How useful is 8K / 12K to you?

[kye]

8K (and more!) seems to be coming, if we want it or not.  How important is it to you and what would you use it for?

[newfoundmass]

I think there's a need for 8 and 12k, just not in these tiny mirrorless cameras and not for 98% of us. 

4K, in many ways, was overblown. There is a difference but not a significant difference between 1080p and 4K when watching on the most common TV size people own (55 inch), especially when it comes to streaming. The exception for me is when watching 4K Blu-ray discs. 

8K will be much the same. There will be benefits, but will 8K really look significantly better on a 55 inch television than 4K? Probably not. 

I have a client that was obsessed with everything being filmed, edited, and delivered in 4K. I'll upload his stuff for him and he used to marvel at how amazing the 4K was on his 4K TV. I just kinda brushed it off until one day he needed me to help him download an original file to his laptop to put on a thumbdrive for a presentation. Seeing how slow his connection was, I realized there was no way he was watching anything streaming in "4K". I had him play a video on his TV and then showed him that it was playing in 1080p. He had no idea. I told him even if it were playing in 4K he'd notice very little difference given the compression used. He stopped marveling after that, and I kinda felt bad about it for a bit. 

I still film and edit everything in 4K because there's really no reason not to. But I can't really think of any reason why I'd need 8K. I really don't need that much extra resolution to reframe (or really any extra at all... You can get away with it enough in a lot of instances in 4K) or anything. I don't think there's a ton of people really that need it who aren't in the film industry doing fx work or something. I'd much prefer camera companies push 4K to its limits while maintaining reliable functionality over this race for higher resolutions. 

[kye]

Personally, I'd really appreciate the extra digital zoom capabilities, but for shooting 1080p (as I do) the 6K sensors are just as good and most cameras don't give you the digital zoom options that I'd really like, so the resolution of the sensor is secondary in that sense.

Also, if the battery life is crap and it overheats, then it's giving me zero footage rather than even sub-optimal footage, a pretty fundamental issue.

The other issue is that if you're using the sensor to get a 4x digital crop (1080p --> 8K) then your lenses will be by far the limit to the quality rather than the sensor.  You might find that a 6K sensor upscaled to 8K has the same level of fine detail as an 8K sensor without scaling.  

17 minutes ago, newfoundmass said:

I still film and edit everything in 4K because there's really no reason not to.

Assuming you have a fast enough machine.  Many people would argue that any decent machine can edit 4K, but with many cameras shifting to IPB, 10-bit, h265, decoding that footage in real-time is no small feat at all.

If I end up with a GH6, which lacks the 2x zoom function from the GH5, then I'd probably just program a mode to be 4K 1:1 and swap to that and then crop in post.  Hardly ideal, but would give me a bit more reach and still be downsampled to 1080p.  

[MrSMW]

It depends...

8k (or above) for 8k sake? Nope.

Delivering anything at 8k isn't even on my radar right now, but I guess one day it probably would be a la gramaphone-vinyl-CD-MP3 etc...

Down-sampled is where it's most interesting to me, - 6 or 4k. Resolution/detail.

I'd still pick a less noisy/cleaner, higher DR 4 or 6k any day though for/in pure video terms

Of most interest to me personally though is the hybrid potential, ie, the ability to pull stills.

I've pulled them from 4k and it was a bit hit and miss, - sometimes great other times not.

6k was better so I can only imagine what 8k is like...and that for me is why the Z9 right now is without having to consider the entire sytem, but as a single camera body, is by far and away the most interesting camera to me right now.

I don't want to rig something out. I just want it in my hands with a lens. I use a lot of slo mo. 8k 50p internal will provide that and the stills capability (as long as the shutter speed isn't too slow and shooting for slo mo footage, you can easily crank up that shutter. And I do. All the time.)

But as above, not at the expense of noise or DR and if there is anywhere where the Z9 for instance could be criticised, it might be in the DR, so if someone came along with say a 6k sensor that bridged the gap between 4k and 8k, I might be interested... You listening Pannyboy? 😘

[ntblowz]

8K is definitely nice for greenscreen, especially like shooting veils or woman's hair in genral

[Thpriest]

I think 8K is interesting for 2 or 3 things. Grabbing stills from video, high resolution ads that appear on screens in the street, and reframing stuff.

[Django]

57 minutes ago, Thpriest said:

I think 8K is interesting for 2 or 3 things. Grabbing stills from video, high resolution ads that appear on screens in the street, and reframing stuff.

yup basically this. also future proofing. for me 6K is enough and a good middle ground of resolution / file size ratio.

that being said, 8k is the last priority in new camera specs I'm interested in. oversampled 4K is also good enough.

[kye]

4 hours ago, Thpriest said:

I think 8K is interesting for 2 or 3 things. Grabbing stills from video, high resolution ads that appear on screens in the street, and reframing stuff.

