While there’s a good chance your next TV will be a 4K set—that’s 4,000 pixels in horizontal resolution—it still won’t be able to do justice to the video above. Joe Capra of Scientifantastic captured this 10k time lapse of Rio de Janeiro with an 80-megapixel camera, which costs nearly $50,000 to assemble. The result is an insanely comprehensive video in which you can zoom in to near-telescopic magnitudes. It’s Rear Window on steroids.
At its full size, the video’s resolution is 10,328 x 7760 pixels, almost 10 times more than the 1080 pixels that Vimeo can support (and what most current HD TVs have). That’s why Capra zooms in to intervals of 50% and 100% resolution, so you can truly see everything that the recording captured.
Here’s Capra explaining its scope:
I wanted to show a couple things with this demo video. First, the extreme resolution of this camera (and medium format in general). Second, the amazing amount of flexibility this resolution allows for in post production. You can literally get about 8 to 10 solid 1920 x 1080 shots out of a single shot. You can also get about 5 to 6 solid 4K shots out of a single shot.
4K displays were the talk of CES this year, but they seem like your grandma’s old “TV” compared to the potential of 10k. Of course, we’re a very long way from having 10K screens, but we now have video evidence of what will go one some day.