I was looking around yesterday and realized that for less than $9,000 I can get 4 Sony AX100s and 2 GoPro Hero 4 Blacks and have six cameras to shoot weddings with, in 4K. That's pretty amazing.

If I were to sell my NX5U, XA20, HV40, and Hero2 I may be able to come up with enough to fund 1/2 the cost of making a switch. lol

Crazy thought. Kind of.

i would subtract an ax100 or two for a x70

Don't forget that for at least a while, delivery will likely be in HD, so you can probably cut that fleet in half... or maybe by a third anyway, so now it's a lot less crazy! The HD cams I sold have more than paid for the AX100...

IOW, if you use pan/crop/reframe to 1920x1080 output, each 4K camera can in theory (and so far for me in practice) replace 2-3 cameras for the next couple years, and of course in that time, tech will improve and prices come down.

And yep those new GoPros are certainly intriguing...

IOW, if you use pan/crop/reframe to 1920x1080 output, each 4K camera can in theory (and so far for me in practice) replace 2-3 cameras for the next couple years, and of course in that time, tech will improve and prices come down.

Except that doing those moves in post generally looks terrible. Ever seen one of those Pan&Scan jobs from the nineties on widescreen films? It will look like that.

When I'm shooting solo, I'm using 4 or 5 cameras, and they are all stationary except the one I'm manning.

For me, the thought of having 3 or 4 that I can "roughly frame" and then "zoom in" to get a better shot is pretty intriguing. I have some friends in Nashville that are doing that with GH4 footage at weddings and from what I've seen it works really good on a 1080 timeline.

I don't have any intention of delivering anything in 4K, as I just had for the first time ever, a bride request 3.... Three!! Blu Rays of her wedding. That's never happened before. Ever. LOL

Anyways, I don't know what I'm doing to do, but there sure are a lot of interesting upgrade routes.

So hold on ... what about storage (hard drives / cloud), a better cpu / graphics card / more ram ? or is that already sorted ?

So hold on ... what about storage (hard drives / cloud), a better cpu / graphics card / more ram ? or is that already sorted ?

Gonna need a truck full of this equipment for all that 4K. lol!

I figure I'd have to build a new system.

My i7-2600K/16GB RAM system will be 4 years old in November.

Should be able to reuse my tower, power supply, and monitors, and swap everything else out.

I don't keep footage, so I don't need a ton of hard drive space. Although right now, I have a 256GB SSD, 128 GB SSD, and 2 2-TB HDs in there.

Hi Kyle

So 4K is heavy on the CPU so I guess my i7 2600 wouldn't cut it either.

I'm seriously thing about getting a couple of RX10's or even a couple of Panasonic FZ1000's which already shoot 4K and are a lot lighter both in weight and in price than my Sony EA-50's .... I also like the idea of shooting with the 3 axis gimbal and a GoPro instead of using the EA-50 on a sled and a huge vest so my stedicam shoots. I reckon that would be really wicked at a ceremony as it's easier to hold plus you could also get great footage of the bridal entry. I am really getting tired of lugging around big heavy gear and the stedicam arm alone is a monster!!

I reckon 4 cams is plenty for weddings ... one on a tripod, one for cutaways and then a GoPro high up for a wide angle shot and one on a 3 axis gimbal and you are more than covered!! Then put all the heavy cumbersome gear on eBay and have everything in one case!!

Chris

Except that doing those moves in post generally looks terrible. Ever seen one of those Pan&Scan jobs from the nineties on widescreen films? It will look like that.

Interesting, not sure at all how the comparison is the same. Since I'm doing it, I can tell you it's awesome and working out amazingly well. I can zoom in in post and it looks amazing, better than my native HD cameras even when zoomed in.

The best time to jump into 4K is now before 4K delivery is common and we can utilize the downsizing and zooming in during post.

Except that doing those moves in post generally looks terrible. Ever seen one of those Pan&Scan jobs from the nineties on widescreen films? It will look like that.

Yep, seen pan and scan... yuck. Way to ruin an otherwise great movie, may 4:3 RIP... good riddance.

NOT what I'm suggesting, as most times you frame wide and then reframe/crop as needed. VERY different from trying to cut a 4:3 chunk out of a 16:9 or whatever widescreen frame... With 4K you have plenty of spare pixels to work with, and can reframe as needed at the proper screen size/ratio.

Not sure about trying to do camera moves in post, rather just the ability to crop anywhere within the larger frame.

My point was that where one might use 2 or 3 cameras for wide and tight shots from a given angle, with 4K you can do BOTH from a single camera, as well as reframe across the scene for slightly different camera "angle".

