Canon unveils 120-megapixel camera sensor

[Frank Cueto]

Ryan, usually when mastering is done for the big screen it is done uncompressed. I really doubt a macbook pro can handle uncompressed HD, much LESS 4K...

 

[Matt W.]

With 28 Days Later it was a mix of an aesthetic and budget-related choice to use the XL1. They needed a digital camera to shoot fast set-ups of busy areas in London without paying huge fees to rent out full streets for the time it would take to shoot 35mm. The movie had a very low budget. And it goes for a "gritty realistic"/ruddy kind of look, which is then contrasted against lush 35mm cinematography in the epilogue. I think this may have influenced some of the similar techniques Dod Mantel used in Slumdog Millionaire and Antichrist. But still I agree, it would have been nice if it were at least a little less fuzzy...it got to me at times.

I don't know what macbook pro you have that can edit, render and composite cgi, then grade and output per-pixel 4k in real time in a professional suite, but I can think of a whole bunch of post houses that would love to have lots of them. My 2.8ghz 8 core mac pro (soon to be up for sale since I'm kind of quitting video and getting a "real job" i.e. going to a temp agency, never found a film job that pays better than $5/hr except once) still chokes on 1080p in After Effects and when rendering in mental ray. It's more an issue of ram than anything else. Past 2k, you start to push the image buffer beyond the largest block of ram 32-bit code can address in 16 bit or float color. The jump from 720p to 1080p for complex After Effects compositions is a nightmare, as is the fact that you need a 30'' screen or larger to fit the interface and video itself at 100%. The jump to 4k is much worse. And how many monitors can display 4k? Thankfully, After Effects is now 64 bit, so we are getting closer. But while the "indie" workflow has caught up to 4k pretty fast because it requires relatively few programs and editors, the complex "Hollywood" workflow hasn't--and won't for a while. Arri didn't hedge its bets on 1080p without doing its homework. The bigger the production, the slower it moves, the more steps there are. 1080p or at least 2k is going to be a viable option for a long time. And, honestly, I can't tell if a DI went through 4k or 2k by looking at the print and I doubt many others can. It's close to a moot point until 4k digital projection is the norm. And don't tell Cameron or Bill Pope 2k is dead. Both of them prefer it to 4k (so do most actresses, no surprise).

But back on topic, at 120mp glass does become the limiting factor. There are lenses that resolve this much resolution; the tiny lenses on point and shoots have to, for instance, but over a very small area (5x7mm at 300-400 lp/mm). "L glass" is nothing more than a red ring and high price tag, but I do think some L primes might be nearly up to the task at ideal apertures. I'm just guessing because the film used to measure resolution didn't even approach 120mp. And, furthermore, the diffraction limit of any optical system at f5.6 for visible light is around 300 lp/mm. So you'd need to shoot everything at f4 or f5.6, most likely, to really take advantage of such a sensor (too much spherical aberration at wide f-stops; too much diffraction past f5.6).

For landscape photographers and large prints there might be a market. Large format film resolves around this much resolution, kind of. State of the art medium format digital is already around 60mp, but, as you guessed, lenses have not yet caught up, not due to poor design but due to poor manufacturing tolerances. There are a few very interesting articles on this I can dig up if you'd like to read them.

EDIT: No one's going to read this (probably) but the Nikon 55mm f2.8 Micro, first manufactured in the 1970s, can resolve 700lp/mm at f2.8 toward the center of the image and is diffraction-limited at f4 and f5.6. So it would have no trouble at all with 120 megapixels.

 

[nageswara rao s]

i need your suggestions matt w, i am going to buy Dell's studio 15 model laptop has configuration of
intel core tm i3- 370m processor
4GB DDR3 SDRAM
320 GB SATA HDD
1 GB ATI mobility radeon hd 5470
15.6"(39.6 cm) HD 720P WLED Display with true life (1366*768 res)
is it useful to manage data of scarlet 3k or if not 1080p res data at all. it costs Rs45,000 Indian currency, nearly little more than us$1000. is it worth while or not. i am asking you this, even though it is unrelated thread and post also because you have so much of cameras technical knowledge. thanks in advance matt w, and others too for their valued advices.

 

[Matt W.]

Sorry, can't help you much there--not my area of expertise, mostly because I'm a mac user (not because they're better; I just grew up using macs).

My advice is figure out what software you want to use first (Avid, FCP, Premier Pro, etc.), then what codec you want to use (DNxHD, Prores, native redcode, etc.), and then research what your system requirements will be based on that. Personally, I prefer desktops for video editing due to expandability, but laptops are almost as fast now. I have no idea how the "Scarlet" will be to work with, seeing as the camera does not yet exist...

No matter the computer, I like having as big a monitor as possible, at least 1920X1200 and ideally a dual-screen set-up with a high-quality (non-TN) LCD or a good old color-accurate CRT if I'm editing HD.

Everyone's needs are different. "What computer should I get" is a broad and loaded question.

 

[Rick Burnett]

Sorry, can't help you much there--not my area of expertise, mostly because I'm a mac user (not because they're better; I just grew up using macs).

My advice is figure out what software you want to use first (Avid, FCP, Premier Pro, etc.), then what codec you want to use (DNxHD, Prores, native redcode, etc.), and then research what your system requirements will be based on that. Personally, I prefer desktops for video editing due to expandability, but laptops are almost as fast now. I have no idea how the "Scarlet" will be to work with, seeing as the camera does not yet exist...

No matter the computer, I like having as big a monitor as possible, at least 1920X1200 and ideally a dual-screen set-up with a high-quality (non-TN) LCD or a good old color-accurate CRT if I'm editing HD.

Everyone's needs are different. "What computer should I get" is a broad and loaded question.

Amen to that advice. I run a Mac Pro 4x 2.66Ghz with 15G of RAM and it works really well with 1080p ProRes in FC and AE. However, I have started working in Maya for a film project and let me tell you, fluid simulations with a decent resolution of voxels brings my system to a halt!

In fact, I was using Blender before this and when I rendered a scene in 4K as opposed to 1080P, the difference in render time went up x 10. I did this because I wasn't happy with the anti-aliasing results in Blender, so I let AE scale my images instead (and was way better).

Where I see this sensor as being really awesome is things like deep space photography. Although truth be told, I wish Canon would get their eye on the ball instead of releasing more of the same (now with the 60D) technology.

 

[arash]

i need your suggestions matt w, i am going to buy Dell's studio 15 model laptop has configuration of
intel core tm i3- 370m processor
4GB DDR3 SDRAM
320 GB SATA HDD
1 GB ATI mobility radeon hd 5470
15.6"(39.6 cm) HD 720P WLED Display with true life (1366*768 res)
is it useful to manage data of scarlet 3k or if not 1080p res data at all. it costs Rs45,000 Indian currency, nearly little more than us$1000. is it worth while or not. i am asking you this, even though it is unrelated thread and post also because you have so much of cameras technical knowledge. thanks in advance matt w, and others too for their valued advices.

Let me tell you

Get dell Studio 1558, better graphic, FULL HD lcd, CORE i7 cpu for $250 more

 

[nageswara rao s]

thank you Mr Arash for your info. i will search for that and price too.