Sony PMW-X70
Mizamook
9 Nov 2015 19:41
I like the Clear Image zoom.
In my tests, you can see that the HD only CI zoom "looks" sharper than that of the UHD when zoomed in all the way to the end stop. There is less apparent noise, that's for sure.
I think the reason it is decent is that the sensor is not fully implemented through the range of the optical zoom. ClearImage zoom uses the whole sensor, in the case of the HD, it is still supersampled, so it is cleaner, whereas in the UHD it uses the whole sensor 1:1 pixel mapping (like I know...this is all supposition).
The long and short of it is that the image is very useable ... I would not crop into the UHD at all though, and if you are using higher gain the image will degrade much more quickly in UHD. In the test in the video I was shooting a fairly dark situation at +3 gain, with my black gamma +7 and black level +4. This brings up the lows considerably, but can make the image noisier.
What I don't understand is why I see more compression artifacting and "sofness" in the HD relative to the UHD, given that the HD is 50MB/s 422, and the UHD is 60mb/s 420.
All in all I'm pretty impressed.
In my tests, you can see that the HD only CI zoom "looks" sharper than that of the UHD when zoomed in all the way to the end stop. There is less apparent noise, that's for sure.
I think the reason it is decent is that the sensor is not fully implemented through the range of the optical zoom. ClearImage zoom uses the whole sensor, in the case of the HD, it is still supersampled, so it is cleaner, whereas in the UHD it uses the whole sensor 1:1 pixel mapping (like I know...this is all supposition).
The long and short of it is that the image is very useable ... I would not crop into the UHD at all though, and if you are using higher gain the image will degrade much more quickly in UHD. In the test in the video I was shooting a fairly dark situation at +3 gain, with my black gamma +7 and black level +4. This brings up the lows considerably, but can make the image noisier.
What I don't understand is why I see more compression artifacting and "sofness" in the HD relative to the UHD, given that the HD is 50MB/s 422, and the UHD is 60mb/s 420.
All in all I'm pretty impressed.