Lifting Stills from 5K

[steve green]

Hi Guys,
I'm going to be shooting a project that wants to be able to lift stills off our R3D files.....I was thinking of shooting 5KHD to keep vignetting to a minimum. With the frame size of 4800x2700 what would the "DPI" be? The post people have told us they need a minimum of 300 DPI.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

DPI is dependent on size. "Dots per Inch". Dot in this case is a pixel.

4800 dots /300 dots per " = 16"
x
2700 dots /300 dots per " = 9"

 

[Craig Parkes]

Hi Guys,
I'm going to be shooting a project that wants to be able to lift stills off our R3D files.....I was thinking of shooting 5KHD to keep vignetting to a minimum. With the frame size of 4800x2700 what would the "DPI" be? The post people have told us they need a minimum of 300 DPI.

DPI is a measure of density, not resolution.

300DPI means 300 Dots Per Inch - Dots equates to pixels so that allows for 16" x 9 " frame at 300DPI. If what they are printing too is going to be wider than 16" and needs to be 300DPI then you'll be heading towards too low res, but that's only really relevant if people are viewing it up close. Not much is wider than 16" for day to day print images, but if they are cropping in to a shot (say so that it's portrait rather than landscape) you might find yourself a little short, which is why a lot of print stuff is shot framing vertically rather than horizontally (aside from just the aspect ratio of print being vertical).

Major magazine covers have been shot in that fashion, so I don't think you'll have a problem for resolution. The bigger issue is that 16:9 is not a very print friendly Aspect ratio, so they are undoubtedly going to be extracting from that, so knowing what they are trying to capture for still and ensuring your framed so that they don't have to crop too much for that extraction may help.

 

[Bill Sepaniak]

When you say, "lift stills off our R3D files," the real question is what do you plan to so with the stills? I have printed 24" x 48" canvas giclees from 5K Epic footage (one of which is actually hanging in Jarred's office). Because it was a canvas gallery wrap, the actual canvas size of the printed frame grab as 29.5" x 53.5". In a nutshell, my basic workflow, (for large format printing), is as follows:

1. Footage "developed" in RCX Pro to your liking.
2. Individual frame was exported out out of RCX Pro as a 16 bit uncompressed .tiff file.
3. The .tiff file was opened in Photoshop and the color space was converted to Adobe RGB1998 at 300 dpi. (from the original 72 dpi). and saved again as a 16 bit uncompressed .tiff.
4. The 300 dpi 16 bit Adobe RGB1998 .tiff file can be further enhanced / color corrected / noise-reduced in Lightroom and/or Photoshop to your liking and similarly saved as a 16 bit uncompressed .tiff.
5. Depending upon what you do to the file, the file size for final output for print will be around 700mb.



____________________________________
Scarlet X # 1859 “Bettie Page”
“… preparing to ‘whip’ the competition …”

Zeiss Lenses:

CY 21/2.8
ZF 28/2.0
CY 35-70/3.4
CY 50/1.4
ZF100/2.0

Nikon Lenses:
G 14-24/2.8
G 24-70/2.8
D 80-200/2.8

Tokina Lenses:

11-16/2.8

 

[steve green]

DPI is a measure of density, not resolution.

300DPI means 300 Dots Per Inch - Dots equates to pixels so that allows for 16" x 9 " frame at 300DPI. If what they are printing too is going to be wider than 16" and needs to be 300DPI then you'll be heading towards too low res, but that's only really relevant if people are viewing it up close. Not much is wider than 16" for day to day print images, but if they are cropping in to a shot (say so that it's portrait rather than landscape) you might find yourself a little short, which is why a lot of print stuff is shot framing vertically rather than horizontally (aside from just the aspect ratio of print being vertical).




Major magazine covers have been shot in that fashion, so I don't think you'll have a problem for resolution. The bigger issue is that 16:9 is not a very print friendly Aspect ratio, so they are undoubtedly going to be extracting from that, so knowing what they are trying to capture for still and ensuring your framed so that they don't have to crop too much for that extraction may help.

Believe it or not they want to be able to make billboards! Am I dreaming thinking the Epic can do this as well as shoot the commercial?

 

[Matt Gottshalk]

Tagged.

 

[thomas s stanton]

I would recommend doing some tests before you shoot. On my last Epic stills shoot, in addition to mounting the camera vertically, I needed to skinny up the shutter to get the results the client was looking for.

 

[Les C.]

I've heard that HDRX might be useful. From another thread:

"For sharper frames, people use HDRX in a different way, they use the HDRX track that has a narrow shutter for pulling sharp stills.. and then use the normal track for video with motion blur."

BTW - to blow it up for billboards, NeatVideo de-noising is your friend.

 

[steve green]

I've heard that HDRX might be useful. From another thread:

"For sharper frames, people use HDRX in a different way, they use the HDRX track that has a narrow shutter for pulling sharp stills.. and then use the normal track for video with motion blur."

BTW - to blow it up for billboards, NeatVideo de-noising is your friend.

Will the resolution hold up for a billboard?

