{"id":1225,"date":"2016-06-15T03:03:21","date_gmt":"2016-06-15T03:03:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/?p=1225"},"modified":"2022-05-25T17:55:20","modified_gmt":"2022-05-25T17:55:20","slug":"every-camera-company-is-a-software-company-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/every-camera-company-is-a-software-company-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Every Camera Company is a Software Company Now"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After roughly one&nbsp;decade of threatening to release a new digital cinema camera, Panavision announced their new DXL camera earlier this month. Cheat sheet: it&nbsp;licenses 8k RED sensors, records Redcode RAW (R3D files), and&nbsp;claims\u2014that&#8217;s right\u2014&#8221;new color science.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The irony of a RED-Panavision love child will not be lost to observers of the digital cinema wars.&nbsp;But the collaborative and modular nature of the camera is also a sign of things to come, while book-ending some&nbsp;old arguments about Digital Images and the Filmmakers&nbsp;who Love Them.&nbsp;The conversation about digital imaging&nbsp;is finally&nbsp;graduating<span style=\"line-height: 1.5;\">&nbsp;to&nbsp;topics&nbsp;like&nbsp;dynamic range, <\/span><a style=\"line-height: 1.5;\" href=\"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/blinded-by-color-science\/\">colorimetry<\/a><span style=\"line-height: 1.5;\">, and even environmental impact.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>But in the early days, it was very narrowly focused on spatial resolution:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">a brief history of spatial res:<\/p>\n<p>90s: digital must be at least 4k<br \/>00s: your 4k is fake 4k<br \/>10s: actually 2k is enough<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/PostChat?src=hash\">#PostChat<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Pliny (@iampliny) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/iampliny\/status\/740661264842645504\">June 8, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h3>&#8220;Digital Must Be At Least 4k&#8221;<\/h3>\n<p>Google Images came up empty for me, but I can recall Kodak ads starting to pop up&nbsp;in&nbsp;<em>American Cinematographer<\/em>&nbsp;in the late 1990s to drive this point home: digital would have to be <em>at least 4k<\/em> to even approach the quality of 35mm film.<\/p>\n<p>It&nbsp;may seem odd&nbsp;that Eastman Kodak&nbsp;would have felt the need to assume a defensive posture that long ago. But recall that it was Kodak&nbsp;who pioneered technologies like the Bayer filter, Cineon, and the DPX file format. They of all parties had a good idea of what was coming, even if they were unsuccessful&nbsp;at&nbsp;re-orienting&nbsp;their business.<\/p>\n<p>(By the way, this is no cause to gloat:&nbsp;you try running a company with a $30 billion market cap and a century of history and culture. Kodak\u2019s story is classic Innovator\u2019s Dilemma stuff, and fodder for closer analysis another time.)<\/p>\n<h3>&#8220;Your 4k is Fake 4k&#8221;<\/h3>\n<p>Several historical events conspired to propel us&nbsp;from mere digital \u201cintermediates\u201d to full-bore, all-digital, file-based pipelines. Those events included the industry\u2019s second great flirtation with 3D, a SAG strike, and a tsunami.<\/p>\n<p>But while that&nbsp;was happening, the argument over mere pixel count started to shade into subtler nerd fights over the nature of camera RAW and how exactly&nbsp;all of that information is processed in order to become RGB frames.<\/p>\n<p>I have zero interest in re-litigating the arguments touched off by Panavision VP John Galt\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/library.creativecow.net\/galt_john\/John_Galt_2K_4K_Truth_About_Pixels\/1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">2007 Creative COW article<\/a>. But he&nbsp;raised many strong&nbsp;points, and I credit him for elevating the conversation.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_1230\" style=\"width: 444px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1230\" class=\"wp-image-1230\" src=\"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/20140306-271x300.png\" alt=\"20140306\" width=\"434\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/20140306-271x300.png 271w, http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/20140306-200x221.png 200w, http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/20140306-680x752.png 680w, http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/20140306-400x442.png 400w, http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/20140306-50x55.png 50w, http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/20140306.png 684w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 434px) 100vw, 434px\" \/><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-1230\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span class=\"image-attribution\"><a href=\"http:\/\/smbc-comics.com\/?id=3288\">SMBC Comics<\/a><\/span><br \/>We are also legally required to make this joke at least once every time we reference that Creative COW &#8220;4k&#8221; piece.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>In <a href=\"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/red-camera-was-not-disruptive-innovation\/\">The RED Camera Was Not A Disruptive Innovation<\/a>, I walk through classic Disruption Theory and apply it to the film production space. One key&nbsp;point to emerge is just how disruptive&nbsp;RED\u2019s engineering decisions were on the sensor side.&nbsp;Disruptive enough to warrant industrial-grade&nbsp;levels of shade from Panavision&#8217;s corner.&nbsp;Hence the surprise at watching Panavision&nbsp;license key technology from an industry&nbsp;frenemy\u2014a fascinating&nbsp;bookend to this particular chapter. It&nbsp;shows, among other things, just how far spatial resolution concerns have&nbsp;retreated into the background.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Need to re-emphasize here: Panavision just released a camera that records R3D files. This is end times stuff. Dogs and cats living together.