alt Hacker NewsIMAX vs. IMAX 70mm: The difference between these two cinema formats
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I wonder when there will exist camera and (laser) projection systems - and with that, movies - that cover even more of the human visible color gamut
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/10/imax-with-laser-supe... mentions that with IMAX Laser:
> Colour-wise, the full Rec. 2020 gamut/space is available—though we weren’t shown any films/trailers that actually made use of this larger colour space; they all used the DCI’s standard P3 colour space.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rec._2020
I have no idea how well the analog film compares there
https://moultano.wordpress.com/2026/06/19/where-to-find-the-...
I think it's interesting how we went from 4:3 to 16:9, and are now back to something very close to 4:3 again. And both changes were sold as "you can now see even more of the movie".
IMHO, the only reasons for using 70 mm IMAX are nostalgia and marketing. Digital movie cameras have far better color reproduction, more dynamic range, zero frame jitter, and plenty of resolution without grain. They are also small and silent which allows far more interesting shots than what is possible with a 70 mm monster. Kubrick and Lean used 70 mm because it was the best technology available at the time. Today, the best technology is digital.
>To understand IMAX, it helps to know how movies are captured in the first place. Many are shot digitally, as it's cheaper and more convenient than using film. However, many filmmakers still want, well, film
The illogical part about this process is that they convert the shot film to digital, they add CGI and color correction and then they print back the digital version to....film.
So the whole point of shooting a Hollywood movie on film today is because some directors like....film. There is no practicality/cost/reasoning to it.
This is purely my opinion. I see 70mm as mostly a movie scam to extort exorbitant amounts of cash from a ticket for something that's vaguely noticeable outside the aspect ratio itself.
Note that I'm not disputing that there is a visual difference, there is, the image is clearer, shaper, with better darks, but the entry fee paired with how out of the way 70mm is, it's just ends up feeling like FOMO.
My opinion doesn't hold much value since I just dislike the cinema experience in general. I like being able to control the environment I'm in when watching something (pausing, eating, loudness...) and whenever I go to cinemas I have to deal with people having their smartphones screens brighten up, people yapping and laughing at things that aren't funny, eating noises, etc...
The DC area used to have two IMAX theaters with film projectors: one at the Natural History museum, and one at the Air & Space museum.
The one at Natural History lost tons of money. They eventually took it out, sold it for parts, and replaced it with offices and a cafe (which does make money).
They kept the theater at Air & Space, but converted it to IMAX digital. As a result, they are able to easily show pretty much any first-run movie, as well as revivals. That helps them sell a lot more tickets.
The real essential difference in IMAX is the physical shape of the theater. A real IMAX theater has very steep seats that are close to an absolutely huge screen, with huge speakers behind it. As opposed to the “IMAX” found in cineplexes where they just took their largest theater and upgraded the projector.
Films really should be shot differently for IMAX. Closeups need to be a lot less close up. People shouldn’t have to turn their heads side to side just to see one or the other eye of your character. IMO it’s a mixed result in The Odyssey. Directors just can’t resist closeups of actors. And the movie needs to work in regular theaters where most people will see it.
I'm curious about the opinions on 70mm (non-IMAX) vs Digital IMAX.
What do you prefer if you have tried both. Because those are the only mostly accessible options around the world.
Sound is also something to consider, because depending on the Theater they might have wildy different sound setups even different audio standards.
Some locals I know built a few of these cameras. I just ran into one of them the other day.
They started the local makerspace. There was an article last week in the local paper about it.
https://cdapress.com/news/2026/jul/25/couples-imax-camera-fi... {view it in a private window}
An IMAX 70mm drama is by necessity blurry because of the low depth of field you get with such a large image frame. IMAX is great for flyover films, but a movie filmed in it will look amateurish compared to a standard RED digital camera.
That said, the Odyssey is a perfectly decent film. It would have looked better if captured with more appropriate technology, but it's an entertaining and uniquely American spin on the story.
For those in the Bay Area, AMC Metreon has the capabilities to show the best of all of these formats: 70mm film, dual laser GT, and also a Dolby Cinema theater in there as well.
Reading this made me start to remember how my thinking changed around expensive/elaborate gear and art.
When an artist performs a gig or releases an album, no one really remembers or connects with the fact that the audio went through some insane signal chain, no one at their gig would hear the difference between a $500 guitar and a $12,000 guitar.
