The Aesthetic

[mercer]

6 minutes ago, Django said:

My bad I didn't mean it in such a condescending way, I was still shooting myself on a FHD C100 not that long ago.

No worries... I may have been being a little bit of a prick there.

7 minutes ago, Django said:

Once I upgraded to a 5K iMac Pro, well that's when I realised that FHD footage wasn't going to cut it for me anymore.

Even C200 4K looked terribly soft, so I got rid of both. (That and because of lack of 10-bit codec). Never looked back.

I get it. Although I'm still happy with my 5D, there are times when it just isn't sharp enough for certain looks I'd like to try. But with the right lens, I usually find my happy place again.

Sad to hear that about the C200... I was just noticing that the C200 was coming down in price. Adorama even has an Open Box C200B for around $3000.

11 minutes ago, Django said:

I just feel sometimes that most people who hate on 6K/8K haven't really properly experienced it and the benefits it can bring. Having actually worked on 8K footage, I feel it can't be unseen. But I'm also on +4K monitors. So I guess I could easily reverse ignorance is bliss to upgrading can raise expectations. 

I'm not hating on 6K at all. In fact, I am planning on renting a Komodo this summer for a couple weeks to shoot a short film... as long as our society doesn't;t fall apart from war, famine or disease by then. I think 8K might be getting into unreasonable territory... but to each their own. You know your needs/preferences more than I ever could.

 

13 minutes ago, Django said:

I just don't get this idea that high-resolution is somehow taking away from other IQ related specs. Pocket 6K & Z9 give you ProRes. 10-bit & 12-bit RAW are now internal. DR keeps getting better. Rolling Shutter keeps going down. Low-light keeps improving etc..

I don't think it takes away from it, it just seems like you can one without the other.

Until I can shoot with an Alexa Mini, 4-6K seems to be the sweet spot to get a good 2K final cut, it's hard for me to justify the costs that go with it. The camera is one thing, but when you add the extra storage costs... recording media and editing, batteries, etc...

I don't make my living doing video work and there's only a slim chance that any of my films will go anywhere... I just don't know if higher resolution will change that. Again Dual ISO would be great though for my horror/thriller stuff I want to do.

18 minutes ago, Django said:

I never advised 8K for social media. An actual iPhone is usually enough to create.. an iPhone look.

Sorry, I misunderstood. Damn they must be lucrative gigs? Your clients do realize that their iPhones can record the same footage, right?

 

20 minutes ago, Django said:

For example Contax T3's are listing for $3K, you can thank YT/IG analogue influencers.

Oh I know, I recently went back to shooting some film and I am dumbfounded at the price of some of these cameras. Luckily I like cheap things and my new, to me, Minolta X-700 and Yashica FX-3 are more than enough to satisfy my interest.

[Django]

23 minutes ago, mercer said:

At what point do videographers have the resolution they need... when we can confidently count the exact hairs in a model's nostril?

Not many people are actually delivering in 8K aside from a handful of YT channels and 1 or 2 TV networks in Japan.

The point of 8K today is really getting great 4K deliveries or extracting stills.

Just like Yellowstone is shooting on an Alexa in 3.2K for 720p/1080i delivery. It's actually oversampled acquisition.

It's not at all about cropping 400% into someones face. Does a medium format portrait photographer on a 100MP Hasselblad publish stills zoomed into the nostril or eyeball of his models? Of course not and the same common sense applies to high res video. 

6 minutes ago, mercer said:

Sad to hear that about the C200... I was just noticing that the C200 was coming down in price. Adorama even has an Open Box C200B for around $3000.

It's not a bad camera at all, especially if you shoot in RAW. But the h264 4K on it is really soft (whereas the C100 had the best oversampled FHD). C200B kinda sucks too, you'll have to buy the over-priced LCD just to get touch AF, same with top handle and side grip. Then all of a sudden you're in R5C/C70 territory. So yeah I'd wait until it drops some more if you're eyeballing it. EF mount is about to be phased out and all those C cams are dropping in value like crazy.

17 minutes ago, mercer said:

Sorry, I misunderstood. Damn they must be lucrative gigs? Your clients do realize that their iPhones can record the same footage, right?

I don't personally specialise in these type of gigs but what I can tell you is this: the camera itself isn't really where the production costs are: gathering talent, locations, directing, scripting, editing etc however are. shooting with an iPhone can also bring its own share of challenges, the cameras suck at low-light for ex. Which is why sometimes we'll actually use a mirrorless to emulate a smartphone look. Finally the overall budget and profit margins are nowhere near what other big projects may involve, so in short no, not that lucrative. But It's an interesting alley to explore, shooting vertical isn't always as bad as people may think (there are ways to take advantage of it even).

