What's the deal with 1960's footage?
January 26, 2009 12:50 AM   Subscribe

What's the deal with certain 1960's black-and-white footage?

Certain 1960's black-and-white footage has a quality that I can't really describe. The best example I can think of is the Jack Ruby-shoots-Lee Harvey Oswald clip.

I don't really have the words to explain what this looks like, and I don't at all why it looks this way.

Is this too vague for any contributions?
posted by jefficator to Media & Arts (3 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Best answer: Previously

I was curious, too.
posted by codswallop at 1:12 AM on January 26, 2009


What the previous thing said.

Basically: portable television cameras were a bigger compromise back then, it was possibly a kinescope, different issues with interleaving, the "sensor" was far less forgiving and sensitive, so a momentary bright light would leave a "sustain" kind of effect, etc.
posted by gjc at 4:38 AM on January 26, 2009


Could also be low-quality transfers where they don't properly fix the frame rate in the transfer causing the video version to be slightly faster than the film version - straight frame-to-frame transfers go about 25% faster 24 -> 30 fps.
posted by GuyZero at 10:51 AM on January 26, 2009


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