new lens for XDCAM HD at NAB?

[William Osorio]

Alister, I haven't been able to use HD glass on my cam, in my case I had this canon for few years so that was no need to buy an HD, just the adaptor and presto.
I know picture will be sharper with the 1/2 and CA, quick note, no matter what we used now, SD or HD we still in good shape, NTSC TV signals will be around for other few years until we go HD, so let's use what we have and have the tecnology do the homework.

cheers!

[Greg Boston]

Originally Posted by Alister Chapman

Using 2/3" lenses on 1/2" cameras is a compromise. The optical path lengths are different which can lead to increased CA and the photo sites on 1/2" cameras are much smaller than on 2/3" cameras so the lens may appear soft. It will depend on the individual lens, but if it was really as simple as sticking in an adapter why would the lens manufacturers make separate lenses for 2/3 and 1/2. My experience has been that 2/3" HD lenses are no better than 1/2 SD lenses on XDCAM HD camcorders.

You know Alister, what you're saying makes a lot of sense. But think about this for a second. For the last year, folks have been marveling at how the F330/F350 have been giving better results than one would expect from a true 1/2 camera in terms of latitude and shallow DOF. Then just before NAB, Sony says they're sticking with 1/2 because they use the full face of the sensor (rather than having the blanked out area around the active pixel area), which provides comparable performance to other's 2/3 sensors. And, I notice that Fujinon has a set of lenses that are for XDCAM HD.

In my head, when I put all these little stray bits of information together, it seems like our XDCAM HD cameras are perhaps more than 1/2, but less than 2/3. Of course they can't say it's a 2/3 camera, because it's not. But it performs very admirably for a 1/2 HD camera.

I'll admit, I may not be 100 percent on target, but I think the 'wow' reactions of several camera operators who are used to the larger chips speaks volumes about this "1/2 camera".

I'm saying all this because if true, it makes the prospect of 2/3 lenses via the adapter more practical from an image quality standpoint than one might believe.

I'm just saying...(wink)

-gb-