What is the Resolution of the Human Eye?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 พ.ค. 2024
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In this video let’s learn how sharp human eyes are, and what resolution is enough for cinema cameras and displays. This video is for filmmakers and cinematographers. If you’re from another field, don't watch, and please don't quote it as if it's some scientific paper or resource. It's not!
This new era of Wolfcrow using lots of science to basically say “stop debating nonsense” is my favorite era.
There’s no such thing as a generalized “enough” particularly for camera resolution. Sometimes a stitched 36k is barely enough for volume plates, and there are times when HD is more than sufficient to tell a story. Context is everything.
Very good video, which makes me miss one point you didn’t discuss (to be fair, it is often missed), the impact of time on perceived resolution. Our persistence of vision system allows us to resolve image detail by aggregating image information over time. You see this phenomenon when you look through a narrow gap while moving your head back and forth to get a complete image of the space beyond.
Fixed resolution images, such as print or digital, lose this effect because the location on the surface where light is sampled remains the same over time.
An example of dynamic sampling is film. With film, light is sampled at different points over time. This is why static frames of movies shot on film are much lower resolution than you'd expect from watching the movie. Because of this, it's a mistake to compare digital resolving power with film resolving power. A frame of film may have no more detail than a 4k camera can capture, but it's a different 4k every time; after one second at only 24 frames per second, you actually have an astonishing 96k aggregate resolution.
This is also true of the human perceptual system. We have a much higher perceptual resolution in reality than we can resolve from a static pattern. It is very difficult to accurately compare the resolution of static images with dynamically sampled light (film, moving your eyes or head around, etc.) since dynamically sampled images are only fully resolved in the brain.
wow thank you! Your Comment and this Video showed me, that there is still something to learn on TH-cam.
one thing I want to ad is: That the resolution of Cameras, lenses and screens or projectors was never driven by what our eyes can see. But what we can achive with the technologie at the time. For example the 24fps we are used to today were established to get fast enought moving film for the soundhead in the projector so in the silentfilm-era the film was mostly projected in 18 fps. A nother example is Lenses: in the past they were not nearly as sharp as modern lenses, not because our eyes in these days were not as sharp, but simply we cant build as precise and sharp as we can today.
Great point about photo versus video resolution. Yes my 4k full frame videos look stunning. I wonder if 8k video might look too sharp with modern ultra-precise lenses, and I can't imagine video resolution ever needing to exceed that for anything other than a hyperreal vr experience.
Hello wolfcrow. My great gratitude to your efforts all this years. You are literally a film school teaching students worldwide for free. Even the film course and departments in my country cannot provide such knowledge to students.
Thank you!
The photographer who some say started the Art in Photography traction, Peter Henry Emerson had an interesting outlook about this topic but with plates & film during the 19th Century: some of his insights could be connected to Hermann von Helmholtz's 'Physiological Optics' (1867). It is cool to see this topic expand into the 21st Century.
This is the longest video I have ever watched back & forth for more than 1 hr to make sure I'll get the point! Beyond PH.D in Cinematography - ufffffff. Thanks to my prof.
Eyes can see 12k. Question is, do you need to see all that detail? Will I be more excited by noticing the hair strands on Tom Cruise forehead, when he is running for his life?
23時以降に観る映画であれば
Thanks a lot, wolfcrow, for all that you do. You are very knowledgeable! I always learn a lot from you!
You’re welcome!
If you have a lightmeter or you can download a basic one to your phone; it is interesting to take readings at sunset, then compare that to how your eyes adjust to the changing light. I always think there is more light than there actually is. Our eyes are amazing.
Loved the additional upbeat background music. Keeps focus & stays entertaining
I am very happy for you my brother for making such amazing videos.
I honestly admit there are very few people in India who make contents with such precision and details ❤
Love it when videos just tell you the answer upfront..you did it even quicker, and put it in the thumbnail. Now I can enjoy your video instead of skipping around for the answer.
Maaaaaannnn that is amazing!!! Thank you so very much for this educational, informative work!
Very informative report - Thank You!
You’re welcome!
I like your new stile and I can understand your English much better now. Thank you !
You're welcome
Wow one of the best videos you have made.
Wow, thanks!
@@wolfcrow jus missing are the metric measurement I had to keep goin to Google to check the equivalent
Very easy explanation 😊
For mainstream home users 4k TVs are not really working in real 4k mode most of the time. On paper it is maybe 4k, but in reality it is 4:2:2 or even 4:2:0, then for streaming services which most people watch most of the time there are heavy compression codecs, with heavy blocking artefacts, long GOP artefacts etc, which further reduces real resolution of the image.
is there anyway to get uncompressed content?
@@furecoem uncompressed not really. But 4k blu-rays generally must be better quality than streaming services. It is not like night and day, perceived gap will be much smaller than for example difference between 1080p and 4k streaming.
So 12K is ideal. Amazingly detailed video!
