I’ve been filming more video as of late, as you might have noticed, you faithful reader, you.
And I’ve put together a quick video (less than 2 minutes) to show it can help to film in 8K and zoom sometimes up to 4x and get great results.
Last year I purchased the Canon R5, which does 8K video. What is 8K and should you care?
- It’s 4x the size of 4K video, which already looks dang good on most screens.
- Nope, not really.
For viewers, we don’t care what the footage was filmed. Heck, film itself, the real reel-to-reel stuff, looks just fine in theaters. So….more pixels? Do they really help?
Yes!
In my specific case, I have been playing with 8K because it is 4x the size of 4K. Meaning you can crop out a 1/4 of the screen and what you have is a 4K video. That’s a lot of real estate.
While it is good for stock footage, it’s even better when I want to play around with footage where I am limited in how close I can get. For instance, with birds or other wildlife. I use a RF 100-500mm L lens and that is quite the zoom but it’s not always enough.
At a basic level, 8K footage can be zoomed 2x and still look the same as 4K, because it is. And that’s a lot of advantage when birds are small on the screen.