» Posts Tagged ‘4k’
Canon applied for a RAW video patent in July of 2010, and it was just published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office yesterday. The filing indicates that Canon is planning to retain CF card compatibility while compressing 12-bit moving images to RAW 4K or 2K resolutions. Note that it’s a popular misconception that “RAW” means “free of compression” — RAW, as far as both still and moving images are concerned, means that the data is stored in an unprocessed manner (which allows for adjustments in maximum colorspace before converting to an output format) — not in an uncompressed manner. Indeed, in the patent Canon describes 4K uncompressed 12-bit video’s 2.8Gbit datarate as “too high for CF cards,” so, like RED, they will be compressing the data coming off the sensor. It’s going to be a very competitive next few years… More »
James Drake from Denver-based RED rental house 5K Insight gave Dave Dugdale of Learning DSLR Video a hands-on with the RED EPIC camera, and the two videos are an excellent introduction to the RED DSMC system. They’re included below, but first, two things every RED EPIC/SCARLET owner should be aware of: More »
The mysterious 4K Canon DSLR — or some other widescreen Canon HDSLR — has been spotted in the wild… literally. Stephen Oachs from Aperture Academy was shooting wildlife in Kenya (with a camera, not a gun) and spotted a Japanese cameraman using the unreleased Canon 200-400mm with built-in teleconverter and Canon 600mm lenses. The cameraman was also using the as-yet-unnamed 4K a mysterious DSLR, which has a widescreen LCD and a new “RATE” button. I’ve lightened and blown up Stephen’s image for as much detail as possible: More »
As I predicted, RED killed their “3K for $3K” fixed-lens SCARLET camera. If that small-chip, big-resolution camera was something you were interested in, JVC has stepped in with the GY-HMQ10 (rolls right off the tongue!), a 4K (3840×2160, or “Quad HD” in RED parlance) compact camera with a fixed 10x zoom lens, which will land in March for under $5k. Recording to a VBR h.264 codec at up to 144Mpbs, the camera also does 1080p at up to 60 frames per second (something that many cameras at double or triple the price can’t do). Does the new JVC hit a sweet spot or does it put the “K” in “OK” (or something)? Press release and larger picture (it looks like what you’d expect) below. More »
With all the hype surrounding 4K acquisition, I was surprised to hear that David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo would be the first large-scale end-to-end 4K digital cinema release. Previous films captured at 4K were posted and distributed at 2K… which kind of defeats the purpose. In my quest to find a 4K theater to see GWTDT, I got a response from Sony’s Digital Cinema Twitter account, yet because I’ve been catching holiday films with my family (including young ones) I haven’t yet had a chance to see the film yet (it seems I’m not the only one in this situation). Regardless, I wanted to share a very interesting article about the film’s 4K workflow by Light Iron’s Michael Cioni, which includes this interesting nugget on Fincher’s approach to reframing in post (his framing chart is pictured): More »
Sony plans to ship a 4K home theater projector, the catchily-named VPL-VW1000ES, for 25 grand in early 2012. Given the $13.50-a-ticket price to see a movie here in New York City, I’ve found myself disappointed at a few recent films where the image felt soft. Sony is on the record about 4K in theaters (PDF link), and I’m convinced that it is indeed the future for the big screen. But at home? I have a 720p projector in my apartment, and it looks pretty damn good. I can only imagine that 1080p would look better, and I don’t know that I could ever tell the difference between 1080p and 4K. Still, that’s not stopping Sony — and RED — from pushing 4K projection in the home. More »
Since RED’s announcement of their world-beating (and certainly Canon-beating) SCARLET X, their website has been down sporadically, but I was able to grab the full specification sheet from their website during a moment of uptime. First of all, I want to say that yes, you can shoot a beautiful film on the new Canon C300 — in fact, Vincent Laforet already did — so, taken in historical context there is nothing wrong with Canon’s new camera. A few years ago it would’ve been amazing. But it’s not a few years ago, and in fact just a few hours after Canon launched their first foray into the professional motion picture arena, they were upstaged by a startup named RED (you could also argue that the Sony F3 is also a superior option). While the Canon will be better in certain areas — low light performance, perhaps? — the SCARLET X starts at half the price of the Canon. Yes, you’ll need to add some accessories, but looking at these specs, I couldn’t help but order one. More »
I guessed RED’s 2/3″ SCARLET was dead, and now it’s confirmed. RED just announced the SCARLET-X, which more than backs up their claim that they were bringing a Bazooka to tonight’s knife fight with Canon. The SCARLET X is not the low-cost “3K for $3K” SCARLET announced years ago, but is instead the interchangeable lens camera formerly known as the EPIC-S, and it looks like an amazing deal. It is very, very close to being the same Camera as the $28,000 EPIC-X — it’s the same size and weight, has the same large sensor, takes the same accessories, and maxes out at the same 5K resolution — except the SCARLET-X starts at under $10K. Canon C300, we hardly knew ye. More »