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Pliny (@iampliny) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/iampliny\/status\/738105965791174656\">June 1, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h3>&#8220;Actually, 2k is enough&#8221;<\/h3>\n<p>Legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins caused a bit of a stir when he essentially declared that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.studiodaily.com\/2012\/09\/roger-deakins-digital-odyssey-not-in-4k\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">4k be damned, 2k is good enough, you guys<\/a>. These comments came on the heels of his shooting 2012\u2019s Skyfall on the ARRI Alexa camera.<\/p>\n<p>It was Light Iron CEO Michael Cioni who first pointed out to me that once you get through the whole interpos\/interneg process \u2014 and <em>pace<\/em> those old ads in American Cinematographer \u2014 &nbsp;your 35mm release prints are&nbsp;lucky&nbsp;to resolve to something in the neighborhood of 1k &#8211; 1.5k.<\/p>\n<p>So Deakins was right, of course: 2k spatial resolution is plenty,&nbsp;<em>assuming that a 35mm film print is your&nbsp;gold standard<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Digital cinema allows&nbsp;us to move beyond&nbsp;many&nbsp;limitations of the photochemical medium: more pixels! more colors! more brightness! (And although we&#8217;re still just&nbsp;learning how to use these new vectors creatively, we&nbsp;will&nbsp;get there.)<\/p>\n<h3>Every Camera Company is a Software Company Now<\/h3>\n<p>This brings us back to the new Panny DXL camera. The dialogue around its announcement has illuminated several things:<\/p>\n<p><strong>First<\/strong>, spatial resolution has almost completely disappeared as a topic of interest. Perhaps we&#8217;re simply near the top of the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sigmoid_function\">sigmoid curve<\/a> in the megapixel arms race.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Second<\/strong>, we\u2019re finally treating digital cinema as a medium unto&nbsp;itself, and not an exercise in recapitulating its photochemical predecessors. We\u2019ve moved past squabbles about spatial resolution and on to far more interesting squabbles about dynamic range and colorimetry.<\/p>\n<p>(It&#8217;s true that&nbsp;\u201cmy\/our\/their\/new color science\u201d is not a great&nbsp;choice of words, and it\u2019s historically been used to&nbsp;Blind You With Science. <em><a href=\"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/blinded-by-color-science\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Caveat Emptor<\/a>.&nbsp;<\/em>But it&#8217;s also true that there is no single&nbsp;correct way to process a RAW image. Yes, there&nbsp;is room for&nbsp;innovation here.)<\/p>\n<p>But <strong>third<\/strong> and most significantly, the DXL announcement&nbsp;signals another shift from the World Of Atoms into the World Of Bits. I cannot overstate how important this is.<\/p>\n<p>Other technology sectors have long experienced this phenomenon: hardware (World Of Atoms) becomes increasingly modularized and commoditized, while software (World Of Bits) emerges as the true differentiator.&nbsp;After all, it was Microsoft Windows, not Dell, that dominated the PC era. And it&nbsp;is Google\u2019s services and Google&#8217;s&nbsp;mobile&nbsp;OS, running&nbsp;on third-party hardware from the likes of Samsung&nbsp;or Xiaomi, who are dominating the mobile era now.<\/p>\n<p>Once an industry&nbsp;reaches the&nbsp;point where software starts &#8220;eating&#8221; it, innovation starts to grow exponentially. (I strongly recommend reading <a href=\"http:\/\/breakingsmart.com\/season-1\/a-new-soft-technology\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Venkat Rao<\/a>&nbsp;by way of&nbsp;introduction to this topic.)<\/p>\n<p>So Panavision\u2019s decision to outsource&nbsp;sensor technology (hardware) while leaning on colorimetry (software) as their major&nbsp;differentiator is a much bigger deal than it may seem at first.<\/p>\n<p>In fact,&nbsp;i<span style=\"line-height: 1.5;\">t\u2019s not too difficult to imagine a future in which certain&nbsp;companies lock parts of the&nbsp;hardware supply chain\u2014think&nbsp;Intel, which dominated microprocessors&nbsp;for so long\u2014<\/span>while the real winners are the companies that make&nbsp;the best&nbsp;software. &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.computerweekly.com\/news\/2240242478\/Satya-Nadella-Every-business-will-be-a-software-business\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Every Company Is A Software Company<\/a>&#8221; is already a trope in most places. But we have yet to learn this lesson in the&nbsp;film industry. Maybe Cioni &amp; Co. are starting to&nbsp;figure this out.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, what we really need is for camera makers to drop the \u201cproprietary\u201d part, open-source their&nbsp;colorimetry, make it&nbsp;available&nbsp;in public GitHub repositories, and let the filmmaking community start happily&nbsp;forking the code.<\/p>\n<p>That, more than anything, would pour some rocket fuel on innovation in digital cinema production.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After roughly one&nbsp;decade of threatening to release a new digital cinema camera, Panavision announced their new DXL camera earlier this month. Cheat sheet: it&nbsp;licenses 8k RED sensors, records Redcode RAW (R3D files), and&nbsp;claims\u2014that&#8217;s right\u2014&#8221;new color science.&#8221; The irony of a RED-Panavision love child will not be lost to observers of the digital cinema wars.&nbsp;But the collaborative and modular nature of the camera is also a sign of things to come, while book-ending some&nbsp;old arguments about Digital Images and the Filmmakers&nbsp;who Love Them.&nbsp;The conversation about digital imaging&nbsp;is finally&nbsp;graduating&nbsp;to&nbsp;topics&nbsp;like&nbsp;dynamic range, colorimetry, and even environmental impact. But in the early days, it was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1237,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17,3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1225"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1225"}],"version-history":[{"count":33,"href":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3233,"href":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1225\/revisions\/3233"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}