Why is 4K important?

[snoke]

Everyone says 4K "not important." TV only 1080p. No need for 4K. Too much data. Too hard to process. And nobody makes video, everyone just make photos.

For every birthday party for my children, I video the whole "happy birthday" song and cake thing. I do it with my phone and my phone does 4K. You can say that the most important videos I make are all done in 4K and using a camera - not expensive Canon equipment (good argument why have it if it is never used for important things!) If Canon make DSLR do 4K and have good IS lens, then I do 4K video of birthday with Canon camera. But not now.

In 15-20 years time, as my kids get older and we have parties where "remember when", I'll have videos to share of those moments. "Oh but my photos are 1893MP!" The difference between photos and videos of parties is "Oh, that's a nice photo" and "listen to them laughing!" / "look at what they're doing!". Back to those future parties. At that point in time, TVs are either going to be 4K "standard" ("Gee dad, why didn't you have good video back then?") or maybe even 6K/8K ("Wow, dad, when I was a baby that was the best video available?!") 1080p might be "ok" now but it will age and it will not age well. Just look at the recent promo's for the upcoming re-release of Terminator 2. Cinemas will be 3D but a 4K UHD edition is being done and it looks sweeet.

Nobody buys a 24MP camera so that they can keep 2MP images (ok, maybe 4MP if you've got a UHD screen), everyone buys 24MP cameras to keep 24MP pictures. Even if they only ever get downres'd for monitors, by keeping the original raw/jpeg, you can re-render it for bigger screens in the future. Same with video.

 

[Loswr]

Back to those future parties. At that point in time, TVs are either going to be 4K "standard" ("Gee dad, why didn't you have good video back then?") or maybe even 6K/8K ("Wow, dad, when I was a baby that was the best video available?!") 1080p might be "ok" now but it will age and it will not age well.

Too right. I had a bunch of movies of my childhood, heartwarming family scenes of me and my dad, who's now deceased. But they were all shot on Super 8 and the quality was crap by today's standards, so I threw them all away.

: : : : :

 

[chris_w_digits]

Once it becomes practical to shoot 4K (for many it is now), I say go ahead. However, I remember not long ago when many people could not even tell the difference in 720 and 1080 on a flat panel at normal viewing distance. At the university where I work, 1280x800 was a sufficient resolution to present practically any material to a class or for a seminar without the pixel structure being visible to students except the ones closest to the front. The brightness and contrast and color fidelity was more important than the resolution in that case. This makes me wonder how many people could tell the difference in 2160 (what I wish 4K were called) and 1080 if they had trouble distinguishing 1080 and 720 at normal distance. I would imagine that other factors (contrast, brightness, color fidelity) would contribute more to the perceived quality than resolution once it is past what the eye can resolve. I have a rather large collection of 1980s music videos which are nearly all 4x3 aspect in 480 (NTSC) or 576 (PAL) format and they hold up quite well when scaled up if the original quality was good. In my opinion, the common stretching of 4x3 to 16x9 or putting annoying "echos" on the sides of the videos to fill out the screen is what makes a lot of old material look terrible (that and using way too low a bitrate to encode it).

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

Not everyone says 4K is important. I have it on my 5D MK IV, but so far haven't bothered with it. I may play with it, but I doubt that it will be of much value if any to me.

 

[Zeidora]

Video is just fine, so shoot it with VIDEO camera. A dSLR is a PHOTO-camera.

Whoever cares about 4K should also care about t-stops (as opposed to f-stops), fluid heads, and audio quality. There seems to be a major disconnect between 4K "quality" and the remainder of the quality requirements. As a pro-video friend once pointed out, the difference between photography and videography is: when you press the shutter in photography, all your problems are over. With video, all your problems start.

That is why I don't get why people care about 4K on a dSLR, with f-stop lenses and handheld. Does not compute for me. And for snap shot videos, a cell phone is just as good.

 

[ajfotofilmagem]

We all know that there are 41-megapixel mobile phones today. So you should throw your DSLR in the trash, and make photos with "the highest resolution available," is not it?

