4K, 8K, 12K. For the first time in the history of cinema and VOD, the average viewer has, in their living room, a screen whose resolution — and dynamic range — dangerously rival those of our shooting cameras.
In this mad race for K’s, professionals are hesitant about which strategy to adopt.
The Paris Images trade show will attempt to take stock.
It’s true that, at first glance, an 8K sensor’s resolution seems needlessly high given the limits of human perception, set just above 3K.
What is less well known, however, is that downscaling to a lower resolution significantly reduces noise — and so allows shooting in low light if needed. A reduction from 8K to 4K is equivalent to -3dB of noise.
And for those worried about a terabyte inflation, the cinematographer behind David Fincher’s latest films and TV movies offers a weighty counter-argument.
“We ran tests and tried moving the RAW compression ratio from 4:1 at 6K to 8:1 at 8K,” explains Erik Messerschmidt. “We not only found a significant increase in quality in terms of colour, fidelity and noise reduction, but also that the file size did not change as a result of the compression change. It was an obvious choice, and there were no additional costs for the production in terms of archiving, since the storage requirements were identical.” (1)
Finally, to complicate the debate further, the 12K sensor on Blackmagic’s latest camera is arranged in a mosaic pattern that has nothing to do with Bayer’s, nor with C-MOS sensors for that matter. The 12K acquisition mainly serves to generate lower-resolution, but better-defined images (this 8K YouTube video is quite illuminating).
The virtual Paris Images trade show will host a debate on 27 January at 3pm titled “Is 8K really reasonable?” Organised by the CST and FICAM, it will bring together five speakers including Malory Congoste, a cinematographer and member of the Union des Chefs Opérateurs. Registration is free, and the debate will be moderated by Béatrice Bauwens of Mikros.
(1) Excerpt translated from an English-language article by NoFilmSchool
