Behind The Scenes Of A 12K Timelapse With The Phase One XF 100MP Camera System

Photographer Joe Capra got an interesting opportunity to show his skills by shooting with the Phase One XF IQ3 100 megapixel camera system and create a special 12K timelapse.

Despite YouTube support for 8K (as of yet there is no support for 12K, nor are there any displays capable of this resolution that we are aware of), this video was only posted for some reason in 1080p. We guess that the extra resolution was used not to display the video in super (ultra) high definition but actually to allow for the crazy high quality zoom-ins in the video.

Using higher resolution to zoom in (either to actually zoom or more commonly to crop) is very common these days. In this respect even 4K is not always enough and getting a relatively small crop at 1080p isn’t always possible in good enough quality (6K RED Weapon and future 8K sensors could allow performance close to what we are seeing in this video but with “live” video and not a timelapse made by a high megapixel stills camera which isn’t suited for general purpose video work).

Since 4K is becoming more and more common these days, we feel that Capra could have given up on some of the zoom range in the timelapse and provide us with a 4K video, but even at 1080p this timelapse looks amazing.

According to Capra, he used the latest software update to the XF system Phase One which added a new timelapse mode which allows users to easily shoot extreme resolution timelapses. He said that “Having the ability to shoot in such extreme resolution allows you much more creative freedom and flexibility in post production, and this film’s purpose is to demonstrate that. You can punch in extremely far into a scene while maintaining massive amounts of detail” (which is exactly what we can see in the video).

The full timelapse – shot with a Phase One XF IQ3 100 megapixel camera

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl36de9Yv-E[/youtube]

As always, you can find many more behind the scenes videos on the BTS section here on LensVid. You can also find more interesting timelapse videos on our timelapse section.

Iddo Genuth

Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.