Pan and scan doens't have to look bad, I recall seeing a video here from a person playing the gitar with panning on a cropped image done in premiere pro and it looked very convincing, in fact I was not aware it was done in post. What made it look real was that the start and stop of every pan was gradual, and not sudden, like you when you stop panning with a tripod.

About pc power, if you plan on doing multicam you need a fast pc, I have a i7 3770 cpu with 8gb memory and a cheap and slow videocard and can do 3 streams multicam realtime of which 2 are 28mbs avchd and one stream of 4K 50mbs x avcs or 100mbs 4k form the gh4.

I use edius and edius builds a buffer to play it all in realtime, when I start playing it stutters for a moment and then runs smooth. Editing is also with a small lag, like when you press play, it's not a instant action.

2 streams of 4k in a multicam and the fun is over and I have constant stutter.

I am constantly editing 4K material now and my pc handles it fine, not planning to upgrade next year, maybe in 2016. Exporting speeds are also fast as edius uses the motherboards gpu to accelerate.

Storage is no issue either, with the ax100 in 4K it's the same as with my 1080P on my rx10 as both do 50mbs x avcs, only my gh4 take almost twice the space with it's 100mbs codec.

I've been editing 4K using FCPX on a 27" iMac (32GB Ram, 4GB GPU) for a while with no problems at all. I even did a 4 camera 4K multicam using the proxy mode (which I always used for 1080p as well) and again, it just worked.

To be fair, my older MacPro can't do this, even though it's got a faster RAID in it. It's a combination of CPU, GPU and the software you're using.

On the "Zoom In" in post scenario, the reason it really came to mind was, the wedding I shot on Saturday, the bride's mother had cancer and the bride specifically requested that I focus on the mother during the Ceremony because she wanted to see her mom's face during the Ceremony.

In order to do this, I set up 3 cameras up front. Left, Center, and Right - all pointed in the direction of her mom.

The left was the HV40 zoomed in "loose" , the center was the Nikon V1 zoomed in a little tighter, and the right was a GoPro on a lightstand about 8' in the air which captured the whole scene.

It was a small outdoor wedding with about 40 people in attendance, and no wedding party. Just the couple and minister.

The XA20 was in the back as the wide shot and then I was running around with my NX5 on a monopod getting other shots and close ups of the couple.

Not sure about trying to do camera moves in post, rather just the ability to crop anywhere within the larger frame.

Well, you used the word "pan" and that is a camera move. And it will look bad.

NOT what I'm suggesting, as most times you frame wide and then reframe/crop as needed. VERY different from trying to cut a 4:3 chunk out of a 16:9 or whatever widescreen frame... With 4K you have plenty of spare pixels to work with, and can reframe as needed at the proper screen size/ratio.

It can come in handy, but it will bite you hard if you start to use it as a crutch. Remember, you're zooming into the sensor, and all the nasty stuff that is generally hidden because you don't have your nose right up to the sensor (sort of what you can get with the Panasonic GH-line in ETC mdoe) can be ugly.

It's not a panacea.

I found the thread back with the pan and scan experiment, here I thought it was well excecuted:

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/panasonic-lumix-gf-gh-series/522829-silly-gh4-experiment.html

It can come in handy, but it will bite you hard if you start to use it as a crutch.

Are you referring to zooming into a 4K image in a 1080p project with the main purpose to reframe your shots? If that is the case I start using it all the time during the ceremony with excellent results.

I found the thread back with the pan and scan experiment, here I thought it was well excecuted:

Yes, if you don't mind mastering in 480p and are know how to ramp your movement. That was a decent job movement-wise. However, I will point out that the encoding of it made the quality of the video really poor. That could just be YouTube, or it could be something else. Would be interested to see a DVD-quality render of it.

Are you referring to zooming into a 4K image in a 1080p project with the main purpose to reframe your shots? If that is the case I start using it all the time during the ceremony with excellent results.

I guess that depends on how much zooming in you are doing (all the way in to 200%?) and what you interpret as "excellent" results. NeatVideo might help, but the sensor pattern you get zoomed all the way in like that is not pleasing to my eye, and I would assume a lot of this is ISOs higher than 400 for ceremonies, so I can't imagine the noise wouldn't be significant.

The discussion of Pan and Scan and comparing it to utilizing 4K is curious and makes no sense at all to me, so maybe I'm missing something, I'm with Noa.

4K has 4X the resolution of HD, so pretty much any zooming unless taken too far, will look awesome and will be in full HD, so you're not losing any resolution.

