Why 10k is the professional standard!

[Wayne Morellini]

While it has limited use locked down in cinema poduction. With 10k you could go to a wide angle lens, and move the 4k frame around in post for handheld and documentary making, and do image stabilization. In documentary making, this would start to make it hard to miss things.

 

[Julio Quintana]

Camera work is just as important in documentary as it is in narrative, in my opinion. A documentary shooter needs to be perceptive and fast-thinking, quickly creating shots that are compelling, dynamic, and underscore the heart of the scene.

The approach you describe is suitable for security cameras, not story telling.

 

[Martin Weiss]

I have to agree with Julio here.

Also, as a documentarist, you have to get involved. Shooting from far away and cropping in later would totally change the dynamics, and I fear not for the better.

Maybe there once will be a time when all creative decisions are relayed to the editing room, but I'm not sure that I am looking forward to such a time.

 

[soren k jensen]

I find the choices made by the cameraman in docs to be a very large part of the emotional impact. Would love to shoot in 5k minimum myself and stabilize and reframe to some extent. But that wlll never really compensate for my good (and often bad) choices in the moment

 

[Bill Anderson]

Why should any improvement in quality be seen as a cop-out, or as a surrogate for "getting involved"? What is there to fear?: Only one's own inadequacies. Everyone has a voice. Let them use it as they see fit. If sticking to 2K or 4K is your contribution to "traditional" values and your art, then good luck to you. I know what I'd like to do with 10K.... But I'm certainly not going to hold my breath waiting...

 

[Bill Anderson]

When considering the past ten thousand years of art development, I have not learned of a relevant technological innovation that superseded the creative mind or spirit.

I believe that digital acquisition will provide a unique portal for the most expressive of minds, and that those minds will show us things we have yet no name for.

 

[Zack Birlew]

This has been talked about before with RED's 28K camera announcement way back when. The same issue applies in terms of lenses and what kind of film you're making. Documentaries are often just a guy and a camera with an occasional camera light if they can work it. Imagine trying to film a subject with a wide lens, let's say like the Tokina 11-16 at 11mm. Let's say you follow a subject as they show an abandoned building, going down hallways with boarded windows and such. You're filming wide and with tons of resolution but, even with a camera light, only 30 percent of the frame is visible. This brings up not only light sensitivity issues but also mechanical issues such as focus. Even at 11mm you would need to focus, even just a little, so as not to ruin your punch in for a close-up. Let's not forget, the idea for RED cameras at this time is to have S35 or full frame 35mm sensors with medium format and panoramic solutions in the future. Selective focus serves digital cinema far more than documentaries simply based on the fact that such cameras are designed for specific planned situations such as movies, modeling, and certain live events. This isn't to say RED cameras can't be used for documentaries, they have been and are being used for them all the time, but for most documentary subjects, they are much better served on a technical and practical standpoint by smaller sensor digital cameras. What you would want is not a 10K+ S35 sensor camera but instead a 10K+ 1/3", 1/2", or 2/3" camera if infinite focus options were your goal. Now, if you wanted to have your cake and eat it too, then resolution isn't what you should hope for but should instead hope for major advances in light sensitivity and ISO technology, that way you could just set your lens to f16 or f22 and adjust ISO as needed.

 

[Marc Wielage]

While it has limited use locked down in cinema poduction. With 10k you could go to a wide angle lens, and move the 4k frame around in post for handheld and documentary making, and do image stabilization. In documentary making, this would start to make it hard to miss things.

I have a silly question: why not just hire a great camera operator to get the shot right in the first place? I think that's the way it's generally been done for the past 100 years.

I can think of at least 50 DI projects I've worked on in the last decade that have had extensive reframing and recomposition involved -- in HD, in 2K, and/or in 4K. Some even had camera moves, usually very subtle pans and tilts to compensate for camera problems (or the actors not hitting their marks), or image stabilization due to wind problems or a pan head not getting locked down. As far as I'm concerned, this is par for the course.

Have you made a 4K project from start to finish yet? 4K is hard enough to deal with, in terms of workflow, storage, backup, and delivery.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Refinement, you either frame your shoot and compensate in list too make it better, or get in the direction of multiple subjects (which you might often have to do). Say you are following somebody, and soneboy to the side does or says something, that you would normally miss in reality, or your main subject is doing something and you don't want to break framing to temporaly catch the other thing. Or suppose that interesting building he just pointed too, guys this will be new style, new stykes of fast cutaways will be possible. Now in post you can pan tilt or cut away too it. In post you can also notice things that you missed and can now get. Believe it or not, the 10k need occurred to me as I entered a toilet cubicle, you could frame what is in front of you, winden the image to get more in, or tilt off to the side to see something interesting, say an important piece if evidence in a murder mystery.

I was pretty delayed last night, this actually should have been titled, as a "Technical Philosophy of Cameras" subject. This first occurred to me in the 90's when I was starting out, I'm a quick creator. I might have written about the cinema versuin before and Jim read it last decade,

The possibilities are astounding, the design concepts for switching, editing, studio and feild production are mostly still radically ahead of the state of the art. Imagine only needing one production person to do a whole film, the director. That level of performance I was figuring out (though it is preferable to have one or two more people in a small priductiin, and more in a major of course) , and since then I have moved to set handling. This is what Red has been missing. Major productions probably have 2/3rds to 3/4 more priductiin people then they need under my system,

Anyway, this is about the future... one year, but also a challenge to move past this obsession with limiting resolution gains for hugh end profit, to show there will be desirable practical need for cameras beyond 4 or 8k.

This is something applicable to low end people too, not elitest, and allows not so good camera people to be used to tell your dream. This is a world for the have nots as well.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Forgot, if I had my way I wood have 180 degree field of view, so no need for far away shoots, you could get way up close. I am working on my own digital cinema camera designs, and new lens technology. I have system design concepts that do not require focussing, that don't even need to be in focus (if you read my explanation some years back how to do single lens 3d and focus. But the reality is that we are far from that today, and the camera I am interesied in does a lot less. About the exposure issue mentioned, yes that is a problem, but I'm not limiting format to s35. I'm interested in medium+ formatting on my new shorter length lens design .

 

[Philipp Straehl]

I thought it was a joke.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Which comment Professionals as so one dimensional on design.