rick.lang wrote:The best image isn’t produced in camera.
It’s post production.
To get the best image, you should strive to get as close to the final as possible in camera, no matter the camera.
A better camera sensor, colour science, and capture codec gives you the tools for a better image out of post.
All of these make the first stage easier... and frankly, I think that anyone who struggles to get a good image out of a Black Magic camera should give up and get out of filmmaking. They're very forgiving cameras...
But how I can bend that captured image to suit my artistic goals matters more than pixels once I begin with 4K/UHD to deliver 2K/HD. If I was ever asked for 4K deliverables, then I’d consider 6K.
You can make 4K deliverables using 4K on Black Magic cameras. You really don't need to downsample for 4K; Black Magic cameras can deliver good enough 4K in competent hands to pull it off without down sampling... so the extra resolution is really a luxury rather than a need.
I can’t speak to 8K, but I am astounded by the extremely low low bitrate for R3D 8K footage.
On a film I shot over the summer, I used a Pocket 4K for the gimbal shots and a Red Helium (Epic-W) for the rest. They cut together quite well, but even at 10:1 compression, the 8K footage definitely had more latitude to finagle in post than the braw did. Both cameras delivered more than enough latitude to enable me to do the graded I needed to for those shots, both had enough dynamic range for even the specular highlights.
There's a reason that so many companies try to upend Red's patents on Redcode, or just license the codec and take advantage of it.