How Does Footage from an 8K Phone Compare to a 2K Cinema Camera?

Magical numbers such as 1080p, 2K, 4K, 6K, and now 8K can make technology sound impressive, but does the footage coming out of an 8K smartphone stack up against a ten-year-old, 2K cinema camera?

This short video from Gene Nagata (a.k.a. Potato Jet) does a quick dive into the quality of video footage produced by a brand new smartphone, and compares it to the Arri Alexa Plus, a cinema camera that’s been used to shoot a wealth of Hollywood movies over the last ten decade. This Super 35mm camera, producing an image size of 2048 x 1152 pixels at up to 60 fps, has shot films including major titles such as Blade Runner 2049, Zero Dark Thirty, and The Wolf of Wall Street, and not-quite-so-well-known titles such as Nymphomanic: Vol. II (which features Willem Dafoe, Uma Thurman, and Shia LaBeouf, by the way). 

One of the huge differences that Nagata explores is the color reproduction, and the skin tones on the smartphone really do look pretty terrible.

Does the phone in your pocket shoot 8K video? How does it compare to the HD or 4K footage produced by your camera? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Andy Day's picture

Andy Day is a British photographer and writer living in France. He began photographing parkour in 2003 and has been doing weird things in the city and elsewhere ever since. He's addicted to climbing and owns a fairly useless dog. He has an MA in Sociology & Photography which often makes him ponder what all of this really means.

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5 Comments

They don't. This was another ad disguised as a camera video. He's starting to do this so much the value of his videos are going down. Am I hearing from him or Storyblocks or some product sponsor?

Ad for whom? Arri? Their camera slammed the phones in most scenarios.

I think that the 8K video on my phone definitely doesn't compare to any other quality as far as realism goes. The 4K video looks much more impressive and I think it could very well compete with a cinema camera from 10 years ago.

He barely touches on bitrate/DR and sort of implies it only applies to extreme cases with those purple lights during that bit. Isn't that the main diff here outside ergonomics/glass?