Dr. Mordrid, or anyone else knowing about Digital Camcorders

[bongo]

Hi. Dr.,

I noticed that you are knowledgable about some digital camcorders..I am planning to buy one and have limited down to 2:

Canon Optura Pi or the Sony DC-PCR100

What I want may not be possible, but I would like a camera with the closest look to 35 mm movie film. I have looked at both cameras physically but have not seen actual footage.

The Canon has 3 shooting modes; In Frame Movie mode users can record high-speed action at 30 frame images per second for the purpose of extracting high-resolution frames from video. Images can then be displayed, printed or enhanced with a computer. Normal Movie mode delivers more than 500 lines of resolution for superior image quality and color rendition for playback on a television monitor. And, Digital Photo mode with self-timer, captures more than 700 remarkably clear still frame images on a single 80-minute cassette in SP mode.

Does this 3 mode ability (esp. frame movie) combined with the Canon's albeit lower pixel (380,000 and RGB filter combo) beat the Sony's higher pixel 1,040,000 pixel for closest thing to best movie quality. Best subjectively speaking being close to a real film stock film. I thought higher pixel was always better, but I heard the Canon's use of RGB filter really shines. (sony has HAD technology which is supposed to make it reduce noise in low light...I do not know if that makes colors richer in regular light though).

Am I making sense.

Which would you pick? thoughts....and thanks

[wkulecz]

Brian,

I agree that 35 mm film has far more resolution than any CCD in production or on the drawing board, but your numbers are too high by a factor of at least five for 35mm still frames, movie film does a bit worse because the film is moving -- mechanical issues cause vibrations that reduce resolution.

I don't think anyone claims much more than about 4000-6000 dpi (~200 pixels/mm or about 100 lines/mm) for any emulsion not on glass substrate. In still photography its quite difficult to actually get above 60 lines/mm on the film due to non-film issues, which ends up being about 3000 dpi resolution.

Even at 30 lines/mm your 24x18 35mm movie frame would be 1440 pixels by 1080 pixels
which is "only" 1.5 Mpixels which is why Hollywood is talking about, if not allready doing, 100% digital productions.

I think digital will replace film for "quality" in movies before it does for stills, although it has already replaced film for stills in "convienience".

At 8Mpixels I consider CCD to have fully equaled 35mm resolution for still photography, at 4Mpixels I'm looking to buy.

We'll need 3-CCD systems at 8Mpixels each to fully equal 35mm still film color quality. OTOH CCD's are immune to the problems of dust and scratches from processing and handling which is another factor in why I think digital will kill film in the movie business as quickly as the infastructure can handle the capital costs for the projectors.

--wally.

[Dr Mordrid]

Both cams will deliver 720x480 standard DV video regardless of their CCD's resolution. How the cam derives this data from a higher or lower rez CCD greatly affects how this frame looks. Bigger isn't always better.

The advanced RGB filter used with its TRUE Progressive Scan CCD contribute heavily to the Canons quality. Other advantages for the Canon are highly regarded optical image stabilization and its 12x optical zoom (the PC100 has 10x) and a larger preview monitor (3.5" vs 2.5").

Advantages for the Sony are the improved still frame mode the high rez CCD offers, HAD (high signal-to-noise ratio) CCD technology and its Carl Zeiss lens. It does a pseudo-PS mode, but it ain't the real thang.

The Carl Zeiss lens is an advantage, but as anyone who does photography can tell you Canon lenses are nothing to sniff at either. You'd likely need to run a USAF lens battery to tell the difference.

I'd probably just go try each one and make my choice subjectively based on how each cams output looked to MY eye. Quality wise you're talking about two excellent cams.

Dr. Mordrid




[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 28 September 2000).]

[bongo]

Thank you for your quick response Doctor M, and I will take your advice on trying out the 2 cameras...also thanks to the other guys for info on 35 mm...so much to learn....bye for now

[Aryko]

Something else to consider is the output source for your content. You're going to eventually watch whatever you tape on a television, not a movie screen, so there's no way you need such a high resolution.

