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1080 vs. 4K: What is REALLY necessary?


jasonmillard81
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9 hours ago, Mattias Burling said:

Think its best to let it go. I dont know how many times I've seen the argument that the biggest filmmakers, biggest producers of nature films, TV etc is just "less informed", " don't know better" or "unaware" of the awesomeness that is low bitrate, low DR, bad RS but surprisingly overly sharp image from a consumer stills camera.

Absolutely, because higher res automatically means low bit rate, low DR, bad RS stuff shot with a consumer stills camera (and by an amateur, I presume). The sad part is I don't think you realize how patronizing your put-downs sound. Hard to have a polite and intelligent exchange here.

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2 hours ago, Sekhar said:

Absolutely, because higher res automatically means low bit rate, low DR, bad RS stuff shot with a consumer stills camera (and by an amateur, I presume). The sad part is I don't think you realize how patronizing your put-downs sound. Hard to have a polite and intelligent exchange here.

Don't assume, stick to what you know.

You haven't been in this conversation that's been going on for two years, if you had been I don't think you would think so.

When a person basically calls anyone who doesn't shoot 4K or more exactly a Samsung NX1 an "idiot", " hack", "uninformed", etc and never stop and think, not for one second, that people just might not agree, then one will get a few cheap shots.

I think you need to lift your eyes a little and realize that not everything is about you. I never said that 4K automatically means low bitrate. I was talking about one specific camera. I myself use lowbitrate consumer 4K all the time.

But I don't think Tarantino and Spielberg are stupid idiots who would switch to a NX1 for their movies if someone showed them one. And if they rejected it go on to calling them "hacks".

But maybe your right, maybe it won't be an intelligent conversation. A bit patronizing, but maybe your right.

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I've shot quite a few live music events & I always get my shots - never even thought about reframing, not once. In fact, most of the time i'm able to sync stuff from one song to make it look like it belongs to another - perhaps I'm just used to knowing what will work & what won't. And yes the Pocket's DR in ProRes (RAW's a luxury one can't afford when filming live stuff) is exactly what makes my task that much easier when editing it all up. That's the other thing as well, if you film but don't edit, you tend to be out of the creative loop - I'm always thinking about the edit when I film stuff, it would be stupid not to.

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So let me know redirect my original question to this scenario:

 

If you're assessing an investment into equipment and have a choice between the trade off of 4k or 1080p but the 4K is a DSLR and the 1080p is a Cinema camera what would be your metrics in deciding where to go?  I.E. a Canon 1DX Mark II or a Canon C100 Mark II?  Is the 4K worth giving up the benefits of the c100 or is the image from the c100 good enough to forego the DSLR 4K image?

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@Nikkor suggested to me a long time ago that I should get a pocket cam when I was struggling with grading/correcting 8bit footage. I wish I had listened to him sooner. Now that I have my BMMCC, the the robust files are something I couldn't even comprehend when using 8bit 4K. With that being said, I do think one can achieve great results with any 4K camera, I've seen it from a bunch of you guys, but I know I would rather have good solid 1080p than thin 4K.

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4k is a choice for  people with the need of high resolution,also for the development of 4K TVs and big screen broadcast,as the pixels  on camera growing ,there is not reasons for us to remain on the 2M  pixels  HD  video

Not to mention most DSLRs today still provide false 1080P with line-skipping

But I think 4K is still on the way for many people,what matter for us now is better sampling 、log and higher bit for color~

RAW is not the future too,we need better codec,NOT MJPEG !

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1 hour ago, mercer said:

@Nikkor suggested to me a long time ago that I should get a pocket cam when I was struggling with grading/correcting 8bit footage. I wish I had listened to him sooner. Now that I have my BMMCC, the the robust files are something I couldn't even comprehend when using 8bit 4K. With that being said, I do think one can achieve great results with any 4K camera, I've seen it from a bunch of you guys, but I know I would rather have good solid 1080p than thin 4K.

Why suffer when you can have fun instead;) If you need 4K you can get a used bmpc which is going very cheap, or upscale 2.5k from the old blackmagic (nobody will tell the difference).

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I just tinkered with raw (photography) for the first time on my dslr (before I had just been using jpegs). I much prefer jpegs.. didn't have the best program to edit the raws, but still, even after getting through the obstacle course to make the picture decent, barely a difference. As well as fpn in the raws, and not the jpegs.. and the tonality! Raw like deleted some shadows or something? Looked weird. anyway, just took a lot of the magic out of raw.

I feel like everyone's camera is overkill. I've never felt cheated that I can't put every drop of 13 stops of dynamic range into a final image. I keep getting sucked into the fantasy of what camera I should get next and then.. not. And not caring. Aside from not having shot anything yet that would "earn" me an upgrade (one project in the works), I could still be learning from my rebel for years, I'm positive. 

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On 6/22/2016 at 10:55 AM, jasonmillard81 said:

 In addition they seem to acknowledge the necessity to keep up with the 4K, 6K, and 8K race but that sometimes the preferable image is of a much lower resolution and they spend time trying to achieve that by softening the image up etc.

I watched the whole thing and didn't catch any of them saying that.

