Resolution vs Pixel Count (by Steve Yedlin, ASC)

Run&Gun said:
Not really. One of the reasons to have a high resolution display is to be able to not see individual pixels and allowing us to sit closer to larger displays(more immersive experience), not farther away. I'd also argue that most display-to-seat-distance is fixed. In my bedroom, the bed has been in the exact same location since day one, as well as the location of the TV and the same with my tv and seat locations in my den. I've gone from a 25" SD CRT to several HD LCD's that each increased in size and resolution to currently having a 55" "4K" OLED in there, now. And in my den I started out with a 27" SD CRT and currently have a 92" 1080P rear projection set. I've gone from 27" to 60" to 73" to 92" and each time my seat position stayed the same. It didn't get farther away. As a matter of fact, even with a 92" 1080P set, I'm still sitting beyond the THX recommended and recommended maximum viewing distance. I would actually need to have at least a 100" display to be within the recommended maximum viewing distance or move ~5 feet closer to the screen.

So, you could say you're partially right, but that's just because most viewers are sitting too far away from their screens to begin with, not because they need to sit farther from a bigger screen. I'd argue most people could probably get bigger screens than they currently have AND move closer to them.
Click to expand...

100% in agreement. We used to be forced to sit too far away, just to enjoy the illusion of resolution, now we can sit in an immersive spot. Looking forward to adding a 4K to my workspace, because the HD is annoying unless I sit far back.

But you bring up the best point of home viewing, and that is our viewing distance is generally dictated by life style and architecture. In most cases, home viewing is pretty far away until you get into projectors and 75"+ screen sizes, which would suggest that HD is optimal for home viewing, but I find, at home, I end up walk by the TV to get something, and seeing pixels on the way to the fridge or bathroom, while not objectionable, is still not ideal. And when I am looking at photos I am usually standing close to the set. it is nice being able to see details instead of pixels. TV's aren't just for lethargic movie watching on the weekends. There is sports, documentary, news, art, and going down memory lane with old digital photos. and in those cases, the case for 4K and 8K "TV's" makes a lot more sense.

Loved your post, it is much more relevant than what I just said. I am just adding my 2 cents.
 
Tom Roper said:
Totally misses the point. Steve's conclusion is simple and has nothing to do with how people should think of the F35. His conclusion is fundamental. Once you reach a certain pixel count further additions don't add more quality to the picture, and that we have already reached that point.
Click to expand...
Your statement only has context because of this forum, but otherwise you did not include any context. There are plenty of situations outside of cinema that require more resolution.

Steve came to his conclusion by circumstance. He based it on a sum of averages within the current norm for cinema, rather than the exception. Yet, the exception still exists. I believe the exception will be part of the new norm.

So, his final point rings a bit truer. That we all have a choice, based on our own perameters and that of our clients', to find the right tool. We should be able to choose a 2K camera, if it gives us a better overall image, and not feel obligated to go with resolution for resolution's sake. Resolution is a part of a whole. His test does not represent all of content everywhere, but more so in the context of "film making" that he does. In the context of fictional narrative, resolution is a low priority. I would say, even SD is good enough for most films. But this shouldn't deter the greater picture and uses of technology. Sure, we often work in the entertainment industry, but a TV is no longer just a boob tube, it is a web browser, picture viewer, research tool and window to the outside world. HD TV as a format was created, not for cinema, because narrative fiction doesn't require resolution, but HDTV was created for information. SD severely lacked in presenting information on screen, between text and detail of images. The government saw HDTV as a tool. Look at the history books. Surely, we shouldn't hope that all TV's and cameras be held back to HD because some film maker made a test that proved fiction narratives don't need resolution (heck, Nolan proved the absolute uselessness of resolution with 'Dunkirk'. e could've shot that on 35mm or Alexa and had similar impact, in most situations). But Yedlin's test were more about using the best tool for his work. In which case, having a camera with superior latitude and more aesthetic color choice is more important than a touch more resolution. But his test does not apply to everything, just his work.
 
Last edited:
With TV's getting thinner and thinner, it becomes easier and easier to just mount them onto a wall. For about twenty years, large rear projection sets took up a lot of space in one's living room and resulted in a WAF. Nowadays, a front projector, an LCD and an OLED take very little room whatsoever. At some point in a not so distant future, an average family will be able to afford a "wall size" TV. Literally. Just don't let your kids smudge them with their chocolate covered fingers.
 
