How many more of these? 2 shots in the Star on Sunday from Arsenal v Tottenham yesterday.
Sitting in the rain at Arsenal v Tottenham yesterday, I got to thinking those dark thoughts about how long stills sport photography would last. It wasn’t the rain that induced this depressive approach, but the emergence of 8K television, otherwise known as Ultra High Definition or UHDTV.
As the boom of “normal” high definition TV (1080p, or 1920 pixels by 1080 pixels, or 2 megapixels in camera jargon) fades now everybody has one, so the hardware companies look for the next technology wave to sustain their “upgrade your TV you losers or your mates will think you’re cheap” business model. And so you enter a world of jargon, pixel densities and complexity which I’ve had a wee delve into.
Firstly, you may have heard of “4K”. This is TV with a resolution of 3840 pixels by 2160 pixels, making 8.3 megapixels which is just a tad short of the resolution of my Canon 1D Mark III stills camera, and 4 times what you get from 1080p.
Then, just when you thought you were on top of the technology, along comes “8K”. This is much more interesting and threatening. 8K is 7680 pixels by 4320 pixels, or 33.2 megapixels, which is twice the resolution of my Canon 1D Mark IV, and a lot more than the 18 megapixels of the top of the line Canon 1DX.
Confusingly both 4K and 8K seem to be known as UHDTV, which is why they are becoming known simply as 4K and 8K.
We have already seen many occasions where the media have pulled stills from current high definition broadcasts, most notably in football, where for some reason none of the stills shooters have got a particular shot. You’ll know the ones – they tend to be fuzzy and look crap, but show a moment that was not captured anywhere else.
And they are getting used more and more, and larger and larger in the newspapers, even if a still of the scene does exist. It also looks like someone has written a de-fuzzing algorithm that cleans up the often jagged lines (caused by interlacing I’m guessing) to crisp up the picture.
Just look at the back page of today’s Sun on Sunday where you’ll see a full page screen grab of Walcott’s two-nil gesture when plenty of photographers including Getty have much higher quality still versions available. Why use a screen grab instead?
The increasing use of such relatively poor quality pictures, taken from what is effectively a 2 megapixel camera, indicates the direction things are taking.
Sky has already been shooting football at Arsenal in 4K to test the cameras, production and transmission technology. With 4 times the resolution of “normal” HDTV, it is necessary to shoot at higher frame rates to avoid motion becoming stuttered. Rather than 50-60 frames per second, standards to use 120fps or up to 150fps are in the pipeline. this has a number of consequences.
Firstly, 120fps is nearly 10 times the 14fps that the Canon 1DX can achieve. So the potential to get the precise moment of action frozen is much higher. Grabbing a single frame from a 120fps stream should be a simple matter of scrolling through and back and then clicking a button. Stick a caption on and you’re sorted, and much faster than waiting for us chaps pitchside to send in at halftime when we can get some shelter from the rain.
Secondly, the pictures will be much sharper than anything we’ve seen from a “normal” 1080p HDTV. They will be far more useful for print and web media as a result, who I predict will be sucking them up like a batallion of Dysons on meth.
Most of the images I send in to the newspapers like the one at the top of this post are 2500 pixels on the long edge. I have to select the frames I want in the camera, pop the card, insert it into my laptop, download the image, crop, tweak and caption it, then send it off to the papers while also trying to follow the game. In the new world, there will be a newspaper picture desk sitting watching the game live, grabbing frames in real time at significantly higher resolution than I would ever send, and much faster than I could get the pictures to them, jamming on a quick caption and inserting them into the web or into the layout for print.
Just to scare you a bit more, Sky is filming all its 3D nature documentaries in 4K already. Telegenic have 4K outside broadcast vans. The Sochi winter Olympics are going to be covered in 8K. 8K is planned for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. I dare say the 2014 world cup will have a rash of 4K and 8K all over it. It’s coming!
What are the problems? Well firstly there is bandwidth. An 8K feed is 48 gigabits per second. That is A LOT. 1080p is 10 gigabits/sec. Will there be space for 8K feeds into peoples’ homes? Secondly, nobody has an 8K TV yet. 4K is starting to come, and 8K will surely follow, but there’s a big investment cycle that needs to take place for people to swap out perfectly good HDTVs for UHDTVs.
Additionally, you’re going to need some fancy video kit to replicate the beauty of an image from a 400mm f/ 2.8 lens shot properly by someone who knows what they are doing.
But…I think it is highly likely that as soon as an UHDTV feed becomes available, the news orgnisations will lap it up. They won’t wait until the world and his wife have a shiny new UHDTVs in their lounges. As soon as they can get a feed they will. And I’m sure a licencing deal with Sky or whomever will cover the use of screen grabs at a much lower cost than the already plummeting cost of buying stills of us guys.
With 12 or more TV cameras covering a Premier League game, many of the angles are already covered. It wouldn’t take many more to fill any gaps. I reckon 2 per corner, plus the high level ones, plus a few other roving cameras should do the trick. Why have 60 photographers at a game plus all the TV guys. And the TV guys could just put put a 400 2.8 on their fancy 8K camera if they wanted – there will be plenty on the secondhand market.
You can see the way this will go. I reckon it’ll be just 5 years before the majority of Premier League images in the papers and online are coming from 4K and 8K screen grabs. Clubs may decide to keep a small contingent of club photographers, or maybe just contract with an agency to plonk a person in each corner. The lower leagues will always remain up for grabs, though the prices paid for pictures will continue to decrease.
So, make the most of it while it lasts. I may look into writing some specialist screen grabbing software next…