Chromatic aberration and smear

[Robert Niemann]

I would be very interested in hearing Your opinions. Once again I watched the videos, Eric Descarpentri shot with the Canon XL H1. And I saw "a lot" of chromatic aberration

- http://photos.gps.free.fr/Canon-HDV/...x_f1.6_0db.mpg (purple fringe around the candle)
- http://photos.gps.free.fr/Canon-HDV/...0lx_f2_0db.mpg (purple fringe at the wall edge on the left side)

and smear

- http://photos.gps.free.fr/Canon-HDV/...L-H1_smear.mpg

My question: Is that just normal, or in other words: Is it just me, who is too petty?

[Barry Green]

Originally Posted by Robert Niemann

I would be very interested in hearing Your opinions. Once again I watched the videos, Eric Descarpentri shot with the Canon XL H1. And I saw "a lot" of chromatic aberration

- http://photos.gps.free.fr/Canon-HDV/...x_f1.6_0db.mpg (purple fringe around the candle)
- http://photos.gps.free.fr/Canon-HDV/...0lx_f2_0db.mpg (purple fringe at the wall edge on the left side)

and smear

- http://photos.gps.free.fr/Canon-HDV/...L-H1_smear.mpg

My question: Is that just normal, or in other words: Is it just me, who is too petty?

For chromatic aberration, that looks downright minimal compared to the Z1 & HD100. Yes you are seeing a little bit there, but for a refresher to see what it's up against, be sure to reference this frame:
http://files.photojerk.com/yusufwings/Fuj1.jpg
(taken from this thread: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=53380)

Now, to be fair, that was the HD100 at full telephoto. Do we know what mm the XL H1 was taken at? If it's also full telephoto, I'd say the XL H1 performed downright admirably...


As far as smear, yeah, that's pretty bad. Don't know that any of the other cameras would do any better though. The Z1 smears just as bad; and I've seen smear on the HD100 that isn't quite as bad but is still obviously evident. Smear's going to be a problem on any high-pixel-density CCD, there's not a whole lot (if anything) that can be done about it.

[Pete Bauer]

Yeah, as usual, Barry's words are sage. There are lots of variables -- too many to make any kind of valid comparision at all between these cameras or judge either one, based on such little information. So, while it heartens me -- a soon-to-be XL H1 owner -- that the H1 footage stood up so well with the disadvantage of being shot in such low light at F2, it gains an "unfair" advantage over the HD100 frame grab because it couldn't have been taken at full tele (H1 can't go F2 at full tele). The H1 was most likely somewhere in the mid-range zoom setting.

It isn't easy to make a comparison between these few images taken from different cameras under different conditions at different times by different methods -- and one was a prototype camera anyway. So it really doesn't mean much to me at all. When production cameras are available and compared apples-to-apples, then it'll matter.