Dinamic range
Depth of color
Bokeh
Image Stabilization
High Bit Rate
No, none of this matters ... :

 

[stevelee]

When I shoot video on my iPhone, I shoot 4K. It doesn't have optical zoom, so the extra resolution comes in handy when I edit. I can zoom in a lot, and still have rather sharp videos that Compressor can output to 720p.

As for TVs, people couldn't tell the difference between 720p and 1080i because they really are the same amount of data, for one thing. I notice that OTA, some of our local stations broadcast 1080i and at least one does 720p. Both look slightly better from indoor antenna reception than when compressed for cable.

Another reason the two are practically indistinguishable is at what I consider normal viewing distance, a 46" set is not big enough for it to matter. Now that 65" sets are becoming more common, then 4K can make a difference. My guess is at this point streaming 4K is going to be highly compressed most of the time, so may not be much improvement over 1080p of Blu-Ray, if as good.

 

[Darkly]

Too right. I had a bunch of movies of my childhood, heartwarming family scenes of me and my dad, who's now deceased. But they were all shot on Super 8 and the quality was crap by today's standards, so I threw them all away.

: : : : :

Old media may not be crisp and shiny like current, but I certainly wouldn't throw away anything like that away just because it wasn't of the highest quality. Call me sentimental but moments in time captured on celluloid are beyond value.

Back to the original question of the value of 4k, you're looking at twice the horizontal resolution of a 1080p video. On my 42" TV 1080p content looks pretty sharp, and you've got to think how much sharper can an image get before you simply can't tell the difference any more. The difference between SD and HD1080 is night and day on that size of set. The difference between 1080p and 4k at that same size is less striking, and many will find 1080p content perfectly acceptable. 4k and higher resolutions will be more appreciated with larger screen sizes, and for many people the differences start to become significant at 50" and higher.

As for capturing family memories, grab them with whatever you have and enjoy them for what they are. Old Polaroids have the power to take us back to special moments in time, and although few people regard them as being particularly high quality they still do the trick...

 

[Loswr]

Too right. I had a bunch of movies of my childhood, heartwarming family scenes of me and my dad, who's now deceased. But they were all shot on Super 8 and the quality was crap by today's standards, so I threw them all away.

: : : : :

Old media may not be crisp and shiny like current, but I certainly wouldn't throw away anything like that away just because it wasn't of the highest quality. Call me sentimental but moments in time captured on celluloid are beyond value.

Perhaps the five in succession were insufficent to make my point. Is there a better sarcasm emoji?

 

[rfdesigner]

Everyone says 4K "not important." TV only 1080p. No need for 4K. Too much data. Too hard to process. And nobody makes video, everyone just make photos.

For every birthday party for my children, I video the whole "happy birthday" song and cake thing. I do it with my phone and my phone does 4K. You can say that the most important videos I make are all done in 4K and using a camera - not expensive Canon equipment (good argument why have it if it is never used for important things!) If Canon make DSLR do 4K and have good IS lens, then I do 4K video of birthday with Canon camera. But not now.

In 15-20 years time, as my kids get older and we have parties where "remember when", I'll have videos to share of those moments. "Oh but my photos are 1893MP!" The difference between photos and videos of parties is "Oh, that's a nice photo" and "listen to them laughing!" / "look at what they're doing!". Back to those future parties. At that point in time, TVs are either going to be 4K "standard" ("Gee dad, why didn't you have good video back then?") or maybe even 6K/8K ("Wow, dad, when I was a baby that was the best video available?!") 1080p might be "ok" now but it will age and it will not age well. Just look at the recent promo's for the upcoming re-release of Terminator 2. Cinemas will be 3D but a 4K UHD edition is being done and it looks sweeet.

Nobody buys a 24MP camera so that they can keep 2MP images (ok, maybe 4MP if you've got a UHD screen), everyone buys 24MP cameras to keep 24MP pictures. Even if they only ever get downres'd for monitors, by keeping the original raw/jpeg, you can re-render it for bigger screens in the future. Same with video.

hmm... not so sure

I'm old enough to remember CDs comming in.

