IAC DISCUSSION FORUMS

The noise performance as well as the lens performance. The 20x G lens has been lifted from the NX5, so it was presumably designed to be good enough for HD yet here it is being asked to work at twice that resolution. The lens is ok for its size, price, speed and zoom range, but it falls down badly in its chromatic abberation and levels of linear distortion.

Tom, if that is correct then it is disturbing, but could those limitations be circumvented by the camera's firmware as is the case with the Panasonic cameras and Lumix lenses assuming the actual resolving power is sufficient?

Good thought Geoff, and the answer has to be yes. Because it's a fixed lens camera Sony could programme in variable correction for whatever focal length had been set. Panasonic started this with their so-so 10x zoom fitted to the GH1, so as you say, it's about time Sony joined in. Lots of DSLRs are programmed to correct lens aberrations for known lenses that might one day be bayoneted in place.

Which is why I wrote that the manufacturers spec doesn't always (ever?) tell the full story. You're talking about prosumer cameras, I was referring to the new Sonys like the F55 and 56, costing many tens of thousands of pounds but which are the cameras that will be used to shoot features, up to 8K raw - awesome, but required by the skeptics in Hollywood, hankering after the much lamented film days. I urge you all to try and get a view of the documentary 'Side by Side' which covers this, giving great insight to current industry thinking. All this is of course irrelevant to most film makers, even broadcasters, decent HD on reasonably good cameras will suffice for years yet.

If there is to be a major move by broadcasters to 4K, then I suspect that it will be for production flexibility rather than distribution/transmission. Both terrestial and satellite broadcasting channels are subject to finite bandwidth meaning that you can have either a large number of lower definition (HD) channels or a smaller number of higher definition (4k UHD) channels within the alocated radio frequency bands. Codec technology has improved considerably since the first days of JPEG and future improvement could allow more channels to be squeezed into the available bandwidth, but perhaps fibre will become the main carrier in the future and this is likely to mean that both HD (radio) and UHD (fibre) transmission will become the norm; an expensive proposition. As to whether the general public will accept the cost of the newer technology or not, I think as has already been said, HD will prove to be acceptable by the majority. I suspect that 4K, 8K or even more will eventually be used for cinema style production - hopefuly 50p/60p rather than the 'cinematic, but strobing 24p. In normal domestic viewing there is little to be gained by the increased resolution of 4K, in my mind better dynamic range would be more welcome. As far as we 'amateurs' are concerned, I think that the major advantage of 4K will be for composition framing and stabilisation in post and possibly a 4.2.2 rather than 4.2.0 colour matrix. The recent Sony 4K prosumer cameras are interesting, but the small size of their imager will likely reduce the increased rsolution benefits of the 4K.

I agree with all you say Geoff, especially the 50/60p frame rates for cinema and BD release. But strangely enough this seems to raise more hackles than anything else in the film adoration world, as if a jerky 24p holds some magic charm rather than being seen for what it is: a historical money-saving move that allowed the movie makers to get away with what they considered 'just good enough'.

Yet in Super 8 days I took 18p to be 'good enough' and 24p was for really special occasions, Sunday best.