. It also brightens the image. So, it's win-win.

[00:06:49]So, you have an 80 mil on this setup.

[00:06:51]What would that be on a full-frame? It's a 0.7, so it's like a 56 mm, but you get all the characteristics of the full mamia medium format look, which is pretty sweet. Why don't they just make lenses with speed boosters built into them?

[00:07:07]>> They do. They do make them now. They just cost as much as like a Blackwing or super expensive.

[00:07:14]>> So, at this point in the experiment, I'm realizing that for me, there are diminishing returns once I get past full frame. Like, when I jump between the micro four/ third shot and the medium format lens shot, there are drastic differences that I definitely find favorable. But when I look at the fullframe compared to the medium format, the differences are more subtle than I would have thought. Once I had established that, I really just wanted to bake in my brain how drastic the different sizes were. And since I don't have access to every camera, I decided to create these cutouts. Mark had mentioned something about how wide a 50 mil lens was on an IMAX camera. So, I figured that mimicking the field of view of a 50 mil on various formats would be a cool way to really bake in how that frame changes as we scale up in size.

[00:07:58]Super 16. This is a 50 mil. This is a 50 mil on super 16. I feel very claustrophobic in the frame, but you know, it's a 50. You get the nice depth and separation from me in the background. Maybe you'd want to shoot on a wider lens and you would lose some of that, but you would see more of the world. But this is what it looks like.

[00:08:15]Let's move on. 50 mil on micro four/ thirds. Not much bigger. Still feel claustrophobic. But these are very cheap cameras. GH4 you can pick up for probably less than 500 bucks now. And I'm ready for the next one. So now we have a super 35 with a 50 mil lens. It's a comfortable frame. What's interesting is that super 35 mil is the same film as 35 mil that you would be shooting on your photo cameras back in the day, but it runs through the camera this way. And so the sprockets are on the side versus having the sprockets on the top and bottom when you're running through a SLR camera. So that's why you have a bigger frame on fullframe, which is where we're going very soon. 50 mil on the Alexa 35.

[00:08:50]It's probably going to look pretty similar to the Super 35. This is just the digital version of it next. So fullframe is also mimicking 35mm film but from an SLR camera where it's running this way instead of this way.

[00:09:01]This would be your mirrorless full-frame camera. So your FX3 or your Canon R5 or Lumix S5. We're starting to see why a bigger sensor yields much nicer results, but it gets bigger. So this is Panovision 570 and this is what a 50 mil would show you, which is a lot more than the other frames we've been seeing.

[00:09:18]We're seeing all these windows now.

[00:09:19]We're getting more sense of the space.

[00:09:21]What's cool about this film is it's the same as IMAX actually, but it is running this way through the camera instead of this way. Cinema cameras generally tended to run this way through the film stock, but some people break the rules and that's where we're going very soon.

[00:09:36]So, this is what a 50 mil looks like on the Alexa 65. So, it's a digital version of the Panavision 570, more or less. Um, so we're seeing very similar amounts of information. We're getting nice depth of field between me and the background.

[00:09:49]We're seeing a lot of the world. So, all of the great things of shooting on a larger format, but this is digital. A great camera. Unfortunately, you can't buy it. You can only rent it as far as I know. So cool. So, this is what a 50 mil would look like on an IMAX camera. We're seeing the entire space. The whole thing with film is you want to make things three-dimensional. So, you want to have things in the foreground, in the background, but you also want to be able to isolate people with pockets of light and with focus. And having such a large sensor like this allows you to do that.

[00:10:18]It also presents new challenges because now we're seeing the grip gear and you know I'm used to being able to get lights nice and close to subjects especially when we were doing close-ups and I first noticed this when I started shooting anamorphic is suddenly I was seeing seaands and flags where I thought they would be safe. So, it's not that it is a bad thing, but it presents new challenges, and this is something I wanted to literally flag.

[00:10:41]But most likely, if you're shooting an IMAX movie, you probably have the budget for very powerful lighting and an incredible grip team who can shape the light and just get everything perfect the way you wanted to. So, >> so this was basically where the video was going to end. But then at NAB, I got chatting with the people at Fujifilm about the Eterna 55. The next thing I knew, I was trudging through the forest with an IMAX approved camera, balancing it on rocks and tree stumps, and getting hands-on with the largest format digital cinema camera that currently exists.

[00:11:40]This is not a review of the Eterna 55. I only had it for 48 hours and half of that was supposed to be my anniversary station where I don't do work. But it was just enough time to fall in love with it and to understand why people who use these cameras tend to get hooked. I am now one of them.

[00:12:01]I wish I'd had faster lenses to play with. These were the Dual Lens APO minis, which are T2.6.

[00:12:07]Uh, so big thank you to my friend Dom for lending them to me on such short notice.

[00:12:13]But if you want to see what this thing looks like wide open, go check out Sloppy Stakes video where he paired it with a T1 lens. To me, that is where things would start to get really interesting and truly unique. and I hope I get a chance to try that in the future. But there was something magical and hypnotic that happened to me while I was shooting with this camera. It brought me back to when I first put a 50 mil 1.4 lens on a 5D Mark II or looking through a waist level finder on a medium format camera.

[00:12:41]I'm still not ready to talk about the Lettuce adapter. I was a focus puller in that era. But one thing that became clear after spending a full day with it was that large format, kind of like high-speed frame rates and global shutter, it's a specific tool for a specific purpose in storytelling. I've got a shoot coming up that takes place almost entirely inside a crashed vehicle. And being able to use something like a 35 mil lens on this or maybe an anamorphic lens and get the field of view of a much wider lens but without the distortion. It's in these confined spaces where you can't just back the camera up. That's where the camera would really come in clutch.

[00:13:18]The audience feels when the camera is further away from the subject and when it's closer. And so sometimes it's a compromise to have to just back up.

[00:13:30]So I definitely want to revise what I said partway through this video, which is that there were diminishing returns once you go beyond full frame. Now that I've been able to spend some more time with a large format system and really become familiar with it, there are definitely ways that I want to incorporate it into future projects that I do, assuming it fits within the story.

[00:13:49]I do get it now. So, a big thank you to Stash and Brandon at Fujifilm Canada for letting me get hands-on with the Eterna 55 for a few days. Um, I really do love that camera. I hope I painted it in a nice light. And a big thank you to the many people that helped me with this video over the last couple months. So, Dom and Mark, George, Josh, Zach, Patrick, Michelle, thank you. I I couldn't have done it without all of that help. I hope you learned something from this video. I know I did, but I'm sure there are things that I got wrong or that I completely missed. So, feel free to roast me in the comments if you think there's something that I need to hear down there, and we'll continue the conversation there. Assuming I survive all that, I look forward to seeing you in the next video. So, thank you for watching and good night.