1080 enough?

[Craig W. Bickerstaff]

Not sure why we're still hearing echoes of this question.
We're going to see 4K digital projectors in many premium theatres within a few years.
Sony, the maker of many "good enough" 1080P cameras used on hollywood pics, has released their 4K F65.

For people on a budget, the less expensive 1080P cameras may be good enough, but you'll have to do up-rez and sharpening.
Stories acting and lighting will play a greater part in how a movie is received, but on a technical level, 1080P will within a year or two be the least desired of the various options (2K, 3K, 4K).

The f65 hasn't actually been released, it's just been announced and not even a price point yet though the rumor is it will be less than 100k.
What I'm interested in is if the genesis will get upgraded to 4k.

 

[Justin R Goff]

That's an odd choice for this production for sure. I would think an EPIC or Alexa would be a lot more appropriate, as you would obviously have a lot more detail in each shot. As someone mentioned, the dynamic range just wouldn't compare. But whoa, Lola does some amazing stuff, awesome how they took years off the X-Men!

 

[Craig W. Bickerstaff]

I think it's important to remember a few things, first is that this is not the first visual effects heavy film to be shot as a 2:35:1 extraction from a 1080p source let alone the Genesis camera, second is that this seems to be the first I've ever heard a VFX supervisor say it's not a very good visual effects camera with the exception of that guy from kodak (who was written off here as a shill) and finally the Genesis camera has a pretty good reputation especially since it has that Panavision logo on it.
Maybe they could have shot on Red one MX or Super 35mm film but I think it's a testament to the Genesis camera that it is still used today but then so is the f900 apparently.

 

[Tom.Wong]

keep in mind there are still valued benefits of a CCD camera, including it's excellent color fidelity. with that many vfx passes, going back and forth in log and maintaining the look when it was time to set it was probably in major consideration. not to mention they designed the Genesis ergonomically to "feel" like a film camera, which a lot of more old school DP's really appreciate and can feel more comfortable with.

that said, I saw the film, and I thought it looked damn good, but with the resolution limitation and with the extract they probably spent a lot more hours working to make it look that good than if they went with another camera. a lot of very visual effects films were shot 1080, but going through all the passes i can just imagine how painful a lot of it was.

and as before mentioned, f65 may be rumored to cost under 100k, but keep in mind the recorder and media alone will cost you another 50+ thousand most likely. there's another major benefits of RED cameras in general. all inclusive RAW codec, recorded internally to affordable proprietary media. i believe a 1 tb SR card is slated to be around 4-6 grand. at the highest quality settings that only records 12 minutes.

ouch.

 

[Peter Moretti]

It amazes me that big budget films like this actually CHOOSE to shoot 1080p...(and then extract 2.35:1)

And doesn't the Genesis cost a ton and needs to be tethered to a RAID tower or something?

It amazes me when someone who criticizes big budget films is correct about only one spec of the equipment that was used.

 

[Craig W. Bickerstaff]

and as before mentioned, f65 may be rumored to cost under 100k, but keep in mind the recorder and media alone will cost you another 50+ thousand most likely. there's another major benefits of RED cameras in general. all inclusive RAW codec, recorded internally to affordable proprietary media. i believe a 1 tb SR card is slated to be around 4-6 grand. at the highest quality settings that only records 12 minutes.

ouch.

I've heard the recorder will be $9k not $50k plus, I think even though Sony cameras tend to be rented they are probably realizing they have to price a little more competitively now that Epic has begun to enter the mix, that said we will learn more in september apparently so until then it's speculation.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Also keep in mind that "Captain America", a little like "Alice in Wonderland" (which was also shot on the Genesis except for some 4K Dalsa efx plates), are period stories where a little bit of softness to the image is less objectionable, more motivated, than some modern hard-edged action movie. In fact, "Captain America" was shot with Hollywood Black Magic diffusion filters, so clearly they weren't aiming for maximum sharpness.

I'm sure we are seeing the waning days of 1080P production for major features anyway, now that the Epic is available, the F65 is coming, and the Alexa can do 2.8K RAW now.

