Why 6k Resolution Is Not Overrated... And Might Be Too Little

[thephoenix]

the funny part is that many of the 4k screen owners still buy dvd's ?

[DBounce]

@mkabi the 85" is priced at $5500. But that is still mighty cheap considering it's 8K HDR and 85". I really think 4k is not enough for such a large screen unless you are more than 10' from it. Depending on what I'm using the screen for, I am not alway far from it. So the option to have 8K goodness is appreciated. 

[Andrew Reid]

Braindead numbers game.

[DBounce]

1 hour ago, Andrew Reid said:

Braindead numbers game.

Not on a 85" TV it isn't... and not if it's on VR. 

[Andrew Reid]

It's a numbers game, yes, but still braindead. I am just not sold.

85" utterly dominates a normal room. It's an omnipresent black mirror. 65" is my limit. Most people's limit is 55". Bigger number not always better.

There is barely any 8K content at the moment worth watching. Most TV is still 1080p. There is no big amazing image quality difference between 8K content at 85" and 4K content at 85" when you are watching at normal viewing distances. I've seen the same Samsung 85" you did. Nobody watches TV from 1-2ft away from an 85" screen.

When it comes down to the real world all these numbers are meaningless.

For displays, motion cadence matters more and nobody talks about it. For going large, projectors are more cinematic than large TVs. Colour, HDR, 10bit, contrast, matter more than resolution on an LCD panel for the living room. Resolution matters most on a desktop monitor with close viewing distance, not in the living room.

Whole industry shift to 8K is flawed and will end like 3D did.

[inde]

I've got two responses to this topic

Consider that in terms of resolution, for stills, a 6 Mp CCD camera equaled 35mm film 10 years ago in terms of resolution. Not in terms of colour..

It seems to me modern 100mbs super 35 at 1080p from a prosumer camera is equal to 35mm film stock in terms of resolution. I've shot quality 4k and displayed it 4k on a big screen and it looks impressive. However, I'm happy with quality 1080p. I've heard annocdotally that for major studios VFX is done at 2k and rezzed up. It wouldn't surprise me.

Also, what's the point of 6k if it's broadcast at 8Mbs? I mean really..

The limitation is not in the number of pixels but the size of the pipe.

it's just a case of give me MOARRR!

[Papiskokuji]

2 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

It's a numbers game, yes, but still braindead. I am just not sold.

85" utterly dominates a normal room. It's an omnipresent black mirror. 65" is my limit. Most people's limit is 55". Bigger number not always better.

There is barely any 8K content at the moment worth watching. Most TV is still 1080p. There is no big amazing image quality difference between 8K content at 85" and 4K content at 85" when you are watching at normal viewing distances. I've seen the same Samsung 85" you did. Nobody watches TV from 1-2ft away from an 85" screen.

When it comes down to the real world all these numbers are meaningless.

For displays, motion cadence matters more and nobody talks about it. For going large, projectors are more cinematic than large TVs. Colour, HDR, 10bit, contrast, matter more than resolution on an LCD panel for the living room. Resolution matters most on a desktop monitor with close viewing distance, not in the living room.

Whole industry shift to 8K is flawed and will end like 3D did.

Agreed, and still if you disable the motion flow thingy of your tv (as we all should do), the resolution in motion of every panel, no matter their definition, is usually 300 lines. Whereas CRT TV's have such a pleasing motion reproduction ! I tried a few years ago a "high resolution" (like only 720p) CRT screen, with VGA signal... omg, even 5d mkII looked so so beautiful on it. It's like watching something with a projector, it enhance the image. The motion is ten times better than on a LED/OLED TV, it's "organic", not digital.

They need to do progress with the black frame insertion, which to me is the best technology for motion reproduction. It emulates CRT's, sort of.

Contrast is also one of the most important aspect to a great image. I must admit the blacks on an OLED panel are breathtaking. Having those true blacks are so much more crucial than HDR or 4K / 8K. A video on a 1080p calibrated oled panel with enough bitrate will crush the same video in 4k HDR on a LED panel. If OLED had no burning, I would buy one immediately.

