Going all in on 4K.

[Kyle Root]

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.

[Darren Levine]

i would subtract an ax100 or two for a x70

[Dave Blackhurst]

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...

[Gary Huff]

Originally Posted by Dave Blackhurst

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.

[Kyle Root]

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.

[James Manford]

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

[Leon Bailey]

Originally Posted by James Manford

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!

[Kyle Root]

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.

[Chris Harding]

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

[Jeff Harper]

Originally Posted by Gary Huff

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.

[Dave Blackhurst]

Originally Posted by Gary Huff

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".

[Noa Put]

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.

[Dave Partington]

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.

[Kyle Root]

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.

[Gary Huff]

Originally Posted by Dave Blackhurst

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.