GEAR | BEYOND 4K
The tech accelerating 6K and 8K workflows, from capture to delivery
WORDS PH I L RHODES / P I CTURES VAR I OUS
THE CAMERAS At least, that’s true if we take ‘straightforward’ to mean using conventional lenses. Red’s Helium was an early example, Kinefinity has a 6K MAVO, and Blackmagic now has its Ursa Mini Pro 12K option, all of which offer more than 4K on sensors sized for conventional Super 35 glass. The 12K is still fairly new and hard to summarise, but it’s already been out on a spot for Kia Motors, directed by Glenn F Clements and photographed by Vance Burberry. As much as it’s convenient to be able to use well-established, well-liked Super 35 glass to shoot
high-resolution material, packing so many pixels into a given space means compromise is going to be inevitable. Clever noise-management techniques are a key part of more or less every modern camera, but for people who are not prepared to make any such compromise, larger sensors are the answer. That’s certainly Arri’s preferred answer, in the absence of the higher-resolution Super 35 camera that it has hinted at previously. For now, beyond-4K resolutions require recourse to the Alexa LF, a 4.5K camera, or to go significantly beyond 4K, the Alexa 65, with its titanic 6560x3100 imager. The sheer physical size of the A3X sensor in the Alexa 65 – around 54mm across – demands lenses based on large format stills glass or made for 65mm film origination. This includes the company’s own Prime DNA, Prime 65 and Vintage 765 ranges, or the Leitz Thalia. Not to be left out, Red’s collaboration with Panavision on the DXL2 offers us another option from the old-established part of the film industry, with a full 8192 photosites across its 41mm-wide sensor. Given Panavision’s long-established enthusiasm for lens development, it’s no surprise to find that the company offers no fewer than 11 series of
he question of resolution in drama production goes back more than 20 years. It had long been clear that replacing film would require at least HD video – and ideally, a bit more than that. The idea of HD goes back at least another 30 years, to the analogue systems of the early eighties, but progress in the 21st century has been meteoric. With commercial broadcasters increasingly demanding 4K delivery, there’s a reason to acquire even more pixels, and manufacturers have responded by making beyond-HD acquisition relatively straightforward.
LEFT The Alexa Mini LF can record
in open gate in a resolution of 4448x3096
24 DEF I N I T ION | DECEMBER 2020
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