James0b57 said:
…
… We should be able to choose a 2K camera, if it gives us a better overall image, and not feel obligated to go with resolution for resolution's sake. Resolution is a part of a whole. His test does not represent all of content everywhere, but more so in the context of "film making" that he does. In the context of fictional narrative, resolution is a low priority. …
…
... Surely, we shouldn't hope that all TV's and cameras be held back to HD because some film maker made a test that proved fiction narratives don't need resolution …
…
… But Yedlin's test were more about using the best tool for his work. In which case, having a camera with superior latitude and more aesthetic color choice is more important than a touch more resolution. But his test does not apply to everything, just his work.
Click to expand...

Well, Steve Yedlin's tests show that there is no apparent increase in the perception of sharpness when going up from 2K. This is applicable for all film/video shooting and presenting.

Clients' demand for 4K is a different story.
 
Joshua_G said:
Well, Steve Yedlin's tests show that there is no apparent increase in the perception of sharpness when going up from 2K. This is applicable for all film/video shooting and presenting.

Clients' demand for 4K is a different story.
Click to expand...
Yedlin shows that there is no apparent quality gain at normal viewing distances and he does so on "still frames". Also he goes from a pristine 2K image, that gets upscaled (i.e. it has already been oversampled and perfected to overcome nyquist frequence/bayer pattern demosaicing). It is interesting with 2K masters being upressed to 4K, I would much rather have a 2K or 1080p image from i.e. The Martian with higher bitrate (same rate as 4K but that each pixel then has more fidelity) than now 4K versions that are upressed with artifacts, artifacts that should even be present when downscaled to 1080p again. Let the bluray/media player do the upconversion, just turn every 1 pixel to 4 without cheesy alghorithms. Because then I could watch a pristine 1080p signal, or a good quadHD/4K (it makes more sense even to do this if no alghoritms/effects are applied since as I mentioned before there will be more data per pixel at 1080p/2K).

This is the problem with 2K masters, that is the best they will ever be. Lawrence of Arabia, a movie shot 50 years ago will still have more resolving power... Sure I know that 4K is much more expensive, but it doesn't feel as a good future proof with 2K (but if you don't have the money you simply don't, just a shame that "new classics" will be partially worse than older ones), since people are "used" to sitting far back from screens because before you couldn't sit close do to low resolution and small TV's. But, I think more people, not all and maybe not a majority are like me and like to sit with a really large field of view when watching movies. I don't think 2K will be enough. I am soon home from being abroad, and will play around with my 4K-ish projector to see the differences. I personally sit about 2,5-3,5 meters from a 3 meter wide screen, obviously movies like Bourne Ultimatum isn't great to be to near, but epic and beautifully shot movies like Lawrence of Arabia is...

However, I do need to point out that proper 1080p/2K is more than enough for me to be immersed in a movie, then pixels won't distract (banding and other streaming/coding artifacts are much more of a distraction), more resolution is just a bonus.
 
Last edited:
I forgot about the Crystal LED technology until it was mentioned in the Sony full frame camera announcement. For this, 4K ain't enough.

 
DLD said:
I forgot about the Crystal LED technology until it was mentioned in the Sony full frame camera announcement. For this, 4K ain't enough.
Click to expand...

Not true.

Again, it depends ENTIRELY on viewing angle and circle of confusion. So depending on the circumstances, 2k might be enough for a screen that size, or you might need 4k, or maybe even 8k if you're right in front of it.

The size of the screen is largely irrelevant, it's the viewing angle and distance from the screen that determines how much our eyes can resolve (and the resolution required as a result).
 
Grug said:
Not true...
Click to expand...
Yes, of course. Reductio ad absurdum. If you view it like a solar eclipse, the resolution won't matter ... but it's (currently) made for the walk-up crowds at expositions with the pixel pitch tiny enough not to be noticed at a point blank range.

By the way, a 38" 4K screen has a 100 pixel per inch density. A current leader (going off Wikipedia) in PPI for smartphones is at 806. Sharp's VR display is at over 1000 PPI. I think Steve Yedlin will be horribly disappointed as resolution numbers will b climbing up and up.

James0b57 said:
Holy jamoly! I want one! That is crazy! Never even considered anyone would build something like that!
Click to expand...
At the moment, these are incredibly expensive, well over $1M for a cinema size screen. Samsung just put one up in South Korea as a proof of concept but even that is "only" 30' wide, much smaller than a 65'-70' movie screen.