What kind of hi-res ads are around?  I haven't seen anything like this.

and what kind of high-resolution are we talking?  you can blow things up pretty seriously before the pixels become visible..

[TomTheDP]

I think high resolution is really more for applications like 3D or 360 cameras. 

Storage has gotten much cheaper and will continue to get cheaper. Cropping in post is useful, not terribly useful but also why not have the option. It is sort of like shooting in RAW, it has become a why not for a lot of people as it's so easy to do now vs 10 years ago. 

If 8k becomes cheap enough to shoot and process easily then most people will opt for it over 6k, 4k, or HD. 

Now as a delivery format I don't see much practical need for anything past 4k. As more and more people become tech savvy there will be less room for companies to push BS that makes no practical sense. OR maybe I am becoming too optimistic about humanity progressing lol. 

[FHDcrew]

Everything I ever do goes online to YouTube.  No one is going to see the benefits of 4k or 8k.  And to be honest, often 8k downrezzed to 4k or even 1080p is just too sharp; I sometimes find 4k on my Nikon Z6 to be too sharp; I can see too many pores in the skin.  As I've said before, downsampled 1080p I think is a perfect medium, great detail without looking too sharp, small file sizes, still great image flexibility.  Plus I can literally get away with cropping in on this 1080p image and it still holds up to an extent.  To me dynamic range and color are much more noticable to me than are a more detailed image.  And again, it's all going online where people just won't see the difference, even if I scale up my 1080 to 4k for YT delivery.

[Kisaha]

360 is the only application that desperately needs a resolution increase.

[BTM_Pix]

Even though I have n* number of cameras capable of shooting 4K and above, I don't have a 4K TV let alone an 8K one.

If I was absolutely realistic about the number of people even remotely interested in watching anything that I've shot then, including myself, then my total audience is precisely one.

And on a lot of occasions, this number can actually be less than that as I'm barely interested in watching any of it myself these days either.

So, on that basis, if I was to only have cameras capable of shooting 1080p then I would have a 100% match with the display technology of my audience.

That doesn't stop me wanting all the Ks though.

 

 

 

n* - precise number redacted out of acute embarrassment regarding the extent of my addiction.

[Django]

3 hours ago, kye said:

What kind of hi-res ads are around?  I haven't seen anything like this.

and what kind of high-resolution are we talking?  you can blow things up pretty seriously before the pixels become visible..

...coming to a neighbourhood near you.

[Kisaha]

...ok, that too!

[newfoundmass]

The thing I keep going back to, even after people talk about the benefits of being able to downscale it to get even better 4K, is that we really aren't even using 4K to its true potential and probably never will before it gets replaced by 8K. Even downscaling to get "better" 4K feels silly, because the difference is so negligible unless you're watching on a big enough screen. It feels weird to argue against higher resolutions, and I don't necessarily view it like that in my head, but this rush to 8K and beyond feels more like a way to charge us more for cameras than a genuine need or necessity. Give me a 4K camera that can film 120fps without any risk of overheating and with all the features we are genuinely asking for before trying to entice us with 8K that 98% of us don't need.

[TomTheDP]

4 hours ago, newfoundmass said:

The thing I keep going back to, even after people talk about the benefits of being able to downscale it to get even better 4K, is that we really aren't even using 4K to its true potential and probably never will before it gets replaced by 8K. Even downscaling to get "better" 4K feels silly, because the difference is so negligible unless you're watching on a big enough screen. It feels weird to argue against higher resolutions, and I don't necessarily view it like that in my head, but this rush to 8K and beyond feels more like a way to charge us more for cameras than a genuine need or necessity. Give me a 4K camera that can film 120fps without any risk of overheating and with all the features we are genuinely asking for before trying to entice us with 8K that 98% of us don't need.

I mean it is clearly just a marketing push. They need a reason to market new cameras to people. This is especially true in the market that these lower end cameras are being sold to. Companies continue to gimp features and push new features that don't even function properly. 

[IronFilm]

13 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

 

If I was absolutely realistic about the number of people even remotely interested in watching anything that I've shot then, including myself, then my total audience is precisely one.

Not sure if you're referring to yourself, or your wife. 

13 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

And on a lot of occasions, this number can actually be less than that as I'm barely interested in watching any of it myself these days either.

Ah, that clarifies it. 

 

5 hours ago, newfoundmass said:

It feels weird to argue against higher resolutions, and I don't necessarily view it like that in my head, but this rush to 8K and beyond feels more like a way to charge us more for cameras than a genuine need or necessity.

I feel the same way about 32bit audio. 

What is next, are they going to market 64bit audio to gullible fools on youtube? 

  

1 hour ago, TomTheDP said:

I mean it is clearly just a marketing push. They need a reason to market new cameras to people. This is especially true in the market that these lower end cameras are being sold to.

