New here: What is 4K photo

Art Shotwell said:

I just received a new Lumix GX85 and I see there have been developments since I last bought a camera, which was an Olympus epl2. What really is 4K photos. Looks like some kind of burst, but I don't really understand it.

I've been taking photos for 60 years, at least. Have only use my epl2 for travel photos, but have more time now and want to expand a bit.

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4K photo modes use short 4K video sequences, a few seconds at up to 60 frames per second. 4K video quality is good enough to select individual frames as still photos, so you can pick the image that was taken at just the right time (vs. the ~8 FPS of normal photo modes). The GX85 has a few other 4K tricks up its sleeve, like the clever Post Focus that changes focus throughout the video sequence. You can then pick your favorite image afterward, or have the camera stack the sequence to produce an image that has everything in focus.

Art Shotwell said:

Thanks for the pointer. Sounds like the purpose isn’t really for a 4K photo, but for high speed stop action? The video also led to my next question about post focus. I won’t pursue that.

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Although it’s indeed useful for high speed action, 4K Photo is something that can be used for a variety of situations, such as portraits.

It can be useful for street photography and Lumix amabassador, Ross Grieve is a proponent of that, for example. However, Ross also used the feature to great effect for more high-speed action like http://www.rossgrieve.com/blog/2016-master-pet-photographer/

I'm more confused now than before. With my G3 when I shoot video I can press on the shutter button and take still shots. (it's a great option that my Olympus cameras lack.) Is this 4K still-video stuff the same thing?

jrg said:

I'm more confused now than before. With my G3 when I shoot video I can press on the shutter button and take still shots. (it's a great option that my Olympus cameras lack.) Is this 4K still-video stuff the same thing?

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It is a totally different thing from your experience on "taking still in the middle of a video recording session".

4K Photo, makes use of e-shutter, video shooting speed of 30 fps, to shoot still image (mostly fast action, e.g. fire surging, balloon bursting, water dropping, Bird in Flight etc), and encodes the frames in video format (end up with a MP4 video file) getting rid of the buffer size etc hardware requirement. Even the entry class GFs can do it nowadays.

Through in-camera 4K Photo extraction features (or by a video playback software like VLC player, MPC player etc) shooters can go through the MP4 file frame by frame, and extract the best into 8Mp jpg photo.

We can of course do similar thing (frame extraction) from regular 4K video. But 4K Photo allows 4:3 or any aspect ratio that the camera supports instead of 16:9 only of video. And we can also use any shutter speed to catch the action that usual 4K video will normally limit to 1/30" or 1/60"...

Better still, 4K Photo can be operated in 2 major styles of operation. 4K Photo and 4K Photo S&S are similar, the first is to hit the shutter, hold it during the recording and release the shutter to stop. S&S is the same as normal video recording, hit shutter 1st time to start and hit shutter again to stop. The most exciting mode is 4K Photo Per-Burst. Camera starts to record from the moment the feature is selected. Images are recorded continuously on rolling basis (new replace old), Only the last 30 frames recorded before the moment of shutter hit, together with further 30 frames upon shutter hit, will be saved to give total 60 frames for shooter to choose. Therefore it can effectively compensate normal human response delay (when we see an incident happened, hit the shutter might already be too late to catch that critical moment of happening). It is something not regular 4K video be design to do.

It's still confusing but it cleared up a lot of things. Still, I'm not the swiftest camel in the tech caravan. I'm going to need a camera with 4k before me so i can experience things first hand. Video in general I find daunting, an irony perhaps since i studied film making in school (the early 70s).


I appreciate the in-depth feedback. Thanks!

Hmmm, well, I think I get it. Sounds like 4k photo is like a burst, but faster shutter, if you want, more images. And, my GX85 manual shows that when you view the photo(s) it shows as one but with a way to slide along the string of photos and pick one to output. I'm still not sure what happens in Photoshop. The 4k in a sense is like a short video, but with a faster shutter speed possible and therefor more images in a string, which seems to be limited.

