[modfodder]

> All this is to say, it is much more complicated than you make it out to be.

Sorry, I think this was meant for another comment, not yours, as I don't see the sentence I thought I was responding to in yours.

>Your list boils down to "use it appropriately and don't assume old techniques are appropriate". Obviously there is a lot of learning the industry would need to do to use 8k well.

This takes more than a "competent film crew". A competent film crew should have no problem working in well established techniques and workflows but wouldn't necessarily be prepared to venture outside that. If I was directing a production in 8k, HDR, VR, 3D or any edge cases, I want more than a competent film crew. I want creative thinkers and problem solvers. I want crew members who have experience on a wide range of projects, everything from digital video to imax (you might be surprised at how often even the crews of big budget productions have limited experience outside the status quo).

In the early days of the RED camera, the best footage came from cinematographers who had worked in lower budget HD productions, not film cinematographers. The HD crews had already been working in similar workflows, but the competent film crews were flummoxed by this one piece of equipment and even though they could see the results on set, they would still send back footage that was way underexposed and often unusable (and this was often from very well respected and experienced cinematographers).

I believe few people in the industry believe that 4k is the pinnacle. But most do believe that the technology to move to 8k is not even close to ready or worth the added cost, that workflows for 4k are just now becoming standard (the majority of projects are still finished in 2k, although that will change with distributors like Netflix now requiring 4k delivery). And that audiences won't care enough about beyond 4k enough to pay extra. Are you ready to pay extra for an 8k screening? The theaters have to recoup the cost for new projectors while they're still paying off the brand new 4k installs. Oh, and there aren't many cinema lenses that can cover an 8k image (especially since many DPs prefer the quality of older lenses).

There are old timers that lament the loss of film and resist moving from 24fps. But they'll be replaced by the younger generation who will be more open to experimentation and pushing the medium beyond its limits. The industry is driven first and foremost by profits, so once the pencil pushers see profit in 8k and HDR, the whole industry will move in that direction.

[dpark]

In fairness, I did not say that the transition to 8k was easy or that any "competent film crew" could make a beautiful 8k film or leverage 8k to its max. I said that a competent film crew could soften the look if appropriate. The lazy fix for "too sharp" is to just scale down to 4k or throw a slight blur at the frames. A slightly less lazy fix would be use lenses that yield a softer focus (which I assume some of the insanely expensive film lenses can deliver).

But I wasn't saying it's trivial to leverage 8k well, just that if 8k is too much to deal with in some cases, effectively reducing the resolution seems a tractable problem.