Introducing 8K video: how the
Canon EOS R5’s
flagship filmmaking feature changes the game

One hybrid photographer-filmmaker already looking forward to using the Canon EOS R5's 8K video is Canon Ambassador Clive Booth, a fashion specialist whose clients need cutting-edge quality.

"The resolution alone is a game-changer," enthuses Clive. "The pixel density means that curved lines will look smoother and images will have more depth, and it will also render colours better because you’ve got more pixels firing.

“Being able to view an 8K image natively will approximate reality – the image will look more real. 8K monitors are starting to appear at the point of purchase in stores, and brands behind make-up and skin products will be really interested in showing their products better than anybody else can."

"Some people will be still be happy with outputting in Full HD," adds Mike. "Not only does this give you massive oversampling for a better quality image, you've also essentially got a 15x zoom to make use of in post-production. You could, for example, shoot wide at a wedding, and then later crop in to get the reaction of the bride, the groom, the parents and guests. You could cover everything from a single camera and 28mm lens positioned at the back of the church. It just gives you more options – and it really is just the start."

High-res stills from 8K video

Increasingly, stills photography and video are seen as complementary facets of any project with ambitions to reach an always-on audience. Now, the ability to record high-quality 8K video also opens up the future to a whole new type of photography – one where you can grab stills from movie clips without any compromise in resolution.

Making the most of an 8K workflow

With four times the resolution of 4K video, 8K generates a lot of data, and understandably there will be extra demands on computer processing power and storage.

"If you’re going to go to 8K, you need to think about the hardware that goes around it," says Mike. "But we saw the same thing with Full HD and we saw the same thing with 4K – technology is catching up fast. Memory and hard drives are all going solid state, so they’re much faster, capacities are increasing and prices are lower, and cloud storage is now much more mainstream."

Video editing software is already ahead of the game, with the ability to work natively in 8K being a distinct advantage. As Clive explains: "Faster computers mean that potentially you can work with your content on the fly. Being able to potentially edit in 8K and have a more straightforward workflow without having to create proxy files will be important for a lot of people."

"Often what’s interesting for me is that we put these features into cameras, but users have a much better vision of what some of these technologies can do than we do,” Mike concludes. “They are the creative people and they are challenging the new limits, trying to create new and interesting forms of communication and media. They set the limits, they drive innovation the most. We just try to produce the technology to make those visions possible."