Shame though the Ursa Mini 12k is badly handycapped due to its use of PL and EF mounts exclusively. That's a real shame honestly, not having access to any ultra sharp E mount, Z mount, RF mount, or even L mount lenses, and it's honestly my biggest issue with the camera as a whole. I mean 35mm film has an approximate digital equivalent of 6k, so the Ursa Mini 12k basically has 4 times the resolution of standard motion picture film.
Thank you!
Be more specific .
It's 12k for a cinema screen not your laptop or TV at home.
In your TV it should be 4k for most of the population and 8k for those with a really good sight.
Basically buying anything above 4k it's a bit of an overkill.
@@roberto987 actually in regards to projectors, after a certain point you pretty much need a laser projector (or a film projector) to see anymore detail so you can actually see all the detail instead of it being hidden due to poor black levels. The same is true in regards to TVs and other screens of course, but instead of laser projectors, OLED or Mirco-LED is best in those instances.
That's also of course assuming the content itself was mastered in 12k or higher, the copy being projected actually is 12k or higher, and has little to no CGI.
That's because CGI is almost always rendered at 2k (but sometimes in 4k), and even if was rendered at a higher resolution, the textures on the CGI objects still aren't guaranteed to actually take advantage of higher resolution. An object rendered in say 12k with a low resolution texture will have a less pixelated outline, but the detail of the object itself will still be only as good the texture used for it.
Finally, even if the film you want to watch in 12k fits all the previous qualifications, just keep in mind that you are still at the mercy of whomever is projecting the film. It can be the greatest looking film and projector ever made, but if the person in charge of projecting the movie doesn't point it at the actual screen, your gonna have a bad time.
@@roberto987 Got it.
Very well researched. I was looking into what the resolution of a vr goggles screen would have to be considering the resolution of the fovea over the whole field of view since your eyes move inside the goggles and I was getting figures of over 600MP and it wasn’t even considering 20/8 vision. 😂
Though for home use 4K is going to be the final resting place imo, since people’s comfortable field of view won’t ever be that of a cinema at the front row.
The extent to which lens glass can resolve source/target resolution is the principal factor, and gigantically variable between lens models. Noise because of how a cinematographer shoots/lights up scenes dramatically obscures the effects of resolution too.
One other point not mentioned here is that in bright light, when the pupil is 3mm across, the diffraction limit is 0.7 arcminutes, and so we have more rods than needed for bright light.
One small comment here. You can't calculate only from the line resolution of the fovea. That covers a very limited angle of view, thus either if you can see that resolution it will be limited for a small area and for very contrasty images (e.g. nearly black and white).. If you watching a 12K TV from the right distance where your eyes can resolve the resolution, the area of where you actually will see that resolution will be very limited near the centre of your vision and only can be seen in very contrasty images. Generally speaking the 12K is true but only at the very center of your vision. To a more wider area 4K is more than enough, considering that we are looking for a color picture (since for color sensing we have less receptors).
I did not calculate from the fovea.
You did good.
can you make a similar video about hdr color/contrast?
The upper estimate depending of the film stock for IMAX film is 18k which is just crazy. It still blows anything digital out of the water.
I think it's worth noting that as much people say stuff "there's no way you could notice a difference" when talking about higher resolutions, the reason they exist is so a given film can look its best for years to come, after all, what if in some far future we need films to be shot at 12k at minimum because everyone uses contacts with screens for you to watch content from, that would certainly require a lot more detail than 2k cameras, or even 4k cameras are capable of producing.
More importantly, what nobody talks about is that Arri cameras use more colors than what the eye can see, if you want to talk about unnecessary, well there you go. Image detail could absolutely become a more important factor in years in to come, but having more colors than you can even see, that's just flat out useless from an objective point of view.
Having a larger color gamut and dynamic range isn't actually useless because post processing such as color correction often brings those values into a visible range.
@@JoshuaKolden I suppose so, but it can also make color grading more complicated if the colorist only sees a shade after he's already adjusted the shade he could see, and that could potentially interfere with composition work overall. But yeah, while I'd overall say resolution is a more important factor, especially monitors 16 bit color to my knowledge don't exist yet (and for context Dolby Vision HDR uses only 12 bit color), that's certainly a use case I've never even considered.
@@BurneraccountXD69 Unlike resolution, which expressed as pixels is pretty unambiguous, the bit depth of a color space is more difficult to compare without more context. For example 10 bit log represents more dynamic range with greater accuracy then 16 bit linear. Also resolution does little for you if your beautiful stained glass window washes out to white. Accurately capturing and reproducing light values often has a surprisingly big impact on an image compared to only capturing fine detail in high resolution.
@@JoshuaKolden that's actually not strictly true. Not the thing about the potential benefits of increased color depth but the fact that an increase in resolution couldn't also accomplish that. That's why a lot of more popular TH-camrs shoot videos in 8k, even if they only publish in 4k, the more pixels, the cleaner the video looks if you choose to downscale.
