On Mon, 22 Jul 2002, Bob Walkden wrote: > stills cameras. I can see a lot of advantages to shooting a burst of > video rather than a few frames of stills, and if it's easy to get a high > quality still out of the video burst, I wonder why anybody would use a > stills camera if they have a DV camera like this? It seems to me that > this turns on the issue of the quality of the output. Does anybody know > how the quality of these things compares with high-end digital stills > cameras? Any other issues to consider?
The quality of stills extracted from DV video is no where near digital stills camera. TV is a low resolution device, and each DV frame (NTSC in North America) is only 640x480 (converted to square pixel). PAL has slightly higher resolution. So while adequate for web or monitor screen viewing, it is not good enough for prints. Many camcorder now has higher resolution stills function - but it is the same as using camera as you only shoot one picture at a time. There is an additional problem in that each TV frame is interlaced - i.e. consists of 2 fields (odd and even scanning line) taken 1/60th second apart in NTSC and 1/50th second apart in PAL. So any movement of camera or objects would result in blurring in an extracted DV frame. To eliminate this problem, you need interpolation of extracted video frame; or use progressive scan video in the first place. I like 30 frames per second progressive scan video, as it allows perfect stills from every video frame. So I can have 30 frames each second to choose that "perfect moment". However, there aren't that many progressive scan camcorders around, and progressive scan video can look jerky if you are not careful. One has to be careful with camera movement and panning; but no different as you are shooting film with 180 degree shutter. The Sony camcorder you mentioned is a very nice 3ccd camcorder. But it does not have useful progressive scan video (it can only capture progressive scan video at 15 frames per second for NTSC; and that's way too low for video). However, its 3ccd setup makes very very good stills at 640x480 (better that the much hyped foveon technology at that resolution); and better than any 640x480 digital camera. But there is no comparison with high end digital still cameras. -- --Lawrence Kwan--SMS Info Service/Ringtone Convertor--PGP:finger/www-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.vex.net/~lawrence/ -Key ID:0x6D23F3C4-- - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
