Do you care about 4K?

[Antono Refa]

I like to shoot video occasionally, but nobody in my family has a 4K TV. Even if my camera had 4K video, I would still set it to FHD.

 

[Roo]

I appreciate that some people would like 4k capability but I have zero interest in shooting video.

 

[andrewflo]

Mainly want 4K for 1080p deliver that is superbly sharp. Also would make shooting interviews easier as they could be done with 1 camera in a pinch instead of 2.

 

[mkabi]

This is to answer the original question.
Do you care about 4K?
Not particularly, but like most people here have said, if I was to buy a camera now, I'd rather be prepared then be left behind. Some people have embraced it, but most still are not convinced.

I've said this plenty of times, as have so many people here...
You can't see the difference between a 1080p & 4K TV after about 6 to 8 feet away (on 50 inch, 60 inch TVs).
So, this so called "better 1080p" from 4K doesn't matter about 6 to 8 feet away. Most people will lie that they can see the difference about 6 to 8 feet away on a 50 to 60 inch TV, I don't know why... and same can be said with 720p (but thats much further like 10 to 12 feet away) and so on and so forth.

Not enough 4K content, TV cable is still broadcasting in 720p & 1080i still... their so called HD channels is still 720p. No 4K discs or 4K players at the local bestbuy, only 4K TVs and may be a 4K camera...

Nothing other than a computer plays 4K... you can't record it on disc and play it on a 4K player (cause no such thing exists)... so you basically have to connect your computer to the TV.

Then there is the storage problem... how much 4K can you store?
One project takes about 320Gb to 500Gb for me (normal 1080p - h.264), then redundancy makes it about 1.5Tb.
Not to mention the conversion from h.264 to ProRes, so I can only imagine h.265 conversion to ProRes (mind you that there isn't anything current that will edit h.265). Gh4 and NX1 users enlighten us, how big do the files get from ProRes Coversion. Lets just ask for a 1 min. video.
Everyone will argue that storage is getting cheaper... whatever... if you want 4K now, better have cheap storage now. You know how much a 2Tb SSD cost??? Look it up and get back to me... cheap???

But again, if I was to buy a camera now... I dont want to be left behind... just in case it is adopted by the masses in the next couple of years.

 

[9VIII]

First off, to add to the speculation about the future of 4K, I suspect that 4K is going to be the "Standard Definition" of the future, very, very long term.
Before the 90's display technology moved in generational steps, then we had a burst of new technology and now we're back to the slower pace again, except this time I don't see a lot of room for improvement beyond top quality 8K and 4K content. 10bit colour will be great but that's (theoretically) already in the spec for 4K, all we need now is better hardware, the signal doesn't need to change.
I've read that 8K is basically equivalent to IMAX, so I still want that for premium multimedia content, but everything else should be standardized to 4K.

Am I ready to use 4K? Not for daily content consumption, I can't use anything more than the lowest quality available simply due to archaic bandwidth restrictions, so I wouldn't want to record any higher than 1280x720 either. I want everything at 60fps as well.

4K games and movies? Definitely yes.
4K home video? Probably not for another 5-10 years.

 

[9VIII]

Most people will lie that they can see the difference about 6 to 8 feet away on a 50 to 60 inch TV, I don't know why...

Now them's fight'n words.

I can continue to see detail on a 100DPI screen from over 9 feet away.
That's equivalent to a 42" 4K display.
That's testing with my own eyes, which are only slightly better than 20/20, and I don't dismiss the results just because someone else testing for something completely different says differently.
The two results are mostly unrelated.

The primary mistake the "experts" make in trying to apply their data to video resolution is they base their data on line pairs.
If you read the section on human vision in this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Principles-Neural-Science-Edition-Kandel/dp/0071390111
You will see that human vision is highly tuned to detect high contrast borders and movement, not consistent texture.
If your image sensor requires movement to work, what do you expect to get from results on line pairs? If each photocell has to pass over the equivalent width of several lines to detect one line, of course the signal will be muddied with multiple lines.
When people say you can't see the difference between "HD" and 4K at anything but close range, what they're actually talking about is your ability to see consistent repeating texture, so for example a picture of a flat cloth with no irregularities will look roughly the same.
Outlines and any patterns of lower frequency continue to gain detail far above that limit.

According to my testing I wouldn't want to be using a 60" 8K screen from much more than six feet away, but 4K is basically interchangeable with your standard "HD" display in the average livingroom.

