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Possibly related, I’ve become a fan of recording videos on my iPhone on 4K. On playback I just love the video quality, and I don’t care about how much space the

by d136o 5y ago

Possibly related, I’ve become a fan of recording videos on my iPhone on 4K. On playback I just love the video quality, and I don’t care about how much space they take. Any 8k fans? I think some android phones support it? I’m not a pro or anything but amongst my family members I tend to be the one who likes documenting the most, and I like the idea of really high quality playback of special moments many years from now.

eric__cartman 5y ago
Rather than investing in a phone that can record in 8k (if it even exists) I'd try and look into some entry level "proper" cameras. The bigger sensors and better optics should provide a bump in video quality. Mirrorless cameras aren't very large to lug around when going on vacation or other places where interesting events could be documented.
- janekm 5y ago
  Somewhat surprisingly, it's actually easier to get good-looking footage on an iPhone than say a mid-level mirrorless camera. The iPhone has better built-in stabilisation and handles high dynamic range more conveniently (built-in tone mapping and HDR capture by taking multiple real captures per video frame). Taking full advantage of a "proper" camera takes additional equipment (tripod/gimbal / lights / microphones / decent lenses).
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Definitely. A modern iPhone can do a pretty fantastic job at capturing a somewhat cinema verite sort of video--with appropriate eye and editing. For relatively modest expenditure, you can take that to the next level. But it probably requires hauling around a lot of gear and being less spontaneous. I was fairly interested in video at one point when film (Super-8) was just transitioning to video. But it was all such a hassle that I pretty much just kept to still. An iPhone (or a videocam that's a few hundred dollars) would have been so great.
  - orbital-decay 5y ago
    A single clip that looks somewhat good, sure. A set of clips with a consistently good look, without any additional gear? Not so much. That permanently enabled tone mapping and noise reduction is actually a huge obstacle in post where you have to give your video clips the look you want and match them to glue into a single video. And you should always use a gimbal, even just a simple mobile one: no matter how good the built-in stabilization is, without a gimbal you'll have parallax and shaky uncorrectable motion blur when shooting handheld on the move, especially in closeup shots. And external lenses and especially ND filters are a thing too in mobile video making, in fact they are super useful. Vendors like Apple spend a lot of money marketing the idea of effortless video making to consumers, but the reality is that even a high quality video blog requires a lot of attention to detail and careful planning. Point and click and "one size fits all" philosophy works much worse for video than it does for photo.
    - janekm 5y ago
      Yes of course, if it's for a professional production (and these days even many Youtube videos are professional productions) a (semi)-pro camera has a lot more headroom. But it will require knowledge, experience and additional equipment to better what an iPhone will do out of the box. This video is quite a good illustration, pitting an iPhone 12 Pro against a Sony A7iii (a quite respectable camera): https://youtu.be/TrEdAKCHSZg https://youtu.be/TrEdAKCHSZg With these default settings the A7iii is blowing out the highlights in the sky, the church and the swan. Which could have been prevented by choosing one of the Log settings but then it would have required making adjustments during video editing. If it's for taking a video of family / kids and sharing it immediately with friends/family, the iPhone will produce better results with minimal effort (and that's not to mention having to bring a heavy camera, lenses, tripod/gimbal, accessories).
