View Full Version : Resolution Loss


Frank Vrionis
March 14th, 2005, 03:36 PM
does the Micro35 lose detail in the image?

i heard it may be the equivalent of over 200 hundred lines.

is this true?

anyone tested it?

James Hurd
March 14th, 2005, 03:43 PM
My last test showed a resolution of ~640 lines using a LOMO lens.

Hope this helps!


James
www.micro35.com

Frank Vrionis
March 14th, 2005, 03:47 PM
LOMO lens? i'm getting a head ache already.

living in Australia i have many hurdles to overcome to get those things. plus the ignorance factor is giving me anxiety.

i bought myself some canon FD lenses. are these alright?

James Hurd
March 14th, 2005, 03:53 PM
The Canon FD lenses will work just fine.

Aaron Shaw
March 14th, 2005, 07:45 PM
640 in the horizontal direction I presume? What about the vertical?

James Hurd
March 16th, 2005, 09:03 PM
Aaron,
Sorry about the delay in responding. I'm prepping for one last trip...

It looks like the vertical was around 600.

Thanks!

james
www.micro35.com

Frank Vrionis
March 16th, 2005, 09:13 PM
i thought PAL was 720x576
and
NTSC was 720x480
??

which one is the 600 and which is 640??

Ryan Hamblin
March 16th, 2005, 11:14 PM
I can attest to the sharpness of the FD lenses, they work really well with the setup. We used all primes and I recommend you do the same.

(r)yan

Steven Fokkinga
March 17th, 2005, 10:07 AM
Hi Ryan,

Is that canon fd MF lenses? I'm looking around for those, since they are cheaper than nikon MF's (one of the few advantages of incompatibilty!), and I heard the best in the canon fd line are equal to the best in the nikon MF line. Also, they have some lenses that are faster than nikon's in certain focal lengths.
What was your experience with them? Did you use an follow focus with them?

Thanks!

Steven

Ryan Hamblin
March 17th, 2005, 07:51 PM
The FD lenses work really well with the system.

Rob Lohman
March 19th, 2005, 06:27 AM
Frank: I believe they are talking about how many lines they can
read of a test chart. The digital resolution will always be the same.

Frank Vrionis
March 19th, 2005, 06:38 PM
Thanks Rob,

I’m aware of that. That’s why I said "equivalent".

Thing is James said 640 lines then said 600 lines.

I’m not sure what specifically he means by that.

PAL is 720x576 and NTSC is 720x480.

Obviously the resolution loss would most likely be from the 720 (horizontal?) and what about the 576 and 480??

Maheel Perera
March 19th, 2005, 08:09 PM
The DV/DVCAM format could deliver only 500 lines of resolution.

Frank Vrionis
March 20th, 2005, 06:02 PM
Maheel, I’ve no idea what that means. I’m a novice and need training wheels. Humour me.

Maheel Perera
March 21st, 2005, 09:15 AM
Frank,

Although PAL frame is regarded as 720X576 the horizontal resolution is limited by the format. VHS can resolve only 250 lines. and S Video resolves 400. For DV/DVCAM it is 500.

Frank Vrionis
March 21st, 2005, 09:51 AM
Maheel, tell me it's not true! I'm losing more lines?

Can't i play a PAL AVI thru a computer to a projector and get the full resolution?

Or DVD to a projector using a DVI cable or something?

Luis Caffesse
March 21st, 2005, 09:57 AM
Frank,

What Maheel is saying is that it is a limitation of the DV format.
Meaning, if your PAL video was shot on DV, you are limited to what the DV format can record (which is 500 lines).

So, even if you were to play it back through a computer to a projector you would only get the resolution that was orignally recorded to tape.

To get around this limitation you would have to take DV out of the equation completely.

Jamie Abbott
March 21st, 2005, 11:46 PM
There seems to be some confusion here regarding resolution. While it is true that DV/DVCam is limited to around 500 lines of resolution (I think it is 525 for NTSC, 625 for PAL) this refers to number of scan lines.

The 720x480 (NTSC) and 720x576 (PAL) refers to non-square pixels (horizontal x vertical) giving a 4:3 image. This is why PAL has better resolution than NTSC, i.e. more pixels. (Let's not get into the 4:2:0 vs. 4:1:1 color debate.)

For what it's worth, a cropped 16:9 DV-NTSC image is 720x406 (if I remember right), so you lose some vertical resolution. Use a Century anamorphic adapter on a PAL camera and you'll gain almost a third in vertical resolution, as it maintains the 576 vertical pixel count.

Does this help?

Frank Vrionis
March 22nd, 2005, 02:48 AM
Jamie thanks. It does help enormously. Now it has opened all sorts of questions.

Never new the pixel count and resolution were different.

<<Use a Century anamorphic adapter on a PAL camera and you'll gain almost a third in vertical resolution, as it maintains the 576 vertical pixel count.>>

Are these real lines or pseudo?

Juan's got this image form his camera:
http://www.reel-stream.com/capture/36bit_HD_sm.jpg
the resolution is 1124x720



....I don't know what my question is but I’m getting there.

Jamie Abbott
March 22nd, 2005, 07:06 AM
Don't misunderstand. These are different ways of measuring resolution.

This page --> http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/vidres.htm

provides a darn good basic explanation of resolution variables, much better than I could do. (Better yet, read Scott Billup's book DIGITAL MOVIEMAKING.)

The Century or Panasonic anamorphic adapters "squeeze" the image to utilize the full range of a 4:3 chip to produce 16:9 images. These are "real" lines, if I get your meaning.

The near-HD 1124x720 images on the Reel Stream site are impressive, but they are captured without the compression that is performed in-camera with DV. So they are uncompressed high-resolution images.

Graeme Nattress
March 22nd, 2005, 07:17 AM
<<<-- Originally posted by Jamie Abbott : There seems to be some confusion here regarding resolution. While it is true that DV/DVCam is limited to around 500 lines of resolution (I think it is 525 for NTSC, 625 for PAL) this refers to number of scan lines.
-->>>

When people quote "lines of resolution" they're referring to vertical lines which means horizontal resolution. Although both NTSC and PAL standard def formats have 720 horizontal pixels, if you actually allowed such a detailed image to be recorded, you'd get aliassing artifacts, hence the horizontal resolution is limited by the lens, by filters etc. to around 500 lines. Although 720 pixels are recorded, think of it recording a slightly blurred image, and hence the resolution of the system is limited. All cameras do this, and it's quite necessary to avoid artifacting. Basically, think of it the other way, we record with more pixels than we need to make sure that the underlying resolution is recorded accurately.

Now to 525 and 625. These are the horizontal line counts for NTSC and PAL, and are total lines, not picture lines. The lines used for picture are 480 (or 486) and 576 respectively and equate to vertical resolution. However, just like horizontal resolution, this is number of pixels, not underlying resolution of the reproduced image, which will be lower, again to stop aliassing and line twitter on interlaced systems.

Graeme

Andre De Clercq
March 22nd, 2005, 07:47 AM
Horizontal resolution in TV is expressed in terms of vertical lines (black lines +white lines, not line pairs!) measured on length which equals the picture hight. So in a 720x480 (4:3) image the max system resolution is 720x3/4=540 TVL/ph (TV lines per pixel hight). For several reasons this limit is never being reached .

Rob Lohman
March 23rd, 2005, 05:09 AM
Thanks for that tech explenation Andre!

Frank Vrionis
March 23rd, 2005, 05:26 PM
thanks for that guys. i'm getting there.