Article pushing 8K hard

Not too much discussion about the business viability of 8K acquisition or exhibition? For me, personally, I am with Paul, I think anything over 2K is sort of wasted on most people in most viewing situations. As we shot our Docuseries largely in DCI RAW,
I don't regret it and we can deliver a 4K master, which commercially, I think was worth the hassle and money, but if it would have been up to me, the whole thing would have been a lot cheaper and easier at 2K or 1080.


What's wrong with 8K+ acquisition and 1920 delivery ? I suspect the cost of 8k sensors even shooting lesser resolution codecs will happen sooner than we think.

That's kind of what RED has been doing along. Few are shooting 8k for 8K distribution. But their 8K camera gets a lot of kudos in 4K deliverables.

Just because the sensor says 8k+ doesn't mean you're recording all those pixels, delivering all those discrete pixels. But the advantages of doing so will happen pretty quickly.

JB
 
Hollywood is both a trend setter and a trend follower. When some smartphones and consumer cameras can already record 8K, it forces a producer to request 8K too. Even when he delivers in 4K.

And someone will always point at "I love Lucy" shooting on film.
 
Guess it all depends on your clients. As I move more and more into the streaming world, it's great, everything is 720 and 1080. None of our streaming clients want, know about or care about 4K, much less 6K or 8K.
As far as 8K, I don't see any C200, C300 MKII, FX9 or lower level pro cams offering 8K today, although I am sure they will in a few years. What can I buy today that shoots 8K besides a RED? Few of our clients will
pay for 8K acquisition or editorial. In 2020, they largely still request 1080, a few UHD and one or two DCI. Sure, maybe in 5 years, I will want an 8K camera. But today, it's all an illusion for most of us.

Nobody we talk to needs to stream even 4K today although I am sure that we will eventually get there. We see, on a daily basis, the
Internet service that people in the real world have, even hoping for clean and clear 1080 playback is hit & miss. That's why I laugh at 4K, 6K, 8K talk all of the time. Many of you must
live in magical places like South Korea, Silicon Valley and elsewhere in Europe where 1TB up and down are common. In the real Southern California world I live in, the internet service sucks, even with my FIOS Fiber. Add in-house wireless
that is sucking about 50% performance from your wired router, to your wireless router to your device. I've benchmarked that here with FIOS Fiber. I have 135 Mbps average up and down if I plug my laptop
into the router via Ethernet. But 20' away with my Apple TV getting it's signal wirelessly, the speed is a fraction of that and is a lot more variable. Sometimes it gets 35Mbps. Sometimes it gets 5Mbps and is freezing and
beachballing all over the place. This is with the brand new router that Frontier installed that was supposed to be a lot faster. It's really not much faster than the old router.

I think for a huge portion of the worlds population and your audiences, even UHD is a fantasy. If you have clients who know what 8K is, want it and will pay for it, I'm jealous, I'd like those clients.
But I suspect many here who are excited by 8K, it's mostly because of untreated GAS. 8K cameras, storage, rendering capacity all cost quite a bit today, although costs are and will continue to drop.
I'm curious, how many of you have real, paying clients who know what 8K is and are willing to pay for it? Be honest. I know few of you do, but I bet most of you don't have a need for it beyond wanting it?
 
Guess it all depends on your clients. As I move more and more into the streaming world, it's great, everything is 720 and 1080. None of our streaming clients want, know about or care about 4K, much less 6K or 8K.
As far as 8K, I don't see any C200, C300 MKII, FX9 or lower level pro cams offering 8K today, although I am sure they will in a few years. What can I buy today that shoots 8K besides a RED? Few of our clients will
pay for 8K acquisition or editorial. In 2020, they largely still request 1080, a few UHD and one or two DCI. Sure, maybe in 5 years, I will want an 8K camera. But today, it's all an illusion for most of us.

So let's imagine you CAN shoot 8K+ but it doesn't really cost you that much more to shoot than 4K.

You can still have the same workflow and the same 720 / 1080 delivery. What's not to want with that ? Because i think that reality is a lot closer than 5 years away. I mean the R5 is kind of already there.

I do think there are some advantages to super sampling. Taking a larger resolution sensor to make nicer lower resolution deliverables. 8k doesn't mean 8K delivery.

4K for delivery is barely there. I just did a HULU series and they specify 4K, but for lot's of reasons, they accepted Arri RAW NOT 4K as the principal format. Is anyone going to shake their TV and complain ? I don' think so. I wasn't worried either !

JB
 
I think we're talking about a few different things here:

1. Optimal viewing resolution
2. Market/consumer/client demand
3. Price/performance ratio

What I'm most interested in is optimal viewing resolution. It's interesting to me that full-frame stills cameras have largely plateaued at about 6K resolution. There are higher resolution cameras, but they seem more popular with landscape shooters and those who crop a lot. That being said, most photos are being looked at on a computer or a smartphone and not an 80" TV.

I think part of the resolution war is just about selling new TVs. Viewers seem more impressed by HDR than UHD, but will we ever see a UHDR? Is there benefit of more dynamic range? Maybe.

I guess my final question is - do any of you honestly think we will be having this conversation someday about 64K vs 128K? And will that upgrade wave again be compared to SD vs HD? I doubt it. And if not, where does it all stop?

There are technological improvements that are out of reach but that I long for. Flying cars - everyone talks about that. Teleportation? Yes, please! 16K video is far easier for me to imagine, and interests me only in specialty cases.
 
