Blury images when shooting 2K...

[Hagwall]

Hi!

I'v found that when shooting in 2K 2:1 with RC36 and i.e 50 fps, the playback from camera always looks blury and you kind of see the pixels... But when in live view it looks good and crisp on the LCD and external monitor... Why is that? And then when downloading the clips to the computer and convert them to ProRes in final cut the result is slightly blury and it got kind of a smudge feel. I first thought that it could have been a focusing problem, but then it kept happen all the time when changing from 4k to 2k. Even on shots where im absolutly sure the focus was set correctly and the calculated depth of field would have made it impossible to look blury, the final 2K clip looks slightly blury compared to a 4k of the same scene... Is this normal? Am I doing something wrong? Anyone else got the same problem?

We are shooting with the RED 16gb CF cards. Normaly 4K 2:1 in RedCode 36 but for highspeed we go to 2K 2:1 RC36. We're using Zeiss Ultra Primes.

Happy for any kind of help!

/Marcus

[Dan Hudgins]

You get 1/4 the number of pixels.

The OLPF is optimized for the 4k resolution vs. the eyes ability to see detail, when you go to 2k its like an optical zoom, it has to look less sharp.

Also there are low pass filters to remove the wavelet artifacts from REDCODE, and the higher the fps you use the less bandwidth there is for each image.

Projected movies are only about 1280x720 on the screen, so you need to not be so close to the monitor.

Stand back 4-6 feet from your 20" monitor and the images will more like what you will see in the 35mm filmout as projected.

If you go to the movies and sit in the front row the movies will look soft and blured as well, you are just too close to the monitor probably.

For viewing 2K you need to be twice as far from the monitor as for viewing 4K to see the same angular resolution.

[Matthew Verkler]

This also sounds like a shutter issue to me. Put the shutter in relative mode, and then your shutter will stay at 180 degrees or whatever you prefer no matter the frame rate. Otherwise, at 48 fps and above in variable frame rates, it acts like a 360 shutter, getting that wonderful video-like motion that we all love so much.

Matthew Verkler

[Ido Karilla]

If you are using wide 35mm lenses for the shots, consider s16 lenses while shooting 2K.

[Michael Epple]

I have the same issue, but you can use 3k if you're only going to 50fps and it is much better.