Near the beginning of your indie film project, you need to determine the video format you will be shooting.

Will it be 4K, or 2K, or — gasp — even 1080p?

This chart shows those display resolutions and many more.

More and more cameras shoot 4K so why even debate it?

There are some very good reasons not to shoot in 4K. Mentorless has three:

“#1 – Nobody Can Tell the Difference
#2 – It Will Stretch Your Budget And Take More Time
#3 – The Delivery Side Can’t Hold Its Part of the Contract (Yet)”

On the other hand, the main reasons touted to shoot in 4K are to allow for digital cropping, stabilization and zooming in post-production and to ‘future-proof’ your production, in anticipation of the day when everyone has 4K TVs and no caps on their Internet data.

My take: I like to shoot fast, so I’m partial to smaller form factors; 1080p is fine for me, for now. But the new DJI Osmo really caught my eye. The 4K footage is amazing and incredibly smooth for such a small camera.