4K!! FOUR KAYE!!!! … Meanwhile, at ARRI….

[David Mathis]

Things are getting interesting in 4K land. Strong competition this year.

No, but I know plenty of French! Just can’t say it on TV or here. 🙂

[Michael Sanders]

Basically they don’t belive they can get the resolution and colour rendition from their or any other currently available sensord at 4K pixels that they would be happy with – thus they won’t do it.

And FWIW those who have done the tests belive ARRIRAW upscaled to 4K is just as good. The possible exception is the Sony F65 RAW which is very close.

I haven’t done the tests myself so can’t comment to much but if I was offered an Alexa V F55 I’d probably take the Alexa.

There are heavy rumours Arri are working on a 65mm (yes 65mm) 4K camera but it won’t be avaiable to buy.

Michael Sanders
London Based DP/Editor

[Robert D’alexis]

C’mon, go ahead, we’ll pardon your French. 🙂

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Robert d'Alexis] “C’mon, go ahead, we’ll pardon your French. :-)”

Yes! Well played, sir.

[Aindreas Gallagher]

jeremy, did you watch terence curren speaking about 4K at the prenab talk?

I found him pretty interesting? He made the point that the only people in a theatre that can perceive the difference between that and the current resolution would have to be sitting in around the front two rows, and in the home you would have to be sitting five feet away from a 65 inch screen.

what is the rationale for 4K again? to re-rack shots?

why is everyone buying the new gear, new storage, new throughput etc if the consumer can’t really see it and none of the broadcasters are anywhere near touching it? And no one gets to mention house of cards on netflix. Why is everyone getting railroaded into 4K?
Curren seems to suggest that its a dark manufacturer cabal conspiracy to stop asian panel manufacturers from going under?

https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics

[Franz Bieberkopf]

[Michael Sanders] “And FWIW those who have done the tests belive ARRIRAW upscaled to 4K is just as good. The possible exception is the Sony F65 RAW which is very close.”

Michael,

Link?

Franz.

[Michael Sanders]

Franz,

No links as such but just an amalgamation of reading various materials and other forums, particularly the Cinematographers Mailing List.

Deakins, could have shot “Skyfall” on whatever he wanted but chose the Alexa Studio (which Arri rushed through production for) shooting in ArriRAW on Codex. There is an detailed article about this in a recent edition of American Cinematographer.

As to the 65mm Digital camera: https://nofilmschool.com/2014/03/arri-developing-6k-65mm-digital-cinema-camera-4k-nab/

Michael Sanders
London Based DP/Editor

[Andre Van berlo]

actually I think he says that before we all jump on one aspect of the whole process (in this case resolution) we should investigate which of the aspects makes for the biggest improvement. Apparently more companies like the bbc are looking into this and are trying to find out what would yield best results.

I’m not sure but I also think he believes that 4K needs higher framerates.

One thing is certain, many things make up for a better image and i’m sure dynamic range and framerate would do a lot with image quality as well.

disclaimer: I understand some German but he has an accent from the south of Germany which is harder to understand

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Aindreas Gallagher] “I found him pretty interesting? He made the point that the only people in a theatre that can perceive the difference between that and the current resolution would have to be sitting in around the front two rows, and in the home you would have to be sitting five feet away from a 65 inch screen.

what is the rationale for 4K again? to re-rack shots?”

I think Terence has excellent points. It is hard to argue with science. In my mind, 4k makes for better HD. 4k does not make for better 4k.

[Aindreas Gallagher] “why is everyone buying the new gear, new storage, new throughput etc if the consumer can’t really see it and none of the broadcasters are anywhere near touching it? And no one gets to mention house of cards on netflix. Why is everyone getting railroaded into 4K?
Curren seems to suggest that its a dark manufacturer cabal conspiracy to stop asian panel manufacturers from going under?”

I don’t know if everyone is buying for 4k. These days, if you are buying a new camera, it’s hard to NOT buy 4k.

Kind of like, it’s harder and harder to nbuy an HD TV without 3D capability.

I will say, House of Cards Season 2 looks absolutely incredible in HD. They are really showing what increased dynamic range in the Red cameras can do. Listening to a podcast with the DP, it was the DPs choice because he knew they could push the technology to do it. It should be a swan song for the Red faithful. I don’t know if it would look any better in 4k.

[Oliver Peters]

Last year at NAB, ARRI was showing a short film shot with anamorphic prime lenses in ARRIRAW with the 4×3 sensor.

This image was displayed on a 4K monitor. Subjectively it looked as good as every other 4K image at the show, though a bit softer (more “filmic”), which is characteristic of ARRI.

Remember that this image, when “unsqueezed”, is effectively greater than 5K. 4K in all of these discussions is never expressed as actual resolution, but rather as frame dimensions. Not the same thing. That’s why EPIC and the F65 use larger-than-4K sensors to achieve higher actual resolution at 4K. That’s the dirty little secret of the debayering “cheat” that we’ve all come to accept.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com