Resolution? Well it is New Year I guess...

Not a pledge of improved lifestyle but an update on my furtive journey into the ultra high definition world of 4K shooting. Since my article “About 4K-ing time” I’ve had some time to get used to the new camera, and the required workflow, and so for the more technically minded I’ve decided to share some of my observations and experiences. Firstly thank you to the business journalist Victoria Masterton of City Desk for the commission and for allowing her shoot to be my guinea pig to an extent, thanks also to her editor Colin Taylor for his feedback and thoughts on working with 4K material. Best foot forward and all that, so I shall begin with the positive… The resolution and quality of the footage from my relatively humble camera is astounding, even viewed at 100%, even when straight down-scaled to regular 1080HD I’m getting sharper pictures than I ever got from my previous kit. An added factor is the requirement for me to use a speed-booster adapter to adapt my existing lenses to my new camera, this gives me even wider apertures (better low light shooting, more depth of field control) with less crop (my lenses retain more of their wide angle) and with the reduction in the projected image circle area, the micro four thirds sensor can make more of the attached lens’ resolution, as less is now lost by sensor cropping.

I opted for a Metabones Speed-booster XL, which although more costly than the camera itself, is still cheaper than a bag of new lenses. Aperture control, AF and IS is maintained on my EF lenses, and it also works fine with my manual iris and manual focus lenses. I don’t use AF for video, but the stills AF performance is good, if not quite as snappy and flexible as with the kit Micro Four Thirds lens. So even shooting at 1080i or 1080p, I’m getting much improved IQ over my previous camera. Victoria’s edit was built around an interview, which was ideal to try out some cropping, in lieu of live zooming, which worked perfectly. On cutaway material I was able to effect nice live zooms, with smooth bezier handles and even speed – one of the bug bears with shooting on large sensor / DSLR cameras is the lack of decent powered servo zooms.

Shooting 4K but outputting 1080 lets you add some zooms in post, from creeping to crash, it really opens up creativity, and since it is in post you can control your movement start and end points getting some really brilliantly timed effects which would be difficult at the time of shooting. Another boon in this multimedia age is the ability to grab decent 8MP stills. Now 8MP may not sound an awful lot in this day and age, but it is enough for an A4 magazine cover or A3 poster at commercial print, if not quite photo quality. If you wear multiple hats then 4K is a good fit as a multi-platform format.

There is some trade off in that video shutter speeds are slower than you might normally use for stills (if you follow the 180 shutter angle rule) so it’s maybe not the best choice for crisp action shots, but on the other hand, you do have 25fps to choose from.. getting the ‘decisive moment’ is potentially made much easier with a video grab. Finally, there is the kudos of being able to offer 4K, or at least, the allure of 4K. For a client who wants delivery on DVD only, then 4K isn’t really required, but it’s a good sales talking point, at some point soon clients are going to insist on it, even if they don’t fully understand what it is, an added benefit is that it does future-proof your present day rushes to an extent.

If nothing else, 4K is really being pushed just now, if you have the facility to shoot 4K, even if it goes unused, you can piggy back on that push. But before you go rushing to your local camera dealership to place your order, I should temper the positives with a few of the problems or issues I have encountered..

The most obvious barrier to a 4K workflow is the lack of viewer platforms. It’s early days. Most folks don’t have 4K sets at home, and fewer have 4K streaming devices, although devices like the Amazon Fire Stick and Android based media streamers are gaining some ground, arguably driven by platform / vendor specific unique 4K content. Apple, as of their latest revision of Apple TV, haven’t yet went 4K (although the iPhone 6s and recent iMac’s have) and Apple remains a fairly dependable barometer of where consumer tech is at.. The barriers as a content producer, especially at the sharper end, range from the sheer quantity of data (4x the picture info, up to 4x the data throughput and storage if you avoid proprietary H265 codecs) Playing around with the footage in legacy FCP requires lengthy trans-coding, so for practical purposes, it's dead for 4K. Any NLE suite is going to require super-fast SSD’s or RAIDS, lots of RAM and a 64 bit OS capable of using that RAM. You will need a new computer. Probably. And finding straight answers to with which to spec components is difficult. It’s a rapidly evolving market with constantly changing tech.

For now I’m probably going to shoot interviews in 4K, do a proxy edit, then an online with added crops and movement, if I’m asked for 4K, I’m just about ready to do it, but like when HDV first came out.. I’m not going to be holding my breath.