SOT: The Great Camera Shootout Episode 2

farss wrote on 8/14/2011, 1:41 AM
I thought some might be interested in this single sensor camera shootout, watch it on Vimeo here. You need to watch it full screen to really pickup on what is being talked about in places.
What caught me off guard was the dramatic difference between recording uncompressed and some of the camera's internal recording systems.

Bob.

Comments

i am erikd wrote on 8/14/2011, 7:35 AM
Thanks for the link Bob. I though the F3 was pretty impressive against the big guns.

Erik
ritsmer wrote on 8/14/2011, 8:38 AM
And I thought that the Canon 5D Mk II full frame DSLR was quite good.

Did he use the expression "unuseable" ?

Wonder how my petty amateur cameras would do in that test - or not...
farss wrote on 8/14/2011, 2:06 PM
"Did he use the expression "unuseable" ?"

Yes.
What makes the DLSR cameras problematic is the aliasing.

I thought the AF100 held up well, the only issue with that camera is the lack of good lenses for the format. The FS100 wasn't in the tests, it does get around the problem of being able to use good glass if you put a PL adaptor on it. It really is not a user friendly camera though.

"Wonder how my petty amateur cameras would do in that test - or not... "

Probably not very well. On the other hand if you understand the limitations of the camera and avoid things in front of the camera that'll provoke problems and light for the camera you can still get perfectly usable footage.
That first low light scene where everyone is looking at the shadows was a prime example to me. My office PC's monitor is so bad I pretty much couldn't see into the shadows anyway. The scene could have been lit to suit the limitations of the camera being used, that's what a good DP would have done if he had to shoot it. Of course that was a torture test of the cameras, not a test of the DPs.

Bob.
John_Cline wrote on 8/14/2011, 3:39 PM
One again, I thought the Arri was probably the best all around, the Sony F3 was really impressive considering its cost and the AF100 and all of the DSLRs were just pretty awful in general. All things considered and cost/performance being the primary consideration, I'd still go for the Sony F3.
LarryP wrote on 8/14/2011, 4:01 PM
I can't say how this translates to video but the inexpensive Nikon AI and Leica M to Micro Four Thirds adapters work quite well on my Olympus E-PL2. My Nikon 85mm f2 lens still looks nice.

Larry
Andy_L wrote on 8/14/2011, 4:38 PM
Fascinating! The weakness of all the DSLRs' resolution is dramatic. I wonder how far away we are from the day when DSLR resolution in video mode will improve...

Obviously, DSLR's are capable of much better resolution when shooting individual frames. The question is, when will they be able to take advantage of that resolution while processing at video framerates?
farss wrote on 8/15/2011, 1:24 AM
"The question is, when will they be able to take advantage of that resolution while processing at video framerates? "

That is pretty much an impossible problem to wrangle.
The sensor in a DSLR is designed to take very high reolution images. In front of the sensor is an Optical Low Pass Filter also optimised for high resolution images and it's matched to the sensor. The other issue is the electronics simply cannot read out all the pixels in the sensor and process them at 24 fps so rows of pixels are skipped and that adds further to the aliasing problem.

The Panny GH2 / AF100 cameras show this very nicely.
One takes great stills and ho hum video. The other great video and ho hum stills. They both use the same sensor. The GH2 skips lines when shooting video and the AF100 does something smarter but the OLPF is setup for 1080 video. The AF100 would do even better if the sensor was designed purely for shooting 1080 but it's still a good camera for the money.

Bob.
Jay Gladwell wrote on 8/15/2011, 5:21 AM

Excellent find, Bob. Thanks for sharing! Quite the eye-opener.

paul_w wrote on 8/15/2011, 7:57 AM
This is No2 of 3 episodes. Looking forward to the next one which is not long away i think. Cool stuff indeed.

Paul.
Laurence wrote on 8/15/2011, 9:12 AM
I love my DSLR in spite of all the issues with this format. It's small and cheap and nobody freaks out when you use it because you look like you're just shooting stills. It may not do a good job on powdered spices, but on faces with soft brokeh backgrounds it is still just stunning, no matter what these tests say.
Andy_L wrote on 8/15/2011, 10:09 AM
Bob it may be beyond current affordable tech, but I certainly wouldn't consider it impossible. After all, most good DSLRs can shoot around 6-7 frames per second at full resolution now. All they need to do is shoot 30fps, and downres each frame before storage using a reasonably good algorithm. That seems to be just a question of processor speed and price. In fact, I'm beginning to think one-chip sensors will become the norm someday in video cams, because they'll be able to do exactly this, at a lower power cost that 3 chips. Fun to speculate, anyhow...
Laurence wrote on 8/15/2011, 10:58 AM
The majority of the problems would be fixed if instead of dropping pixels during capture, there was some sort of averaging of the pixels (in one of the 1920 x 1080 pixel areas). That would fix all sorts of line twitter and aliasing problems. Maybe next year ;-)