Nowadays we even have cellphones that record in 4k. Why do the TV stations still use that big cameras? (Professional video camera, aka television camera)
In: Technology
Sensor size and lenses. I am not an expert but IIRC when you squash gazzillion pixels in a small sensor they start to effect each other more. Which causes noise.
Lenses’ performance is measured how they resolve detail. Optical resolution. Big lenses are made with lots of different glass elements. Polished and coated to correct abbreviations both optical and color. For example nikkor 70-200 2.8 have 21 individual lens elements in 16 groups. Which means some are glued together. As compared to cellphones’ single element, quiet possibly; some sort of plastic; lenses. (Most of them anyway )
Its arguable that phone optics will never be as good as the real thing.
Yes you can record in 4k with a phone, but I doubt we will have a practical 35mm+ sensor in a cell phone along with very good optics(lenses) any time soon because then your phone would easily way 2 pounds at least.
Resolution is not the end-all-be-all of quality/clarity. The size of the imaging sensor and quality of the lens matter just as much, if not more.
Depth of field, focusing ability, and visual detail. There is versatility in the larger versions. Have you noticed your cell phone camera takes _awful_ pictures of the moon, compared to what you see through your eyeball?
Same type of thing.
(Also — what phone records in 4k?)
Though not every one has phones that can record in 4k only the more expensive ones can do it.
The cameras used in TV production are getting smaller. They’re about half the size they were ten years ago. A lot of productions even use things like DSLRs and action cameras now for certain shots. The big cameras though are used when you need high quality footage. They have advanced optical lenses and large sensors for capturing more light, and thus more detail. High quality glass lenses in particular are difficult to scale down. Especially zoom and telephoto models.
Phone cameras have small sensors and tiny lenses with a very limited range of iris stops. The raw photos they take aren’t very good, so a lot of digital voodoo is done in the background to clean them up. Which makes them look great on a small screen, but on larger screens like a TV, the difference between that and an ENG camera are very noticeable. They also don’t perform well in low light environments. Manual controls are very limited. There’s no zoom feature. Just digital zoom, which degrades image quality. You can’t get nice, clean, tight shots. You also can’t get nice stable shots without a gimble or steady cam. Those big camcorders you see camera guys with on their shoulders are evenly weighted for that kind of stuff.
Lastly, phones don’t support professional video codecs. So video is more compressed, again degrading image quality. Which is important when the image is getting compressed multiple times before reaching the consumer’s TV. Most TV stations record at high bit rates. Usually around 50mbit/s for 1080p, where as a smartphone might record at around 5mbits/s.
Quantity vs quality. Just because you can record 4k doesn’t mean you’re doing a good job of it.
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