The just-announced Canon Cinema EOS C300 has a 4K* sensor. But yes, there’s an asterisk there, and it turns out the Super35 CMOS sensor’s native resolution of 3840×2160 (which is exactly double that of 1080P’s 1920×1080 resolution) isn’t a “traditional” 4K, and the camera outputs at 1080P. It reportedly has 1920 x 1080 pixels for red and blue, and 1920 x 2160 pixels for green. Here’s the deal from DV Info: More »
As you already know, Canon is releasing a motion picture camera on November 3rd. Not one to let Canon steal their thunder, RED countered by scheduling their SCARLET announcement for the same day. In order to make such a bold move, I assumed RED had some advance insider knowledge of Canon’s plans, but RED’s head honcho Jim Jannard claims RED has “no idea what Canon is going to announce.” He also called the day “Ali vs. Frasier” [sic]. And he’s confident enough to say, “My bet is that after our November 3rd announcement… we will never, ever, be out of back-order. Ever. Really. Never… ever.” This kind of confidence does not come from announcing a camera with a sensor several times smaller than the competition’s. More »
Perhaps confirming the rumors that they will release their first camcorder designed for Hollywood/professional/whatever-you-want-to-call-it feature filmmaking on November 3rd, Canon today announced the opening of their “Canon Hollywood Professional Technology and Support Center” at 6060 Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. I doubt very much they are opening a service center in LA to fix DSLRs, especially with the name “Hollywood Professional” in the title. Here’s the full press release: More »
Today Canon pre-announced an announcement — which they’re calling “historic” — to take place in Hollywood on November 3rd. What would be hilarious is if they show up in Tinseltown and announce a new line of inkjet printers. But because it’s Hollywood, hopefully it will have something to do with, you know, movies. In the “proper video camera with large sensor” market, Sony has their FS100 and F3, and Panasonic has their AF100. As of right now, Canon has nothing. Just saying! Here’s their teaser: More »
I was in the room at this year’s NAB when Sony revealed the F65, and one of my first thoughts was to wonder why it was called the F65 if the F35 was named because its sensor size matched that of 35mm film. With their announcement today that the F65 will retail for $65k, perhaps the camera was named because of target price? Strange. The F65 has the same size sensor as the F35, but upgrades the pixel count to a “true” 4K (I’m putting “true” in quotes because the F65 has a nonstandard pixel array that producers a resolution of 8768 x 2324). More »
I’ll have more to come on RED’s NAB announcements (or strange lack thereof) in the coming days, but after a few visits to their booth, I thought the product that was being underreported was the RED RAY 4K playback system(s). The RED RAY Pro — announced long ago — was running flawlessly in a corner, and the RED RAY consumer version was on display as a mock-up. After spending some time with RED engineer Stuart English, the devices looked a lot more disruptive — especially for independent theatrical distribution. More »
I’m not going to go into much detail on Sony’s new F65, which I covered at launch, or the new offerings in the ARRI ALEXA lineup, because cameras that run six figures aren’t exactly the purview of DIY filmmakers (though they’re nice to think about, at least as a rental). Briefly, here’s what I saw at NAB about the latter: the ALEXA has gotten a number of new features, upgrading it to Plus status — 3.5K ARRIRAW codec, 120FPS shooting mode in 2K (which was working fully on the camera I toyed with briefly), and iPad wireless camera control. There are also two new models — the ALEXA M, which separates the camera head from the recording body, and the ALEXA Studio, which has a mechanical shutter, optical viewfinder, and 4:3 sensor with anamorphic de-squeezing. And of course, Sony has their new F3. More »
At their press event today at NAB, Sony demonstrated their previously previewed 8K camera and officially gave it a name: the CineAlta F65. When we’d last heard of this 8K camcorder, I’d assumed the high resolution was designed for the purpose of providing a full 4K image after de-bayering. But it turns out the sensor has dedicated green photosites for every pixel (unlike other bayer-pattern sensors, as far as I know), and thus Sony is designing the F65 for not only 4K, but beyond. More »
The 2011 Consumer Electronics Show took place this weekend, and among hundreds of new product announcements were a couple of interesting camcorders from JVC. The googly-eyed 3D GS-TD1 is the first 1080p 3D consumer camcorder (seen at left; previous 3d cameras were limited to 720p), and JVC also showed an as-yet unnamed 4k camcorder that looks to match RED’s resolution: More »
Late last week rumors started flying about a firmware upgrade to be posted January 1st that would allow the Canon T2i to shoot at 4K (4096×2304) resolution. All of the HDSLR and video blogs I follow posted the rumor, including ProVideo Coalition, EOSHD, Cinema5D, Philip Bloom, Robin Schmidt, and planet5D. There was just one problem with this firmware: it never existed. More »
I adapted this headline from a piece I remember The Onion running thirteen years ago. The Onion’s excoriating 1997 article, entitled “High-Definition Television Promises Sharper Crap,” lambasted the increase in TV resolution for doing nothing to raise the quality of the actual content itself. YouTube’s recent announcement that they now support 4K resolution is easy to poke fun at for the same reason, given no one was complaining that the thing missing from YouTube (which already offers 1080p) is more resolution. More »
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