Must my next cam be 4K?

Exactly proving the point that 4k (or even 1080p) will be enough for many years to come. As rollouts and getting folks to change en mass takes time. And I would not judge very much based upon a TV in a sports bar...:)
 
The human eye has a fixed resolution, and it is not getting upgraded, at this NAB or any other NAB.

Most places I've read put it at 1/60 of a degree, but some claim as high as 1/120 of a degree.

So the first question is, how many degrees does the TV screen take up in your field of view? The size of the screen is meaningless apart from distance. My 46" TV is smaller to me right now than my 14" laptop, because I am about 16" from my laptop screen and seven or eight feet from my TV screen.

Suppose TV screens grow without limit over the years. Will people keep going for the biggest that they can afford? Suppose some day a 500" TV is $500. Will people buy it? I think not.

There is an upper limit on a comfortable viewing angle, which I, George Lucas, and various other people pin at about 30-40 degrees. Think about it. Do you enjoy sitting on the front row of the movie theater? Do most people want their living room to be a totally immersive home theater experience? Or do they want the TV to have a prominent but not overbearing place, alongside their fireplace, windows, coffee table, and other furniture? My TV is at about a 15-degree viewing angle. Maybe if I had more money I would have got a bigger one, but I don't think I'd go beyond about 30 degrees. And I'm a film buff! Most people I know put their TV even further away. Of course, a lot of people are watching movies on their laptops, but I see them keeping it at about 30 degrees away or further. They're not holding their face close enough to make it much wider. It's just not a pleasing viewing experience. It feels too overwhelming.

So 30 degrees times 60 pixels per degree is 1,800 pixels. So 2K. Or you could take the higher number claimed by some, and it's 30 times 120, which is 3,600. So 4K --- at least until the day that people are watching movies in some kind of interactive, 360-degree simulation like in Star Trek. But even so that doesn't mean you have to have 4K today. People --- including me, again, a film buff --- do not notice the pixels just because they don't meet the resolution of the eye. There is a lower limit when it starts to become noticeable, and I found that to be somewhere around 1,500 pixels, at 30 degrees.

You can test this right in your own home. It takes some trigonometry, though. You would just back away from your TV until it looks sharp enough for you. Then measure how far you are from your TV. Then use trigonometry to figure out what your angle of view is. Then divide 30 or 40 degrees by that, to figure out how many pixels you would really ever need. For example, I stood a certain distance from my laptop (1366 x 768) until I couldn't really make out the pixels anymore. I calculated that it was about 20 or 25 degrees, I can't remember. So 30 / 20 = 1.5. 1366 x 1.5 = 2049. So there. I need 2K plus one pixel ;)
 
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Get 4K if
-You deliver in 4K
-You need to reframe/crop in post

Otherwise most of the world is 1080p. No scratch that, most of the world is still SD, only US and UK and a few select countries in Europe have access to 1080i broadcast and internet connections capable of streaming HD. A good HD camera will be all you need for a good 3-5 years to come.

I will not buy a 4K camera or shoot in 4K until my clients start asking for 4K content, when they do, I will get to buy a new camera and get to make more money using the 4K buzz word. A win win really!
 
I had posted this in another thread, but it is my experience that by starting with a 4K or better image, you end up with a very nice looking HD image. The majority of the HD cameras out there are lacking the resolution you get from acquiring with 4K.
 
Thats what I mean about 'the bar' - doesn't matter what it says on the box - is the image good? Most '4k' cameras make a pretty sharp picture..
S
 
Bassman2003 said:
Exactly proving the point that 4k (or even 1080p) will be enough for many years to come. As rollouts and getting folks to change en mass takes time. And I would not judge very much based upon a TV in a sports bar...:)
Click to expand...
In terms of 4K TV's, the current price leader is a 50" Vizio model (receiving mixed reviews so far, with the negatives mostly regarding its QC/DOA ... and, naturally, the "soap opera" effect) that is offered for about a grand via major US retailers. By the Christmas shopping season of 2015, the 50" (loss) leader will probably be in the $500 range and then 50%-70% of main family sets will be in 4K (bedroom/kitchen/garage TV might remain 720p/1080p for a while). The prices have actually been dropping a little faster than anticipated.

4K Blu-ray player is also supposed to come out by that time, which may signal for many to update their old DVD's (the Blu-ray itself hasn't set any sales records). At the same time, the broadband speeds are getting more and more affordable, with 30 Mbps offered for about $40/mo by a number of companies.

Combine all of the above and you have a confluence of the reasonably priced TV's/monitors, streaming and media players being 4K capable. By then, I would think that most clients will want 4K as well, at least, not to appear lagging behind in technology.

That's my opinion. I could, obviously, be wrong.

On the other hand, Panasonic misunderestimated its GH4 sales by about 250% and, I am sure, they have a giant marketing department with a bunch of PhD's in suits and ties designing very detailed questionnaires and interviewing every cinema-video maven across the globe. ARRI, which sits - or, at worst, was sitting - at the pinnacle of the pro market with Alexa, also fanned with their estimates and had to scramble for a 6K camera. Canon is universally derided for their incremental updates as well. Meanwhile, there are now compact 4K cams out there for under $1K.

PS. As been posted with regards to F-55 at the DVX100 prices - I was watching one of the latest FS-7 4K clips on YouTube (wasn't too fond of the footage or its grading but that's probably me) and the shooter/reviewer said on his blog that he thought FS-7 was basically F-55 for $8,000 ... sans the global shutter! Which was my point a few days ago. And if something is $8,000 now, it will be $5K by the NAB'15.

I think.
 
Thanks for all the feedback everyone. This gives me a lot to think about. As of now I'm probably leaning towards a GH4, not so much because of the 4K but just because of the image quality and price. This cam plus lens should be around $2,500 vs the $5,000 for the 270. But I'm in no hurry... will probably not buy for another month or two so I'll keep doing research.
 
4k is a delight to work with if you're post flow can handle it. Borrow or rent a GH4 and see what you think of the images and workflow. Warp stabilizer in 4k then bumping down to 1080 looks amazing. Nice to have resolution to spare and a truly clean 1080 output.
 
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