Image Stability setting on Sony

PAW wrote on 9/7/2002, 1:53 PM

Hello,

There is an image stability setting on my camcorder.

Does anyone know the impact of this on image quality

Regards, Paul

Comments

wcoxe1 wrote on 9/7/2002, 2:36 PM

The FINAL image resolution is not changed, you still have a 720 x 480 picture, either way. However, using the electonic stabilizer does have an effect.

Sony, like many, uses a chip with, say 1 megapixels. If you do NOT use EIS (electronic image stabilization) your whole chip, all 1 million pixels, is used to render the 720 x 480 picture.

When you turn ON EIS, the area for your picture drops, typically to 680,000 pixels for your image, with the balance being used to effect the stabilization.

So, yes, there is a quality difference, but you may not notice the difference, especially with the new megapixel units. If you do, use a tripod and turn off EIS.

Optical Image Stabilization, on the other hand, doesn't do the above. You use all your pixels, all the time. Only the higher end Sonys and quite a few Canons and some others have OIS, though.