16:9 Pd150
 

I'm going to shoot in Nepal and would like to take advantage of the panaramas shooting with a PD150. Is the quality diminished by switching to 16:9 or is it just a "cut off" picture? Should I consider shooting Progressive?
There is no electricity to charge batteries and although I plan to shoot sparingly I won't be able to charge for 20 days- I'm going to try a Brunton Solarport 4.4 - has anyone tried charging with one?
Any ideas (short of a different camera) for shooting in a remote, cold area?
Thanks
Jay

can't help on the battery situation but the 150's 16:9 isn't a real 16:9-it simply crops off the image and frankly I don't like the way it looks - seems like it's not a sharp as the 4:3
As for PROGRESSIVE the 150 doesn't shoot REAL progressive except at 15FPS (NTSC) so as long as no one is moving I guess you could use it.

Why not mark the LCD with the 16:9 crop lines (top and bottom) shoot 4:3 and crop it out in post-as for progressive perhaps do that in post as well.

I love my 150 (had 2 at one time) BUT for the way you want to shoot probably not he best choice.

Don

You can also use an 16:9 mask in camera to create the 16:9 letterbox in the 4:3 mode.

pd150
 

thanks - jay

Forget the progressive scan as it simply turns the PD into a motor-drive still camera. At 12.5 fps (PAL) it's not much use for anything else.

The 16:9 mode is surprisingly good, as it's using an electronic anamorphic compression and not simply cutting off the top and bottom of the picture. If you view the results on a 4:3 TV you see it letterboxed with no loss of resolution at all - but if you expand that to fill the screen of a true 16:9 set, then yes, the picture does get a bit softer.

You talk about 'panoramas', but don't forget that in the switch to 16:9 you lose wide-angle coverage (diagonally) so you'll need a wide-angle converter.

I'd say that the PD150 is a fine camera to take into difficult climates and conditions. It was taken into every war zone going and came out triumphant. I'd take lots of NPF-970 batteries, though.

tom.

Progressive Tip:

You should experiment with it before you depend on it, but there is a way to the Digital Effect Flash mode to get a pseudo Progressive with the VX and PD cameras. See this thread for full explanation. It is pretty interesting. See posts 5- 15 for discussion and use.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=84045

My personal preference would be to put a safe area mask on the LCD screen to keep your framing within the preferred area and shoot 4:3. This gives you a little forgiveness for re-framing in post.

Don't use sticky on the LCD screen itself. Shoot everything as pure and unaltered as you can. Don't mess with any effects at all. This is a rare and costly event you are doing. You can put salt in the stew but you can't take it out.

Electronic widescreen works okay. The Century Optics 16:9 anamorphic lens works better but it is an added weight, can become skewed and I would also have some anxieties about CA when shooting with bright snow, dark rocks and sharp edges in background.

You also have to be vigilent about corner cropping on the widest end of the lens so in your situation where simple is best, I would leave the 16:9 anamorphic at home and take the resolution hit.

For the wide panoramic views I would be inclined to cover the identical shot twice, one with a human in it to establish scale and one without. A human in the shot will also tend to distract the viewer from inferior resolution which is most observable in the highly textured and contrasted wides.

There is the "Over Land and Under Water" thread furthur down in "Special Interest Areas". Ask for some advice there. Those people really know what they are doing in wilderness imaging and will surely give you some good advice.

The principle questions I would ask are how to deal with the snowcaps and high contrasts (UV and polariser filters?), white balance, ultra-violet light, batteries in cold evironments, camera acclimatisation methods, lens care.

If I was going to take an accessory lens, it would be the wide-angle adaptor for the Sony or maybe even a fisheye.

On 12.5 fps progressive. If you do not have movements happening close to the camera in the frame and the camera is locked off on a tripod, I would say "why not?" in selected situations but get normal interlace coverage as well for the same shots.

cropping also compromises resolution

I've had decent experiences using the electronic 16/9 -- it doesn't from my eyes appear to apreciably harm the sharpness --

If you are certain to end up with 16/9, I'd shoot that way using the electronic mode (but test yourself to see if you agree.)

NP970s are fairly light and cheap -- pack as many as you think you'll need. Does that solar charger weigh much ?? (BTW -- I've bought an NP970 cheap at a street camera shop in Saigon a year ago).

BTW -- Sony made a little known accessory light that worked on the VX2000 -- (never tried it on the PD150, though I bet it does) Incredibbly tiny, it gets powers off the main battery through the powered hot shoe. Diffused with tough spun, it makes an incredibly useful light for situations such as you'll be in.

good luck...