[Tim Sewell]

Really the title of the thread says all that needs to be said. The aesthetic. You shoot on whatever you need to shoot on to achieve the aesthetic you want. If the aesthetic is the measure, then, qualitatively, the perfect camera can be an iPhone, an EOS-M or a Panavision DXL package. Fincher likes the resolution as high as possible, other directors/DPs want something more lo-fi (for *this* project - might want something else entirely for *that* project). If we're talking art then the best cameras and lenses are the cameras and lenses that best realise the artist's vision.

No need for any argument, really.

[MrSMW]

12 hours ago, mercer said:

But Kye also has a point that when these higher resolutions require a lot of filmmakers to dirty the image for a pleasing aesthetic, one has to wonder what is the point in using the higher resolutions?

Because as the saying goes, you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear.

Personally, I want:

The highest quality starting point +/vs the least compromise (but there will be compromise)

Photo and video.

It's just a no-brainer for me.

I'm playing with some stuff right now, photo and video, ahead of this year's season.

Photography-wise, it's really just some fairly minimal tweaks but with video, I'm really trying to explore shifting from SOOC profile to shooting log.

At least for anything 4000 iso or under, otherwise I'm sticking with my profile.

The aesthetic, as Tim just mentioned, is whatever we want it to be.

[Django]

8 hours ago, mercer said:

Your clients do realize that their iPhones can record the same footage, right?

I should add that even when shooting on iPhones, we're not just shooting it handheld like dummies. We're using tripods & gimbals, shoot with Filmic Pro which allows shutter angle, ISO control, Manual focus etc. We try and use original camera movements or angles a smartphone may open-up, shoot under water/rain/snow conditions etc.

On a related note, clients can be very curious about your gear and I've had some cringe moments when they'll say: my partner, brother, son-in-law has that same [5D3/A7S/XT3/R6] semi-implying you're an amateur. Or worse you'll show up at a gig with a hybrid and some assistant might ask: is a photo shoot planned today? You have to learn to laugh it off. But sometimes looks do matter as superficial as it may sound. On certain comfortable budgets I've been told to avoid hybrids (even when they might suffice) and bring the cine cam. I guarantee no snarky comment when I rig up the FS7/C200. With BMD/RED on set clients are straight up intimidated and it could go the other way and make talent nervous.

So I guess "aesthetics" also applies to hardware cosmetics at times!

[MrSMW]

I've had guests turn up at weddings before with an enormous pro grade shoulder camera.

I've had guests turn up with backpacks full of cameras, lenses and lighting...

Some introduce themselves and ask if they can shoot alongside me all day. Err, no.

Others just get on with it as if I'm not even there, indoors or out.

I had one Leica toting dude directing bridal prep a couple of years back before I had a quiet word with the couple and said it's him or me, choose now.

Nothing to do with ego if their camera is 'bigger or better' than mine, but when you have a professional image to uphold...

It's no different to me walking into a chefs kitchen and saying, "Hiya, I've brought my own knives but I'm just going to use some of your ingredients the rest of the day if that's OK with you?"

And that's the polite version, - imagine just wandering into the pro chef kitchen and just using their ingredients without a word as if you owned the place.

There's bold and there's absolute fuckwittery...

Fortunately, that kind of thing happens rarely, like 1 in 30 gigs maybe, but from time to time it happens.

Once, it was the parents of the bride. Yep, blanked me from the start and acted as if they had been booked. Bride went along with it because they were paying but when I asked her why she booked me she looked at me funny and said, "because my parents are shit".

At one wedding with 9 guests, 2 of them turned up and tried to shoot it like pros all day and when discussed with them, told me they could do as they wished. Imagine, one quarter of the people there were capturing the other 3/4. That was a fun day.

I could write a book and one day, maybe I will 😉

People eh? Messing with my aestheticism 🤨

[Django]

@MrSMW Yeah I've done my share of weddings.. never had such issues with guests but I can only imagine lol. 

For me though, the complicated thing as a videographer was always.. getting along with the photographer. 😉 

There is this sort of unsaid hierarchy where they precede you, and might not get out of the way when you're also trying to get that money shot (kiss, ring etc) .

Of course this may just be isolated poor experiences and with most pros we'll discuss/arrange in advance positionning but it ain't always easy, weddings often get hectic.

Working solo on photo/video duties would sure simplify those situations but what a task! Is that what you usually do?

This is a type of gig where I'd imagine that 8K could really be beneficial as you could film and extract stills (at least when lighting conditions allow it).

[MrSMW]

2 hours ago, Django said:

Working solo on photo/video duties would sure simplify those situations but what a task! Is that what you usually do?

This is a type of gig where I'd imagine that 8K could really be beneficial as you could film and extract stills (at least when lighting conditions allow it).

