R5 : HQ 4K vs ‘Regular’ 4K

[Dave Rodgers]

I have no clue who this guy is but I thought many would find it interesting. All in all the regular 4K doesn’t look too bad with some work.
What do you all think?

 

[NoTicket]

Thoroughly unsurprised. The 4k with a minor sharpening filter applied looks 99% as good as the 8k oversampled hq footage.

 

[Bassman2003]

Agreed. For a lot of stuff the normal 4k with some post work will be fine.

 

[shawnphoto]

Thoroughly unsurprised. The 4k with a minor sharpening filter applied looks 99% as good as the 8k oversampled hq footage.

I could be wrong, but don't you also get a noise reduction from super sampling?

 

[shawnphoto]

I have no clue who this guy is but I thought many would find it interesting. All in all the regular 4K doesn’t look too bad with some work.
What do you all think?

I'm more surprised that HQ actually looks better even zoomed out and watching it second hand via a YouTube video... Canon has really improved their super-sampling performance, it looks really good! I will definitely be using HQ on my R5 when I shoot video because it looks fantastic.

 

[NoTicket]

Thoroughly unsurprised. The 4k with a minor sharpening filter applied looks 99% as good as the 8k oversampled hq footage.

I could be wrong, but don't you also get a noise reduction from super sampling?

You do, and you will not get that in the non-overheating mode, which will work perfectly well, and it will be about 1 stop or less depending on the algorithm used for subsampling / line skipping / pixel binning.

 

[PhotoSiem]

He says some good stuff. The picture and emotion that matters, not the sharpness that much as the youtubers let you believe. I think most reviewer/youtubers are OCD/autistic instead of really creative. I like my footage not to be too sharp, it gives a more cinematic feeling not to be too sharp.

 

[Miguel-C]

Thoroughly unsurprised. The 4k with a minor sharpening filter applied looks 99% as good as the 8k oversampled hq footage.

On a small screen, perhaps. Sharpening doesnt add detail, it only punches in the contrast areas, and it becomes really visible when you work the files.

 

[lawny13]

Get an external recorder, take out the CF card, and just record all you want in 4k HQ

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/64232149


Another thing is that apparently if you do oversampled 5.1k (so shoot in super35 mode) then you also don't have overheating issues. So if you have the lens for it, you can do that too.

 

[Bassman2003]

Things are looking up. With 10bit 4:2:2 one has more information to "save" the normal 4k as well. That is why the video world has been pushing 10bit forever. The only gotcha with the lower level 4k is if somebody sits down with a pattern on their clothing and the shot is ruined with moire. That needs to be flushed out as not many have focused on working with the normal 4k yet. But it has shown up in shooting focus charts.

 

[Wing2]

Both HQ 4K and Regular 4k are 4K. Their resolution is the same. With the right amount of sharpening applied, it is not surprising to look near identical in sharpness on some scenes. I would even recommend use keyframes on sharpness, so that some scenes won't look over sharpened while some scene can be further sharpened. Sure, the more effort you spend on your video, the better it may look.

However, please note that (like most digital cameras) R5's sensor is a bayer RGBG sensor The grey level of each pixel in HQ mode with full RGBG information is possibly calculated to higher accuracy than grey level of each pixel in Regular mode which is just an estimate (There is just not enough data available in line skip mode)

HQ 4K is 4K 422. If the video was shot in 8K 422, it is not difficult to convert it to even higher quality 4K 444. At 4K the difference between 422 and 444 is not as big as in lower resolutions. However, it is not difficult to use a some test patterns to prove that 444 is better than 422 even at 4K.

If the video was intended for YouTube, Regular 4K may already be too good! However, there are always chances that some original footages may in future became useful elsewhere that requires higher quality.

 

[lawny13]

Things are looking up. With 10bit 4:2:2 one has more information to "save" the normal 4k as well. That is why the video world has been pushing 10bit forever. The only gotcha with the lower level 4k is if somebody sits down with a pattern on their clothing and the shot is ruined with moire. That needs to be flushed out as not many have focused on working with the normal 4k yet. But it has shown up in shooting focus charts.

True.

Thing is that people are now saying you can’t use the R5 as a production camera. Well if you wanted to it is usually better to just amount an atomos on there anyway, and if you can get the record times you need by using oen and taking out the CF card, then by definition you could use it as a production camera, since you have access to 4K HQ, and potentially 60p, 120p and maybe even longer 8k. It remains to be seen.



What is funny to me though is that I gave 4K a roll when it was the rage when I got me the a7III. That was the only time. At 450 MB per minute, and the hassle of processing it. I decided to stick to 1080. And I have a high end MBP with an eGPU running high end video cards, and a 32TB NAS, and the software to do it.



When I read from people that they intend to dabble in video and the R5 won’t do it for them cause it doesn’t deliver on video like 8k I have to suppress laughing out loud. If you are going to dabble in video you better start with 1080. There is a lot to learn before you can make good use of 4K or 8k. The latter takes 1 TB of space for 50 minutes.



I get it, some people NEED it to be able to do so. But realistically the vast majority using it for stills will shoot 8K once, realize how much space it takes on a CF card, realize their system can’t even open it cause it is so heavy and never use it again.