Will 4K cameras be practical for weddings?

[Chris DeVoe]

Originally Posted by Dave Partington

The ONE thing that interests me on 4K is the ability to crop when outputting HD or even DVD.

I just shot a dance recital and it would have been heaven to have all those pixels to play with since I'm only delivering on DVD! I could have had a single camera in the balcony and one to the side and got all my shots without having to move a muscle on the day trying to follow the dancers with a manned camera for closer shots.

For sure I can do some re-framing from HD, but 4K would have been even better since even HD doesn't give quite enough to capture and resize people at the back of the stage. Low light is still my main concern.

Fair point.You'd need an editing program that made that easy - I know it would be pretty tedious in Edius. You'd have all the advantages of a multicam shoot without having to worry about matching color and exposure.

[Dave Blackhurst]

I did the same analysis Noa did, and "jumped the shark" on the AX100. If I'd had the investment in the GH series + glass, I'd have swung that way.

Pan and crop in Vegas is easy, and will work nicely from the tests I've run. I'm not entirely sold on 30p, but unless you've got brides running madly, it probably isn't a big issue! The AX100 shoots 30 VERY sharp high res images per second - I have to see if I can induce at least a little motion blur with shutter speed to make motion seem more natural, but that may or may not work or be advantageous. Need more time to experiment!!

Low light on the AX100 is good enough (you're already at 30 shutter speed in low light, right?), and it holds through the zoom range better than the PJ760, which goes dark at the long end b/c of aperture.

I'm a little nervous about handheld with ANY 4K camera, simply because any motion really stands out with a super sharp image (tradeoffs). RS/skew seems to be more prominent in 4K mode, likely due to the readout of the full sensor. Still experimenting a bit, but the AX100 has a high bitrate 1080/60p mode too, if motion/RS/skew is an issue... seems to "solve" those.

I figured the AX100 would replace at least a couple cameras for a typical "event" shoot (wide and "zoom" potential from one 4K + pan/crop), so the math wasn't as daunting. I'm sold on the sharpness, like the "feel" of the camera, and have reduced the number of cameras once again (the RX10 meant culling the herd too).

You probably don't NEED it, but there are definite uses for it, some of them even "practical"!

[Dave Partington]

Originally Posted by Chris DeVoe

Fair point.You'd need an editing program that made that easy - I know it would be pretty tedious in Edius. You'd have all the advantages of a multicam shoot without having to worry about matching color and exposure.

Pan & Scan is trivial in FCPX, I've been doing it for the last couple of days on HD footage destined only for DVD and having done some tests, it's not so bad on 4K footage either in terms of speed of playback / rendering etc.

[Dave Partington]

Originally Posted by Chris DeVoe

Low light on the AX100 is good enough (you're already at 30 shutter speed in low light, right?), and it holds through the zoom range better than the PJ760, which goes dark at the long end b/c of aperture.

I've been trying to find some low light footage (original - not YouTube) that I can look at and do some pan & scan on.... any ideas where I can find some?

[Noa Put]

Originally Posted by Dave Blackhurst

Low light on the AX100 is good enough (you're already at 30 shutter speed in low light, right?), and it holds through the zoom range better than the PJ760, which goes dark at the long end b/c of aperture.

How is the low light from the ax100 compared to the pj760 when both lenses are wide, so before any ramping occurs?

[Peter Manojlovic]

Originally Posted by Chris DeVoe

Are you shooting weddings that are going to be seen in a movie theater on a 30 foot wide screen? If not, 4k is utter overkill. It's a solution in search of a problem.

This should be on somebody's signature..Straight to the point. Bravo.

[Chris Harding]

A very sobering thought, that we often miss, is the conversation that I had with a couple on Monday evening. Normally I just talk to the bride and the "hubby to be" just hovers in the background. However this guy liked to talk "tech" and went on about 4K and forthcoming future 8K etc etc and after trying desperately to get him to keep quiet, I asked the bride about her feelings on the topic and she said "I haven't the faintest idea what you guys are talking about" ..I said to her "All you want is a nice wedding video you can watch, right?" ... She replied "Exactly"

We often miss the point that the bride (who is normally the person who decides what vendors get chosen) simply wants a nice recording of her special day without any technical mumbo jumbo to go with it!

