Should 4k be 12mp or 16mp?

[Wayne Morellini]

Simple reasoning, in still on motion photography you want more options than a skinny 16:9 ratio. 4:3 would be 12mp, but if you turn your camera it becomes 3k, so 1:1 4k would be 16mp. It also means that 8k would be 64mp.

However the problem you get is that to get corner to corner coverage, 16:9 cutouts don't touch the proper lens image corners, producing a field of view crop. This would then require a different lens format for 1:1 format. I suspect Red already does that.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Panasonic apparently likes 16mp:

http://www.43rumors.com/ft4-full-panasonic-gh-4k-camera-specs/

 

[Phil Holland]

IMO over thinking it a bit here.

Mysterium-X 5K HD is a bit larger than Super 35mm, however the vast majority of lenses for this format cover and perform fine. You could crop into the image if you want a precise frame size.

On Dragon however, 5K HD lands "within" the Super 35mm frame and it's "straight up gravy".

In terms of resolving, Dragon has a bit more freedom with the 5.5K and 6K resolutions.

When dealing with motion you're usually looking at one of three flavors of ice cream. 16x9, 1.85:1, and 2.40:1 or something similar. 1.66:1 is still used out there too. Whatever aspect ratio is chosen to capture and finish at, you additionally need to choose the desired capture resolution as well. This is one of the reasons Red plays with the oversampling concept. This not only increases overall image quality, but give people some "framing freedom".

Right now there are two "official" UHD 4K standards.

4K = 4096x2160
and UHD 4K = 3840x2160

How you fill that box is up to you.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Yes.