 

[Paul Russell]

Definitely not.

Full frame 5K is 5120 x 2700, which is 17" x 9" in a magazine print at 300dpi, so not really big enough for a full page, let alone a double page spread. You can check this in photoshop through the image size dialog.

You can use fractal algo software (like Genuine Fractals) to big it up for billboards, but it will probably look blurry and noisy.

Also unless you are shooting at a minimum shutter speed of 1/125th of a second the motion blur will be inappropriate for stills.

 

[Bill Sepaniak]

You have to understand that printing for billboards is a lot different than printing for fine art or photographic reproduction. The printing techniques used in billboard printing typically involve RIP's that use interpolation to get to the desired file size.

Generally speaking, fine art and photographic enlargements that are meant to be viewed relatively close-up .... say 2' to 4' ... need higher dpi's than a sign, graphic or billboard that is meant to be viewed from 20' or even hundreds of feet away. 300 dpi is a good starting point for fine art and photographic enlargements that are meant to be viewed from a few feet away, but I have printed in the range to 100 to 200 dpi for works that were meant to be viewed from further distances. Now, as to billboards that you see on the road, they are typically printed at around 12 to 15 dpi .... because they are meant to be seen from a considerable distance. It is perceived resolution that counts. (If you see them close-up, they obviously will look blocky / jagged.)

Here is something that you can do to see how big you can go with your file:

1. Open your file in Photoshop.
2. View you file under Image > Image Size.
3. In Image Size, uncheck the resample box and keep the constrain proportions checked.
4. In the resolution box type in the dpi you want to use: the smaller the dpi, the larger the image size, and bigger the dpi, the smaller the image size. You will quickly get a rough idea of how big the file can be enlarged (obviously ... not how it will look when it is enlarged ... )

An Epic sensor is what, 14 megapixels? I would think that should be more than sufficient to give you something usable for a billboard. However, at the end of the day, the only way you will really know is to get the technical requirements from the billboard printer or give them a test file and get some feed-back from them.

____________________________________
Scarlet X # 1859 “Bettie Page”
“… preparing to ‘whip’ the competition …”

Zeiss Lenses:

CY 21/2.8
ZF 28/2.0
CY 35-70/3.4
CY 50/1.4
ZF100/2.0

Nikon Lenses:
G 14-24/2.8
G 24-70/2.8
D 80-200/2.8

Tokina Lenses:

11-16/2.8

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Billboards are *not* 300 DPI. You're dealing with clueless people who don't know what they're asking for--which is unfortunately normal for the print world.

"Please give us this 8" print at 300MB resolution."

 

[Les C.]

Will the resolution hold up for a billboard?

That's a subjective question.

But, think about this, Hugo was shot with 2K Arri, and blown up (with mostly 2K projectors, I'd guess) to fill a large movie screen where the viewers were quite close and (hopefully) stationary.

A billboard is viewed from a highway at a large distance (much, much smaller relatively than a movie screen) while (hopefully) traveling at a speed greater than zero mph - so ... maybe a billboard's necessary quality is less than what one would suppose?

I have no actual knowledge to base this assumption on, I'm just trying to reason it out logically.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

It's a logical argument but while the screen is stationary... the subject matter in the movie screen is moving.

A little googling says the average highway billboard is about 24' wide. 24' * 12" * 20dpi = 5760 resolution is probably all you'll ever need. I know people who have gotten asked for 24' @ 300 dpi and they just used this: http://www.ononesoftware.com/products/perfect-resize/. And the client was none the wiser.

 

[Craig Parkes]

Yeah, for billboards 300DPI is nonsense - when they ask for 300DPI al they mean is 'High Res' or 'Big'.

RED images have been used on billboards before, you should be fine.

 

[paul schefz]

actually billboard (or at least printed billboards) have almost penny sized dots (pixels) so it really isn't that hard to blow up to billboard size....magazine print is about 170LPI (because they use off set, not inkjet...) so the file is big enough....basically...and billboards are extreme verticals, so that works in you favor....
but it really depends on you subject...there is a reason they usually turn the epic on the side when shooting the cover...to get the best possible file...if you are looking at beauty, hair,.fine detail, everything counts....make sure your exposure is spot on and most important keep the compression as low as possible.....
the hard thing is to get a 30x40 fine art print from a epic/scarlet file....that is tough....
genuine fractals can work wonders but really needs a great, detailed, sharp! file to start with....a good retoucher can do wonders....
red actually just ran a 4 times fold out (vertical) in the latest vogue of rooney mara, a beauty shot with epic.....that print is so clean and crisp, you would have no problem going very large with it....
billboard used to be shot with 35mm still cameras....so technically it is very doable....
like mentioned here before, you will have to play with shutter speed and figure out how to balance natural motion (for video) with sharp images for stills....