She really doesn't care what format you use and simply wants a watchable wedding video. To brides content is king and we often get so tied up in the technical aspects that we forget that!

Chris

[Dave Blackhurst]

CONTENT is ALWAYS king... otherwise pixellated wobbly videos wouldn't go "viral"... or show up on the news... etc...

The technical aspect should be somewhat "invisible", and generally IS, up until the point where the quality is so degraded that it becomes a distraction. or everyone looks like Smurfs... or has their heads cut off...

Because we have to look at the "raw, uncut" footage (usually quite a few times!), we see EVERY little thing, including things that just aren't that big a deal to most viewers.

But who can blame us for wanting the BEST raw clips to work with, no matter how bad the lighting/ambient conditions? It's a pain to try to coax something usable out of a murky grainy mess! We want to work with GOOD clips! Being able to crop/pan and retain image quality is a nice advantage...

Everyone may not have a HUGE TV now, but with prices coming down, it's likely they WILL, do you want the stuff you shot to look low budget when they get that new TV? HD is likely going to be "just fine" for at least a couple years going forward, but like it or not, 4K IS coming. Technology marches onward.


At least from my viewpoint, there are some technical advantages to having a 4K camera in my kit, it's not a "necessity", but it IS practical IMO (and that WAS the question, right?), and I can see the difference on even a small screen. Call it "overkill" all you want, I wasn't a big fan of DLSR video... but it has a place as well... it's all just tools to do "the job"!

[Chris DeVoe]

Originally Posted by Peter Manojlovic

This should be on somebody's signature..Straight to the point. Bravo.

Thank you. My wife and I go the movies all the time, and by preference, we sit in the front row. And even on a movie screen occupying our full field of vision, 4K is enough. I'm hard pressed to imagine a situation in a home where the difference between 1080P and 4K will be apparent.

[Chris Harding]

My concern is always low light performance as well so one needs a way better sensor to resolve an image 4 x an HD one ..I notice that despite 8 mp sensors the low light performance hasn't really changed and the cameras are talking about a 4lux rating at 1/30th second shutter which is a bit worse than a HD camera.

I struggle already with low light ! On our old 4:3 SD cameras we never has many low light issues either as the image was a tiny 720x480 so cameras like the Sony PD150 used to be a low light master compared to what we are working with today and the old SD's used to often boast a lux of 0.1 at 1/60th shutter !!

I guess the time will come, like when SD cameras eventually vanished when we will have to replace our current cameras with 4K models but by then 8K will be here and people will start having their 30' wide TV's built into a wall of the house!!

Chris

[Noa Put]

My concern is always low light performance as well so one needs a way better sensor to resolve an image 4 x an HD one

The panasonic gh4 also has the same lowlight sensitivity then the gh3 with the same size sensor, but it is cleaner at high iso, so 4k doesn't have any negative impact on that performance, from what I have read so far the ax100 is the same or even a bit better in low light then the cx730, which is already very good, but that's why I asked Dave if he could confirm. 'lux' rating doesn't say anything, real life comparisons do and they don't show any negative impact so far, actually an improvement in that area.

[Dave Blackhurst]

Took a bit to dig out the PJ760 (same sensor block as your EU CX730). I'm going from the LCD, but here's what I noted - the 7xx series seems to push the saturation to make the image look brighter, while the AX100 is a bit more "flat" and natural. Both are brighter than "nekkid eye", though they are likely gained out, meaning some noise. The AX100 seems able to actually reach deeper into the shadows than the 760, meaning you'd get "something".rather than murk.