OLED contrast in SDR crushes LED contrast in HDR. (I'm not convinced by HDR yet... They sell you HDR, meaning more contrast, on TV's with less contrast than OLED)

Anyway back on resolution. Sure the more the better, but right now there's a problem of bitrate. For instance, 1080p TV in France, is around 5 mbps. It's ridiculous. If you don't have at the very least 20 mbps, you won't have an optimal image that does justice to your purchase. 5 mbps is good for news, for every day tv, but not for films, for sports, well it negates the fact of having the best tv with the best resolution. Just imagine for 4K. You'd need 80mpbs, and right now, no country does that. So until there's not a way bigger bandwith for TV, the only times you'll get the best image out of your TV set is when you plug it directly to your PC and play a video you shot with your brand new BMPCC6K and exported in PRORES  Or you can buy a 4K blu ray (I litterally know no one who owns a 4K blu ray, and almost no one with HD blu rays for that matter ! And I work in the cinema industry with crazy cinema lovers).

So yeah... 4K is dead, etc. We're not there yet, not one bit. And my prediction is people with 4K TV will go on and watch movies, netflix... on tv with a weak bitrate and won't give a shit as they more interested in the story and don't care for image quality like we do. But of course, they'll have a 4K or 8K TV, cause there's no 1080p TV anymore, and also because the guy in the store told them 4K is better.

[User]

If countries like France send their TV content out at 5 Mbps, what do streaming sites like Netflix etc send (Mbps) their hi res content out at?

Edit:
I found this:
"A regular HD Blu-Ray has a bit rate of 40mbps. A 4k Blu-Ray is like 100 mbps. Netflix says you need a 25mbps connection for “4k content” which means the bit rate is even lower than that."

Streaming throughput will increase... in time. But properly pushing an 8k monitor from the web is still quite far off.

[newfoundmass]

8 hours ago, DBounce said:

Not on a 85" TV it isn't... and not if it's on VR. 

You're in the minority, re: wanting an 85 inch TV. There's only one room in my home that could accommodate a TV that large and even then the room isn't wide enough to comfortably watch it. 

[User]

Yep, and just imagine how many Malaysian (because that where the majority of the world's electronics cardboard comes from) old growth trees it will take to package one of those fuckers? Of course the payoff will be kicking back all smug with a tasty single malt (and a woman you can no longer get it up for) as a horrified orangutan races across the screen... on fire.

Of course the 8k will show off those charred hair follicles... and make you wonder about your own.

But for the man who has everything (except inner peace), how much is actually enough?

[Stab]

Guys give it a break and write a film ffs!

I watched The Godfather (again) recently. This film probably has as much detail as a poor 720p camera. The highlights are often blown out and it looks like the dynamic range of that film is no more than 6-8 stops. It is yellow as fuck.

And still, it's a beautiful movie. And almost everyone agrees.

I realised that, including for myself, this obsession with gear, pixel peeping and resolution is a race to the creative bottom.

[PannySVHS]

On 8/12/2019 at 8:35 PM, thephoenix said:

the funny part is that many of the 4k screen owners still buy dvd's ?

Watched a DVD projection on a 9foot projection screen. Looked awesome. "Coffe and cigarettes". Awesome BW photography. Looked as good as any streaming from netflix. @User Yes, the horror of pixel and tech race. The rants about segmenting tech and about these awefully short product cycles and redundant products are more than justified!

[User]

2 hours ago, PannySVHS said:

Watched a DVD projection on a 9foot projection screen. Looked awesome. "Coffe and cigarettes". Awesome BW photography. Looked as good as any streaming from netflix. @User Yes, the horror of pixel and tech race. The rants about segmenting tech and about these awefully short product cycles and redundant products are more than justified!

For sure. And, aside from image quality, I'd put Jarmusch's Coffee and Cigarettes against 99% of anything on Netflix... if just for the ethics involved in making it.

I can imagine that many of us here live on very little to do the work we love, that has certainly been the case for me these last years... it's a trade off that I don't regret (as two teeth currently rot in my head). And and as our biosphere bakes and smokes under incessant human greed and narcissism, I rest a little easier knowing that I'm not caught trying to keep up with the Jones. Some call it 'voluntary simplicity.' And I appreciate the spirit of the folks here who are trying to eek out every last notch of their older gear (a la Magic Lantern etc.) before being forced to carry forward.