Many of us shooting 4K are putting out great looking videos and we are zooming in and adding camera movement with great results.

My understanding of Pan and Scan is that it is a method of taking something shot in 16:9 and trying to make it fit in a 4:3 production. Totally different animal than 4K to HD, not a valid comparison.

4K and HD both fit on the screen the same, 16:9 aspect ratio essentially.

I zoomed in post on a bride during vows and it was nothing short of amazing, I did a long, slow zoom and it mimics a camera zoom perfectly, and of course, there was no loss of resolution.

As I said, maybe I'm missing something and not understanding you Gary.

My understanding of Pan and Scan is that it is a method of taking something shot in 16:9 and trying to make it fit in a 4:3 production. Totally different animal than 4K to HD, not a valid comparison.

Except that, for films which were shot far wider than 4:3, they were panned in post-production to move between speakers on occasion where it was a two shot and they were on opposite sides of the frame. That's a post production move utilizing a source resolution that's larger than the target.[/QUOTE]

Yes, if you don't mind mastering in 480p and are know how to ramp your movement.

It looks like premiere has the advantage of slowly speeding up at the start and slowing down at the end panning or tilting motion which makes it appear like a real tripod move, something you can perfectly do in a 1080p project.

That experiment he did does show it is possible to pull off real looking tripod moves so it doesn't have to look bad. I use Edius and have not experimented with that but I think it's not possible to do gradual movement like you can do in premiere.

About zooming in on the image, in a 1080p project I never zoom in further then the native resolution of 4K, if I pixel peep I might find artifacts but from a normal viewing distance zoomed in 4K shots blend in with my 1080p material just fine, I can't see any difference to be honest. I often use it to create some variation in framing my shots while I switch between a 1080p and a 4K camera. I also used it a lot to correct framing mistakes as I mainly use the 4K camera locked of and as a safety, for instance I place the altar and lectern in one frame but in post I can switch between altar, lectern or both and with a second manned camera I do close ups so I have plenty of shots to choose from.

I know this advantage will only last until I have to deliver in 4K but I plan to use it as long as I can, 4K has made my ceremony recording so much easier to handle as a one man band.

Except that, for films which were shot far wider than 4:3, they were panned in post-production to move between speakers on occasion where it was a two shot and they were on opposite sides of the frame. That's a post production move utilizing a source resolution that's larger than the target.[/QUOTE]

Got it. For what most of what we all do here I think 4k at this point has virtually no downsides, other than potential issues with ability to edit. You can certainly take it to far, for sure.

I want to add that I would also opt for the pro camcorder when possible, the AX100 is amazing but the 30p is a real limitation. Would love to shoot at 60p. I would think shooting with several AX100s and having one pro version as primary cam would be very nice.

Another advantage to shooting 4K, at least with the FDR-AX100, is for better low-light performance. The AX-100 lens is not the best part of that camera, it ramps up from f/2.8 rather quickly as you zoom in. So, if you leave the lens wide, to get the f/2.8 aperture, then you get more light in, and can just crop to HD sized framing in post. Also, compared to the XF305 shooting a low-light scene in HD, the AX-100 performance is a little better, but not "amazing". NeatVideo yields excellent results with the AX-100 4K footage, although the XF305 isn't too far behind it.

Mark

Well, you used the word "pan" and that is a camera move. And it will look bad.



It can come in handy, but it will bite you hard if you start to use it as a crutch. Remember, you're zooming into the sensor, and all the nasty stuff that is generally hidden because you don't have your nose right up to the sensor (sort of what you can get with the Panasonic GH-line in ETC mdoe) can be ugly.

It's not a panacea.

I think all you've illustrated is that that any technique or "effect" CAN be poorly executed... and also misunderstood.

When taking an HD crop from a 4K frame, you're not "zooming into the sensor" (whatever that means), you're simply re-framing to pixels that are ALREADY there. There is plenty of resolution and potential to move within the larger "picture".

Thus my original suggestion that a single camera can potentially "cover" much the same needs for wide and close up framings that might have necessitated 2-3 "HD" cameras to avoid the very issues you're describing. Frame wide, crop in post. If you're talking DVD/SD delivery, you can take this up another huge notch as well...

Of course if you are trying to get 4K output (not sure there's much demand YET), this would not be true, although I'm finding that HD can look pretty good on my 4K "monitor", more than adequate for all but dedicated "pixel peepers".


And If memory serves, "pan" in pan and scan did not typically involve "live" moves (maybe it did, didn't watch much in 4:3 once widescreen became available, too much stuff "missing"!), but rather moving the mask back and forth as needed to get a 4:3 framing in the larger "window"