My feeling from first use of the RX100M2 was that low light was not a huge issue, and that Sony got this sensor "right". I feel confident that I can push the RX's and the AX and get what I "need" in low light, even if it means cranking the ISO (RX), or letting the gain rise (AX). Even with "noise", as long as the image holds up reasonably well it should "do". An LED light is an easy add on, and I don't shoot black cats at midnight in a dark room that often anyway... and I try to avoid swinging the camera back and forth wildly when I do...

The RX10 has a little advantage with the constant f/2.8, but the AX100 lens range holds up very well, definitely much more usable on the tele end of the range than the 760.

For me the AX100 replaced a couple PJ710's, and I'm still debating whether the PJ760 stays or goes... the BOSS stabilization and compact size being the things I'm debating... generally speaking the AX100 is overall a "better" camera in almost all respects (and that's if you don't factor in the 4K), and that's pretty good considering the 7xx series are excellent cameras for what they do. It should of course be better given the higher price!

[Noa Put]

As soon as my cx730's are up for replacement the ax100 will most probably be the ones to take over, considering Sony does replace models quite fast I"m sure the ax100 will sell for a few 100's less in 1 or 1,5 year, usually there is a considerable pricedrop just before a new model is released.

Edit: A bit off topic but I just noticed that the nex-ea50 inclusing stocklens has received a 1000 euro price drop going from 3600 euro to 2650 euro in a Dutch store, it's just 100 euro above the price of a sony nx70 now, maybe a sign of a new upcoming 4k model? It looks like I sold my nex-ea50 in time.

[Bob Drummond]

Sorry to derail this thread.

I asked this question before. If the Lord of the Rings trilogy exists as a 2K master, as do many modern Hollywood blockbusters, why would any bride anywhere ever need or want a 4K wedding video?

2K has been the standard in cinemas, not living rooms, since the dawn of digital intermediates in the film production pipeline. And before that, 35mm release prints often had an equivalent resolution at or lower than 2K. And I think we all agree cinema projection looks pretty good.

This 4K things seems like marketing hype at its worst. I can't usually tell the difference between a 720p and 1080p rip of a blu-ray on my decent 55" LCD. And I actually care about image quality.

I get there are benefits to acquiring the image at a higher resolution than you intend to deliver to the client. But it would seem to be much more important to focus on shooting the story effectively with the tools at your disposal, even if those tools "only" deliver a 1080p image. Heck, most of the best wedding videos ever made have been shot with DSLRS, and many of those deliver an effective resolution lower than 1080p.

And they'll still look good in 50 years, if we actually have anything that will play the files or discs :)

[Dave Partington]

Originally Posted by Bob Drummond

If the Lord of the Rings trilogy exists as a 2K master, as do many modern Hollywood blockbusters, why would any bride anywhere ever need or want a 4K wedding video?

Most Hollywood masters do indeed exists as a 2K master, but many were shot at 4K or even 5K in the first place. Now, if they could shoot everything at 2K in order to end up with a 2K master don't you think they would save themselves all the hassle and expense of 4K/5K in the first place?

We need to stop thinking in terms of shooting only what we deliver, or only delivering what we shoot.

There are many reasons to shoot 4K, the question is whether it's going to suit your workflow and business model. For the low price people who want in and out as quickly as possible then shooting as close as possible to the delivery format makes sense. for those who want more flexibility in post then having more resolution may be beneficial.

Cost of cameras is still a major factor, but prices will come down just as it did when people were asking why anyone would shoot HD when all they delivered was DVD.

Processing power of computers is still a factor, but over time things will improve, just like they did during the SD to HD transition.

Storage is going to be a perpetual problem, as it is now with HD, but worse.

In some countries 4K will take off pretty quickly and while we only seem to get requests for DVD, in other countries Blu-ray has taken off much more and those people can't understand why anyone would want the inferior DVD.

To me, 4K has much more legs than 3D ever did.

How long have HD TVs been out? Try buying a standard def TV today. 4K is coming faster than HD did. How long before you can no longer buy an HD TV?