-3K vs 3K Resolution?

With very rare exception, the aspect ratio of old movie film, whether 8mm, Super 8, 16mm, 9.5mm or 35mm, is roughly 4x3, like an old style television. Modern movie formats are pretty much all 16x9, which is wider. Scanning a 4x3 movie to a 16x9 sensor means a large portion of the sensor width isn't even used. So what we see is that, for old 4x3 movies, the height of the sensor is more important than the width. If you use the entire 4x3 sensor of the Mark-II, the height of your captured image is only 10% less than the height of a 16x9 Full 3K sensor. We refer to this as "Near 3K" or "-3K". The files created in Near 3K can be easily bumped up to Full 3K without visible degradation of image quality.