What resonates with people and what people will remember is the writing, the performance, the story, the energies... Everything else is the 0.1%, and yes it can stack but it's still on the peripherals.
Everyone I respect in the arts has done the full bell curve, started out with crappy fundamentals -> gear will solve all my issues -> gear is marginally important but the fundamentals were always key. It's really interesting to me to see people I should expect to be on the other side of the bell curve still obsessing with marginal gains.
My favourite movies, I couldn't even tell you what it was filmed on, and it probably could have been filmed on a range of comparible mediums and I would have never known.
I go to IMAX to see less smartphones show up during the movie.
The rest is just icing on the cake.
I find the sound system to be more compelling than the projection system.
The audio amplification in some IMAX venues are rated for more power consumption than their projector lamp. 15kW across 12 channels in some cases. You could never recreate this part of the experience at home. The power you could replicate but not the acoustics of a gigantic auditorium combined with that power. You can get 20hz floor shaking in small parts of your living room where the standing waves build up, but at imax it works smoothly across every seat.
It's interesting to me when I go to the cinema how poor the quality is compared to at home on an OLED TV. The blacks are so grey and dark stuff is hard to make out.The resolution is far less noticeable than that (but obviously worse).
Seems to me the real improvement in cinema would be OLED-style contrast ratio panels. Is this a thing being worked on?
I've recently been to a planetarium which was pretty cool. It has in theory even better specs: 45 million pixels (8K has 33 million), ~500nits, 60Hz. It did seem to use PWM at very low brightness though
https://planetariums-database.org/list_projectors.php?menu=l...
I enjoyed the Odyssey movie, but didn't think it looked that good. Too sharp and kind of fake looking, almost like TV. (To be fair, I don't live in a real city so we just have LieMAX.) Disappointing visually, but I did quite enjoy the "Braveheart meets Greek myth meets Jason Bourne" aspect of the whole thing.
I've seen a real 70mm projection print, the sharpness combined with brightness is hard to describe. But nowadays I can't find anything close to me that has this option.
What I do know is that most movies in cinemas these days aren't even close.
Maybe related:
In the LA area, both Regal and AMC have a number of IMAX 70mm theaters. Universal City AMC and Irvine Spectrum Regal both have the biggest IMAX screens. TCL in Hollywood has the next biggest. The downtown Regal and Burbank AMC are in the third tier (bit still very large).
All of these theaters have IMAX 70mm film projectors.
The thing is: It's kind of irrelevant for most theatergoers, as there are only 24 IMAX 70mm venues in the whole country. And many of them don't even show theatrical releases.
For example, I used to live in Houston, and we tried to find a 70mm theater for OPPENHEIMER. There aren't any there despite being a city of nearly 8 million.
Most "IMAX" branded theaters these days are just the biggest screen in the cineplex rebranded and with a more expensive (but still 4K) projector.
IMAX really cheapened their brand with the LIEMax format. Most "IMAX" are actually LIEMax, projecting a 4K image and not even with the extra tall IMAX aspect ratio.
Hollywood auteur clowns shooting om formats that no movie plex actually uses. I admire the grift.
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If you want a very in depth technical look at the differences between IMAX 70mm, 70mm and 35mm for _The Odyssey_, I wrote an article about this last month.
https://www.theppt.org/rewind/articles/where-can-you-watch-t...
But here are my nit-picks from the article linked here. I'm only commenting on the 15/70mm IMAX parts, because I'm not knowledgable enough about the digital IMAX foramats.
> The extra resolution, up to 18K equivalent
The claim of 18K is entirely untested. No one has ever measured what the theoretical resolution of an 15/70mm IMAX system is. Kodak's film may me theoretically capable of resolving this, but what about the camera lens, the GT projector lens and field flattener, and everything else involved? Until a study is actually done, I don't think the 18K is a good number to band about.
> thanks to the use of single or even dual 15kW water-cooled xenon bulbs
No cinema is using dual lamps. The dual lamps are used for 3D - one lamp per "eye" (right and left). But no 15/70mm IMAX is currently showing 3D, I think the last was the London Science Museum (but that's a guess, so don't take as truth). So it is only single lamp. 15kW is also not always true - some smaller 15/70mm IMAXes use 12kW or around that.
> However, there are only around 24 such theaters in the US, nine in Canada and six elsewhere around the world.
This is incorrect. There are actually 25 in the US, and 7 in the rest of the world, totalling 41 prints.