It’s silly, isn’t it?
WIth the announcement of the Galaxy S5 and the Sony Xperia Z2 both capable of recording video at 4K resolution, it seems ridicilous that many current TV shows and films are still being shot in old fashioned 2K resolution.
Let’s get one thing straight first of all – a 4K smartphone is not going to have better picture quality than a Arri Alexa camera (shown above) which is capable of shooting video up to 2K. Arri have yet to release a 4K version of the Alexa, but there are plans to do so in the nearish future. As an example, these 2K Alexa cameras are being used on the forthcoming BBC production of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.
There are many, many reasons that a 2K Alexa will outperform a 4K smartphone. More pixels is not necessarily better. Far too much other stuff (CCDs, lenses, etc.) to go into here without boring people to death.
What makes me think that having 4K smartphones as being completely mad is that few people will have computer systems that are capable of displaying full 4K resolution. Not to mention sufficient hard drive speeds (even if these smartphones use highly efficient video codecs to compress the footage) to be able to edit 4K footage without stutter. With more laptops and desktop systems coming with SSDs, this isn’t so much a problem anymore, but certainly the lack of monitor resolution alone is enough to think 4K is an overkill on a smartphone. It’s a gimmick.
And how many folks already have 4K televisions? These are still hideously expensive and will continue to remain so for the foreseeable future. Having a 4K smartphone isn’t likely to drive sales of 4K TVs unless the manufacturers can bring down the cost of making them and passing on the savings to the consumer.
I’m unlikely to buy a new TV until 8K sees the light of day – perhaps another 10 years. Heck, many TV and film companies don’t even have proper 4K or 8K workflows yet. Everything is still very much HD.
The question is: when will Arri, Panavision, Sony, etc. start putting phones in their TV and film cameras? Image may be NSFW.
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