[kye]

If anyone knows of any lenses that are 6K wide-open to go with my new P6K / S1H / F6 camera or 8K lenses for my F8 then please let me know.  Must be under 100Kg and budget is limited to the GDP of a small island nation.

 

[DBounce]

9 hours ago, kye said:

If anyone knows of any lenses that are 6K wide-open to go with my new P6K / S1H / F6 camera or 8K lenses for my F8 then please let me know.  Must be under 100Kg and budget is limited to the GDP of a small island nation.

 

Well isn't 6k only 19.4MP? We have plenty of cameras that shoot 24, 30, 42, 61 even the 100MP Fuji. So surely resolving 6k or even 8k (33.2MP) is not a hugh issues with modern lenses. 

With that in mind I would comfortably say virtually any modern lens, from any of the major players should readily resolve the 19.4 megapixels needed for 6k.

[kye]

55 minutes ago, DBounce said:

Well isn't 6k only 19.4MP? We have plenty of cameras that shoot 24, 30, 42, 61 even the 100MP Fuji. So surely resolving 6k or even 8k (33.2MP) is not a hugh issues with modern lenses. 

With that in mind I would comfortably say virtually any modern lens, from any of the major players should readily resolve the 19.4 megapixels needed for 6k.

I'm kind of coming around to this from a different perspective - that of evaluating lenses by their area of worst performance rather than cherry-picking their best.

There are absolutely lenses that will resolve 100MP somewhere in the frame under perfect conditions.  But what about the corners?  and what about CA?  and what about halation?  If a lens resolves as much as a 100MP sensor in the middle, but edges with contrast have CA still visible when you downscale the image to 1080p (2MP) then is it really still a 100MP lens?  and wouldn't adding more resolution in the middle simply make it more obvious that the flaws are so much less?

If you check out the images I posted in the other thread, you'll see that the $40,000 Master Anamorphic has CA still visible in a 1080 frame (and it was still visible in the 720 frame I didn't bother to upload) so what are we really talking about?  

I used to think of the Helios as a charming lens because it was so imperfect, but the truth is that even in 720p some of the best cine lenses available are still a bit like the Helios.

Most things in life are hard to see from a huge distance away, and look nice from a sensible distance, but when you get right up close the flaws become visible and the magic kind of fades.  I'm beginning to think that with lenses you want to capture the image well enough to see it clearly but not so well it just points out all the flaws.  and that happy medium seems to occur around 2-4K.  

[User]

2 hours ago, kye said:

Most things in life are hard to see from a huge distance away, and look nice from a sensible distance, but when you get right up close the flaws become visible and the magic kind of fades.

It sound s like you are talking about marriage

I'm not shooting with anything above my C100 MkII but aside from chromatic aberration and unsharp corners, I thought I'd been hearing the it's helpful to use 'softer' lenses to take the edge off the higher mp sensors. The term 'clinical' sharpness comes to mind, which is fine in gynecology clinic... but even then, maybe better to dim the lights and up the Barry White

[heart0less]

@kye, I share many of your views on cinematography (sometimes I'm even scared to see just how alike we think ? ), but right now, in my humble opinion, you're digging deep into the search of a holy grail.

Sure - every time I get a new lens, I take it out and shoot dozens of photos wide open, only to see if I like its character.
Then I come back to my PC, examine every RAW file thoroughly (pixel peeping FTW) and decide whether I've got a keeper.

And more often than not, I'm happy with my purchase.
Though, I have to admit I spend hours on research before buying anything.

 

Like I said before, I'm more a photographer than a videographer (80/20% I'd say) - and that's why I firstly look at lens's qualities in photo mode.  If I enjoy it, then I'm 100% sure I'll have no issues with its rendering during video shooting.

Right now, my most expensive lens (apart from an anamorphic adapter) is Minolta Rokkor 58/1.4, which I bought for ~100$. The second one is newly acquired Nikkor 35/1.8 DX - 90$..
All my lenses are fully manual, lol.

[Shell64]

1 minute ago, heart0less said:

@kye, I share many of your views on cinematography (sometimes I'm even scared to see just how alike we think ? ), but right now, in my humble opinion, you're digging deep into the search of a holy grail.