 

[TeT]

...What concerns me is that 4K might already be passé. Apple has 5k monitors and Dell recently announced 8k monitors, and I would expect more companies to follow suit. I wonder whether we are only seeing the continued push of 4K because so many companies have invested in it....

Personally I would think that one needs the proper hardware to display/edit before even shooting in 4K, otherwise what's the point?


And whether it is going to be outdated like 480 or 720 by 1080, only the the future will tell.

I still download and play movies in 720.. 1080 is often available but file size + TV size etc... I am good watching 720. If & When I get larger tv, maybe we will think about 1080 or not...

 

[RLPhoto]

4k is one of the big features I'd like in the 5d4 along with DPAF. Otherwise another 1080p cam isn't much incentive for me to buy.

 

[expatinasia]

I still download and play movies in 720.. 1080 is often available but file size + TV size etc... I am good watching 720. If & When I get larger tv, maybe we will think about 1080 or not...

This really is not about what you watch today, though I expect most people will have full HD TVs at home, even if the majority do not yet have 4K TVs.

I also doubt that anyone shoots in 720, even if you are watching them at 480 or 720.

This is about future proofing your work. To be able to shoot in 4K and take stills from that, or downsize it to 1080p while still keeping the 4K files is valuable.

I recently did a shoot which was stills plus video. There was one shot in the video that my client really liked which I had not taken a still of. If that video was in 4K I would be able to give him a very good quality still. That is just one very small example.

I am sure that those who do not understand will ask the same about 8K video when the time comes, and on it goes.

 

[Zv]

I still download and play movies in 720.. 1080 is often available but file size + TV size etc... I am good watching 720. If & When I get larger tv, maybe we will think about 1080 or not...

This really is not about what you watch today, though I expect most people will have full HD TVs at home, even if the majority do not yet have 4K TVs.

I also doubt that anyone shoots in 720, even if you are watching them at 480 or 720.

This is about future proofing your work. To be able to shoot in 4K and take stills from that, or downsize it to 1080p while still keeping the 4K files is valuable.

I recently did a shoot which was stills plus video. There was one shot in the video that my client really liked which I had not taken a still of. If that video was in 4K I would be able to give him a very good quality still. That is just one very small example.

I am sure that those who do not understand will ask the same about 8K video when the time comes, and on it goes.

TeT has a valid opinion. The poll question is open to anyone, those who shoot video and those who watch video. The purpose is to see who cares about 4K right now and TeT's response is that he doesn't.

 

[Don Haines]

My first video card was a home made (wire wrapped TTL logic) 512 bit by 192 line monochrome output that could be displayed on an ordinary TV.... at the same time 4K was a lot of memory and we stored programs on audio tape....

Since then, my computer has gone from and 8 bit processor at a 500Khz clock rate to a 4 core 64 bit processor running at 3.8Ghz.... about 6 orders of magnitude more computing power.... and that doesn't even consider 1000 CUDA cores running at 1.1Ghz on my video card....

My memory has gone from 4K to 16Gbytes, about 6.5 orders of magnitude.

The first hard drive I bought for work was $10,000 for a 10Mbyte hard drive. Now for $200 I can get a 4Tbyte drive... about 8 orders of magnitude more storage for the dollar.

My first commercial video card/display was 640x400 pixels. A 1080P video display is 7.7 times the number of pixels, or an increase of less than 1 order of magnitude.

Compared to everything else, the improvement of displays and video absolutely sucks! 4K is long overdue and I, for one, welcome it.

 

[sanj]

Absolutely yes. This question is obsolete now.

Indeed, that's been effectively demonstrated by the responses to the poll above.

Hahahaah. How convenient that is indeed. Countless times you state that the opinion of people in this forum does not count in the real world and manufactures do their own research to determine future products. But now, since the poll results matches your thinking, you point to that. Effective response, not!

Does not the 5k of the iMac or the crystal clear trend of most new cameras putting 4k in their camera's not make you face up to the fact that 4k is not the future but is now?

Personally I rarely shoot 4k on DSLR (I use on Alexia and Red) except for when using them at second camera for quick cuts. I need 4k for that. 1080p would just crumble and die.

As the owner of 2 Canon 1dc I know how popular 4k is because producers now grab jobs by saying they will shoot on 4k which will not only make the product better and future proof.

Are you even a videographer?

Strong coffee time.

 

[Tugela]

No, not one iota.

4K is completely over hyped, who the hell wants to see a newscaster's pimple from 30ft'?

I can well understand it, and higher resolutions, for big budget productions where the visuals are a vital component of 'the experience' but 4K footage of your dog on the beach, you can keep it.

