New 4K cameras good news for indies?

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brunerww

In the last two days, two sub-$2000 4K cameras have been revealed at CES:

First, Sony announced a $1998 4K camcorder with a 1" sensor, the FDR-AX100, and then...

Leaks started appearing this morning that Panasonic will roll out its 4K resolution interchangeable lens GH4K before the end of February for less than $2000. This will seriously undercut other 4K interchangeable lens cameras from Blackmagic, Canon and Sony.

This is good news for shooters, because prices on BM, Canon and Sony cinema cameras will probably come down.

And 1080p HD shooters will probably start migrating to 4K UHD - a 4K original will look a lot better on a 2K movie screen than a 1.9K 1080p original.

My 1080p cameras (except the BMPCC) are pretty much all for sale :)
 
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Most indie peeps don't even know how to frame a shot or get proper sound - much less tell a non-cliche story.

4k will not save a shitty story and adding the extra workflow will detract from things that need much more attention.

Considering 99% of indies won't ever benefit from 4k, it is fool's gold at this point for anyone thinking it will improve their quality.
 
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IndiePaul said:
Fair points tokenwhiteboy.

That being said 4k is damn interesting tech for the indie folks that could learn to use it right. Thanks for posting brunerww.
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Thanks.

Wouldn't it make more sense for people who have decent cameras now to explore the hacks and work with raw footage than to drop another 2 grand (less lenses, modules and everything else)?
 
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I'm certainly not excited about 4K from a 1" sensor - I'd rather 720p out of the three 2/3" CCDs on a Varicam.

The 'GH4K' intrigues me, but I'll believe that it's <$2,000 when I see it - of course I'm happy to be proven wrong.

4k is kinda like raw - it's a buzz word that gets people buying cameras because they 'most definitely need it' and it will 'most definitely make their images look soo much better' even though most don't know what to do with it, let alone 'need' it.

As well, I'll take colour rendition and dynamic range over resolution anyway - which is why I'd rather shoot with an Alexa at 2.7k than an Epic at 5k any day (unless doing intense VFX stuff where they need the extra resolution).

Shooting in 4k seems somewhat pointless if you're still only getting your 4-stops of dynamic range, 4:2:0 colour sampling, and 8-bit compressed codec.
 
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tokenwhiteboy said:
Most indie peeps don't even know how to frame a shot or get proper sound - much less tell a non-cliche story.

4k will not save a shitty story and adding the extra workflow will detract from things that need much more attention.

Considering 99% of indies won't ever benefit from 4k, it is fool's gold at this point for anyone thinking it will improve their quality.
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I can agree with you for once :cool:
 
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tokenwhiteboy and jak rox, have just said exactly what i was going to say. Thank god not everyone believes in 4k making everything better! unlike a facebook group I am also a part of, which had this exact same question yesterday, and I got almost instantly flamed for putting across the same points as you guys haha
 
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tomb378 said:
tokenwhiteboy and jak rox, have just said exactly what i was going to say. Thank god not everyone believes in 4k making everything better! unlike a facebook group I am also a part of, which had this exact same question yesterday, and I got almost instantly flamed for putting across the same points as you guys haha
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Yep , happen to me as well .
 
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tomb378 said:
tokenwhiteboy and jak rox, have just said exactly what i was going to say. Thank god not everyone believes in 4k making everything better! unlike a facebook group I am also a part of, which had this exact same question yesterday, and I got almost instantly flamed for putting across the same points as you guys haha
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LOL... on the list of places to find useful information, Facebook groups rank at the bottom. (Not that many forums are much better.)

Here's the key... the vast majority of DOERs aren't sitting on the computer all day playing on the facebook or ranting in forums (unless you are in pre-production like me and waiting for other people to get me their stuff).

Consider this... hand one monkey a Red EPIC and another monkey a Sony Hi-8 camera...
 
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brunerww said:
And 1080p HD shooters will probably start migrating to 4K UHD - a 4K original will look a lot better on a 2K movie screen than a 1.9K 1080p original.
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If you mix shots of different formats people may notice the difference; if you're consistent with your source though either one will look just fine to your audience. I've projected fairly low-bitrate (but well encoded) 720p theatrically on a 2k christie and it looks pretty good. 4k has it's uses, but it also has post workflow implications that I'd consider more important than the slight improvement you'll get in projection.
 
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As an editor on other's projects, 4K would be great. Even mastering in 2k means you get to move around and reframe shots in post.

For indy DIY guys, shooting is often the most expensive part of production. You have to pay or at least consider everyone else's time on set, but if you are you're own editor then you can spend as much time in post as you want. That means shooting a wide could easily double as a medium, or medium as a tight and you wouldn't lose resolution. Not always ideal, but if you're trying to shoot a feature in a single 17 hour day all that time saved is important haha. Even if you aren't doubling shots like that, you can save a bad shot, stabilize shaky footage or add motion in post a lot easier.
 
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PaulGriffith said:
As an editor on other's projects, 4K would be great. Even mastering in 2k means you get to move around and reframe shots in post.
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Maybe the Camera Op should have framed correctly in the first place..? :D

For indy DIY guys, shooting is often the most expensive part of production. You have to pay or at least consider everyone else's time on set, but if you are you're own editor then you can spend as much time in post as you want. That means shooting a wide could easily double as a medium, or medium as a tight and you wouldn't lose resolution.
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Blasphemy! No! Stop! :lol:

Seriously though, 90% of the time this doesn't work - I've seen it tried and it just looks... odd, simply because you're jump cutting between two shots which are identical angles, except one is tighter.

If you carefully planned for it, you might be able to get away with it, but you'd need other coverage to cut with it, which almost starts to negate its usefulness (unless, of course, you're one of those filmmakers that needs every piece of coverage for every scene, rather than being selective about what you'll actually use in the cut).

For docos, however, I think it's good - say you're interviewing someone on a wide or mid-wide, and halfway through the interview they start to break down and cry. You'd love to punch in for that , but you don't want to break the moment, you don't want to risk losing something by zooming, and you can't really re-frame for a close shot and ask them to cry again...
 
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jax_rox said:
Shooting in 4k seems somewhat pointless if you're still only getting your 4-stops of dynamic range, 4:2:0 colour sampling, and 8-bit compressed codec.
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This.

Technologically speaking, global shutter is going to do way more for indie films than 4K ever will. And even that isn't going to make a bit of difference over the fundamentals anyway, but that point was already made. ;)
 
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