Exactly!

5 hours ago, newfoundmass said:

Give me a 4K camera that can film 120fps without any risk of overheating and with all the features we are genuinely asking for before trying to entice us with 8K that 98% of us don't need.

And give me a 4K camera with as much dynamic range as the ARRI 35, but without the price tag!

[kye]

12 hours ago, Django said:

...coming to a neighbourhood near you.

Those look awesome!  (The middle one is geoblocked, but the others are fun).

However, at this kind of viewing angle, I think that even an uncompressed RAW 720p image would look detailed and high-quality.  Most movie theatres are high-quality 2K, and they look far superior to 4K YT due to the bitrate differences, despite the cinemas being much larger viewing angles than most YT setups.

I think the true feature of those billboards is the HDR, not the resolution.  Maybe they are very high resolution images, and maybe that is visible in person with a telescope / binoculars, but I just doubt it's visible to the naked eye at that distance.

[kye]

7 hours ago, newfoundmass said:

Give me a 4K camera that can film 120fps without any risk of overheating and with all the features we are genuinely asking for before trying to entice us with 8K that 98% of us don't need.

Another way to look at it is that for the same sensor read-out (data rate), you can have:

• 8K with 26.8ms of RS (that's what the A74 gives in full-sensor readout mode)
• 4K with 6.7ms of RS (roughly on par with the Alexa 35)

I know which of those I'd prefer.

2 hours ago, TomTheDP said:

I mean it is clearly just a marketing push. They need a reason to market new cameras to people. This is especially true in the market that these lower end cameras are being sold to. Companies continue to gimp features and push new features that don't even function properly. 

Unfortunately, video is so complex that much of the camera-buying public (from parents to professional videographers) simply doesn't know any better and are therefore subject to the "more is better" marketing tactics.  

In cameras, and also in life, I've come to realise that every statement that is worthwhile begins with "well, it's actually more complicated than that, ...." but I've also come to realise that most people tune out when they hear those exact words.

1 hour ago, IronFilm said:

And give me a 4K camera with as much dynamic range as the ARRI 35, but without the price tag!

There is one thing that I am quite puzzled about, which is why they don't use the extra pixels to increase the DR of the camera.  Especially considering that DR is one of the hyped marketing specs that gets used a lot.

For example, if they took an 8K sensor, installed an OLPF that gave ~4K of resolution, and made it so that each colour (RGB) was made of a 2x2 grid of photosites of that colour, they could either:

• Average the values of each group of 4 photosites to lower the noise-floor by a couple of stops, or
• They could make each of the photosites in the 2x2 grid have a different level of ND dye, in addition to the RGB dye, potentially giving that hue (RGB) at up to 4 different luminance levels

If they did the latter, spacing the ND dyes perhaps 3 stops apart (which is lots of overlap considering each photo site will have at least 10-stops of DR on its own), then the photo site with the most ND would have 9 stops of extra highlights before clipping, potentially giving 20 stops of DR when combined with its neighbours in that 2x2 grid.  

This wouldn't need to include two separate ADR circuits the way that ALEV/DGO/GH6 sensors work, it would only need a very simple binary processor to merge the 8K readout into a 4K signal with huge DR.

I mean, wouldn't Sony marketing department love to have a camera with 4K and 20 stops of DR?  That's more than ARRI and would make headlines everywhere.  Plus, it can be done with existing tech and just a single extra chip in the camera.  Of course, they'd charge $10K for it, but still.

[Django]

2 hours ago, kye said:

Those look awesome!  (The middle one is geoblocked, but the others are fun).

However, at this kind of viewing angle, I think that even an uncompressed RAW 720p image would look detailed and high-quality.  Most movie theatres are high-quality 2K, and they look far superior to 4K YT due to the bitrate differences, despite the cinemas being much larger viewing angles than most YT setups.

I think the true feature of those billboards is the HDR, not the resolution.  Maybe they are very high resolution images, and maybe that is visible in person with a telescope / binoculars, but I just doubt it's visible to the naked eye at that distance.

You are incorrect. Those are giant 8K displays that first appeared in Seoul and are meant to push and advertise high resolution LG TVs. The high resolution is what helps gives the 3D illusion. 

I don't know if you've ever seen a large 8K display with actual 8K content but its pretty bluffing and surreal.

Watching a film in 2K theatres is a very different experience. My local multiplex has 2K, 4K, OLED rooms. You can definitely tell each a part. 2K is soft but that is not a problem and can even seem more enjoyable, more "cinematic". I rarely if ever pay the premium to watch in 4K OLED. I would pay extra for good old 35mm film projection of a classic, or Nolan/Tarantino film. I kind of hate the digital projection transition we're in, especially those cinemas with horrible low budget projectors where you can see pixels and/or low bitrate streams with visible various artefacts.