R-G-B, Picture for input/discussions

[Lars Siden]

Hi All,

I'm very interested in hearing your comments on a picture (frame) that I shot with the XM-2 just now.

I put the camera on a tripod, set it to "frame" mode.

The picture is saved as BMP and TIF for PC & MAC - no compression.

Please observe the black circular dots on the red plastic toy... they do have some really ugly "blocks and lines/pixelation" - I just wonder if this is normal? Or if it is something strange with my cam.

It would be interesting if someone with a "perfect" XM2/GL2 could do a similiar shot and show.

The picture can be found at:

http://lazze.dns2go.com/xm2red

It is named: RGB

Best regards,

Lazze Z

Sweden

[Bud Kuenzli]

look at the black circle on the red figure..the one on the right. at the top of that circle you can see (on the mac tif) a LOT of jpg artifact bleed from the red pixels into the black dot. However, had I taken this picture myself and looked it over closely, my reply would have been "not bad". This is a 1.6 megapixel still shot from a camera designed to be a video camera. It's like a spork. Not a great spoon or fork. This isn't a 50,000 pro camera and it's not a $5,000 DSLR. Perhaps I'm not very discriminating but I don't see the big deal in some bleed from a 1.6MP still taken off a video camera. Of course i'd prefer not to see any such bleed and I think the jpg compression is pretty hard with strong stair-stepping evident, but I never look to my video cam for still shots of high quality.

[Ken Tanaka]

I agree with Bud that the shot does not look bad.

Lars, I know from your other posts that you seem very troubled by your new XM2. It's my impression, admittedly from afar, that you're devoting a great deal of time to analyzing it rather than enjoying and learning to use it. I know that I and others have shared our thoughts and suggestions concerning the XM2 / GL2 with you elsewhere recently.

But perhaps it's just not the camera for you. You will have to spend a great deal more money to get an all-around better camera, likely a 1/2" system. Simply switching to a comparable Sony or the new Panasonic merely trades attributes. Maybe your intended application warrants a much greater investment?

My point is that you should be enjoying and learning your new camera. If the XM2 doesn't make you happy, send it back (before it's too late) and get a camera that will.

[Bjørn Sørensen]

I agree with Ken.

You can't expect perfect quality from a 3000$ camcorder. And when your movies are well made no one would ever notice how exact and sharp the red colours are.

For still photography I own a Nikon D1x digital SLR ($4000) and it is not perfect either. But in general produces outstanding quality.

[Hans Henrik Bang]

Lasse, did you check out my test shots in your other XM2 thread. I have a very similar shot of a red and a green candle done with my XM2.

I really don't think this is a matter of .jpg artifacting. The image I viewed was the PC .bmp, and that should be uncompressed. 720 x 576 / 8 * 24 =1244160 bytes, which corresponds nicely with the file size.

I have some of the same effects on my XM2. If you look at the top edge of the red and blue object, you will see that BOTH exhibit some kind of color streaking near the edges. The red one has blackish stripes, and the blue one has magenta ones. They are pretty much equal in size when viewed up close, but somehow more apparant in the red one when viewed normally. Some of it should be inherent to the DV format due to the 4:2:0 compression of chroma information. Thus you can never really compare with stills from a regular digital camera.

I think however that there is actually a big difference between single frames and moving video. In your other example with the red jacket, it looks bad when you look at a single frame, but as soon as you loop the video, it looks much better in my opinion.

I think I would second Ken and Bjørn (or do you third, when there is 2 of them?) and either return the camera right away or try doing more moving video and less magnifying glass on stills. After all, the issue of reds in tricky spots when freeze framed are much less important than the overall look of the movie.

You can even try freeze framing a DVD if you have some DVD movies at home. Very often you will think that an individual frame looks like s... but nonetheless the movie when viewed as such looks just fine.

Hans Henrik

[Lars Siden]

Hi,

Thanks alot for your input. The tests I've done is merely to sort out "should it be like this" or is it "time for service". If I know that the camera should behave like this, fine! But if not, I want it fixed.

The one thing that puzzles me the most is, why is the pattern on the blue-guy ( black arrow filled with yellow ) perfectly rendered, when a single black circle on red is "messed up".

I do certainly know that I can't compare frame stills with real stills. And I won't leave my D30 at home when shooting stills ;-)

I won't "argue" about this anymore. Canon Sweden finds it intersting enough to have the product manager in Sweden to look in to it ( maybe his answer will be like yours, "the Camera is OK".

Ken -> You're right, and the reason is that I will spend alot of time doing NLE with material produced with this cam ( and mix it with TV input and real stills from my D30 ). That is why I want to have the "best" setup possible, with the tools at hand.

Best regards,

Lazze Z

ps. As soon as I get a "final" answer from Canon, I will post it ds.