Meet the new 8K cameras

Just as we start to settle peacefully into the era of 4K media, Canon has ruined our smug tranquillity.

Canon cameras

Just as we start to settle peacefully into the era of 4K media, Canon has ruined our smug tranquillity with 8K cameras and a display. We’re facing media disruption again.

This comes with Canon’s announcement of a CMOS sensor of about 250 million pixels, or 238 megapixels.

The new devices are:

— A Cinema EOS System 8K camera that makes possible high-resolution 8,192 x 4,320 pixel imaging performance. It has a Canon Super 35mm-equivalent CMOS sensor and features an EF mount that is compatible with Canon’s interchangeable EF lens line-up. It boasts a frame rate of 60 frames per second with 13 stops of dynamic range and wide colour gamut support;

— A professional-use8K display with a pixel density exceeding 300 pixels per inch, a level that Canon says approaches the limit of human visibility.

— An EOS-series 120 megapixel SLR camera that produces high-resolution images capable of recreating the three-dimensional texture, feel and presence of subjects. Canon says the camera will make people appear as if they are really before one’s eyes.

The question is do we need 8K, given that 4K is as crisp and detailed as many of us would need on our lounge room TVs?

And there is a point of diminished returns, where the benefits of even crisper vision is outweighed by enormous file sizes, making it hard to store 8K video, and an even worse capacity to stream it than in the case of 4K.

The answer is there will be specialist circumstances where 8K will be useful. As Canon points out, its SLR camera resolution is more than enough for enlarged poster-sized printouts while also enabling images to be cropped and trimmed without sacrificing image resolution and clarity.

Wherever you have a super-large display or poster region to fill, or need to zoom in on part of the image is where this technology has an immediate future.

There may be cases where you want an incredibly high resolution 8K camera for security surveillance. In a crowd situation, you could home in and identify people even where they appear a small figures in the overall vision. It will be a boon to Big Brother.

Satellite imaging, defence, medical imaging and astronomy are other possible uses.

But don’t discount 8K coming to your lounge room TV some day in the future.

8K is no means the biggest video resolution available on the open market. Last year Forza announced a Forza 100+ MP CAM Platform that captures video at just over 19K resolution.