Camera Labs

Arguably the Canon 5DII opened up the market to cheap(er) big sensor video formats. There's quite a bit floating around right now on a new Panasonic pro camcorder than uses microFourThirds lenses. And there's rumblings Canon have something in this area to share tomorrow at NAB.

I know there's quite an overlap, but I have to wonder if optimisations for video may start to impact still performance where both are included?

As an example, what if they started to make "video lenses"? Due to the low resolution of HD video, perhaps they can trade off lens resolution for more speed (aperture) for example. Silent focus is more or less already here, but how about powered zoom controlled by the body?

As I'm no video maker I'm not sure what is needed or wanted, but it makes me wonder if we might be seeing different things in DSLRs in the near future.

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

Hey, nice topic to discuss about popo.

I'm actually not very concerned about manufacturers sacrificing photography in exchange of video. In the end, they also manufacture video cameras, so no sense on cannibalizing their own sales.

On another side, a famous pulitzer-prize winner photo-journalist (David Leeson) once said on a interview that eventually photojournalists will be using HDSLR's on video mode exclusively, and they will take frame grabs if they want stills. Now, this is a very powerful statement to say, but it makes sense: if you are shooting 30-60 frames per second, you have much more material to choose from.

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Canon 5D Mark II
Canon 24-105mm f/4.0 L

Provided you are able to nail the exposure and shutter speed correctly of course, and the resolution and framerate are high enough. Although perhaps future HDSLRs will have such great exposure adjustment is done completely afterwards, and the camera films at a fixed (high) shutter speed.

I'd be curious to see the development

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I take pictures so quickly, my highschool was "Continuous High".

Is HDSLR going to be a name for these things?

I tried the "video as high speed shooting" trick once in the wild. Totally failed, forgetting to take note of the exposure time as it were. Everything looked great as a video with no perceptible softness, but stills were full of motion blur and unusable. Of course that is user trouble and not the kit.

I'm just wondering, if DSLRs are a convergence of high end video and stills, or are they going to re-diverge again as their requirements and use demands for each group will still differ, with changeable lens camcorders becoming a new affordable high end category (sharing with existing lenses, not new mount).

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

This is one thing I'm curious about to. I can't say I'm a majority but I am interested in a DSLR that has great movie making abilities. I think most of the better quality lenses out there by Nikon and the like are actually pretty good for video. Even the 720p videos I've seen from Canon and Nikon's P&S cameras are decent enough so I would not expect them to sacrifice photos for video quality. BUT not all companies make wise choices so it wouldn't surprise me to see a new "all-in-one" more geared towards video editing.

I think that the display-technology has to move ahead a little first, before we see 6, 8, 10, 12, 18 MP video-cams.

When HD TVs and large monitors move beyond the current..what..2500X1800 resolution (I.e. hovering around 4 MP) it would perhaps make sense. Today a 24" monitor does 1900X1200 and 1080P is roughly the same on a large TV...so we are still way below even the minimum-specs of a modern D/I SLR.

Looking at it another way: how many would want to pay for 30-60 FPS in 10MP resolution, when nothing exists to display it? The requirements for processing, storing, post-processing at these resolutions would be enormous by today's standards.

Furthermore: I/D SLR makers today, do not have the "courage" to make 4 or 6 MP sensors in their new models. They seem to firmly believe that the MP wars are still on.

Imagine the dynamic range and high-ISO handling of an APS-C or even FF sensor with 6 MP, using modern technology?

Cheers

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Nikon stuff and other stuff, but not nearly as much stuff as I really want!

For a hybrid (video+stills) camera, it would still make sense to make the sensor MP count the same or multiple of the output formats. Taking 1080p in higher end mainstream, which is about 2MP. Assuming it is bayer pattern, I'd suggest it is advantageous to use 4x oversampling for 8MP, as that increases the colour accuracy while allowing easy pixel binning. Interestingly 9x oversampling (3x each way) would lead to around 18MP, certainly current competitive for stills.

Then you could have a full output for stills, and if the video output has downsampling applied real time at capture you retain optimal usable detail at practical data rates for both applications. And the higher pixel count also allows for video "pixel zoom" through crop without blocking due to digital scaling.

18MP at 60fps would be shifting about a gigapixels a second. I'm not sure how many instructions per pixel it takes to de-bayer and pixel bin, but I'd say that is probably within the realms of current processing technology. Maybe not necessarily at consumer levels. Or it would be done in multiple parts - the sensor might provide a first layer processing (binning) before another processor does the output encoding.

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

Pany AF100 reportedly has a 12MP sensor.



Sony PMW-F3 reportedly has 4X size pixels.



Problem is that, under those conditions, video could have moire and aliasing. Which is why the AF100 has an OLPF optimized for video and does not capture full 12MP res stills.



Yup, GH2 does this.



Yup, Red MX does 5k @ 120fps.

Mark

If the original high MP image doesn't have moire or aliasing, then a downsample wont have either assuming it is a correctly done all pixel resize, not the line skipping commonly employed on HDSLRs.

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.