So I read a YT comment that because of "HD" conversion of old films into digital formats, we are now seeing exactly what audiences saw way back when(50s,60s and earlier) because "35MM film is close to the equivalent of 4KHD".
Is this not an incorrect assumption since projectors of that era in theatres were presumably not projecting a HD image?
I'm guessing the comment was referring to the amount of detail that can be seen, the sharpness of the image, etc. You're right of course, 35mm is analog and HD is digital, but comparisons can be made between them.
The comment is incorrect in another way though. Movies are usually re-edited for Blu-Ray and DVD versions, because of the size of the smaller screen. A closeup of an actor surrounded by several other people works on a movie screen, but if that same image were put on a TV screen the actor would look too small, so the image is cropped. So unless you're watching the movie in a movie theater, you're not seeing "exactly what audiences saw" when they saw the movie way back when, in the theater.
Yeah I was referring more to the idea that, the amount of detail we see today in HD conversions of old film on 4k blu ray, was visible to audiences in theatres in the 60s and prior.
There is alot of controversy around "HDifying" old movies because things that weren´t apparent in a lower quality format become apparent in a HD conversion, like actors´makeup etc.
My thinking was that the projectors of that era are not comparable to the ones today, so even though 35mm film is high quality, the amount of detail could not be replicated by the antiquated projectors of that era. I have no idea if that is correct but that was my assumption.
> I have no idea if that is correct but that was my assumption.
I have no idea either. I'm an old fart but I'm not that old.
> There is alot of controversy around "HDifying" old movies because things that weren´t apparent in a lower quality format become apparent in a HD conversion, like actors´makeup etc.
I've seen that happen. The movie 61* (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0250934/), about Roger Maris, Mickey Mantle, and the 1961 baseball season, was made in 2001 for HBO. Back then standard definition was the norm. The movie looked good then. Later, when it was rebroadcast in the high def era, it was glaringly obvious in one scene that the Yankee Stadium bleachers weren't real but were a matte painting.
Another example is a Columbo episode (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101602/) made in 1991. Sondra Currie, then in her mid-forties, played a police officer. In one scene she wears a police uniform with a necktie. The makeup people did her face but didn't bother to do her neck -- not much of it was showing, and the detail on what was showing would be captured on film but would also be lost on television anyway. That was the right decision -- for 1991. But when the film was later turned into a HD broadcast it did show; a quite startling "effect."
The same thing happened in audio. If the Internet is correct, the first CD player went on sale in October 1982. I bought my first CD player a little less than three years later, in the summer of 1985. At that time, most music CDs were made from master tapes originally used to make vinyl records. The engineers had not yet developed all the skills and techniques necessary for the new technology, and some of the results were ... "interesting," let's say.