I am not advocating against using electronic 16:9 for resolution reasons alone. It is true cropping in post also introduces a resolution hit.

My recommendation for using 4:3 with a safe area mask for 16:9, is to enable vertical re-framing options in post where for whatever reason, the vertical framing of the shot might be off.

After scuttling up and down mountain trails or riding hot crowded buses, there will be a fatigue factor in play which can diminish the skill set.

If there is some extra image area to use for later enhancements like re-framing a poorly composed shot or stabilising an image which is all shook up due to muscle tiredness, then that is the option I would prefer to keep.

Most times, I use the electronic 16:9 option.

Debate: 16:9 Real World Result with PD's and VX's
 

Okay. I've been hammered a few times for indicating that I have gotten decent results shooting with my VX 2000 in 16:9 mode and combining with FX1 footage in 16:9, in an SD format. I'm trying to rectify those comments with my experience.

Of course, the first thought is my standards are not high enough, and that may be the case, I tend to shoot for family, friends and school functions, etc.

But I still think there is more to it than that, and I am postulating my perception is the result of the following. I am wondering if Boyd Ostroff and others with more experience would tell me where I am wrong:

1. I have been told that the 16:9 coming from the Sony VX and PD only has a resolution of 380 vertical lines. I understand and believe that. It is painfully obvious on the computer in editing programs, and when played from .avi of direct capture on my computer monitors.

2. What I have experienced though, is that when I output this material after editing to DVD, and play it on a standard definition television, the difference between a dedicated 16:9 chip camera and the PD is much less obvious. It may even be negligible.

3. I postulate that this is due to the fact that (unless my understanding is wrong) the actual vertical resolution of letter boxed material on an 4:3 standard definition television would be around 360 lines.

So is the reason that I do not notice much difference in my finished DVD material due the fact that the 480 lines from the dedicated 16:9 chip have to be downrezed for display on my standard definition TV.
Or what.

That's exactly it. An SD television dispays 480 lines (essentially that's part of the specs of an NTSC SD television), and a letterboxed 16:9 image uses only 360 of those lines.

Wow, I never thought of that. Thanks for making this topic.

So I did a little test to try out this hypothesis.

I took video of a fan in my room with the FX1 and VX2000, in 16:9 SD on both.

Then I captured both into Pinnacle 10 Plus. From there, I captured a 1 bit map from each clip. They are shown below as FX1.bmp and VX2k.bmp. The bit map image turned out to be 853 by 480.

Then I took those images into Photoshop, created two new blank images at 640 by 480 to simulate SD TV resolution. I then copied the original photos and reduced them to fit into the 640x480, leaving bars at the top.

I will let you be the judge of the images. My impression is that the reduction in resolution actually brings the VX2k image closer to the FX1 image. (I was hand holding each camera, and shot in auto, so there may be some shake issues there.) Check it out.

sorry but the difference stay the same for me, at original size or reduced.
...and VX looks much better.
but the important thing is what YOU see, and if you are happy with the VX2000 picture, nobody should complain.
From my point of view, SD can be as good as HD. I run everyday good DVD on my 1344x768 42" LCD TV (HDMI comnnection to player) and they look much better than everything i can get from my VX2000, or even the same as my FX1, but these are SD DVD.
it is especially amazing on cartoon like "over the Hedge" or "Happy Feet" or "Shreck" were you can see every details of animals furs or every dot of skin texture.
The only difference is that the original material is very high resolution.

It looks like the FX1 image was sharpened more in-camera. Actual resolution isn't as different as the difference in sharpening can make it appear. Try sharpening the image from the VX (in photoshop) and I think you'll find they look a bit more similar.

There are other differences though. The color balance of the FX1 image looks cooler. There appears to be more noise in the VX image.

Just my impressions, at a glance.

Sorry for "hammering" you Chris :-) Handholding is probably not the best way to show what the FX1 can do. I have done tests myself, and had them online for a long time but finally dumped it all to make room on my website. But they convinced me that 16:9 on the VX doesn't give the quality I need.

Comparing them on a regular TV probably isn't a good way to judge the difference, but I think Giroud makes a good point. If they work well in your application then who cares what all of us think? ;-) I think it's great that you took the time to do this and draw your own conclusions actually. Much too often people ask questions of strangers and base decisions on the response because they're just too lazy to do a little research on their own.

But it you want to do another test, go outside and shoot some kind of landscape on a tripod with a lot of small objects, like distant trees or buildings. I think you will see a more pronounced difference between the VX and FX in this situation.

Also, I'm not all that impressed with shooting in SD mode on my Z1. Pretty sure the difference would be more pronounced if you shot in HDV and downconverted either in-camera or with software.