There was debate about whether 44.1k or 16bit was enough and so on..

30 years later and we're still using 44.1 & 16bit. Sure there are other "better" formats, but 44.1/16 is plenty good enough.

When it comes to video, there was 640/480 analogue.. pretty grim, more like old 78s

Then we got 720p DVDs... Holy Muffins! what an improvement

Blueray/1080p.. OK.. it's nice, but I still watch 720p, I've got a few bluerays but my laptop only goes as far as 720p and you know what?.. I don't enjoy stuff any more because it's 1080p.

Now we have 4k.. and 8k's in the pipeline

Now I don't know what the video version of 44.1k/16bit is, but I'm willing to bet it's probably about 3k. And 1080p is more than my laptop can show, my next laptop will show 1080p and it will be nice to have it and "old" vidoes will look a touch "old" but only a touch, because the colour, contrast, sound quality etc will all be there.

So it's more like going from 22k/16bit to 44k/16bit.. nice to have and you will notice, but we're never going to experience the kind of "you only had X" in your day like we do now looking at old analog video.

 

[svensl]

I used to shoot photos only, mainly landscapes and dog photography. Recently I started shooting video of dogs also. It's been a steep learning curve and it is a lot of fun. Coming from photography I have a Canon 5D Mark IV which is a great camera. I mainly do 1080p due to the crop factor limitations of the 5D but recently have been asked to do 4K to future proof the content. If it was easier to shoot 4K with the 5D I would do it more often to utilize the extra resolution in editing.

 

[unfocused]

Back to those future parties. At that point in time, TVs are either going to be 4K "standard" ("Gee dad, why didn't you have good video back then?") or maybe even 6K/8K ("Wow, dad, when I was a baby that was the best video available?!") 1080p might be "ok" now but it will age and it will not age well.

Too right. I had a bunch of movies of my childhood, heartwarming family scenes of me and my dad, who's now deceased. But they were all shot on Super 8 and the quality was crap by today's standards, so I threw them all away.

: : : : :

I know what you mean. Everybody talks about how "Citizen Kane" is the greatest movie of all time, but it was shot on black and white film, so I know it's absolute crap. Why waste my time with that when I can watch "Fifty Shades Darker" which is so much better because it was shot with modern equipment.

 

[ethanz]

The 4K from my 1DXii is great. If you want 4K, pony up the money for a camera that has it. And if you actually want good video, as a previous poster said, get all the accompanying sound/accessories to make it nice.

Neuro, people may not be able to distinguish between your sarcasm and your regular posts.

 

[Loswr]

Why waste my time with that when I can watch "Fifty Shades Darker" which is so much better because it was shot with modern equipment.

Oh, come on. You know why you really bought Fifty Shades Darker. Because it sounded like it had a helluva lot of DR.

 

[Loswr]

Neuro, people may not be able to distinguish between your sarcasm and your regular posts.

Maybe ten would make it easier?

: : : : : : : : : :

Or would it be better to just use one big one?

 

[Maximilian]

Why waste my time with that when I can watch "Fifty Shades Darker" which is so much better because it was shot with modern equipment.

Oh, come on. You know why you really bought Fifty Shades Darker. Because it sounded like it had a helluva lot of DR.

*rofl* That made my day. Thank you.

 

[Khalai]

Why waste my time with that when I can watch "Fifty Shades Darker" which is so much better because it was shot with modern equipment.

Oh, come on. You know why you really bought Fifty Shades Darker. Because it sounded like it had a helluva lot of DR.

Did you get your abbreviations bad again?

 

[unfocused]

...Neuro, people may not be able to distinguish between your sarcasm and your regular posts.

I don't believe there is any difference between his regular posts and his sarcasm.

 

[Khalai]

...Neuro, people may not be able to distinguish between your sarcasm and your regular posts.

I don't believe there is any difference between his regular posts and his sarcasm.

His sarcasm level is over 9000!!!

 

[Loswr]

Please, gentlemen. I don't have a sarcastic bone in my body.

I have 204 of them (for those who are counting, that's all of them except the humeri).