Reminds me of a friend who used to go out on his cast-iron 10-speed CCM wearing jean shorts, flips flops and a loose tshirt with cut off sleeves bombing past these spandex wearing, gloved fruitcakes in their aerodynamic helmets riding thier 300gr italian made bicycles. All hat, no cattle.

4K is only stupid marketing. The picture quality is not only made by pixels quantity. Full HD is very near at 2K cine. You can make great productions with HD and win an Oscar too.

Shoot in 4K; crop, pan, zoom in post and deliver in HD if you must (more creative options and you avoid noticing "actors makeup and imperfections").

Btw, Netflix requires 4K at a minimum for its own productions.

These reasons seem more personal and budgetary oriented than actual reasons why it should be avoided. You don't want to use it? Great, shoot 1080.

I have found 4K great for both image resolution and for punching in for a second angle in 1080.

You're incorrect about 1080P being enough for Netflix and other streaming platforms. 1080P is fine your home movies, but if you're doing any kind of distribution, 4K is becoming the requirement.

If your computer can't edit in 4K, it might be time to upgrade. Or, keep working in 1080.

LOL

I will use 4K for cuts only / wipe /dissolve /simple grading editing.

And I will use FullHD for multilayer editing

its pixel density, not pixel quantity. (pixels per inch) Tv's can sometimes be less than half the quality of monitors.https://www.saji8k.com/displays/pixel-density/

@danilo1 Cheap, facile shot, and illogical. How exactly will reducing the quality of the visual output increase the quality of the story, directing, etc.? What does "focus more" even mean - more money for authors? The camera cost is a very trivial component of the overall budget of their productions. There is no trade-off between pixels and the rest of the production quality.

Film is a visual art. And, btw, the "focus" on pixels here is totally-off base - the Netflix visual requirements that are more important are dynamic range and number of bits - all of which much more directly affect visual quality. Most of their new productions are HDR. Netflix also has audio standards.

It is difficult to write down "standards" for writing and acting, but there are objective measures for resolution (pixels), dynamic range, color steps, frequency range, distortion. The fact that they are written down and enforced does not mean Netflix is "focusing" too much on technical standards.

@apefos Your questions miss the point.

This has been rehashed over and over on many forums: the fact is that for most cameras shooting in 4K and downrezzing in post to 1080 results in much better 1080 in terms of resolution and color than shooting in 1080. So, it is irrelevant how many TV's are 4K or monitors are 4K or subscriptions to Netflix are Premium. Better 1080 IQ from shooting in 4K, get it?

In addition, as has been said, shooting in 4K and delivering in 1080 gives you more creative flexibility, as you can pan and zoom and reframe in post with no loss of resolution in 1080. Better imagery in 1080 from shooting in 4K, get it?

And, on Youtube, uploaded 4K video looks better viewed in 1080 than uploaded 1080 video.

I hope you have enjoyed your rant, and learned something.

"The difference in image quality between shooting in 1080p and shooting in 4k for downscale to 1080p is small"
Actually, I see I big difference. Just my 2 cents. Plus the big difference in viewing on YT.

@apefos If you cannot see the difference between downscaled from 4K 1080 and original 1080 even on small screens and 1080 screens then this discussion is not worth having - you are basically blind. Perhaps you should shoot in 720, save even more time and the difference is likely not discernible to you either. Perhaps VHS is all you need.

You obviously are illiterate in economics as well, and clearly not a "project manager" or independent videographer.

What are these "low-budget" productions that cannot afford storage and computing power? If there are enough of them, then investments in computing power and storage constitute a fixed cost that is amortized.

No one who makes any money from video would not invest in proper computing power - it enhances creativity across all productions and saves time in each, which is money. And the cost per production goes down the more productions there are, regardless if each individual production is "low-budget." Transcoding is faster (if it is even necessary) with a more powerful computer. But it is not as if you cannot carry out other tasks while waiting for the batch transcoding or even rendering. These time-consuming computer tasks are trivial costs of video production of any kind.

If a 1080p camera can resolve 720p dont you think it is pretty good? 720p is everything you need to enjoy a movie in big screen. There are studies about film cinema proving that 35mm film projection in theaters could only resolve 800 lines at maximum when cinema was film.

I grew up as a child and as a teen with VHS and it did magic at that time. I own a VHS camcorder today and I will use it in my projects.

What do you prefer? A good movie in VHS or a bad movie in 4k?

@apefos You are now being even more silly, to cover up your ignorance and perhaps your blindness. We prefer a good movie in 4K to a good movie in VHS. Your question is stupid - there is no trade-off between all other movie goodness and resolution. Are there "good" movies available in VHS and not 1080?

What "projects" are you talking about using VHS? Certainly not ones anyone would pay for. As I predicted, you are satisfied with VHS, so you are either blind or have never seen a 4K video on any screen.

Hey man, I get your points, theres lots of SD distributed content made in beta or dvcpro thats great. I remember a TV show where actors narrate short stories from local authors, thing is from 2003 have a horror tone, the visual is great even with crapy low DR, highlight clipping and blooming. I would say it even adds a lot to the character of the show. That put, their equipment was not subpar in the date and content is still enjoyable.

I have recorder with HVX200 lots of times and i prefered it to things line 5d mkii that was getting all the hot in the day, but thing is, that camera put 100mbps, the noise is very high, media cost kidneys, everything is damn expensive. You had to shoot what you want to deliver if you cant, you wont. Theres no room for adaptations. That was years ago.

On the other hand i aquired a LX100, a cheapo. Media is cheap. Storage is cheap. Bitrate is same. 4K downsampled have waay less noise. I can actually plan and choose if theres something to post. And I can do 4K on a Sandy bridge. And an i5 K is cheaper than a shitty new computer, put modern nvidia tha you will need anyway for post in 2K, youre set. Thats consumer level and its way cheaper than to work with an HXV200.

So if you have artistic considerations you do what you please, if you have hard budgetary restrictions you do what you can with what you have in hand, but those things are not universals.

The cost of 4K vs 2K is negligible, its consumer grade gear that adds tool capability. Theres no reason to buy gear in 1080p only as the total cost will be about the same. Paid work will afford you 4K anyway.