Couple things though:

1. It's 360 lines and not 380.

2. The VX and just about all SD cameras without true progressive mode do some form of field blending. This is necessary to prevent flickering edges on nearly horizontal surfaces and lines. Imagine a horizontal line which is only one pixel wide. It would be captured in the odd field but not the even field, and would therefore flash on and off with interlaced video. So even though 360/480 would appear to be a 25% loss of resolution, in reality it's probably not that severe since the VX doesn't really output 480 discreet lines in the first place.

hey chris, want to try something else while you're at it? do another screen cap with that "flash setting" on. i personally don't see a visible quality difference and that mode kinda replicates progressive(kinda) so why not give it a shot!

also, you already turned your sharpness down in the cams, right?

The downsampled Z1 HDV image should be a bit sharper than the VX, but if the downsampling is done in photoshop, the difference will appear to be greater, because the downsampled chroma resolution will be higher than with the 4:1:1 coming from the VX.

Everything was on auto on the cameras, including focus. FX1 was actually set to the PP1, which I have not modified from factory settings, I realized afterward, I used the fan housing because it had straight lines and curves. Should have mounted on tripod, but I did this on spur of moment more than anything just to see results, deciding to post them afterwards. I could have definitely been more scientific about it.

I do see a clear difference, in the full resolution video, comparing the two, and that is clear. My only point is that in the process of encoding to DVD mpeg, then having the DVD player scale to a standard 4:3 screen, the greater portion of that difference can disappear pretty quickly, and assuming that is your target, use of the 16:9 feature on the VX's and PD's may not be as detrimental as I was originally thinking.

Boyd, I agree with your thoughts on the actually editing FX1 footage in HDV or Cineform intermediate, then down converting. I do that regularly. And I I'm experimenting with a self built 35mm adapter using that process too.

I will try to do the landscape "test" in a day or too, also, because my curiosity is up on that one too.

In the past with the VX2000, if I had wanted a leterbox 16:9 effect, I would use an in camera mask. So I will add that to the test too, just to see where that goes.

I have messed a bit with the Flash utility to create the fake "24P" effect on my VX2000. It is interesting. My first impression, though, was that resolution did drop a bit in that process... but that is another good experiement.

Lets see, a wedding this weekend, finish UWOL challenge, then fun experiments...

Well no argument there. When you letterbox 16:9 in 4:3 you only have 360 lines in the image area, so there isn't gonna be much if any difference. The expression "pearls before swine" comes to mind if you're using an FX1 for that application ;-)

Boyd:

While we are on the subject of FX1 and VX, lets say for some reason I want to shoot the two cameras in 4:3 for an SD gig. From what I can tell, the FX1 and z1 lops off the sides, relying on the pixel aspect ratio to give the full picture 4:3. But doesn't that actually reduce the actually pixels, and since it does, how does that effect resolution ?

IIRC, the sensor has 960 pixels but interpolates this to 1440 using pixel shifting. So I think there are enough pixels to get full resolution (especially as you say your target is 4:3 on consumer TV's) but it's more like shooting with a 1/4" chip camera since the sides of the 16:9 native CCD's aren't being used in 4:3 mode.

My totally unscientific gut reaction is that 4:3 video from my VX-2000 looks better than 4:3 from my Z1. Recently I looked at some 4:3 material I shot 5 years ago with the VX, and I was reminded just how nice an image that camera can create.

Okay, as Boyd suggested, I did the landscape test on the FX1 and VX 2K, both in SD, obviously. On the VX2k I also shot one in 4:3, using a mask I applied in memory mix mode.

The shots below are labeled and self explanatory. It looks like again, at better performance as Boyd indicated in FX1 16x9, especially at full DV resolution, with what I think is a decreasing the edge in the 640 by 480 resolution reduction. The shot with the matte applied gives pause, at it appears at least as good as the 16 by 9 VX2k mode shot. That confirms what I've seen earlier user indicate. Problem with it is if you mix that on a 16:9 time line, you have to stretch it to fill the frame, and I think you lose there. .....

I recently did a year-end wrap up reel mixing footage from VX2100, Canon XL1s, and a Sony A1U. The final project was 16X9, done in post. I have to say that shooting with the VX in 4:3 and then stretching it in post yields some NICE results. I was pretty surprised at how well the VX stacked up against in the other two cams.

my $.02

Just to confuse an otherwise straightforward thread: There is no particular reason why you would be obliged to letterbox 16:9 material, even SD material, unless forced to view it on an SD set and if that set doesn't offer 16:9 scan. My HD delivers a rather spectacular 16:9 SD display of DV material, using the full 480 lines (actually it upconverts to 1080i, so it 'line doubles') ...