Two core reasoning's for 4K are pretty weak too. The first is, I need to shoot 4K so I can edit down to HD in post for cropping and stabilization purposes, is akin to saying I shoot with a 100mm lens so I can crop down to a 400mm fov for my wildlife shooting, or, I shoot medium format stills so I can edit down to 135 format! Can you imagine somebody suggesting that? If you use either of those reasoning's then you no longer have 4K quality anyway so what was the point of shooting it?

Linked to that is the comment "it is inevitable". Well the HD standard works pretty well for the screen size viewing distance coc calculations that are based on human vision, so most of the time we see very little difference. Sure in the store when you stand next to a 4K and an HD screen the difference is dramatic, and we have progressed towards larger screens and shorter viewing distances, but for most people when they get the 4K screen home and in their normal position the differences are not so big and often not actually viewable with the naked eye. Which puts 4K into perspective and gives higher resolution systems a very real limit to practical applications.

The second reasoning is the "I can take still images from my 4K footage", really? The 1DX was hyped with that capability and every still I saw from it looked pretty weak in comparison to an 18MP still from the same camera.

But it is a great way of selling media cards, HDD's, and computing power.........

Shoot a scene with lots of foliage (or some other non regular detail) in it with a wide angle (not of large objects) in HD and 4K. Then view the scenes on an HD panel and a 4K panel of the same size. The difference will be immediate and stark, because the HD footage cannot resolve the detail you are looking at.

The mistake people make is looking at something like a person or some other large object close to the camera with a narrow field of view. And in a situation like that visually your brain will register the large object over detail, and may not "notice" the stark differences between the two clips. That completely changes when you look at a scene shot with a wide angle of view with lots of small detail that is the focus of attention.

Frankly, the people who say "oh, you can't tell the difference" just boggles the mind. They either have bad eyesight or have never actually seen 4K footage and base their opinion on stuff they have heard as opposed to actual experience.

 

[Tugela]

If you need help selling a 4K recording, pull out a VHS tape and see how good it looks on your 60" HDTV. In 10 years, HD will look the same - antiquated, low quality. We capture once in a lifetime events, generally speaking, I want to offer my clients the very best possible currently. Otherwise, might as well get out the 8mm camcorder.

This is a poor analogy due to the diminishing returns of 4K vs average display size. 4K requires around 120" screen to start really noticing a difference over 1080p from normal seating distance (source: Joe Kane), which is over double the average display size end users have. Technology has evolved a lot but eventually displays just get too big for a living space, and for 99.9% of people 120" will be too big.

About the only good argument for 4K video is if you are going to crop a lot, as it will allow you to do a significant crop while retaining acceptable pixel density. It can also be used as a marketing tool to differentiate yourself from your competition, but it is not something the end user will significantly benefit from.

For the vast majority of end users, though, there will be no noticeable difference between 4k and 1080p. An analogy to the audio world: 4k is like DVD-Audio and SACD - technically better than standard CD, but differences that are not audible. 24bit/96khz may be useful to the producer, but for the end user anything more than 16bit/44.1khz is a waste.

Instead of quoting someone who probably hasn't really compared what stuff actually looks like, why don't you compare directly. And don't do the stupid thing that most people do, which is to compare HD to upscaled HD and say "there is no difference". Of course there is no difference - it is the same footage for gods sake - they will both like HD because they ARE both HD. Just being displayed on a 4K panel doesn't magically turn HD footage into something other than HD footage.

 

[sanj]

No, not one iota.

4K is completely over hyped, who the hell wants to see a newscaster's pimple from 30ft'?

I can well understand it, and higher resolutions, for big budget productions where the visuals are a vital component of 'the experience' but 4K footage of your dog on the beach, you can keep it.

Two core reasoning's for 4K are pretty weak too. The first is, I need to shoot 4K so I can edit down to HD in post for cropping and stabilization purposes, is akin to saying I shoot with a 100mm lens so I can crop down to a 400mm fov for my wildlife shooting, or, I shoot medium format stills so I can edit down to 135 format! Can you imagine somebody suggesting that? If you use either of those reasoning's then you no longer have 4K quality anyway so what was the point of shooting it?

Linked to that is the comment "it is inevitable". Well the HD standard works pretty well for the screen size viewing distance coc calculations that are based on human vision, so most of the time we see very little difference. Sure in the store when you stand next to a 4K and an HD screen the difference is dramatic, and we have progressed towards larger screens and shorter viewing distances, but for most people when they get the 4K screen home and in their normal position the differences are not so big and often not actually viewable with the naked eye. Which puts 4K into perspective and gives higher resolution systems a very real limit to practical applications.