Well, personally with my "films" I like to take my 87k resolution image, slap it in DaVinci, add some mist, some glow, some halation, some grain, until it looks real grainy, and soft, and beautiful, you know, like an old film moobly does, but first I gotta render those 1080p proxies, because you aren't editing 87k without a super computer...ah hell, you know what, this 2k footage looks pretty good, so long as you don't compress it. Ah hell. I'll just use the 1080p files, looks fine.
Phase One IQ4 is 150Mp. Has been at this resolution for many years.
the music is sick
but this video was only 1080p - :)
1080p is plenty for YT consumption. The absurdly high resolution mentioned in this video is suggested for movie theatres/cinemas with large screens.
I draw your attention to shooting up to 18.7K VFX plates with a single ACHTEL 9x7 Digital Cinema Camera, replacing an Alexa 65 array used for very large display formats. Pioneered by the famous IMAX cinematographer, Pawel Achtel, its sensor is truly one of a kind. Take note of the lenses employed.
It looks interesting, but I don't like the colors and DR. Not to mention trying to find a lens that can actually resolve 18K.
@@wolfcrow Indeed, experimental advancements are a hallmark of the industry, and opinions help drive their future. My dad (Navy), along with Charlie Scripps (CG), faced similar, developing a high-speed workflow of their color WWII reconnaissance footage, later employed at TV news stations.
At some point, in the not too distant future… resolution will become so high. That the human eye… won’t be able to differentiate between what’s reality and what’s a video image. For example, I could have an actual window 🪟 to the outside world, on one side. Next to the window, I would place a high resolution display… dressed up like a window 🪟 with video footage projected on to the display from what’s going on outside. You won’t know which is a window 🪟 and which is a display. 📺
We might not need it but I'm still waiting for 16k :-)
🔥🔥🔥
Too many numbers hurt my brain.
I don't think the fact that the fovea is a small part of the retina is relevant, since we constantly move our focus of attention between several points of the screen. That is, virtually every small area of the screen can be projected onto the fovea at some time
True, but not everyone has a fovea that moves at the excat same speed, though I don't know enough about the subject to tell you if its because foveas physically vary in speed on an individual level, because of limitations in someones brain and by extension reaction speed in general, or as combination of both. In practice, that means people who have faster fovea's will notice higher framerates easier, and people with slower ones will be more susceptible to image detail. I actually have pretty poor reaction speed myself, and I'm actually pretty good at seeing differences in higher resolutions, so maybe this is just anecdotal evidence, but I'm inclined to consider it pretty reliable, at least for now.
In practice the measured resolution is way smaller than the density of photoreceptor cells in the fovea.
@@wolfcrow how is that measured exactly?
Eye exams! There have been numerous studies on human resolution. The empirical evidence are smaller than the theoretical maximums that we arrive based on calculation. Most people are happy with 1080p, too.
now lets play with colors, also there are people ( mostly girls ) that have more rods and cones hehehe that will make results a bit weird but can be calculated. what weird is we dont know what is the theoretical limit to how far it can be pushed. Maybe some very rare cases having more rods and cones than even the rarer cases we know of. 🤔🤔
final battle for display card
run games at 12k 480hz
Can 2k appear sharper than 12k? Yes, it can. Resolution is more about cropping and capturing more data than anything else. Any bump we have now will be very small compared to the 240p to 1080p bumps that really mattered. Also, delivery of a good image is more about bandwidth. You'd better send a good 2k image than a bad 4k image as the viewing experience will be way better.
Man your video is very informative, I love it, but please kill the music, it's SO distractive
I honestly don’t think the difference between 1080 and 4K is all that significant. Yes, you can see more details on skin in 4K, but it’s not enough to upgrade in my opinion. There’s a much greater disparity between Blu-ray and DVD. I don’t watch DVDs anymore unless the film isn’t available in any other format, but regular Blu-ray is fine. I also think 4K can make film images look too smooth and take away film grain, which can ruin the cinematic experience.
Idk my eyes are like 540p
For you fellow aspiring film makers out there, you can hide a lower quality camera but adding infrasound to your film. Specifically tones of around 18.98hz or so. The human ear can't hear those frequencies, but your eyes can see them, or rather, your eyes absorb them, and it can create occasional black blobs in your vision essentially allowing you to distract your viewer from noticing how bad your camera is. Many horror movies actually use this trick already to unnerve the viewer even if the rest of the movie is just awful.
18 hz is booming shaking bass. your whole body will see it 😂😂
@@user-pv4ze2gu1b well more like feel it, but I *feel* what you mean (I know that wasn't funny)
Just shoot imax film :)
"K" is not a permission, it is not a characteristic. Stop measuring everything by "K". There are megapixels, what's the problem??????
God these are amongst the most depressing and boring videos i have seen in a while: tone of voice, super annoying background music, visuals and how the content is presented.