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Topic: Regal to go 100% Sony 4K?

Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 05-17-2009 02:17 PM

quote: Lyle Romer
As 4k digital aquisition becomes the norm, they're not going to downrez it to 2k for post production. CGI might still be done in 2k for a while but the non-cgi parts I'm sure will be 4k from camera to screen.

You can't really go direct from camera to screen with digital cameras unless you're happy with the 6 o'clock news look. All electronic video cameras no matter how glorified with 35mm film camera like gear must have their electronic footage processed to imitate the film look in post production. Shooting 24p alone isn't going to cut it. It costs a certain amount of money to apply film look processing to 1080p HD footage. Rendering time will be quadrupled for 4K footage.

The existing digital camera systems have speed/sensitivity issues that must be overcome to deliver acceptable image quality compared to 35mm in a wide variety of shooting environments -particularly in high speed and low light settings. Even the Panavision Genesis camera, which is only a 1080p HDTV level camera, has serious problems with low light photography. Get Smart shows off some of those limits all too well.

I don't think 35mm based photography is going away anytime soon. The only thing that will force a widespread dump of film-based production is if Kodak, Agfa and Fuji stop making film altogether or just go out of business. More and more movie productions are going to shoot "digital." However, good film camera setups still outperform the digital ones, especially in low light and high speed shooting environments. Digital just provides great levels of convenience and cost savings with trade-offs in image quality. Most major releases will still be shot on film for at least the next several years until it just becomes difficult to buy film stock.

I think the balance on 4K output becoming common will lie in the pricing and power of computing hardware. Currently RAM costs around $30 to $40 per gigabyte. The vast majority of computers still operate in the 32-bit realm. Once we can get over that 64-bit hump and RAM costs about 1/10th what it does today then 4K production should be much cheaper and easier to do. I think we're still a good year or two out from that. And that span of time may be enough that some new CMOS camera sensors are introduced that just blow away all the current ones in terms of speed and sensitivity.

We still have to remember that Hollywood studios are owned by larger bean-counting oriented corporations. They're looking for any way to cut costs and deliver barely "good enough" when they can get away with it. Some of these "suits" will see the speed and improvements with 4K production translated into saying "we can do 2K much cheaper than that! Let's keep doing 2K and save even more money!"