How to read the demonstration: Each stop is a deliberately constructed
representative visual style, not the look of every movie from that year. Color systems coexisted with black-and-white, lenses varied dramatically, and cinematography is also a matter of artistic choice. Depth of field and optical softness are only approximated; film-stock latitude and information lost in the source cannot be recovered by a filter. Film scratches, dirt, and flicker describe surviving prints and projection—not newly exposed negative film. The modern endpoint represents digital capture and grading, although movies are still shot on analog film.
Sources for technology milestones:
Kodak film chronology ·
George Eastman Museum, Technicolor ·
BFI, early color cinema ·
BFI, early digital cinema.