Deliberately Shooting in Standard Definition

[QuickHitRecord]

In the race to 8K, 12K, and beyond, how much resolution do we really need to tell a story? I brought my trusty FZ47 on a little New Year's trip to Arizona, and I think that 640x480 might just be enough:

Technical: I scaled up to 1920x1440 (no "smart" or AI rescaling). I did not add any sharpening or softening to the image, and I resisted the urge to clean up the digital artifacts and just embraced them instead. I did however do a little color work.

I was actually shocked by how good this footage looks, probably because it's progressive and not interlaced. I think I'd put this footage up against the DVX100, XL1/2, or comparable camera. And as we've seen in the 8-bit grading tests that @kye shared with us, it's kind of shocking how much you can push the image around in post (especially if you are either okay with some macro-blocking, or willing to soften/hide it). I think that's part of what makes this camera so much fun.

Is there a unique aesthetic afforded by this low resolution? I'm not sure. I've degraded 1080P footage to have a similar level of detail in the past. The compression artifacts are definitely smaller and easier to hide. But in full motion, I feel like they add a nice texture.

[kye]

38 minutes ago, QuickHitRecord said:

In the race to 8K, 12K, and beyond, how much resolution do we really need to tell a story? I brought my trusty FZ47 on a little New Year's trip to Arizona, and I think that 640x480 might just be enough:

Technical: I scaled up to 1920x1440 (no "smart" or AI rescaling). I did not add any sharpening or softening to the image, and I resisted the urge to clean up the digital artifacts and just embraced them instead. I did however do a little color work.

I was actually shocked by how good this footage looks, probably because it's progressive and not interlaced. I think I'd put this footage up against the DVX100, XL1/2, or comparable camera. And as we've seen in the 8-bit grading tests that @kye shared with us, it's kind of shocking how much you can push the image around in post (especially if you are either okay with some macro-blocking, or willing to soften/hide it). I think that's part of what makes this camera so much fun.

Is there a unique aesthetic afforded by this low resolution? I'm not sure. I've degraded 1080P footage to have a similar level of detail in the past. The compression artifacts are definitely smaller and easier to hide. But in full motion, I feel like they add a nice texture.

Great thread and what a fun final edit!  Don't fall into the cacti!!

I think for me, one of the most enticing aspects of shooting with "bad" quality cameras is that the "get a technically great image" part of my brain shuts off and I can relax and feel free to be silly and engage with the situation etc.  The fact these low-quality cameras are often small also contributes to this freedom.  This has an enormous effect on the footage, obviously.

I take a slightly different strategy to you by shooting the highest resolution from whatever camera I'm using but then deliberately degrading it in post.  The connection between the methods is that I'm choosing the camera based on how it is to shoot with, and not immediately ruling it out because it doesn't hit some spec or other.
I've mentioned before in other threads that a new project I'm just starting is to shoot fun / whimsical / vintage style videos in order to learn that style and integrate it into my other personal work, but within that I'm also going to try and replicate an 8mm film image as a sort of minor goal.

Posted before, but I shot in SD for the last cheap camera challenge with the mighty Fujifilm J20, a point and shoot from 2009.  

Final video:

 

The fact these often shoot only in 30p gives the "opportunity" for a slight slow-motion effect, which is just enough to make the footage a bit more surreal, which I think lends itself to the already slightly-surreal aesthetic that comes from the footage being so low resolution.

I find these images to be emotional in some way that I can't explain.  The nay-sayers put forward the argument that it's just nostalgia for the past and that if the past was in 12K then we'd be nostalgic for that instead, but I don't think that's the full picture.  TBH, I don't think highly of the past and I'm not nostalgic for it - on the contrary actually - I tend to think of the past as sort of uncomfortable and dirty, like when you visit old people and they haven't cleaned their houses properly and everything is dusty and gross.  My life has also gotten a lot better over the decades and the thought of going back is not a desirable one either, so my associations for the past are not positive, which rules out nostalgia as the single explanation for these aesthetic associations.  I wonder if dreams might be a factor - they are often vague and surreal but are sometimes highly emotional and definitely the language of connection to our semi-conscious and unconscious minds.

[kye]

I should add that the processing in post isn't to be overlooked, here's the ungraded edit of the above video:

Not only is it SD, it's pretty darn poor SD at that.

