Crazy New York 12K video is even beautiful on your screen
While we are slowly upgrading our TVs and monitors to 4K, the next technological limit has already been reached. And then we are not even talking about 8K, but one step further: 12K. Cameraman Phil Holland has shot a video of New York at night in that resolution. Just for the perspective: that is the resolution of twelve 4K TVs together!
12K cameras do not exist yet, so Holland has put three RED 8K cameras on its side and put it on a special Shotover Hammerhead ‘rig’ so that the edges of the images fit seamlessly together. After turning the images, they were then digitally glued together so that you ended up with 100 megapixels per image. If you are interested in the technical aspect of the video, you can read his blog about it, but believe me when I say it is insane. Just the processor power needed to adjust the three images correctly so that the perspective would be true is bizarre, let alone how much storage you would need to capture all that.
The biggest problem, however, is that there is, of course, no 12K display anywhere in the world. Why would you make the video in such a high resolution? Does not that matter to anyone? That is not entirely true. Although you can watch the video on YouTube in 8K, that is only a theoretical possibility. But even if you watch a 12K video in 4 or 5K it still looks sharper and nicer than a video recorded in 4K would be. That effect is called supersampling and it not only gives a more beautiful picture, according to Holland, the depth of such a video cannot be compared with ‘regular’ 4K videos. Anyway, the video is in any case very beautiful so you can – at any resolution – just enjoy watching. Because New York at night, that’s always beautiful.