- ghaff 5y ago
  Although once you're getting into "proper" cameras, you're probably also talking about at least a tripod, maybe steadicam, at that point. But, yes, once you're at 4K, I'd definitely be thinking about other ways to move to the next level than higher resolution.
  - d136o 5y ago
    This is a great point. Part of what I’ve liked about iPhone shot videos is sound and stabilization. So maybe there are some of those aspects which dedicated cameras could do better without stepping up the resolution.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      Traditional cameras--and the more traditional you get the truer this probably gets--have been fairly, well, terrible is probably not too overstated in software. One could probably make nationalistic--or at least industry related--comments related to that but I won't. (BTW I have significant Canon and Fuji systems.) It's also probably the case that the buyers of those cameras were traditionally fine with software that was pretty hands-off. But, yes, if you combined APS-C Fuji, say, with the software available in an iPhone you'd have a really impressive instrument and presumably we'll get there some day.
TAKEMYMONEY 5y ago
The lenses are still very poor compared to pro gear (especially like what we see in this article). This can be fixed in post with lens distortion correction but there's no substitute for a nice hunk of glass.
- samspenc 5y ago
  There are the Moment photo lenses snap-ons, which are fairly decent photo lenses that could provide DSLR-like control on an iPhone: https://www.shopmoment.com/iphone-lenses https://www.shopmoment.com/iphone-lenses
asimpletune 5y ago
I think the main reason people are shooting is 8K is that they can crop into 4K more easily. It just means you don't have to do as much planning with your framing.
- d136o 5y ago
  Yes I was wondering if the smartphone push into 8k is almost coming from the expected future of VR, but it may offer benefits for users before getting all the way to VR playback like you mention. Collect all the video at a higher resolution than you can display and then only show the small part which is in the smaller user view field.
zokier 5y ago
I think it is telling that even Hollywood is not yet on the 8K bandwagon; for example the ARRI Alexa LF camera mentioned in the article is "4.5K" and the Sony Venice is "6K"; I venture to guess that vast majority of feature films are produced at 4k currently. I find it unlikely that smartphone video footage would be at this point significantly improved by changing recording format to 8k.
mrandish 5y ago
Phone cams and optics have definitely advanced remarkably in recent years and are capable of surprisingly good-looking output in the right contexts, especially when combined with a little effort and knowledge. But... as someone who has shot film and video (both professionally and for personal projects), there is still significant incremental value in going up to a full-frame DSLR-style camera body for most contexts. Most fundamentally, it starts with the size of the "light hole" (ie lens diameter) and the size of the imager - which constrain the number of photons at the top of the funnel. To your point, this is balanced by the old photography truism, "The camera you don't have with you is always zero megapixels." Thus, for personal day-to-day use, there is tremendous value in a good camera that fits in your pocket.
jiggawatts 5y ago
Personally I’m blown away the iPhone video quality. It squeezes an amazing end result out of a tiny lens. It’s now a surprisingly expensive endeavour to noticeably beat iPhone 4K Dolby Vision HDR. Something like the Nikon Z9 with a decent prime lens and a stabiliser mount? That’s approaching $10K and is nowhere near as convenient or practical. Anything less than that and the quality difference just isn’t worth it in my eyes (for home videos at least)