 

[Jarek Zabczynski]

It amazes me when someone who criticizes big budget films is correct about only one spec of the equipment that was used.

How was that a criticism? I find it shocking that these films are made with such a low resolution when other options have existed for a while now. Mind you I like half the films I speak of, but it still baffles me. It's just such a step down from 35mm.

I've never used a Genesis, hence why I was asking...I just remember when it first debuted it was clunky to use and needed outboard recorders or something.

 

[Jeff Coatney]

Sorry guys, I've heard all the arguments for 1080p and they may sound credible. But there's one huge over-arching fact that I can get my mind around: If you have a budget of $140 million dollars, why on earth wouldn't you want the highest resolution image possible? I just don't get it. Seems really short-sighted to me.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

I've never used a Genesis, hence why I was asking...I just remember when it first debuted it was clunky to use and needed outboard recorders or something.

I think you're thinking of the Dalsa or the Viper -- the Genesis always had an attached HDCAM-SR deck.

 

[Craig W. Bickerstaff]

Sorry guys, I've heard all the arguments for 1080p and they may sound credible. But there's one huge over-arching fact that I can get my mind around: If you have a budget of $140 million dollars, why on earth wouldn't you want the highest resolution image possible? I just don't get it. Seems really short-sighted to me.

From everything I've heard about the process of making these big budget block buster movies I would say that resolution really isn't a very important part of the process as "hey it's a panavision digital camera and it looks and feels like those panavision film cameras we are used to"
Resolution is very important on reduser.net and inside red head quarters but the big studios are thinking about wether chris evans will draw the big bucks with his sex appeal.

 

[AnthonyFlores]

Sorry guys, I've heard all the arguments for 1080p and they may sound credible. But there's one huge over-arching fact that I can get my mind around: If you have a budget of $140 million dollars, why on earth wouldn't you want the highest resolution image possible? I just don't get it. Seems really short-sighted to me.

Yah, seems very few understand Jim's point about "future proofing" but it makes absolute perfect sense to me. I mean, I kinda understand not needing to future proof a time-sensitive commercial or something like that -- but a $140 million feature? I would want to have it be able to be viewed in 4k when the time comes ...

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Sorry guys, I've heard all the arguments for 1080p and they may sound credible. But there's one huge over-arching fact that I can get my mind around: If you have a budget of $140 million dollars, why on earth wouldn't you want the highest resolution image possible? I just don't get it. Seems really short-sighted to me.

But that argument predates digital... we used to ask why there weren't more 65mm productions -- what's another $500,000 for 65mm cameras and stock when you're spending $100 million dollars on the movie itself? Or why shoot Super-35 and only use effectively 2.5 perfs when you can shoot anamorphic and use 4-perfs of 35mm negative area? The truth is that image quality is not the number one priority on a lot of movies. A producer thinks "I can spend the money on a bigger negative format... or I can book another star actor... or add 50 more efx shots...." they aren't always going to spend the money on format. Now of course, you're thinking that using a Red One wouldn't have cost them more than using a Genesis, but clearly whoever makes these decisions had some other priority than resolution, I don't know what or why. Considering how good "Social Network" or "Pirates 4" looked using the M-X Red One, I probably wouldn't have picked the Genesis for a major efx movie in 2010-2011, but I don't know what was going on with recommendations from the efx people, studio, etc.

 

[RivaiC]

I still see most are mixing up the terms between spatial resolution and resolution. And this is greatly abused. At once, people are talking about resolution for delivery and all of sudden the discussion falls back to spatial resolution talk.

All of this will resolve if once understand the differences. Red offers the best digital camera spatial resolution on the planet. While you can output to any delivery resolution all you wanted. That's it, there's no argument about this. Film has always 4K + spatial resolution and people TC at 2K, it's their resolution delivery choice. But you always shoot at 4K (spatial resolution) on film.

Most camera offers less spatial resolution than HD 1080 and output final resolution at HD 1080. One really shouldnt confuse between these two. it's all still mix up nowadays.

It's co-exist with each other.