 

[PatrickFaith]

When you say, "lift stills off our R3D files," the real question is what do you plan to so with the stills? I have printed 24" x 48" canvas giclees from 5K Epic footage (one of which is actually hanging in Jarred's office). Because it was a canvas gallery wrap, the actual canvas size of the printed frame grab as 29.5" x 53.5". In a nutshell, my basic workflow, (for large format printing), is as follows:

1. Footage "developed" in RCX Pro to your liking.
2. Individual frame was exported out out of RCX Pro as a 16 bit uncompressed .tiff file.
3. The .tiff file was opened in Photoshop and the color space was converted to Adobe RGB1998 at 300 dpi. (from the original 72 dpi). and saved again as a 16 bit uncompressed .tiff.
4. The 300 dpi 16 bit Adobe RGB1998 .tiff file can be further enhanced / color corrected / noise-reduced in Lightroom and/or Photoshop to your liking and similarly saved as a 16 bit uncompressed .tiff.
5. Depending upon what you do to the file, the file size for final output for print will be around 700mb.

I think Bill gave the hot tip, especially lightroom. I convert 4k images to 8k matte's for compositing shot backgrounds ... and the 8k mattes look great(i.e. i'm panning a keyed 4k image with a 8k matte moving in the background). Adobe must be doing something magical behind the scenes (this btw even works in AE, especially if i go directly from a r3d to a 8k composite). Lightroom even has some plugin's that help a bit on blow ups if needed.

 

[steve green]

When you say, "lift stills off our R3D files," the real question is what do you plan to so with the stills? I have printed 24" x 48" canvas giclees from 5K Epic footage (one of which is actually hanging in Jarred's office). Because it was a canvas gallery wrap, the actual canvas size of the printed frame grab as 29.5" x 53.5". In a nutshell, my basic workflow, (for large format printing), is as follows:

1. Footage "developed" in RCX Pro to your liking.
2. Individual frame was exported out out of RCX Pro as a 16 bit uncompressed .tiff file.
3. The .tiff file was opened in Photoshop and the color space was converted to Adobe RGB1998 at 300 dpi. (from the original 72 dpi). and saved again as a 16 bit uncompressed .tiff.
4. The 300 dpi 16 bit Adobe RGB1998 .tiff file can be further enhanced / color corrected / noise-reduced in Lightroom and/or Photoshop to your liking and similarly saved as a 16 bit uncompressed .tiff.
5. Depending upon what you do to the file, the file size for final output for print will be around 700mb.




____________________________________
Scarlet X # 1859 “Bettie Page”
“… preparing to ‘whip’ the competition …”

Zeiss Lenses:

CY 21/2.8
ZF 28/2.0
CY 35-70/3.4
CY 50/1.4
ZF100/2.0

Nikon Lenses:
G 14-24/2.8
G 24-70/2.8
D 80-200/2.8

Tokina Lenses:

11-16/2.8

Thank you Bill and everyone else for the knowledge you've lent. Seems like it's certainly worth the exercise of a test. I shot a frame at 5KHD and uploaded it to the print guys with these guidelines to let them do their work and see if that satisfies their needs. I'll report back the results.

 

[Björn Benckert]

Think of it... a few years back there where no still camera doing anything better than 4k... Where there good looking billboards around back then... yes as far as I remember.
DPI is strange enough a measurement used for printers, telling the printer how far in between your pixels should land on the canvas. However most print people do not know the meaning of the term they think it's resolution.
A 5k 72dpi image holds exact the same amount of data as a 300dpi 5k frame... So simply change the dpi number in photoshop without reraster the image. If you want to enlarge the frame before sending them the image ( which is stupid in a way) you uppress the image using a good scaling algoritm like lancroz or such.

But basically a well exposed epic frame with appropriate shutter angle will hold up better than any billboard printer is able to print.

So if your shot looks nice and does not have unwanted camera motion blur or unwanted motion blur in frame you will do more than great. shooting 180 degree 24p will with any action in scene problably be to much blur. So change shutter speed down to 45 deg or such and you can as mentioned above use the HDRx mode with same exposure to get a frame with less motion blur. if you need to pull it from your moving footage that for some reason need 180 deg shutter.

 

[steve green]

Think of it... a few years back there where no still camera doing anything better than 4k... Where there good looking billboards around back then... yes as far as I remember.
DPI is strange enough a measurement used for printers, telling the printer how far in between your pixels should land on the canvas. However most print people do not know the meaning of the term they think it's resolution.
A 5k 72dpi image holds exact the same amount of data as a 300dpi 5k frame... So simply change the dpi number in photoshop without reraster the image. If you want to enlarge the frame before sending them the image ( which is stupid in a way) you uppress the image using a good scaling algoritm like lancroz or such.

But basically a well exposed epic frame with appropriate shutter angle will hold up better than any billboard printer is able to print.

So if your shot looks nice and does not have unwanted camera motion blur or unwanted motion blur in frame you will do more than great. shooting 180 degree 24p will with any action in scene problably be to much blur. So change shutter speed down to 45 deg or such and you can as mentioned above use the HDRx mode with same exposure to get a frame with less motion blur. if you need to pull it from your moving footage that for some reason need 180 deg shutter.

Silly question.....How would i turn on HDRx and get the same exposure as my A frame and still have a say 45 degree shutter on my X frame?