What about 4K?

[Zaner]

Hello everyone,
Can someone please tell me, is 4K just for video or for photos too? Right off, I believe that it must be for photos too, since video is just a series of frames. So, does that mean that we will soon see 50-100 (and larger) Megapixel cameras because of 4K, because they will just be enlarged photos without quality loss in the cameras? Are there currently any 4K photo cameras on the market? I know there are for video.
Thank you everyone,
Zane.

 

[ronlane]

AFAIK, 4K refers only to video. There are already digital camera's out that produce 50+ megapixal photos. (SEE THIS) Of course they are medium format, buy hey, they do it. I'm sure that camera's will be just like computers have been throughout the years. They will keep packing more into them and making them smaller and more affordable to most people.

 

[KmH]

4K refers to a display device or content having horizontal resolution on the order of 4,000 pixels - Video, photographs, computer displays, etc.

In other words it's just marketing hype.

 

[Overread]

Yep 4K is the "next big thing" for computer monitors (because their previous "touchscreen" big thing never worked); I've also noticed it being a new "fad" for some new computer games as well as video. Although at present I think the only market actually pushing for it is video.

 

[rudimaes]

If you take one frame of a 4K movie, you get a 8 MP photo, that's it.
So a 4K video is just 24, 30, etc 8mp pictures taken per second.
Rudi

 

[Ido]

4k is formally referring to Cinema 4k as far as I know. Consumer 4k is officially called Ultra HD, and its resolution is 3840 x 2160. Do that multiplication, and you'll find that Ultra HD is actually no more than 8.3MP in total, so pretty much any camera currently on the market -- even many smartphones -- already capture stills with a higher resolution.

Full HD, the current standard (which will hopefully become the previous standard pretty soon), is 1920 x 1080, which is roughly 2.1MP, and that's quite a low resolution that isn't particularly good for printing in any size. 8.3MP, though, is a very versatile resolution, even for printing - not very large, obviously, but still a decent size. So with cameras that shoot in Ultra HD or Cinema 4k (which is slightly bigger on the long edge, as cinema standard's aspect ratio is different from the consumer 16:9), one can shoot a movie at 30 frames per second, and extract a good-resolution still image from it.

 

[sscarmack]

Just wait till 12k, oh oh, 128k

 

[Solarflare]

AFAICS the official definition of video formats currently officially ends at 8k, which is 8192x8192 at maximum settings - 64 Megapixel (well a bit more than that, the way they usually count it. But us programmers working on powers of 2, and thus power of 1024, consider this 64 Megapixel, exactly).

Thats only slightly less than the best cameras offer at the moment, and AFAICS none of them offer 8192 for the weaker angle (the best is PhaseOne with their 80 Megapixel sensor that gives ~10000x7500). Theres of course the military that will have higher resolutions (if you can pay millions for a single camera, no surprise) and there are 200 Megapixel Sensors that actually are only 50 Megapixel, but archieve 200 Megapixel through "wobbling", i.e. taking a sequence of 6 pictures over a time of a couple seconds, each time moving the sensor only the slightest part around (less than one pixel size) and combining the 6 pictures into one pictue of four times the resolution.

From one can hear, even 4K is already a rather small improvement over Full High Definition (FHD). But many people talk about using 4K as a sort of easy way to get a digital zoom (you can zoom up to 2x with no loss at all), or as a way to get more quality for FHD with little cost (basically if you record 4K with 8 bit and compress it in the end down to FHD, you kind-of get the quality of 2K/FHD with 10 bit).

 

[runnah]

If you take one frame of a 4K movie, you get a 8 MP photo, that's it.
So a 4K video is just 24, 30, etc 8mp pictures taken per second.
Rudi

Pretty much.