by d136o 5y ago

eric__cartman 5y ago

Rather than investing in a phone that can record in 8k (if it even exists) I'd try and look into some entry level "proper" cameras. The bigger sensors and better optics should provide a bump in video quality. Mirrorless cameras aren't very large to lug around when going on vacation or other places where interesting events could be documented.

janekm 5y ago
Somewhat surprisingly, it's actually easier to get good-looking footage on an iPhone than say a mid-level mirrorless camera. The iPhone has better built-in stabilisation and handles high dynamic range more conveniently (built-in tone mapping and HDR capture by taking multiple real captures per video frame). Taking full advantage of a "proper" camera takes additional equipment (tripod/gimbal / lights / microphones / decent lenses).
- ghaff 5y ago
  Definitely. A modern iPhone can do a pretty fantastic job at capturing a somewhat cinema verite sort of video--with appropriate eye and editing. For relatively modest expenditure, you can take that to the next level. But it probably requires hauling around a lot of gear and being less spontaneous. I was fairly interested in video at one point when film (Super-8) was just transitioning to video. But it was all such a hassle that I pretty much just kept to still. An iPhone (or a videocam that's a few hundred dollars) would have been so great.
- orbital-decay 5y ago
  A single clip that looks somewhat good, sure. A set of clips with a consistently good look, without any additional gear? Not so much. That permanently enabled tone mapping and noise reduction is actually a huge obstacle in post where you have to give your video clips the look you want and match them to glue into a single video. And you should always use a gimbal, even just a simple mobile one: no matter how good the built-in stabilization is, without a gimbal you'll have parallax and shaky uncorrectable motion blur when shooting handheld on the move, especially in closeup shots. And external lenses and especially ND filters are a thing too in mobile video making, in fact they are super useful. Vendors like Apple spend a lot of money marketing the idea of effortless video making to consumers, but the reality is that even a high quality video blog requires a lot of attention to detail and careful planning. Point and click and "one size fits all" philosophy works much worse for video than it does for photo.
  - janekm 5y ago
    Yes of course, if it's for a professional production (and these days even many Youtube videos are professional productions) a (semi)-pro camera has a lot more headroom. But it will require knowledge, experience and additional equipment to better what an iPhone will do out of the box. This video is quite a good illustration, pitting an iPhone 12 Pro against a Sony A7iii (a quite respectable camera): https://youtu.be/TrEdAKCHSZg https://youtu.be/TrEdAKCHSZg With these default settings the A7iii is blowing out the highlights in the sky, the church and the swan. Which could have been prevented by choosing one of the Log settings but then it would have required making adjustments during video editing. If it's for taking a video of family / kids and sharing it immediately with friends/family, the iPhone will produce better results with minimal effort (and that's not to mention having to bring a heavy camera, lenses, tripod/gimbal, accessories).
ghaff 5y ago
Although once you're getting into "proper" cameras, you're probably also talking about at least a tripod, maybe steadicam, at that point. But, yes, once you're at 4K, I'd definitely be thinking about other ways to move to the next level than higher resolution.
- d136o 5y ago
  This is a great point. Part of what I’ve liked about iPhone shot videos is sound and stabilization. So maybe there are some of those aspects which dedicated cameras could do better without stepping up the resolution.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Traditional cameras--and the more traditional you get the truer this probably gets--have been fairly, well, terrible is probably not too overstated in software. One could probably make nationalistic--or at least industry related--comments related to that but I won't. (BTW I have significant Canon and Fuji systems.) It's also probably the case that the buyers of those cameras were traditionally fine with software that was pretty hands-off. But, yes, if you combined APS-C Fuji, say, with the software available in an iPhone you'd have a really impressive instrument and presumably we'll get there some day.

TAKEMYMONEY 5y ago

The lenses are still very poor compared to pro gear (especially like what we see in this article). This can be fixed in post with lens distortion correction but there's no substitute for a nice hunk of glass.

samspenc 5y ago
There are the Moment photo lenses snap-ons, which are fairly decent photo lenses that could provide DSLR-like control on an iPhone: https://www.shopmoment.com/iphone-lenses https://www.shopmoment.com/iphone-lenses

asimpletune 5y ago

I think the main reason people are shooting is 8K is that they can crop into 4K more easily. It just means you don't have to do as much planning with your framing.

d136o 5y ago
Yes I was wondering if the smartphone push into 8k is almost coming from the expected future of VR, but it may offer benefits for users before getting all the way to VR playback like you mention. Collect all the video at a higher resolution than you can display and then only show the small part which is in the smaller user view field.

zokier 5y ago

I think it is telling that even Hollywood is not yet on the 8K bandwagon; for example the ARRI Alexa LF camera mentioned in the article is "4.5K" and the Sony Venice is "6K"; I venture to guess that vast majority of feature films are produced at 4k currently. I find it unlikely that smartphone video footage would be at this point significantly improved by changing recording format to 8k.

mrandish 5y ago

Phone cams and optics have definitely advanced remarkably in recent years and are capable of surprisingly good-looking output in the right contexts, especially when combined with a little effort and knowledge. But... as someone who has shot film and video (both professionally and for personal projects), there is still significant incremental value in going up to a full-frame DSLR-style camera body for most contexts. Most fundamentally, it starts with the size of the "light hole" (ie lens diameter) and the size of the imager - which constrain the number of photons at the top of the funnel. To your point, this is balanced by the old photography truism, "The camera you don't have with you is always zero megapixels." Thus, for personal day-to-day use, there is tremendous value in a good camera that fits in your pocket.

jiggawatts 5y ago

Personally I’m blown away the iPhone video quality. It squeezes an amazing end result out of a tiny lens. It’s now a surprisingly expensive endeavour to noticeably beat iPhone 4K Dolby Vision HDR. Something like the Nikon Z9 with a decent prime lens and a stabiliser mount? That’s approaching $10K and is nowhere near as convenient or practical. Anything less than that and the quality difference just isn’t worth it in my eyes (for home videos at least)