I started offering video on top of photography some 15+ years ago on the basis I never knew what type of muppet would show up 😉

To be fair, not all videographers were muppets, but few were compatible shall we say...

So yes, totally in house ever since other than the 3 clients since who have breached contract, 2 of which were fine, thwe other, muppet. On the day, the couple hated him from quite early on and by the end of the day... (and don't ask about afterwards...).

I've tested at 4k and 6k and 4k was better from the S1H.

Motion blur is the biggest issue with 50 or 100fps shutter speeds...

But I reckon I could get away with doing zero photography on the day and just producing screen grabs from 4k footage. I don't think a single person would ever know.

I will test that theory soon, perhaps this year even, but the simple fact is I enjoy photography. I am as much photographer as I am filmmaker so why would I want to not actually take pics? Otherwise I just become a technician.

Anyway, what was this thread about?

Aesthetics.

To keep it on topic, I'm going to be exploring the aesthetics of 4k screen grabs this year...

[Django]

We're a little off-topic but it does relate to high-resolution which is a running theme so I say we get a pass.

Zero photography sounds a little extreme/unlikely no? Like you said there is motion blur but also surely you use flash/sync in low-light situations like church/mairie and during the evening? Or perhaps slow-exposure and shallow DoF which could be harder to manage in video.

I don't see 4K/6K/8K as a replacement for photography but rather a supplemental source for specific extraction. 

Sport/Action shooters are probably the ones that benefit the most from that.

Z9 even has a 120fps burst mode in photo mode that I suspect engages 4K120p and converts each frame to jpg.

 

[MrSMW]

Yes, more interested myself in say shooting 120fps at 240th second shutter speed as that more or less coincides the min 1/250th my stills camera is set at.

Coupled with 6 or 8k, could be interesting as it’s already pretty decent from 4K.

The boundaries and possibilities are certainly interesting and there is a certain appeal to focusing on just one form of capture and then producing 2 sets of results from it, with identical aesthetic.

At the moment, I can’t quite get photography and video from the same shoot to have exactly the same look, so deliberately keep things different in a number of ways such as 3:2 pics vs 2.35:1 video, a different but complimentary grade to each being the main ones.

I just need a full wedding day where I am booked to shoot only video and then I can pull out the stills for a full set of photography results…but of my 40 or so booked clients, about 5 are photo only and the rest hybrid.

I suppose I could just pull from one of those jobs and will have to settle for that.

[MrSMW]

S1H graded 4k 50p log screen grab, saved as a TIFF, exported to Lightroom and saved as a 50% size long edge size reduced Jpeg with a small amount of sharpening.

Pretty sure I could shoot and edit an entire Wedding Film and simply pull off any number of stills in order to produce a complete set of stills with identical aesthetic.

If I didn't want the dramatic crop, I could simply set the film size to say 3:2 before making those screen grabs.

Click the image for a larger view.

 

OK, it would not stand up to a side by side equivalent still shot on a 24mp camera, never mind my 47mp S1R...but as most never print and stuff is mainly viewed on nothing larger than a laptop...

[kye]

2 hours ago, MrSMW said:

S1H graded 4k 50p log screen grab, saved as a TIFF, exported to Lightroom and saved as a 50% size long edge size reduced Jpeg with a small amount of sharpening.

Pretty sure I could shoot and edit an entire Wedding Film and simply pull off any number of stills in order to produce a complete set of stills with identical aesthetic.

If I didn't want the dramatic crop, I could simply set the film size to say 3:2 before making those screen grabs.

Click the image for a larger view.

 

OK, it would not stand up to a side by side equivalent still shot on a 24mp camera, never mind my 47mp S1R...but as most never print and stuff is mainly viewed on nothing larger than a laptop...

Pixel peeing here, but it looks quite compressed:

Is that compression from the original file or the compression to upload the still?

My understanding of wedding photography is that the occasional couple will drop real money to get a large print of the best image of the day to hang in their house - maybe 24"x36" or more.  Does that still happen?  If so, that's the worst-case they'd have to stand up to, probably being viewed from about the same distance away as its larger dimension.

I do really like the idea of grabbing a still from a video, especially if you're a single shooter.  I've played with printing out stills from video and my recollection was that bitrate mattered a lot more than resolution, at least for modest sized prints.

[MrSMW]

Oh you definitely would not want to blow it up/print it any larger than the original output size.

The original full size file at 5076px long edge is a little better, but really this could only be book/album or smaller printing.

Maybe higher rez 8k would be a lot better?

[Django]

2 hours ago, MrSMW said:

Maybe higher rez 8k would be a lot better?

That much is obvious considering 4K = 8.8MP and 8K = 33.2MP

[kye]

13 minutes ago, Django said:

That much is obvious considering 4K = 8.8MP and 8K = 33.2MP

All else being equal that's true, but it'll depend on the compression, which apart from RAW and Prores is typically very high.

