I'll check out your footage, thanks for the info on 24 & 30P in Vegas

If you look at the 15db 1/30 shots you can see the Z7 looks a little darker, but at 0 gain they look the same and the Z1 goes to 21db , but it looks like through the gain range they match up very clse, so the 21db is like a middle ground to the hypergain

Low light shoot off bewtween z1u z7u and ex1
 

I shot this today ... pretty interesting. My white balance was a little off on the ex1, but you get the idea.
Oh, and the progressive is differen than v1. Footage shot in progressive on the z7 won't play back in the z1, but progressive shot on the v1 can play back on the z1. Hmmmmmm.
For the comparison I used a Sony LED light.

hey david, were these shot with relatively the same WB? It seems like the EX1 shots exude a much higher yellow prominence in the color balance than the Z7 does, otherwise the low light sensitivity seems relatively similar.

progressive?
 

Hi David nice test...lots of work!
Did you perform the test in progressive? If so, I am under the impression that the Z1 really doesn't have true progressive. Progressive will double the light sensitivity right off the bat on the EX1 and Z7.
I wish that there was a comparison done with the 3 cameras in 1080i, hence all things being equal. Also, it would be inportant to do that test with +3 and +6 db gain on each camera and look at the noise difference. The Z1 will tolerate gain and actually requires gain to optimize performance.
Thanks again, Craig

These were all shot in 60i for a fair comparison. I did shoot with a higher db, but forgot to lock down the shutter on the ex1 and so instead of getting brighter it went to a higher shutter speed - I'll have to reshoot those.

The white balance is off on the ex1. I shot this a few hours after getting the camera and was still trying to figure some things out. However, if you zoom in to the picture, you can see how much better the ex1 for picture quality. I also shot the ex1 with the same rez as hdv and not full HD.

Here are the high rez photos:

www.davidperryfilms.com/images/0db.jpg
www.davidperryfilms.com/images/0db_50light.jpg
www.davidperryfilms.com/images/0db_100light.jpg
www.davidperryfilms.com/images/comparison.jpg

Here is the z1u and the z7u at 12db

It is interesting to see the Z1 and Z7 like this. If nothing else is shows the better lens of the Z7

K

Those are approximately 1.5 megapixel images (the full size frame grabs). If the softer image from the Z1 (compared to Z7) is due to lens, that would seem to imply that the glass in the Z1 lens is pretty poor quality. Looks to me that the imagers in the Z7 outperform the imagers in the Z1 (quite noticeably). After seeing those comparison images, I'm a lot more interested in the Z7 now.

I don't have much experience with the Z1 but I do have a V1 and the lens is much much smaller than the Z7. I don't know if I'd say the Z1 is "pretty poor quality". More likely the Z7 is very high quality and the Z1 is average to above average. It does look like Sony did put a lot of the Z7 costs into the lens.

Keith

What I was pointing out is, that even if the lens on the Z7 used glass that was absolutely perfect (theoretical of course), the glass in the Z1 would almost surely have to be of pretty awful quality to soften a 1.5 megapixel image, from a 1/3" sensor, that much (at least I would think). These aren't images from 35mm film or a 10 megapixel DSLR camera, where differences in lens quality have a far more noticeable impact. I'm impressed at what Sony is doing with their CMOS imagers.

Wow, just look at the whites in the focus charts between the two cams at 12db. Drastically different gain structures for highlights.

Would anyone with a Z7 and an XH-A1 (or G1 or XL-H1) care to do a similar comparison to David's?

I could probably do a comparison with the Canon's as well since I have friends with those cameras. Maybe beginning of next week.

That would be awesome David.

I am not sure what is meant by your reply. Do you agree or not--can't tell. Better lenses would be noticeable even at 1.5 megapix or manufactures of cameras would just use cheap lenses.

I work for a museum and 8 years ago when they started taking digital photographs of art with a 2.1 megapixel Nikon camera our professional photographer did not use cheap lenses.

Granted softer images do come from several aspects of the camera however, the lenses are a big factor.

I'm sure lens quality is part of the difference between the IQ of the Z1 images and the Z7 images David posted, but I doubt it is most of the difference. I guess "cheap" is something of a relative term. Certainly the quality of glass makes less of a difference with a 1.5 megapixel image than with much higher resolution images.