Art Shotwell said:

Hmmm, well, I think I get it. Sounds like 4k photo is like a burst, but faster shutter, if you want, more images. And, my GX85 manual shows that when you view the photo(s) it shows as one but with a way to slide along the string of photos and pick one to output. I'm still not sure what happens in Photoshop. The 4k in a sense is like a short video, but with a faster shutter speed possible and therefor more images in a string, which seems to be limited.

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Yes it is more or less how 4K Photo does.

If Pany does not use the video technology on this features, Olympus is the one and can do it in full resolution raw, this extra high speed shooting will need a very high spec hardware. Even the high spec EM1-II has buffer size issue. Do we ever hear video has to stop because of buffer size?

Besides how it works, IMHO how we apply any of the 3 shooting modes could be the real topic we need to study otherwise it will become another sort of 4K video shooting and frame extraction.

Art Shotwell said:

The 4k in a sense is like a short video, but with a faster shutter speed possible and therefor more images in a string

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Do not confuse the frame rate with the shutter speed.

Art Shotwell said:

which seems to be limited.

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What's limited about it?

Nope, I hope I’m not confusing shutter speed with frame rate. Limited in how long you can shoot in 4K mode. No?

Art Shotwell said:

Nope, I hope I’m not confusing shutter speed with frame rate.

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Ok, so just to be clear, setting a faster shutter speed does not get you "more pictures in a string" as you put it.

Art Shotwell said:

Limited in how long you can shoot in 4K mode. No?

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That depends on you, how you set up your camera. If you set "4K Burst S/S" there's no limit other than the video limit of the camera - for the EU model that's 29m59s, for the US model I'm not sure if it's limited. It's also the only one of the 3 modes that captures sound.

Mark9473 said:

Art Shotwell said:

Nope, I hope I’m not confusing shutter speed with frame rate.

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Ok, so just to be clear, setting a faster shutter speed does not get you "more pictures in a string" as you put it.

Mark9473 said:

Limited in how long you can shoot in 4K mode. No?

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That depends on you, how you set up your camera. If you set "4K Burst S/S" there's no limit other than the video limit of the camera - for the EU model that's 29m59s, for the US model I'm not sure if it's limited. It's also the only one of the 3 modes that captures sound.

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Ooh, I never aware 4K Photo can also record sound!

Learn one more thing today, thank you.

At this point, you should just try it.

Let's continue after that.

Yeah, now I have to find something moving... tomorrow... just for the heck of it. thanks for the help. Art

Here's another question for those of you who have used the 4K photo...

how do you find the focusing? A chap near the beginning of this thread gave a link to a pro photographer, one of his photos was of a puppy (running or hopping, not sure) I'd love to be able to do the same thing, but find my GX9 sort of struggles in CAF when taking photos, so was wondering if attempting 4K photo would be worth it, any users out there given this a try?

Ron

a100ps said:

Here's another question for those of you who have used the 4K photo...

how do you find the focusing? A chap near the beginning of this thread gave a link to a pro photographer, one of his photos was of a puppy (running or hopping, not sure) I'd love to be able to do the same thing, but find my GX9 sort of struggles in CAF when taking photos, so was wondering if attempting 4K photo would be worth it, any users out there given this a try?

Ron

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CDAF + DFD might not be the best CAF in the market but will depend on what we are going to take.

When a fast moving object moves across the frame, particularly in irregular path, my GX85 has a very difficult time to follow it and the keeping rate is very low.

But if shooting something of moving within a fixed / limited area, like bursting of a bubble, the birthday girl blew candles on the cake, bird caught an insect on the ground etc the AF can be good enough to follow the movement. It is similar to use burst AFS shooting to catch the right moment and best face expression. 4K Photo can shine on the sort of shooting of its ultra high fps. Once I shot people playing zip slide. It slided down hill in a quit fast speed. I use 4K pre burst, pre focus on the starting point, and got over 40 frames in good focus.

--
Albert

I saw a video, from this site, that compared continuous focus success on the GX9 and the G9 and another camera. Turns out the G9 has more processing power and it shows up in better autofocus tracking.

Full disclosure: the other camera had phase detect on sensor, and it won. DFD helps and it's getting better over the years, but phase detect still won.