Astro Design, the Japanese camera manufacturer brand is the first one to announce the camera with the 8K video recording capability. The 8K CAMERA HEAD AH-4800 from Astro Design, is a heavy duty shooter which was introduced at the NAB 2013 show.
The 8K camera head comes with the 2.5-inch 33-million pixels single plate CMOS sensor, which was developed by NHK Engineering System, Inc.
Some of the details about the AH-4800:
- [Active resolution] : 7680×4320
- [Lens mount] : PL mount
- [Output] : 12-channel parallel optical-fiber
- [Dimensions] : 125(W) x 125(H) x 150(D)mm
- [Weight] : 2kg
The camera is capable of capturing 8K UHD resolution at 60 fps. Although one might not be able to judge how good this would function, it is the first of its kind and you have to commend Astro Design for their try in getting an edge on this new technology that is predicted to be a part of the daily stuff in a decade from now.
After the early announcement at the NAB 2013 show, the camera didn’t really show much appearance, and according to its makers, the first tests are to be done in the year 2016, and well, by then we are going to see some good screens which would be able to stream and portray this ultra high resolution content.
There is going to be a Full HD electronic viewfinder in this camera, and the adjustment of brightness, contrast, peaking with dedicated rotary switch can be performed well, flip screen, full / under, mono: mug on / off, 2 times, smooth, marker, aspect sensor, select marker, mask, back light, tally etc., and there are quite a lot more inbuilt functions, so the future with the 8K realistic capturing is not far, and Astro Design is one of the first to doe something in the UHD category.
According to Astro Design, the processor and the camera head were two separate parts initially, and it wasn’t easy easy to merge them, but they finally could do something and the processor has been made into a form where it can be placed within the camera.
The adapter AC-4803 is built-in. There is a huge control panel which would take care of the capturing and the processing of it, and that all isn’t a part of the camera. With the pace at which things are happening, we are sure that the progress of AH-4800 would be faster and we would get to know about things related to it, very soon.
