Camera rumors for 2016?

Gillvane said:
this makes no sense to me because most people under 30 grew up exposed primarily to 60i TV programs. But after 30 years of "exposure" most don't find it more pleasing than new TV shows like breaking g bad and walking dead shot at 24p.
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They may be watching 60i, but the movies are produced in 24p and the higher end TV programs are produced in either 24p or 30p. Only the news, talk shows, sports and live events are produced in 60i or 60p. So we associate certain types of content with the frame rates in which they were captured.
 
Mitch Gross said:
They may be watching 60i, but the movies are produced in 24p and the higher end TV programs are produced in either 24p or 30p. Only the news, talk shows, sports and live events are produced in 60i or 60p. So we associate certain types of content with the frame rates in which they were captured.
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I think you are putting the cart before the horse. It's like saying you just think steak is better than a McDonald's hamburger because they don't serve Big Macs at a nice steak house, but if they did you'd think a fast food hamburger was as good or better than s steak!
They shoot 24p for higher end productions because they have the budget for the best look and 24p is intrinsically better looking than 60i, just like a chord sounds better on a guitar than three random notes put together, or a picture composed with the rule of thirds is more pleasing than lack of composition. You don't "learn" ythst chords sound better they just do, same with 24p. It's just physics.
we don't like 24p because they shoot movies in 24p, they shoot movies in 24p because it looks better intrinsically, and now that technology allows cheap cameras that shoot 24p most tv shoes are moving to thst more pleasing format.
that doesn't mean w won't find a higher frame rate that still looks good, like 120, but 48 inherently looks like crap.
 
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Gillvane said:
I watched both the 24p and 48fps versions. It's not just the sets. In 24p Ian McClellan looks like a wizard. In 48fps he looks like an old actor in a costume, and no amount of make up would change that imo.
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If you want to make Ian McLellan appear "dreamy", smear half a pound of Vaseline onto a lens. He'll look like he is in a perpetual fog.
 
Gillvane said:
I think you are putting the cart before the horse. It's like saying you just think steak is better than a McDonald's hamburger because they don't serve Big Macs at a nice steak house, but if they did you'd think a fast food hamburger was as good or better than s steak!
They shoot 24p for higher end productions because they have the budget for the best look and 24p is intrinsically better looking than 60i, just like a chord sounds better on a guitar than three random notes put together, or a picture composed with the rule of thirds is more pleasing than lack of composition. You don't "learn" ythst chords sound better they just do, same with 24p. It's just physics.
we don't like 24p because they shoot movies in 24p, they shoot movies in 24p because it looks better intrinsically, and now that technology allows cheap cameras that shoot 24p most tv shoes are moving to thst more pleasing format.
that doesn't mean w won't find a higher frame rate that still looks good, like 120, but 48 inherently looks like crap.
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While that sounds like a nice summation, historical fact does not bear it out.

Various frame rates have been tested for special venue high end formats over the years. Showscan was famously a 65mm 5-perf 60p format. IWERKS tried different frame rates and resolutions. Todd-AO was 30p. There have been LOTS of different formats over the years.

"Better" is a subjective and relative term. I love the 24p look and don't think it's going anywhere soon for narrative storytelling. But I don't fool myself into thinking that it is more appropriate to the content for anything other than a subconcious association.

Sports makes a lot of sense at a high refresh rate for two reasons. The obvious one is that it means less motion blur on fast action, but the more subtle effect is the association to the immediacy and "liveness" of the events.

A few years back MTV decided to shoot its Movie Awards show in 24p. They thought it would lend the program a "cinematic appeal". Instead they got complaints because people thought they weren't showing the event live. Just a mental association.
 
Just a note here that even within a given frame rate, different cameras (even within a brand) can have a different "cadence" or approach to processing the frames.
 
Gweilo66 said:
Just a note here that even within a given frame rate, different cameras (even within a brand) can have a different "cadence" or approach to processing the frames.
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True. The thing people forget is that even "small stuff" like that can have a big subconscious impact. For example Tessive Time Filter improved the cadence a lot (improving in this sense means "film gold standard", i.e. removing some artifacts associated with global shutter/rolling shutter), but never became a requirement cause it is expensive and most people find the stuff they shoot on Alexa/RED "good enough" or just don't mind/care about the cadence.

I've seen 24p in digital cameras since miniDV/HDV days over 10 years ago, and some were really bad in their cadance at 24p. So a lot of the time when people say 24p is jerky and strobing, it is like when people complained about HD being too crisp/sharp, sure that is true when manufacturers have bad implementations or "gimmicks" to trick you into thinking something is more high res, etc...
 
I remember seeing sitcom-style shows on TV when 24p in video was newer that looked baaaaaad. I think "That's so Raven" was guilty. There were also a bunch of Sony HDV cams when that was a thing that didnt do it well and were notorious for such.
 