PS. Canon has been exhibiting its 8K projector, which is a combination of four 4K projectors, each responsible for a quarter of the screen, for a couple of years now. From the economic perspective, that would be the next step for the ultra high end theater.

https://www.theverge.com/2016/1/7/10725492/i-was-taken-for-a-ride-by-canon-s-8k-experience
 
Last edited:
In the ensuing battle over megapixels in sensors, the oft overlooked limiting factor is the MTF of the lenses and other factors like CoC and motion blur/temporal loss of detail in moving images. Add to that the fact that if a scene isn't critically in focus at the optimum f/stop, it won't resolve detail to the pixel. I think that's why 2K is the most gain for the buck and 4K is diminishing returns.
A lot of the 4K footage I shoot only looks sharp if I pause the playback. Current displays can't keep up with the edge detail when scenery is in motion.
The reason I want a new 4K projector is partly because of finer detail, but mostly because of HDR, P3 gamut and smoother edges (less aliasing). I think more important is deeper color and more dynamic range. That's what really gets the viewer's attention.
 
basspig said:
In the ensuing battle over megapixels in sensors, the oft overlooked limiting factor is the MTF of the lenses and other factors like CoC and motion blur/temporal loss of detail in moving images. Add to that the fact that if a scene isn't critically in focus at the optimum f/stop, it won't resolve detail to the pixel. I think that's why 2K is the most gain for the buck and 4K is diminishing returns.

A lot of the 4K footage I shoot only looks sharp if I pause the playback. Current displays can't keep up with the edge detail when scenery is in motion...
Click to expand...
When the first GH5 "Ice in bars" promo video appeared, it was in 60p and the temporal loss was greatly minimized. Sadly, my broadband speed doesn't allow me to watch 2160 @60p without buffering but I caught enough to be impressed. It may look like "video" but, for doc/sports/wedding, this type of look will probably be more in vogue than not. Mind you, the goal is 8K @ 120p for the sports/doc broadcast and streaming.

BTW, for large installation, there are also multi rear projection units. They sort of work like the short-throw front projectors ... but from behind the installation with some using mirrors. The images are designed to deliver seamless blending much like Canon's 8K front projector, so a movie theater would not be limited by a number of these units in its setup. A large room with a 60 foot size screen could then have five of these rear projectors per row for about fifteen total. At this point, they are designed for control studios/rooms and so on but a laser powered gaggle of 1080p projectors can deliver the resolution and the brightness far superior to the current 2K presentations.

PS. In terms of the RP's, I meant that one could set up a full theater with the inexpensive "consumer" type projectors. Live staged events use pro projectors.
 
Last edited:
In my observation with LCD screens, it's the switching speed of the LCD that causes the blur. This can be seen by pausing the video. If it's sharp when paused, but blurs when playing, that suggests the display is not fast enough to switch pixels on/off with sufficient speed.

I have had an eye on Sony's VPL-VW5000ES for a few months now, as it would be the perfect projector for my studio theater, but the price is still very high. Lower than the $100K projectors in the generation before it, but still way higher than I can afford.

Rear projection would be ideal, but one needs a lot of space to accommodate the projectors and the speaker systems.
 
basspig said:
In my observation with LCD screens, it's the switching speed of the LCD that causes the blur. This can be seen by pausing the video. If it's sharp when paused, but blurs when playing, that suggests the display is not fast enough to switch pixels on/off with sufficient speed.

I have had an eye on Sony's VPL-VW5000ES for a few months now, as it would be the perfect projector for my studio theater, but the price is still very high. Lower than the $100K projectors in the generation before it, but still way higher than I can afford.
.
Click to expand...

http://newatlas.com/acer-vl7860-p8800-laser-projectors/51120/

Well, while pricing isn't yet released ... Acer can't really price itself above the mid-market, can it?
 
More importantly than pixel count is industry standard deliverables people. You mainly have 2 choices if you want real audiences to watch your films. Either 8-bit 1080p H.264 or 10-bit UHD H.265. I think the answer for what path you should take is obvious. That's all there is to it.
 
Here's some data to munch on:

[table="class:grid"]
[tr][td]Horizontal Angle[/td][td]Note[/td][td]From a 55" TV[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]
10°​
[/td][td]average SDTV living room[/td][td]
22' 10"​
[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]
20°​
[/td][td]average HDTV living room?
watching a movie on my phone[/td][td]
11' 4"​
[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]
25°​
[/td][td]my ideal living-room set-up
my 13.3" laptop in my lap[/td][td]
9'​
[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]
26°​
[/td][td]THX maximum back row in a movie theater[/td][td]
8' 8"​
[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]
30°​
[/td][td]SMPTE recommended back row
a 15" laptop in my lap[/td][td]
7' 6"​
[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]
36°​
[/td][td]THX recommended back row[/td][td]
6' 2"​
[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]
45°​
[/td][td]my closest comfortable for 16:9 movies[/td][td]
4' 10"​
[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]
50°​
[/td][td][/td][td]
4' 4"​
[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]
55°​
[/td][td]my closest for 2.40:1 movies[/td][td]
3' 10"​
[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]
60°​
[/td][td]SMPTE maximum (?)[/td][td]
3' 6"​
[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]
70°​
[/td][td]IMAX average[/td][td]
2' 10"​
[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]
80°​
[/td][td]maximum IMAX, front row in a cheap theater?[/td][td]
2' 4"​
[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]
90°​
[/td][td]mayday![/td][td]
2'​
[/td][/tr]
[/table]

I chose a 55" TV as an example because it is mid-priced. I calculated its horizontal side (48") with my Frames page, and then calculated angle of view with my Angle of View Calculator. You can use it to land upon your favorite viewing angles.

As some have said, I don't want my living-room TV to feel like I'm at the movie theater. It's more for casual viewing. People should feel free to walk through the room, even in front of me some times. We're just hanging out. That's why I prefer it just to be 20-25°. I don't want it to dominate the room. And that's still pretty big. But going to the theater is an event, and I want the screen to be bigger (30-45°).

By the way, if you're trying this test at home, getting closer or farther away from your TV to see what's ideal, do it when there are two people talking back and forth on TV. Ironically, this makes me want to be farther away than some intense action scene. I think it's something about getting a good view of the human face. A close-up of a face is more emotionally intense than a close-up of a wheel.

Resolution History
[table="class:grid"]
[tr][td]VHS[/td][td]320x483 (but color was only 40x483!)[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]broadcast NTSC[/td][td]440x483[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]S-VHS[/td][td]560x483 (but color was still only 40x483!)[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]DVD[/td][td]720x480[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]35mm release print[/td][td]~1500x800[/td][/tr]
[/table]

I was horrified to read that VHS had just 40 pixels of horizontal color. Even S-VHS, the format for my student films, was the same.

Anyway, divide resolution by angle of view, and you can come up with:

Pixels per degree
[table="class:grid"]
[tr][td]40[/td][td]SDTV
DVD (more res, but TVs got bigger then too)
35mm movie
2K theater[/td][/tr]

[tr][td]60[/td][td]my eyes, minimum[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]90[/td][td]2K living room
4K theater
my eyes, maximum[/td][/tr]
[/table]

(these are rough counts, based on averages)

I was surprised to find that a 35mm release print at an average seat in a theater had the same pixels per degree as broadcast TV on your average living-room tube back then (27-32"). It's just that the 35mm was 6 times bigger and therefore had 6 times as many total pixels.

Measuring my eyeballs was a little frustrating, as you can see they're somewhere between 60 and 90 pixels per degree. Let me tell you how I measured them, and then maybe you can conduct your own experiment. I used GIMP to draw an image the same size as the native resolution of my monitor. I drew black and white stripes that were each one pixel wide. I drew them in both directions, making a grid. Think, window screen. This took some time, but copy and paste are your friend, especially if you use compounding interest ;)

Then I set it as the desktop background on my computer. There are lots of pitfalls at this point, because there are different ways to set it as your background (stretch, fit, center, etc.), and you want to choose the one that makes the image exactly 1:1 with your monitor's pixels.

Then you just kind of back away or move forward, mark your distance, calculate your angle of view, and divide the total number of pixels by the angle. At 60 pixels-per-degree or closer, I could clearly make out the lines. Farther away, my eyes started playing tricks on me. Do I see a pixel, or do I not, I don't know! At 75 pixels-per-degree, the white and black lines were definitely blending together, and something about that resolution made my eyes feel very comfortable (mind you, this was for a black-and-white grid, not an average image. Normally a photograph feels fine up to 60 pixels-per-degree or even closer.) At 90 pixels-per-degree, the whole image was a gray mush. The black and white pixels had fully merged. Now that has to be more than my eyes' resolution, possibly exactly 1½? Or maybe, in MTF terms, 60 pixels-per-degree is 100% MTF and 90 pixels-per-degree is 0% MTF. I don't know. Thoughts are welcome.