Rivai

 

[Dan Kanes]

People still use that Turd of a camera the Genesis?

Should be called Panavision Exodus...

 

[L. Langer]

People still use that Turd of a camera the Genesis?

Should be called Panavision Exodus...

There was a BTS clip from Superman Returns, might have actually made it into that documentary on the DVD/Blu-Ray, where the DP was talking about the Panavision Genesis and he gave a little talk about the camera and what Panavision was cooking up in it's digital cinema program and I remember that was one of the camera names given as a successor to the Genesis. :arf:

 

[Jannard]

Maybe I should clarify... I don't think that 1080P is the "Gold Standard" for digital. It isn't good enough. It doesn't mean you shouldn't ever shoot 1080P or 2K... or Super 16mm or even Super 8mm. It means that when you are shooting for the best picture... 1080P is just not good enough. It has the same measured resolution as Super 16, which is not considered the "Gold Standard" for film.

The future is a 4K digital delivery. EVERYONE knows this. So the discussion whether 1080P is good enough is over before it ever started. If the argument is whether 1080P is good enough now for HDTV or a 2K projection in theaters, the answer is still "No". Unless the project has no future value whatsoever. Then the answer is a resounding YES! (There is an exception to every rule).

Jim

 

[Poi Boy]

1080 ? why are people still talking about this ? it is great for smart phones ;-)
Aloha
-A

 

[Jarek Zabczynski]

I think you're thinking of the Dalsa or the Viper -- the Genesis always had an attached HDCAM-SR deck.

Viper...I think you're right. Haven't heard much about that one in a while. I guess somehow I fused them together with Genesis.

 

[Keith Walters]

Maybe I should clarify... I don't think that 1080P is the "Gold Standard" for digital. It isn't good enough. It doesn't mean you shouldn't ever shoot 1080P or 2K... or Super 16mm or even Super 8mm. It means that when you are shooting for the best picture... 1080P is just not good enough. It has the same measured resolution as Super 16, which is not considered the "Gold Standard" for film.

The future is a 4K digital delivery. EVERYONE knows this. So the discussion whether 1080P is good enough is over before it ever started. If the argument is whether 1080P is good enough now for HDTV or a 2K projection in theaters, the answer is still "No". Unless the project has no future value whatsoever. Then the answer is a resounding YES! (There is an exception to every rule).

Jim

Bah! Expecting common sense from some people in this industry is asking a lot.
When all the "Film is Dead!" crap started about 15 years ago, the bonehead statement that kept getting bandied about by people you'd imagine would know better, was that the 1440 x 800 or so pixels you got from HDW750s /F900s was equal to the resolution of the average projected cinema print.
Therefore, something shot on one of those is going to be "indistinguishable from film".
The only problem was that, even if that were true, what you see in the cinema is usually a fourth generation copy from the original negative. Anything shot on one of those video cameras was going to have to transferred to a negative at the start at that chain, but with about the same resolution that film origination usually ends with. Small wonder the images looked like crap.
You'd think that was bloody obvious, but apparently not to some well-respected people!
Then, when it finally sank in what we were talking about, with barely a pause for breath, the Mantra changed to "Well, that's OK, because in a year or two, everybody is going to switch to digital projection".
Which
A. Didn't actually happen
B. Even if it did, a scanned negative is still surely going to look a lot better than something shot on a tarted-up ENG camera.

The notion of "future-proofing" is sound enough, and you've only got to look at some of the early 60s sitcoms that have been re-scanned, re-framed and re-colour corrected, coming out looking vastly better than a lot of stuff shot only a few years ago on SD video.
But, do you really imagine that the producers of those shows even considered that they might still be being profitably shown, nearly half a century later? They shot on 35mm film simply because it was readily available, and they could use the same high-precision equipment designed for making movies that would appear on fifty foot screens. Colour TV was virtually non-existent at the time, but some of them did at least have the foresight to see that colour TV sets were getting steadily better and cheaper.

You’re expecting way too much commonsense from an industry whose bread and butter is escapist fantasy. Trust me, it's far more Idiot than Savant in frighteningly many cases.