The second reasoning is the "I can take still images from my 4K footage", really? The 1DX was hyped with that capability and every still I saw from it looked pretty weak in comparison to an 18MP still from the same camera.

But it is a great way of selling media cards, HDD's, and computing power.........

Shoot a scene with lots of foliage (or some other non regular detail) in it with a wide angle (not of large objects) in HD and 4K. Then view the scenes on an HD panel and a 4K panel of the same size. The difference will be immediate and stark, because the HD footage cannot resolve the detail you are looking at.

The mistake people make is looking at something like a person or some other large object close to the camera with a narrow field of view. And in a situation like that visually your brain will register the large object over detail, and may not "notice" the stark differences between the two clips. That completely changes when you look at a scene shot with a wide angle of view with lots of small detail that is the focus of attention.

Frankly, the people who say "oh, you can't tell the difference" just boggles the mind. They either have bad eyesight or have never actually seen 4K footage and base their opinion on stuff they have heard as opposed to actual experience.

Nailed it.

 

[TeT]

I still download and play movies in 720.. 1080 is often available but file size + TV size etc... I am good watching 720. If & When I get larger tv, maybe we will think about 1080 or not...

This really is not about what you watch today, though I expect most people will have full HD TVs at home, even if the majority do not yet have 4K TVs.

I also doubt that anyone shoots in 720, even if you are watching them at 480 or 720.

This is about future proofing your work. To be able to shoot in 4K and take stills from that, or downsize it to 1080p while still keeping the 4K files is valuable.

I recently did a shoot which was stills plus video. There was one shot in the video that my client really liked which I had not taken a still of. If that video was in 4K I would be able to give him a very good quality still. That is just one very small example.

I am sure that those who do not understand will ask the same about 8K video when the time comes, and on it goes.

agree; was speaking more to his comment about 4K becoming outdated soon.. it won't.

 

[mkabi]

I don't know why you guys are wasting time on 4K... seriously....
8K is around the corner, I'm serious... thats what I am waiting for... No joke.
Actually, and this might sound stupid and/or crazy, but I'm waiting for Holograms to start taking off... the future can't come soon enough for me.

I'm actually contemplating on getting this for my driveway... but its a bit out of my price range
Don't mind the corny commercial, just that this tech. actually exists???
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlTA3rnpgzU

 

[slclick]

Option 6: No, stills shooter only

 

[Don Haines]

I am sick and tired of all those crappy video clips of bigfoot, UFOs, and the Loch Ness Monster. 4K and 8K video would solve the mystery.... bring it on!

 

[Besisika]

Two core reasoning's for 4K are pretty weak too. The first is, I need to shoot 4K so I can edit down to HD in post for cropping and stabilization purposes, is akin to saying I shoot with a 100mm lens so I can crop down to a 400mm fov for my wildlife shooting, or, I shoot medium format stills so I can edit down to 135 format! Can you imagine somebody suggesting that? If you use either of those reasoning's then you no longer have 4K quality anyway so what was the point of shooting it?

Interesting point of view.
I shoot raw at 5184X3456 but I end up saving it as a JPG at 3840X2560 as a photographer, so why not shoot video at 4K and get final result at 1080? Especially if that gives you advantages.
I am interested in 4K mainly for the sake of stabilization but would have my final footage at 1080.
Please give me a reason not to. I must be lost somewhere. People do shoot raw but publish JPG and TIFF.
Not sure how many times have you found yourself having a footage that is just a touch shaky.
I have been thousands of times, and I would take any technology that would save me from that pain.
Not sure if the current technology will give good enough result but when it is widely available I would certainly try it.
I do not intend to crop it, but stabilize it - definitely.
Another reason is grabbing stills from video for Fusion. Many times I find it a lot faster to shoot a bunch of short videos and grab stills from them for the sake of fusion.

Stabilizing 1080 for a finalized 1080 or grabbing stills from a 1080 for the sake of a 1080 fusion is what I use today and the image quality suffers. I do believe 4K would give me better solution than 1080, again for a final 1080 (not a final 4K as some assume); similar to shooting in CR2 but publishing it on web page in JPG.
You come up with a good way to stabilize a handheld 5s video, please share I am listening.
Using hardware to stabilize video is definitely the right way, but as a photographer I always prefer having chances to be able to fix or improve things in post - the only reason I shoot raw, as opposed to JPG.