Lenses

Maybe it doesn't matter what our eyes' resolution is, if our lenses can't handle the resolution.
Lenses are typically measured in line-pairs per millimeter. So I take that to be 2 pixels per millimeter.
If you want to pull your hair out, try finding the actual resolution of many lenses.
At which f-stop do you want to measure? Lenses are sharpest around f/8 and can be noticeably blurrier at wider apertures.
At the center or at the corner? Lenses can be half as sharp in the corner as they are at the center.
And then many, many reports don't say the absolute resolution at 0-10% MTF (MTF is a measure of contrast, basically just how faded out the lines are at that point). Instead they report the line-pairs-per-millimeter at 50% MTF. The lines have faded at that point, but there still is resolution left. And they would agree. It's just tradition to report the 50% MTF.

Or maybe it's just easier, because lenses are crazy sharp, off the charts, perhaps literally. From my searching for scraps on the Internet, it seems that it's safe to say that most lenses, at their best, are 150-250 line-pairs per millimeter. So if you take the number of millimeters across various sensor sizes, you can convert:

Resolution in K to lp/mm

[table="class:grid"]
[tr][td][/td][td]4/3[/td][td]S35[/td][td]135[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]
2K​
[/td][td]
59​
[/td][td]
41​
[/td][td]
28​
[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]
4K​
[/td][td]
118​
[/td][td]
82​
[/td][td]
56​
[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]
6K​
[/td][td]
178​
[/td][td]
123​
[/td][td]
85​
[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]
8K​
[/td][td]
236​
[/td][td]
165​
[/td][td]
114​
[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]
12K​
[/td][td]
355​
[/td][td]
247​
[/td][td]
171​
[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]
16K​
[/td][td]
474​
[/td][td]
329​
[/td][td]
228​
[/td][/tr]
[/table]

A decade or so ago, I vaguely remember talk of needing to upgrade lenses, because they weren't HD lenses, or they weren't 4K. So I was thinking we were certainly at the limit with 8K. But back they they were talking about broadcast lenses, for the 2/3 format, which is only 9.6mm across even in 16:9. A 2/3 sensor in 4K would be 210 line pairs per millimeter, definitely needing one of the finer lenses. But the larger formats spread their K wider, and full-frame 35mm lenses look like they may be 12-16K total.

Or maybe you are wondering when we'll hit the Diffraction Limit. I was certainly hoping this insurmountable brick wall of optical physics would curtail the race for higher and higher K. Here's the diffraction-limited K for various sensor sizes, at various f-stops:

[table="class:grid"]
[tr][td]
f​
[/td][td]4/3[/td][td]S35[/td][td]135[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]
1.4​
[/td][td]
37.2​
[/td][td]
53.5​
[/td][td]
77.3​
[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]
2​
[/td][td]
27.0​
[/td][td]
38.9​
[/td][td]
56.3​
[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]
2.8​
[/td][td]
19.1​
[/td][td]
27.5​
[/td][td]
39.7​
[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]
4​
[/td][td]
13.5​
[/td][td]
19.4​
[/td][td]
28.1​
[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]
5.6​
[/td][td]
9.6​
[/td][td]
13.8​
[/td][td]
19.9​
[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]
8​
[/td][td]
6.8​
[/td][td]
9.7​
[/td][td]
14.1​
[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]
11​
[/td][td]
4.8​
[/td][td]
6.9​
[/td][td]
9.9​
[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]
16​
[/td][td]
3.4​
[/td][td]
4.9​
[/td][td]
7.0​
[/td][/tr]
[/table]

So you can see that we start to be diffraction-limited around f/8 or f/11 for some of the higher resolutions bandied about lately. But the wider apertures are wide open, so to speak, and I don't think the high-K advocates will demur just because their lens is only 5K at f/16.

Still, going back, you can see that 2K is enough for most people's living room set-ups. It's even looks great up to 35°. This is home-theater territory, not casual living-room watching. Trust me, at 35°, you are engaged with your TV, just 6½ feet from a 55" screen.
4K is good enough for almost any seat in the theater.
If you've been contracted to shoot something for IMAX, you may want to rent a 6K camera.

Because it all boils down to: how many pixels can you see per degree, and how many degrees does your screen take up?
 
Last edited:
S VHS never really took off. There were too few films released on it and consumers were not willing to pay premium over VHS VCR's. The pro camcorder market went toward the Hi8 format. And so it met the fate of the Elcaset.

As to the screen size, it started small but it never stopped growing. I can easily imagine wall size OLED's a few years from now.
 
Wow combatentropy. Awesome work.

THX recommended back row is a bit comic. Absolutely nobody sits 6' away from their 55" TV at home. Unless they have a 55" TV in the toilet. Not in the living room any way. But just for test sake I just put on Avatar on blu ray and stood 6' away from my TV. It still looks great! I mean the live action parts obviously.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top