Epic-W 8K resolution for stills question

[steve green]

Hi everyone....I've got a shoot coming up where the client wants to have the highest resolution stills possible from our shoot. Is there any advantage to shooting separate takes in "stills mode" or if I'm shooting 8K full frame at 24 fps am I there already? I understand there may be a compression advantage by lowering the frame rate, but it would be great if they can take the stills right from the 24 frame work to save time.

 

[Alberto Guglielmi]

It really depends on what you shoot. People or products/landscapes? How much motion? What kind of light.

You might still want to change the shutter angle/speed if you have motion, to avoid movement blur. So if you have to do different takes, then it might make sense to change compression/frame rate. I personally only had issues with very contrasting backlight at higher compression rates (10:1). I tend to switch only shutter angle between takes.

 

[Nick Morrison]

I don't think there's a difference.

As Alberto pointed out, its mostly about shutter angle. 23.98 at 180 can be pretty soft if subjects are moving.

Shooting high speed can be a good trick to naturally tighten up your shutter, and pull stills.

Good luck.

 

[Hal Long]

Stills are rarely shot at 1/48 or 1/60. Usually, 1/125 or faster to minimize motion blur.

 

[Akin A]

If the subject is moving at all, a standard 1/48th second or 180 degree shutter won't give you nice stills.
If you increase the shutter, your stills will look better, but your motion will look worse.

Because of this, I either shoot specifically for motion or specifically for stills.

You can check my Instagram page for a bunch of still shoots that I've done at 12fps RC 2:1. Sometimes I leave the shutter at 1/48th just to have more light and since I'm not moving in the frame, I can get away with it.

 

[steve green]

The job we need the stills and motion for is a car spot. The director likes the blur in still frames of cars. I was thinking 90 degree shutter at 24fps to try and split the difference. My thinking is 90 degree won't effect the motion and will give him sharper stills. Problem being he'll lose a lot of the blur that he likes.

So the resolution of the E-W is maxed out at 8K FF? So there's no resolution advantage to shooting 3 fps in still mode, correct?

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

There are several ways to approach such a shoot, most of which have trade offs. One thing that will benefit both motion and stills is keeping the compression ratio as low as possible. Without going too deep, RedCode compression is a derivative of JPEG2000, which is an "entropy" codec. That means that as compression ratios go up, fine detail is lost. In a moving image, that loss of fine detail is difficult to discern so it's sometimes referred to as "visually lossless" at ratios as high as 8:1 (the veracity of that is a whole other discussion). OTOH, a still image allows the viewer's eye time to pick out the lost detail and can look soft at higher compression ratios.

Motion blur is the most noticeable issue on stills shot at slower shutters like 1/48th, or even 1/96th if either the camera or key subjects are moving. If the camera is locked off, then anything in the frame that's sitting still should read just as sharp as at 1/500th, with moving objects showing motion blur based on speed of movement (particularly in the horizontal direction). For a car spot where some motion blur is desired, keeping the camera static will provide sharp elements to show off the blur of the moving vehicle in juxtaposition.

Since you are keen to maximize resolution; I suggest you use a sharp, high MTF lens with a high quality polarizer. Captured resolution matters, but preserving (or even enhancing) resolution during processing matters. Choices like using 16 bit TIFFs, ADD, managing contrast, tasteful sharpening, etc should all help those stills look tight.

Cheers - #19

 

[Marcus Friedlander]

If you have a VFX pipeline already setup for this gig, you could shoot with a sharper shutter to guarantee your photos are solid. Then, you can add a touch of motion blur in post to get your video back to the 24FPS 180 shutter motion look.

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

If you have a VFX pipeline already setup for this gig, you could shoot with a sharper shutter to guarantee your photos are solid. Then, you can add a touch of motion blur in post to get your video back to the 24FPS 180 shutter motion look.

Shooting thin shutter to get tighter stills and adding motion blur in post (sometimes called reverse optical flow) can be an effective strategy - especially when camera movement is part of the mix. For a car spot where the director wants to show some motion blur in the stills, but not have the stills look too soft overall - I still recommend keeping the camera static (vs panning/jib/dolly) so you have nice sharp elements in the frame juxtaposed with motion blurred elements (presumably the car). It is my contention that this will allow a relatively small amount of motion blur on the car to still "sell" the feeling of dynamic action without making the hero product too blurry to be appreciated by the potential buyer.

FWIW, the other trick is to match the pace of camera movement to the speed of the car to keep the car tight, but with lots of motion blur in the background. As long as the pan is pretty fast, you should be able to go to a 45° or 22.5° shutter to keep the moving subject sharp and still have an appropriately motion blurred background to sell the perception of speed.

Cheers - #19

 

[Marcus Friedlander]

Shooting thin shutter to get tighter stills and adding motion blur in post (sometimes called reverse optical flow) can be an effective strategy - especially when camera movement is part of the mix. For a car spot where the director wants to show some motion blur in the stills, but not have the stills look too soft overall - I still recommend keeping the camera static (vs panning/jib/dolly) so you have nice sharp elements in the frame juxtaposed with motion blurred elements (presumably the car). It is my contention that this will allow a relatively small amount of motion blur on the car to still "sell" the feeling of dynamic action without making the hero product too blurry to be appreciated by the potential buyer.

FWIW, the other trick is to match the pace of camera movement to the speed of the car to keep the car tight, but with lots of motion blur in the background. As long as the pan is pretty fast, you should be able to go to a 45° or 22.5° shutter to keep the moving subject sharp and still have an appropriately motion blurred background to sell the perception of speed.

Cheers - #19

Love these suggestions! Thanks for sharing your advice!

 

[steve green]

That's why this community indispensable!

 

[Mike Finegan]

compression ratios and OLPF may cause more impact - notice that is not mentioned here
The comment about visually lossless FOR MOVING PICTURES is critically correct!
Everyone seems to equate visually lossless for Motion Pictures to visually lossless for Digital Photographs and nothing could be further from the truth!
Weapon VV with Helium should be better since it has higher data rates and can achieve lower compression, right?

Depending on movement and lighting 1/160 (or as close as you can get with shutter angle) might look okay as film and provide clean frames - but compression will still impact stills quality.

 

[Rakesh Malik]

Epic-w can go down to 3:1 for stills with the frame rate set to 12fps. I think it can go to 2:1 with an even slower frame rate, but since the screen updates at that frame rate, it gets clunky to work with.
3:1 looks wonderful anyway.