To show 24p on a TV one has to somehow make 24frames fit a refresh rate of the display. Low cost TV's in North America will be 60hz. Doesn't divide well !! hence the 3:2 pulldown. Film projectors with a 2, 3 or 5 blade shutter all frames are shown the same number of times not so on a 60hz TV. On a 120Hz or 240hz one can arrange them to be equally shown. So the majority of TV sets will show 24P with a cadence of 2:3 pulldown and not like film in the cinema. When you say 24P looks more professional do you mean with pulldown as on TV or in the cinema ? To me 24P with pulldown looks awful. I find the cadence disturbing to my old eyes. This often exaggerates the judder etc . I have my Sony 240hz interpolation set up to smooth them out even if it can show 24P correctly . Coming over cable it already has the cadence so the TV is out of luck to correct. To shoot 24P one has to use a film approach and I think it is this approach that one is talking about. framing, camera movement, shallow depth of field to minimize judder etc, all set up to cover for the issues of shooting at slow frame rate. Shooting 4K the resolution means focus is super critical and either things look out of focus or all the detail is there to see. If the film sets are crap then all the rubbish will be plain to see regardless of frame rate. If you want it to look like the viewer is actually there then high resolution and high frame rate is the answer. If you want it to look like the viewer is in a story then slow frame rate and shallow depth of field to focus the attention. But for me sports, documentaries , travel shows etc need high frame rate and high resolution to be as real as possible to the viewer. Make them feel they are right there next to the camera operator.
 
Mitch Gross said:
While that sounds like a nice summation, historical fact does not bear it out.

Various frame rates have been tested for special venue high end formats over the years. Showscan was famously a 65mm 5-perf 60p format. IWERKS tried different frame rates and resolutions. Todd-AO was 30p. There have been LOTS of different formats over the years.

"Better" is a subjective and relative term. I love the 24p look and don't think it's going anywhere soon for narrative storytelling. But I don't fool myself into thinking that it is more appropriate to the content for anything other than a subconcious association.

Sports makes a lot of sense at a high refresh rate for two reasons. The obvious one is that it means less motion blur on fast action, but the more subtle effect is the association to the immediacy and "liveness" of the events.

A few years back MTV decided to shoot its Movie Awards show in 24p. They thought it would lend the program a "cinematic appeal". Instead they got complaints because people thought they weren't showing the event live. Just a mental association.
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there are bad 24 fps movies and good 60i tv shows. There are 60i tv shows that were shot with big budgets, and 24 fps movies shot on a shoe string budget. There are 60i tv shows shot with terrific actors, and 24fps movies shot with terrible actors. Yet no one has been clamoring for movies to be shot in 60i while people do want tv shows shot in 24p. At some point you have to realize the steak doesn't taste better than a Big Mac because it's served in a fancy steak house so you associate steak with quality, but steak actually is quite good no matter where you serve it. Doesn't mean you can't still enjoy a Big Mac now and then.
 
Gillvane said:
I watched both the 24p and 48fps versions. It's not just the sets. In 24p Ian McClellan looks like a wizard. In 48fps he looks like an old actor in a costume, and no amount of make up would change that imo.
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Exactly. This is a fascinating discussion, folks! Whether or not it's nature or nurture (or a combination of both) I feel that 24p looks much more high quality than the same footage shot at higher frame rates. The Hobbit was the perfect example. I went with a bunch of friends that don't know jack squat about filmmaking and we saw the 48p version. As soon as we left the theater, they were ALL complaining that it looked cheap. And it was a multi-million dollar budget film! I asked them why and they said they didn't know why, it just did. Then I went and saw it again in 24p and it looked gorgeous.

As for sports in 24p, the NFL has almost all their games archived on film. They look fantastic. I'd love to watch the Super Bowl in 24p. As it is now in 60i, it looks cheap. Grand, epic, spectacular, but still cheap.

So, I don't really care much about the "why," I just care that 24p looks better, more cinematic, and higher quality. Just my opinion, of course. :)
 
I remember when I was not even a teenager, knew nothing about the tech or anything about fllmmaking/video production, and could tell the difference between 60i-looking stuff and 24p-looking stuff. I didn't know WHAT I was perceiving, exactly, but I knew that one (60i) was what I called the "live" look. There were certain episodes of the original Twilight Zone that somehow were shot on video or live or something (or maybe it was transferred incorrectly?), while most of them were done on film (or transferred correctly), and I noticed it immediately (watching them as reruns on TV, I'm not THAT old), thinking the video-looking ones were somehow less appealing.
 
DLD said:
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Great example! Interpolated to a 60p refresh, this subtley has a "video" feel, or whatever you wish to call it. As noted in other posts here, some people seem to prefer this while others absolutely hate it. But this has nothing to do with steak or cheeseburger level content. It is purely an association we make to a presented frame rate.
 
many of those TVs have a high refresh rate/Hz option that people never turn off from factory settings. I hate it. Makes EVERYTHING look ultra cheap and cheesy. Some people for some reason prefer it or can't tell. I can tell easily and find it repulsive.
 
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