A 100Mbps 8K frame won't be as good as a RAW 4K frame.

[Django]

Well Z9 does 8K RAW & ProRes.. R5C 8K RAW (up to 2140Mbps) or high bitrate 10-bit compressed 8K (540Mbps).

[kye]

7 hours ago, Django said:

Well Z9 does 8K RAW & ProRes.. R5C 8K RAW (up to 2140Mbps) or high bitrate 10-bit compressed 8K (540Mbps).

Ah, well RAW is RAW, so in that case they're directly comparable.  

For the compressed version you'd really need to do a visual inspection because 540Mbps isn't an amazingly high-bitrate for 8K.  The uncompressed data rate for 8K 10-bit 4:4:4 (after debayering) is about 25,000Mbps, so 540Mbps is only 2.2%, whereas for reference the Prores HQ data rate is about 9% of uncompressed.  

Prores is visually different to h264 and h265, which both seem more aggressive and digital looking than Prores to me, so the 540Mbps might look considerably worse than a still from a Prores HQ file.  Still, the proof is in the pudding so you'd have to actually look.

A good way to preview it is to put it 1:1 on a larger monitor and then gradually move away from it until you can't see the pixels anymore.  Then you can work out how large the image would be when printed that size and how far back you had to move, then scale that to how close people would stand and you'll get a rough indication of the upper limit on size.

[Django]

50 minutes ago, kye said:

Prores is visually different to h264 and h265, which both seem more aggressive and digital looking than Prores to me, 

So I guess every time you go to the cinema or watch a show on Netflix you find the viewing experience "agressive & digital looking"?

I'm saying so cuz you do realise that all your favorite shows/movies on Netflix or on BluRay are all encoded in h264/h265 ?

And that your 2K/4K movie theatre uses DCP projection using JPG2000 compression with a maximum bitrate of 250Mbps regardless of capture resolution.

Truth is: you will never access and view any Hollywood film/show material in ProRes or RAW. 

Those are acquisition formats that capture the most info to transfer to post and for mastering. 

As for still capture/extraction, choosing between RAW & h264/h265 is the same dilemma as choosing between RAW & Jpg.

[kye]

3 hours ago, Django said:

So I guess every time you go to the cinema or watch a show on Netflix you find the viewing experience "agressive & digital looking"?

I'm saying so cuz you do realise that all your favorite shows/movies on Netflix or on BluRay are all encoded in h264/h265 ?

And that your 2K/4K movie theatre uses DCP projection using JPG2000 compression with a maximum bitrate of 250Mbps regardless of capture resolution.

Truth is: you will never access and view any Hollywood film/show material in ProRes or RAW. 

Those are acquisition formats that capture the most info to transfer to post and for mastering. 

As for still capture/extraction, choosing between RAW & h264/h265 is the same dilemma as choosing between RAW & Jpg.

I just assume that all content these days is steamed, so to clarify:

• I find triple-h26x compression (h26x in-camera, h26x export from NLE, and h26x streaming compression) to be harsh, compared with
• double-h26x compression (Prores in-camera, h26x export from NLE, and h26x streaming compression)

The acquisition compression matters more than the export and streaming compression as often it's in a flat format, so any digital nasties get amplified with all the processing (adding contrast and saturation, sharpening, etc).

Prores was designed as a professional digital intermediary, and the implementations in cameras will have been honed over many years to be as visually optimised as possible.  The bitrates will also have been selected to be generous, as professional video environments aren't so worried about a 10 or 20% increase in file sizes if that's going to mean a difference in quality.

The H263/4/5/6 standards were designed specifically for lower bitrates:

Quote

The intent of the H.264/AVC project was to create a standard capable of providing good video quality at substantially lower bit rates than previous standards

 Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Video_Coding

The overall aesthetic quality of h26x family is secondary to bitrates, because unlike a post-production house, Netflix or Prime might get bankrupted by a 20% increase in their total storage, processing, streaming infrastructure and data costs.

[Django]

Just because h26x was designed for lower bitrates doesn't mean it has to be (just like other lossy formats like mp3).

Today most cameras offer 10-bit 4:2:2 high bitrate ALL-I h26x recording options.

ProRes is also a lossy codec. It just ensures minimum quality requirements like 10-bit 4:2:2 ALL-I at various set bitrates.

Its mostly appreciated by editors as the low compression ALL-I decodes and cuts nicely on most systems.

I guess what I'm trying to say is there is a wide range of h26x compression settings so saying the codec looks "harsh & digital" is a bit of a blanket statement.

That said ProRes is an excellent pro standard capture codec and I do think it's great it's making its way in consumer/prosumer cameras.