Sure - every time I get a new lens, I take it out and shoot dozens of photos wide open, only to see if I like its character.
Then I come back to my PC, examine every RAW file thoroughly (pixel peeping FTW) and decide whether I've got a keeper.

And more often than not, I'm happy with my purchase.
Though, I have to admit I spend hours on research before buying anything.

 

Like I said before, I'm more a photographer than a videographer (80/20% I'd say) - and that's why I firstly look at lens's qualities in photo mode.  If I enjoy it, then I'm 100% sure I'll have no issues with its rendering during video shooting.

Right now, my most expensive lens is Minolta Rokkor 58/1.4, which I bought for ~100$. The second one is newly acquired Nikkor 35/1.8 DX - 90$..
All my lenses are fully manual, lol.

My most expensive lens is a Meike 25mm 1.8 MFT for $80. Lol. 

[kye]

8 hours ago, User said:

I thought I'd been hearing the it's helpful to use 'softer' lenses to take the edge off the higher mp sensors. The term 'clinical' sharpness comes to mind, which is fine in gynecology clinic... but even then, maybe better to dim the lights and up the Barry White

ah, good old Barry

In terms of sharpness and resolution it's an interesting thing.  Our eyes have a huge resolution (in the middle at least) and we don't think of the world as looking 'clinical' or anything, so it's not about resolution.  It's about sharpness, which in digital images is typically the alteration of the image to emphasise edges by adding artificial contrast (either deliberately or because of compression) and that is the problem.  That's why shooting RAW doesn't look over sharpened or clinical.

8 hours ago, heart0less said:

@kye, I share many of your views on cinematography (sometimes I'm even scared to see just how alike we think ? ), but right now, in my humble opinion, you're digging deep into the search of a holy grail.

Sure - every time I get a new lens, I take it out and shoot dozens of photos wide open, only to see if I like its character.
Then I come back to my PC, examine every RAW file thoroughly (pixel peeping FTW) and decide whether I've got a keeper.

And more often than not, I'm happy with my purchase.
Though, I have to admit I spend hours on research before buying anything.

 

Like I said before, I'm more a photographer than a videographer (80/20% I'd say) - and that's why I firstly look at lens's qualities in photo mode.  If I enjoy it, then I'm 100% sure I'll have no issues with its rendering during video shooting.

Right now, my most expensive lens (apart from an anamorphic adapter) is Minolta Rokkor 58/1.4, which I bought for ~100$. The second one is newly acquired Nikkor 35/1.8 DX - 90$..
All my lenses are fully manual, lol.

I don't think I'm searching for the holy grail, I'm just questioning how much resolution is really needed.  If you had a 2MP lens and put it on a 4K camera (9MP) then what would be the benefit of upgrading to a 6K (20MP) camera?  Nothing I would suggest.

Now, if you think about a lens like the Helios, it's probably >9MP in the middle and <9MP around the edges, let's say that half the frame is >9 and half is <9.  Now we decide we're going to shoot in golden hour and so we do the right thing and we use the sunlight as a back-light and now we've got CA on the edges.  So now there's less than half the frame >9MP.  We decide we want a dreamy look to suit the mood of the scene, so we open up the lens to (let's say) f2.8.  The Helios is an F2 lens so it's not at its worst, but it doesn't sharpen up completely until you stop down to F4, so now we've got two-thirds or more of the frame under 9MP, and even the parts in the middle that are still relatively sharp have CA intruding into them.  
At this point would you be saying to yourself "wow, I really wish that I had a 6K sensor"?  I really doubt it.  The thing is that all lenses are kind of like the Helios, just not quite as bad.

I guess the reason for me posting about it now is that I am now aware of how bad most lenses are (I'm seeing lens problems on almost everything I watch now) and I kind of thought that really expensive lenses were much better than they really are.  I'm guessing that either people aren't seeing the lens issues like I do now and kind of don't care, or they're aware of them but don't mind.  But my question is really that if the lenses are the bottleneck in the image pipeline then why are we optimising something else in that pipeline?

It's kind of like taking a super-high-resolution scan of a low quality fax.  I just don't see the point.  and people seem to be falling over themselves to talk about higher resolutions without any discussion of what it is that we're really trying to achieve.