What's the point in 4k or 2k cameras?

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ok so I see a lot of people using high 4k or 2k cameras on YouTube. However a lot only have 1080p monitors.

For example I have seen techmoan review 4k dash cams on a full hd monitor, not a 4k or 1440.

This defeats the object as they cannot see the resolution. Or am I missing something?
 
ok so I see a lot of people using high 4k or 2k cameras on YouTube. However a lot only have 1080p monitors.

a lot of content creators that do 1080p material still shoot in higher resolutions so that they can crop and edit for a better end result than just shooting in native 1080p
 
ok so I see a lot of people using high 4k or 2k cameras on YouTube. However a lot only have 1080p monitors.

For example I have seen techmoan review 4k dash cams on a full hd monitor, not a 4k or 1440.

This defeats the object as they cannot see the resolution. Or am I missing something?

Some media players have the excess pixels off the edge of the screen. With the computer mouse you can click-and-drag the media player window left-right/up-down to move the window around and view what was off the screen.
 
For a dashcam, the advantage of 4K on a 1080 monitor is that while playing it you can zoom in and still have a perfectly sharp image up to x2 zoom.
(Assuming that your video player provides a zoom function.)
 
Not to mention, viewing on a different screen, like TVs? I have USB on my TV so I can view the raw footage straight on it with a card reader, without the need to upload anywhere in different formats/resolution
 
P.S. I don't have a 4k or 2k camera.... or a 4k tv :D
 
As someone who DOES have a 4K monitor, the purpose of 4K video on a dash cam is so that you have a better chance of getting legible license plates when using wide angle lenses. Things that would help this even more is to have a wider aperture lens and higher frame rates to get shorter exposures (reduced motion blur), but for some reason it is easier to get a 4K sensor in a camera than a bigger lens, or higher frame rate.
4K is great for viewing digital photos. My computer struggles a bit playing 4K video. My dash cam is a mini-803, so no 4K video from that. It is also dieing. It keeps shutting down claiming my class 10 video card that still benchmarks above class 10 is too slow.
 
As someone who DOES have a 4K monitor, the purpose of 4K video on a dash cam is so that you have a better chance of getting legible license plates when using wide angle lenses. Things that would help this even more is to have a wider aperture lens and higher frame rates to get shorter exposures (reduced motion blur),

bold part is false.


@OP, all else being equal more resolution = more detail, more "options" for post-processing.
 
There is somewhat of a debate about frame rate and motion blur.

Peruse THIS link and THIS link and see what you conclude.
Problem is that the second link says: "Note: examples illustrate the effects while maintaining a standard 180° shutter angle. "

Dashcams do not use a "shutter angle" since they are not trying to produce cinematic video, shutter angle is about producing motion blurred frames while the aim of a dashcam is to produce sharp frames so a dashcam should always maintain a high shutter speed while the shutter angle is irrelevant.

A 30fps dashcam can, if it wants, always use the same shutter speed as a 60fps dashcam. A 60fps dashcam can't always match the shutter speed of a 30fps dashcam though, the 60fps dashcam is more limited.
 
Explain to me how recording at 60 frames per second does not limit the exposure time to 1/60 of a second.

It does limit to 1/60 and 30fps cameras would allow down to 1/30 but in reality I think they're programmed to maintain much faster shutter speeds
 
There is somewhat of a debate about frame rate and motion blur.

Peruse THIS link and THIS link and see what you conclude.

Allow me to clarify: there is no debate about motion blur and frame rate when it comes to available dashcams. It has been claimed thousands of times, but never once has it been substantiated.

Explain to me how recording at 60 frames per second does not limit the exposure time to 1/60 of a second.

Feel free to provide an example of a single dashcam that has ever used that long of an exposure.

(I'll give you a hint: they don't, not a single one, which is why 60fps does not improve motion blur)
 
Allow me to clarify: there is no debate about motion blur and frame rate when it comes to available dashcams. It has been claimed thousands of times, but never once has it been substantiated.

Well, I wouldn't know about "thousands of times" but there has indeed been a debate about the effect of frame rate on the appearance of dash and action cam video. In any event, I presented those links because I felt people might find them interesting and enlightening but I didn't offer an opinion of my own.
 
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