The Sony lens, as I understand it, has more pixels but they're not all used to capture RGB information - I think I recall reading on this forum in the past that less than half record colour and the rest record lightness, contrast, that sort of thing. The end result is that the image quality of both single CCD cameras were pretty good, each had their own pros and cons, but both were still shy when it came to a 3CCD comparison.

I wonder how the Sony camera looks with stills, though.

- Aryko

[Brian Ellis]

Bongo

A wee bittie maths here will put things in proportion. The highest resolution 35 mm film, such as is used for shooting negative stock in good light, has a resolution of 300-400 lines/mm, each line being equivalent to 2 pixels. A movie frame is 18 x 24 mm, so it is equivalent to 18*24*300*300*2*2 pixels = 155,520,000 pixels, at the lowest resolution. No camcorder, not even professional, can come anywhere near that, nor can a standard PAL image theoretically resolve better than 2,083,333 pixels at full screen 4:3 aspect ratio (this ignores all the various losses in transmission etc.). IMHO, to achieve the quality of 35 mm film requires 35 mm film. Sorry!

------------------
Brian (the terrible)

[Brian Ellis]

Doc

I believe Ilford Pan F (monochrome) 35 mm film was claimed to have a resolution of 400 lines/mm when it had an emulsion speed of 15 ASA. I think they have now upped this speed, so the resolution may have dropped since. I think this film was much used for high quality negative stock in its heyday, even in the three-film Technicolor camera, which was why colour studios needed terawatts of lighting. Interestingly, Ilford also made the best separation filters which were used to polish the spectrum after the dichroic beam splitters. The positive film used for mono prints (a dye separation process was used for colour prints) could resolve anything you could throw at it.

The real problem was to find the lenses that would resolve 300 or more lines/mm. Only the most superbly designed and manufactured fixed focus lenses could even hope to approach this and these cost, even 50 years ago, tens of $k and were usually hand-made by such firms as Leitz and Zeiss. Each lump of glass was individually adjusted. The irony was that these lenses were so good that they were replaced for a lot of the shooting by special soft-focus lenses. Commercial, mass-produced, variants of these lenses were made for the better cameras, such as the Leica and Contax. This was why the Leitz Elmar had a relatively small aperture (f2.8, if I remember correctly), but it could resolve about 300 lines/mm if stopped down to f5.6 to f8. Below f8, diffraction effects of the diaphragm caused the resolution to drop again. Of course, no zoom lens can hope to approach these figures.

I agree that Hollywood is going digital but not at 625 lines or thereabouts. I'm now so out-of-touch with this industry (I worked for 10 years for the company making much of the sound equipment for worldwide location and reportage shooting, but that was from 1964) that I don't have a clue what is happening today, but I imagine we are probably talking about somewhere in the region of 2000 lines in the frame.

Lenses for even professional TV cameras, if put on a 35 mm cine camera, would look hopeless.

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Brian (the terrible)

[Dr Mordrid]

Huh? I didn't address 35mm at all. That was wkulecz.

At any rate I think film is dying a slow death for most uses. The announcement of 4 megapixel consumer priced CCD's last week means this is largely immenent. Film is already on its deathbed in medical imaging.

Dr. Mordrid

[bongo]

Aryko interesting comment about Sony's pixel not all being used to capture RGB, but other elements of visual..shades, contrast, etc...and if true that less than 1/2 of pixels used to capture RGB...it would make it sensible that the Canaon Optura which has a dedicated RGB filter jumps the quality gun over the Sony in the area of colour saturation only...because I know the canon's ccd is 30% less than the sony...which explains why some reviers were saying that there was more noise in low light with the canon than the sony...but the canon was stunning in normal indoor and outdoor light...hmmmm..seems the more we know the less we know...amybe I should just get an old 8mm....

thanks again for the input folks

bongo

[Brian Ellis]

Sorry, Doc, must have been my dyslexia :-(

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Brian (the terrible)

[Flying dutchman]

Doc,
I disagree about the imminent death of 35 mm film. The problem with digital cameras is getting a decent print of comparable resolution.
Even with a ten gigapixel camera you have to somehow get it on paper, and even the best inkjet printers don't give true color mixing at a decent resolution or for a decent price per print....