The 16:9 recording of DV uses the full 720x480 frame area without wasting any space on black bars -- so although the imaging chips are not fully utilized during shooting in 16:9, there is a real gain in the recording that is then preserved in post ... as long as you can present on a 'proper' 16:9 capable set.

GB

16:9 real world results
 

Ok, I'll bite. What brand hd set do you have that renders these wonderful results? I'd like to know, as I'm considering a purchase in the near future.Thanks.

Mine's a Sony 53" HiScan CRT -- but I don't think that's the key factor, the issue is a set which can display 16:9 without adding letterbox, which I'd think was a function of any HD set that can display widescreen SD material. My DVD player, for example, will output 480p on the component outputs and display as a 16:9 image.

HTH

GB

Yes,thank you.

4:3 is sharper than true 16:9, right?
 

I'm shooting with a Sony PDX10P that can do true widescreen but I have a question:

If widescreen is the same resolution as 4:3, doesn't the image quality suffer slightly from the 'stretching'?

The thing is, we work with a lens adapter and we're cutting the frame to anamorphic anyway. So if we just zoom in on our wide focussing screen until it fits into frame left and right, we won't even have to mind that you still see some black up and above because it'll be cut off and you'll see the whole focussing screen so putting the camera in wide mode won't really make the angle wider. So it seems to me that 4:3 is better because it should be sharper, right?

Because if you shoot widescreen, for as far as I understand, a wider image is squeezed into the normal DV resolution and the image is stretched again afterwards. If you shoot 4:3, none or very little of this occurs.

The PDX10 has 4:3 CCD chips, and when you shoot in the 16:9 mode it uses more of the width of the chips (and so has more wide-angle coverage - much needed on this camera) but sadly cuts down on the height. So you're right, it's at its best in the 4:3 mode but gives very acceptable results in the 16:9 mode too.

But as you're into lens adapters you're after an aesthetic effect, so quibbling over small losses in the camera settings seems academic to me.

tom.

Of course, the problem will be that when shooting 4:3 I will have to do more letterboxing, resulting in the loss of vertical resolution... I guess I'll have to compare that with the loss of horizontal resolution when shooting in wide.

But as you'll be ending up with widescreen, I'd suggest you shoot wide to begin with. The losses that way will be less noticable than the vertical res lost by cropping 4:3.

tom.

This image shows how the PDX10 sensor uses it's sensor area for 4:3 and 16:9 video, and also for still images... looks like it uses more pixels for 16:9.

I agree with Tom... and Tom :-)

The PDX-10 is really at its best when shooting 16:9 IMO. I shot a bunch of comparisons with my PDX-10 and VX-2000. The 4:3 image from the VX looked noticeably better than 4:3 from the PDX, which I attributed to the larger sensor on the VX, plus the fact the the PDX doesn't even use the full width of the chips in 4:3 mode. I think the PDX is kind of a bad choice if you want to shoot 4:3, but it does a pretty good job of 16:9.

Thanks a lot guys, clears things up, I'll be shooting in 16:9 :) .

Shooting 16:9
 

I'm in the preliminary stages of putting together a small business with a few buddies of mine who are in related fields (videography, photography, DJing etc) and have been doing loads of research on various products. One of which is the VX2100, I've been looking at this camera as a possible secondary camera. The reason being it's smaller size than the Canon XL2 and it still shoots in a 16:9 aspect ratio. However, I'm curious if this will be a true 16:9 like the XL2 shoots or will it be "stretched" like my old Optura Xi does? Our primary camera will hopefully be a Canon XH-A1 teamed up with a Brevis35 system. So I was hoping for a good secondary camera that will shoot 16:9 so that shots can flow relatively seemlessly.

Thanks for your help! I may have more questions along the way...

neither the VX series nor the PD series nor the DSR250 shoot a true 16:9-I've tried it on my PDs and DSR and frankly thought it looked pretty bad so when I need it I mask the LCD and leave the headroom and bottom room to crop in post.

Don

Neither. The VX crops a standard 4:3 frame to about 360 lines. It's basically the same effect you'd get by hacking the top and bottom off in editing.

The middle 360 lines look the same as they always would, so letterboxed on a 4:3 regular TV it's not a big deal. But view the video blown up onto a 16:9 HDTV, particularly a big one, and you'll want to cry. It'll be especially noticeable when trying to cut together 360 VX lines with 1080 A1 lines. You'd be better off with an HV20.

Been there.... it's what pushed me to my FX1...

Alright, thanks for the heads up guys I appreciate the info. Glad I discovered this early on.

Thanks again!