You can find this article in it’s original location over at LinkedIn – click here to view
” .. We combined the photography and the video budget – I feel bad for the photographer, but then I started out as a photographer, so you know.. progress “
” .. We pulled still-frames right out of the video, that’s the power of 4k .. “
” .. Marks & Spencers are putting in vertical lightboxes across their European stores, with 4k, we can take vertical cuts out of all of the frames for print .. ”
Last week I attended a workshop put on by Canon Australia and Lemac, led by Brett Dantontitled ‘4K RAW workflows from capture-to-post’ – in short, using the C500 EOS Cinemacamera to capture the most detailed image possible, in RAW format (so it is not compressed) and then store it for editing and colour grading purposes.
***
If you flick back to the top of this article, you can see three statements, the first two likely being the most relevant to you – more and more I’m capturing events for people and we are using stills right out of the video.
From a budgetting perspective, by bringing higher quality equipment to your requirements the video budget increases by 20-25% but it removes the stills budget, so you have less total overhead and less people running around.
I’m not saying I don’t like to work with good photographers, I do and often they can capture some amazing moments – most of the time, recording the elements, interactions and ‘highlights’ of an event means I won’t focus on creating portrait captures of every couple standing together.
It’s a different result to using a dedicated stills photographer, but the reality is with limited budgets, video is a must in 2014, so would you prefer photos and no video, video and no photos, or video with the capacity to create stunning still frames?
For this reason I’ve invested Bravo Charlie in the Canon Cinema EOS line as production cameras for you (are you a client yet?) because it provides the image quality, data redundancy and audio capabilities professional jobs need. Messing about with DSLR’s is fun, but the drawbacks on-set are not worth it.
Technological Limitations
On July 9th, 2010 – YouTube announced it would add streaming of 4k content and NetFlix ‘will ruin TV’ now that they have dedicated 4k streaming channels.
This is an issue in Australia as due to geo-blocking we can’t access it (unless you read thisand use Hola, Unblockus or Tunnelbear) .. then the only limitation is streaming a massive amount of data, so best you have access to the NBN or at least the fastest internet you can find.
With that said, you can still easily watch high-definition through Youtube and it makes a big visual difference as long as your internet can handle it.
Have you seen the cog icon in the bottom right of all videos? Or the three vertical dots in the top right on mobile devices and tablets? Click that and ensure you are on at least 720P.
Longevity and hardware (read the education section first if you don’t understand resolutions)
Australia may be behind, but what we shoot today should be usable tomorrow – for the most part of the last 5 years, I’ve filmed in 1080p and scaled down to 720p for the speed of editing and uploading (smaller resolution, lower file size)
It has not been relevant for most Australia’s to watch anything on YouTube in 1080p, let alone 4k but that is changing, especially if your material is viewed by people overseas.
With that said, when you film things at 4x times the size of high definition, everything increases exponentially – the Codex OnBoard recorder shown in the image above creates 1 terrabyte of data per hour of filming using proprietary storage cards, each costing several thousand dollars, which then requires editing and storage.. this is why film budgets have .. film budgets! 🙂
Still.. preparing for the future is an ongoing task and 4k is definately here to stay, which is why I’m putting in the infrastructure to capture, handle and store your digital stories in 4k.
Education section – 4k .. wha??
“It’s all about resolution, baby” – a pixel is a dot on the screen, the more pixels you have in a specific space, the more detail you can have and the ‘cleaner’ the image looks.
Remember four years ago with digital cameras, when manufacturers raced to scream at you “It’s got more megapixels!!” as a selling point ?
This is great if you are printing out your photos and using them to put on billboards, but ultimately it’s about the delivery format – I’m typing this to you on a 27″ Samsung monitor with a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080.. so if you have a 4,000 pixel image.. I won’t see it.. I’ll see a quarter of it on my screen, and then I’ll ‘fit to screen’ and it will be 1920 x 1080.. and you will have to send it to me in the first place, which would be a large file size.. so for a web-centric world, overkill.. you with me?
If you are seriously into commercial photography you would be talking about using medium format cameras for print campaigns (An interested beginner? Have a read of ‘Printing billboard size and megapixels‘ via DP review).. BUT.. to throw the cat amongst the pigeons, Nikon used one of their Coolpix 990 cameras to print the ‘world’s largest single digital image‘ – a 65 x 43 foot print of a T-Rex from Jurrasic Park in Times Square.. so you know.. it’s all about using the right tool for the job 🙂
Crossing the digital divide
If you are on a computer and make it to https://www.bravocharlie.global you may notice a little drop down arrow in the centre of the screen. Hovering over it reveals the statement:
” .. Crossing the digital divide is an art form
Solving problems you haven’t predicted is our gift to you
Together, let us make art .. “
I stay up late figuring this stuff out so I can confidently support your digital story telling needs, and I work from the perspective of a CEO and business development manager, to first understand where you are and where you want to get, so the story we tell the market is relevant to your business goals.
My definition of commercial art is to be relevant, beautiful and engaging.
Did you learn something reading this?
Please share this and tweet it to your followers – thank you for your support.