[Emanuel]

Limitations can help to balance it more with raising the creative side of our own very often ; )

- EAG

[Clark Nikolai]

20 hours ago, Emanuel said:

Limitations can help to balance it more with raising the creative side of our own very often ; )

- EAG

A better word for them would be parameters.

I remember kd lang saying how she used to do performance art but because you can do anything with that it wasn't fun and creative, she then turned to country music and it having so many conventions she was able to mess with it in interesting ways. In improv Jazz music they don't just play whatever, they have a key, a time signature and a riff that they then play around with. It ends up being more creative than it would be.  So limitations are good for creativity.

[QuickHitRecord]

On 1/5/2024 at 9:13 PM, kye said:

Posted before, but I shot in SD for the last cheap camera challenge with the mighty Fujifilm J20, a point and shoot from 2009.

The fact these often shoot only in 30p gives the "opportunity" for a slight slow-motion effect, which is just enough to make the footage a bit more surreal, which I think lends itself to the already slightly-surreal aesthetic that comes from the footage being so low resolution.

I find these images to be emotional in some way that I can't explain.  The nay-sayers put forward the argument that it's just nostalgia for the past and that if the past was in 12K then we'd be nostalgic for that instead, but I don't think that's the full picture.  TBH, I don't think highly of the past and I'm not nostalgic for it - on the contrary actually - I tend to think of the past as sort of uncomfortable and dirty, like when you visit old people and they haven't cleaned their houses properly and everything is dusty and gross.  My life has also gotten a lot better over the decades and the thought of going back is not a desirable one either, so my associations for the past are not positive, which rules out nostalgia as the single explanation for these aesthetic associations.  I wonder if dreams might be a factor - they are often vague and surreal but are sometimes highly emotional and definitely the language of connection to our semi-conscious and unconscious minds.

I remember your original post and this is still some of the most compelling footage that I have seen on this site.

My working theory is that I think less resolution allows the audience to subconsciously fill in that detail in a way that makes sense to them and sum of their life experience. And the very act of this can make a video more interactive and engaging, kind of like reading a book. And one can argue that this active participation is nostalgic in itself, since a lot of us grew up in the era of film projections and standard definition video.

To me, the same idea applies to keeping the monster in your horror film in the shadows until the last possible minute. It is always going to be scarier in the imagination.

It's also why we gravitate towards keeping half of the face in shadow. It's been proven that humans find symmetrical faces more attractive and very few people actually have them. But if you don't show half of the face, the audience creates their own idea of a face and oftentimes that is going to be more appealing than the actor's real face. This is why I think that some people look great on camera, but not so much in-person; possibly because we never actually see their whole face in flat light, as is more common in the real world.

Here's the same video from the original post, without any processing. To me, it evokes a very different feeling than the original:

 

[mercer]

1 hour ago, QuickHitRecord said:

I remember your original post and this is still some of the most compelling footage that I have seen on this site.

My working theory is that I think less resolution allows the audience to subconsciously fill in that detail in a way that makes sense to them and sum of their life experience. And the very act of this can make a video more interactive and engaging, kind of like reading a book. And one can argue that this active participation is nostalgic in itself, since a lot of us grew up in the era of film projections and standard definition video.

To me, the same idea applies to keeping the monster in your horror film in the shadows until the last possible minute. It is always going to be scarier in the imagination.

It's also why we gravitate towards keeping half of the face in shadow. It's been proven that humans find symmetrical faces more attractive and very few people actually have them. But if you don't show half of the face, the audience creates their own idea of a face and oftentimes that is going to be more appealing than the actor's real face. This is why I think that some people look great on camera, but not so much in-person; possibly because we never actually see their whole face in flat light, as is more common in the real world.

Here's the same video from the original post, without any processing. To me, it evokes a very different feeling than the original:

 

I think it still looks pretty good, those old Panasonic CCD sensors were really cool... I had one of their P&S cameras back in 2009... I think it was an FX150. Loved that camera. The mjpeg files had such a thickness to them.

I grew up in the 80s and I agree about the footage giving a nostalgic feeling... I swear when I remember my childhood, I see it in 110 film.

Back in the camcorder days, there used to be a trick where you'd copy a clip and stack it on top of the other to make it have a little extra heft, you should try it with one of your film emulations.