The reason for the APS-C "settling" in the 30 MPX range is the photo-video cartel keeping the proper - by their expectations - distance between the MFT, APS-C, FF and MF - 20-30-45-100 (with the high end MF reaching 150). Samsung 108 MPX sensor is 70mm2. If one kept the same pixel density, MFT would be ~ 300 MPX, APS-C 500, FF 1,200 and MF gazillion squared.

Not that you want to work with those file sizes but there's a lot of space in between 30 and 500.
 
I'm talking full-frame cameras, not APS-C.

It seems to me like there's more utility for maximum resolution images from a smartphone. If everything is in focus and you can't use a telephoto lens and you don't care that much about what part of the lens you're using, why not shoot a massive image and crop to the part you want? Most phones are already just cropping in when you pinch to zoom.
 
Abe...the best way I can explain it to you is that what you're thinking about now is not going to be questioned in 3020.

Too realistic for 2020 folks? But how will it look for 3020 ones?

No evolution textbook can teach us about what it will be like in 2120 or 3020, but if we're still around in at least 20 years, let's talk about it then.

Is it possible you were sent here from the future to warn us about something major happening in 3020? What is it? I need to know!
 
I don't know where the ceiling is but technology more important than higher resolution could also come along.

I think we can get used to things pretty quickly. I initially thought netflix shows were jarring but now I definitely prefer a cleaner image and find it dificult to relate when people reminisce about film grain for the look. I'm not saying resolution was the difference but as the tech increases, an aesthetic so unimaginable by today's standards may become the norm.

I'm with norbro, I say bring it on. It's all just a big experiment anyway.
 
You can have your 16K medium-format camera. I just wish they would also make my kind of camera (2K S16, raw, DSLR body). It seems like there is room in the line-up. Sony has some perfect 2K or 3K S16 sensors with global shutter and 13 stops of dynamic range.
 
You can have your 16K medium-format camera. I just wish they would also make my kind of camera (2K S16, raw, DSLR body). It seems like there is room in the line-up. Sony has some perfect 2K or 3K S16 sensors with global shutter and 13 stops of dynamic range.

Isn't that just the original BMPCC? Your wish is granted!
 
I'm talking full-frame cameras, not APS-C...
In terms of photos, Sony A7RIV takes 16 shots in sequence off its 61 MPX sensor to arrive at a 240 MPX (pixel shift) image. In fact, I'd argue is that the camera is crippled since Sony avoided doing the 122 MPX composite off a 4 shot sequence, which would have eliminated a lot of the motion artifacts that are present in the 240/16. And a smudge free 122 would give it a leg up on the 102 MPX Fuji GFX 100, that also uses a Sony sensor. And is priced at $10,000.

As to video, there are other criteria, such as the rolling shutter, ISO, codec, etc. Off reasonable spec expectations, A7RIV could have easily had a 6K center crop, with a 10-bit Log and a phenomenal auto focus.
 
https://www.yahoo.com/news/lgs-8k-oled-nanocell-tvs-230000400.html

Some more 8K TV bits and the wireless speaker association certification.

PS. Here's a "Matt Granger" story. I walk around my local supermarket, see a stocking assistant, a Haitian in his late-20's/early 30's, with short dreadlocks, up the aisle. As I walk by, he does a required by the company greet. "Hello, how are you, I hope you find everything you need". I respond, "Thank you, thank you, blah-blah-bah". We're all nice. I almost leave the aisle. Then I turn around and ask him, "Has anyone told you that you looked like Matt Granger?". He shrugs his shoulder, "No. Who's that?" - "He's got a photography themed YouTube channel". So, the guy pulls out his smartphone out of his back pocket and quickly clicks up on the YouTube icon. "How do you spell Granger? G-R-A-N-G-E-R?" - "Yes". He locates the channel. "Holy Moly, I do look like Matt Granger. I mean, he looks like me". Carbon copy. Except one of them is white and the other is black.
 
I always felt like that about Jordan Peele and Adam DeVine.

They both concurred on social media one time.
 
Here's an interview with an 8K TV-pusher.

Amusingly, he says that the shift to 8K will bring improvements not mainly through resolution but through other changing standards...which might be true, but has nothing to do with 8K.

He's also incorrect because HDR became an accepted standard while 4K resolution was maintained.

" 8K technology is about much more than 33 million pixels. Although the quantity of pixels is four times greater than 4K UHD resolution, the quality of those pixels and the dramatically better visual experience that can be delivered are the real benefit. When whole entertainment eco-systems are driven to evolve with the introduction of new resolution standards, that evolution is never just about resolution.

Just like past upgrade cycles to HD or 4K, other standards and features are introduced at the same time that deliver real benefits to content creators and distributors, equipment manufacturers and retailers, and ultimately to consumers. The same benefits will be seen as the 8K upgrade cycle gets fully underway."

https://www.soundandvision.com/content/8k-next-big-thing-home-entertainment
 
...the quality of those pixels and the dramatically better visual experience that can be delivered are the real benefit.

Sounds really promising.

Now all we need is a double blind test at the next convenient convention where people are asked to sit 7 feet from a TV and pick which one is 8K. For real truth seekers, we'd probably want an array of 6 TVs or so with 5 UHD and 1 8K, to eliminate the 50-50 probability.

The information to the one watching the screens will be: any number of the TVs (might be 0, might be all of them) may be an 8K screen. Please tell me which one(s).

The results of that might very well be dramatic.
 
Dramatic as in people won't be able to tell the difference?

I don't think what he said sounds promising because he makes it clear that the resolution increase is not that important but he doesn't name the qualitative improvements he claims are coming.
 
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