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I shot an event with an rx10ii yesterday all in 1080p and loved the image and how quick it is to grade 1080 footage on my system. Shot something last week with the nx1 @ 4k and loved the color and the way the image looks like moving stills. I acknowledge that both these cameras have different aesthetics so I've been using them on different shoots where I can exploit their strengths. Point I am trying to make is pick the camera that looks good to you and ignore the technical stuff like resolution cause its not hard to adapt a workflow for 4k & 1080. 

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On 6/24/2016 at 2:08 AM, kaylee said:

"Just do it in post, same thing, saves a ton of time just shooting a master"

 

Haven't had this good a laugh to a response to a forum quote in ages.

People think it will fool the public today because of resolution. Ha! They were taking the piss out of that notion decades ago.

I wanted to bring up crop factor which seems the sacrifice for great DR at consumer level.

There, it's brought up. Any thoughts?

Edit: and no matter how much folks take communion for speedboosters at the altar, I can always see the difference of a full to 35 sensor. People don't look like like toys in the frame.

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14 hours ago, HelsinkiZim said:

Haven't had this good a laugh to a response to a forum quote in ages.

People think it will fool the public today because of resolution. Ha! They were taking the piss out of that notion decades ago.

I wanted to bring up crop factor which seems the sacrifice for great DR at consumer level.

There, it's brought up. Any thoughts?

Edit: and no matter how much folks take communion for speedboosters at the altar, I can always see the difference of a full to 35 sensor. People don't look like like toys in the frame.

Look like toys in the frame? No idea what that means. Recently did a test with all kinds of different lenses--native, speed boosted, vintage, modern--on both the G7 and BMPCC. All gave very different looks in regards to skintone, detail, contrast, 3D seperation, bokeh, and color. Where does this "toy" thing come into play, and what makes it a result of sensor size and not lens choice or camera processing or color grading? 

To your actual question, I have no problem dealing with crop factor as the price of great image quality. Micro Four Thirds lenses are good, cheap, and plentiful, and you can easily get an APS-C field of view of your full frame lenses with a simple $150 focal reducer. 

In terms of 4K? Like any tool, it depends on the project. Kind of a moot point if the studio/client asks for it; you need to have it. And I think we'd all rather have a badass high-DR awesome color RAW 1080p image than crummy compressed 4K. That's a silly argument because there's no possible way anyone could disagree. For broadcast and documentary, 1080p makes a lot of sense for file size reasons and delivery. But for high-end TV and narrative work, all else being equal, would I personally want 4K or 2K? Probably 2K for most things, as it's kinder to faces and I don't shoot a lot of wides. But it really depends on the project and your style. 

The biggest problem with 4K right now is delivery. We have the cameras, we have the displays, we have the content, but the pipes to get it there aren't up to snuff. 4K streaming is far too compressed at average American bitrates to beat a good 1080p Blu-Ray for quality. That Sony box that lets you download 4K digital copies works well and doesn't compromise quality, but you have to have all your movies downloaded far in advance and the library is very limited. They make 4K Blu-Rays now, but the library is small, they're expensive, and the players cost about $300. 

TLDR: There are more important IQ factors to consider first. It makes sense for certain projects, styles, and shots, but isn't quite there in terms of delivery yet.

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If anyone has TIDAL you will be happy to know that Kanye West's new video is shot  with a VHS cam. The DP (UZI, cool dude) signature style revolves around his work with the VHS cams. Im sure the resolution doesnt even hit anything close to 1080 and he landed Kanye as a client. Im sure who he knows is a factor too but it kinda smashed the debate that you cant be "pro" shooting with consumer cams or if you dont shoot 4k

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On 6/25/2016 at 6:52 PM, Liam said:

I just tinkered with raw (photography) for the first time on my dslr (before I had just been using jpegs). I much prefer jpegs.. didn't have the best program to edit the raws, but still, even after getting through the obstacle course to make the picture decent, barely a difference. As well as fpn in the raws, and not the jpegs.. and the tonality! Raw like deleted some shadows or something? Looked weird. anyway, just took a lot of the magic out of raw.

I feel like everyone's camera is overkill. I've never felt cheated that I can't put every drop of 13 stops of dynamic range into a final image. I keep getting sucked into the fantasy of what camera I should get next and then.. not. And not caring. Aside from not having shot anything yet that would "earn" me an upgrade (one project in the works), I could still be learning from my rebel for years, I'm positive. 

This doesn't mean raw is the problem. Check 500px for the type of photo you tried to process, sort the list by "pulse" and you'll see what properly processed raw file looks like. There is a difference.

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11 minutes ago, tomekk said:

This doesn't mean raw is the problem. Check 500px for the type of photo you tried to process, sort the list by "pulse" and you'll see what properly processed raw file looks like. There is a difference.

I... realize people have shot good photos in raw. Still had that experience. People have shot pretty jpegs too

IMG_4129(5).png

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1 minute ago, Liam said:

I... realize people have shot good photos in raw. Still had that experience. People have shot pretty jpegs too

IMG_4129(5).png

I'm not saying otherwise. I'm just pointing out that raw, in photography, will let you push the photo to it's limits further than jpeg will - if you know how to do it properly. There is a point where jpeg's flexibility ends but raw's doesn't. That's where you see the difference. If you don't know how to make it past that point, there is no point in using raw.

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