[wkulecz]

Flying Ducthman,

I partially disagree here. I agree that 35mm will hang on for still photography a good bit longer for two reasons -- it'll take three 8Mpixel CCD's to equal 35mm film color resolution, and with the exception of a few "pro" cameras priced like entry level luxury cars, the best of the consumer Digital Cameras are only about the level of a $250 "point and shoot" 35mm as a photographic tool.

In the US prints are not a problem. There are plenty of places that'll take a 26MB file on CDROM and give you a dye sublimation print at a price competive with a quality 35mm enlargement from a negative.

The HP Photosmart and Epson Stylus printers produce 8x10's that most people don't recognize as not being actual photographs if done on a "photoweight" paper. They do tend to fade faster than tradational photos and don't holdup well to handling, but I've many hung on the wall amongst Cibachrome prints from slides, and normal 35mm enlargements Nobody picks out the "digital" prints as being anything "different".

So while we agree 35mm still photography will hang on, the reason is not prints on paper, at least in the US.

I've heard rumors of dye sub printers capable of 8x10 output at about $2-3 per print from Sony and Olympus to be on the market "soon" -- they already have models that do 3.5x5, but at this size I can get 36 exposures done in 30 minutes while I pick up groceries for $12, so why would I want to print small ones myself at higher cost per print?

Retouching in photoshop and printing 8x10 is a whole different game, and I've been doing this for over two years now.

--wally.

[Dr Mordrid]

I have 8x10 prints of 3.3 megapixel images hung that 99.99% of people couldn't tell from a glossy photo (Olympus C-3030, ~$800 USD).

For printing we use both Canon and Epson tabloid size printers (11.7x14 and 14x19 inches respectively) and their 8x10 output is excellent. There is a bit of quality loss when printing the larger sheets, but not enough that the vast majority of folks would ever notice the difference.

With the new 4 + megapixel consumer priced cams coming out later this year even the tabloid size prints will be generally indistinguishable.

Dr. Mordrid


[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 03 October 2000).]

[A_BIT]

I agree with the Doc. I have a 2.3 MegaPixel camera and a 6 color Epson 1200 wide carriage photo printer. I can produce 5 X 7 or smaller photos that actually look better than conventional prints (IMHO) because there is a wider dynamic range and absolutely no grain.

Two of such prints will fit on an 8 1/2 X 11 page. Using OEM ink and photo paper the cost is about 60cents per print.

These prints look far better than cheapo photo lab. Much of the quality comes from the TLC done in Photo Shop. Film does contain a lot more detail which helps if you want to enlarge or (especially) crop and enlarge. That's something of a limitation of digitals at the < 4MPixel range. But if your shot is composed well and you don't need to throw out a lot of pixels the results with todays digitals can be stunning. Even though film has so much detail you wont see it unless you enlarge due to the resolution limitations of conventional photo paper.

What is also great is the immediate feedback on the LCD. You can delete the shots you don't like and take home only the keepers.


[This message has been edited by A_BIT (edited 03 October 2000).]

[wkulecz]

I'll have to pipe in and say the LCD "immediate feedback" is a feature that sounds good on paper, but really is of marginal utility. There is not enough resolution in the <2" LCD screens to make any kind of critical decision as to which are "keepers".

About all you can do is recycle memory from the obvious blunders where you cutoff some ones head, had your finger blocking the flash etc. Lots of shots that look "great" on the LCD are terrible full size because the auto focus was in the wrong place :-(

However, the "free" processing and quick turnaround to see the full rez pic on your computer does make digicams a great learing tool for basic photography -- assuming the camera has decent manual controls.

I've made some great 8x10 prints from 3.3 Mpixel digital camera shots. I've also seen some serious color mosaic artifacts. For example, the texture of tree bark sometimes has enough detail to cause a "color Moire" interference so parts of the tree ends up a bluish purple color. Curiously, the camera's owner had never noticed this until I pointed it out -- how one can ignore a purple tree in the background is beyond me. Quality is in the eye of the beholder.

--wally.