4K Video at reasonable cost with the Panasonic LX100?

[Interceptor121]

Panasonic DMC-LX100 Nauticam 4K Underwater video becomes affordable | Interceptor121 Underwater Photo & Video Blog

 

[danvolker]

In the next year or two, I will want to evolve to some video camera beyond the Canon 5D mark II I have been using for about 3 years or so now....But to me, the 4k direction seems a huge mistake.
The biggest issue is distribution....We can barely get 1080P now for the "average Youtube user"...Many have to stream at 720....4 K just seems a mistake, given that it is only going to make a real difference for cinema.
Where I would want to spend money, is on 4-2-2 or on 4-4-4 cameras with more like a 80 meg per second data rate..that record better color and lighting information....and with the technology evolutiion, I would want something that is much better than the Canon 5 D mark III or the 1, on extreme low light sensitivity--allowing the backgrounds in a wide angle video--the stuff 10 feet out to 150 feet away, to have plenty of luma info so that it can be made to look awesome in post....Better still if there is a camera that can merge high quality lighting in the 2 foot to ten foot range where our colors are popping from high end video lights, with the much darker luma values of the 10 foot to 150 foot ambient light. If someone know about cameras in this direction, I would love to hear about them!!!
And yes, I know youtube or brightcove or Limelight do not play 4-4-4 content on stream servers...the H264 content shot originally with 4-4-4 and then color graded in post, and then encoded in H264 at 4-2-0 will always look much better than the same original underwater material ( containing a mix of lights and near blacks, when shot at 4-2-0 . To me, this is a way bigger issue than 4k.

 

[Interceptor121]

That seems a bit like those technology predictions gone wrong
"I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse." -- Robert Metcalfe, founder of 3Com, inventor of Ethernet, 1995.
4K is already the present there are affordable tv and with fiber to the cabinet you can stream the required 30-35 Mbps soon 1080p will be legacy and 720p is already dead three four years ago
Nobody cares about 4:2:2 in the consumer markets the eye is more sensitive to resolution than to anything else so there is a reason why all manufacturers are pushing for it.
3D has been a bit of a flop but 4K is present not future

 

[danvolker]

That seems a bit like those technology predictions gone wrong
"I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse." -- Robert Metcalfe, founder of 3Com, inventor of Ethernet, 1995.
4K is already the present there are affordable tv and with fiber to the cabinet you can stream the required 30-35 Mbps soon 1080p will be legacy and 720p is already dead three four years ago
Nobody cares about 4:2:2 in the consumer markets the eye is more sensitive to resolution than to anything else so there is a reason why all manufacturers are pushing for it.
3D has been a bit of a flop but 4K is present not future

When fiber optic Internet services dominate in the US and other markets, then your prediction of "soon" will be realized. There were plenty of great concepts for online video back in the late 90's, but the average consumer had such poor download speed with their internet providers, that it was not until a couple of years ago that the masses could even enjoy 720 p Youtube. Today, most American consumers can stream 720, but 1080 p is still the minority....To stream 4 k is actually an entirely different delivery network than the present system.....Whether fiber optic, or something else, I would not be holding my breath for any major distribution change becoming common place before 2020 or later.

4-2-2 in the consumer market makes little sense for topside.... 4-2-2 or 4-4-4 for Underwater is an entirely different story, as we have major needs to color correct and change luma where 4-2-0 is sadly lackling--and again in topside, this same problem is dealt with much more easily by normal topside shooting techniques--and topside is a much easier medium

 

[Interceptor121]

4K scaled down to 1080p is much better than 1080p native so either way shooting 4K is the way forward you have so many options to crop and do things anyway I don't need to spend time on this is a proven fact

 

[danvolker]

Glad it is proven to you.
When I choose my next camera, you and I will have to have a 1080P, Youtube shootoff, on 100 foot dives with 100 foot viz.

 

[Interceptor121]

Erm we can do right now with my 1080p vids and without 4;2;4 or whatever you do with yours! Lol

 

[ronscuba]

Fun debate going on here. 4K resolution, 4-2-2 or 4-4-4 color space, high speed data rate recording, etc.. Which is more important ? I don't know, but what is the target viewing platform ? Online streaming, a smartphone, a laptop, a PC, a HDTV, a 4k HDTV, a home projector, a movie theater ?

Where and what you record matters too. Wide angle dark, a lot of water or subject movement ? 4K resolution by itself will do nothing for you in these conditions.

General consumer understands resolution, but no clue what color space and data rate recording is.

I'm very impressed with my consumer 1080 HD camcorder/camera footage. Looks great online, on my laptop and still pretty good on a HDTV. However, viewing with my 110" projector, there is a big fall off. 4-2-2, 4-4-4 and high data rate recording does make a difference.

 

[danvolker]

Erm we can do right now with my 1080p vids and without 4;2;4 or whatever you do with yours! Lol

Kind of misses the point of showing the differences between 4k and the color space being used....but I am curious as to your videos.....It sounds like they must be quite good, so I would love to see a youtube example of good 1080p content, at a depth of between 100 and 125 feet deep or so....with around 100 foot vis....to me, I want this kind of vis to show a fantastic marine ecosystem and to make it appealing to an audience that would be compelled by this, to visit.....and the depth range is still recreational, but is very challenging for the camera to deal with the 2 to 10 foot foreground lit up by your lighting, and the huge seascape/background lit only by ambient and going out 100 feet distant or so....
Do you have anything like this to post?

 

[Interceptor121]

Yes look at grenada there is the wreck of bianca B 120 feet and few others at 100 feet I think shake em and another one I don't remember. Those were shot with pana lx7 using custom white balance. And malta and Comino tuna farm is also around 85 feet. This is with sony rx100
In general though things are dark at 100+ feet and there is not much to be seen most of life is upper

Ron has got an lx7 and I think he has got excellent examples too

I was the other day at a seminar that talked about saving with Adobe color space to ensure color correction was better this is because there was more color in it to start
If you don't have it because you couldn't record it definitely you can't add to it especially with heavily compressed video