Can a still camera produce better video than a camcorder?

R

rc444

Well-known member
A lot of modern digital still cameras have the ability to record .mpeg or .avi clips onto SD cards, in addition to stills.

I own a Canon S3IS (6 MP) which has the ability to record one shot continuously for up to 90 minutes, providing the SD card is big enough.

I'm using a basic 1/6" 3CCD Panasonic handycam at The NZ Film and Television School, and I wanted to do a test to compare the quality of the video from the still camera with the quality of the video camera I'm currently using.

I shot a 1 minute video on my Canon still camera and transferred it to my hard drive. The 1 min .avi video took up 109 Mb. I'm not sure how much space 1 min of DV takes up on a hard drive, but when I viewed the quality of the Canon clip, I observed that it was equal in quality to footage shot on the handycam. The image quality from the still camera movie still looked like video (had the usual artifacts etc). While the video was certainly not remarkable, I would be bold enough to say that I thought the footage was at least equal to standard def miniDV.

Of course, while I'm not advocating that we should be using still cameras to shoot movies (we're filmmakers not still photographers here:), it would certainly be interesting to compare the image quality of a movie clip from a top-of-the-line digital SLR with that of say a 2/3" camcorder. What does everyone think?
 
A prosumer Canon 30D (let alone the pro 1dm3 range) taken frame by frame would blow the socks off the HVX at full resolution. But that does not mean it's the way to go. Who would do that ? ;-)
 
Tim Burton's Corpse Bride was shot entirely using still cameras (with 35mm lens adaptors, I believe) - of course that was stop animation and they were capturing one frame at a time directly to computer, so storage wasn't an issue.

The usual problem with the 'video capture' feature on most still cameras is that they use reduced resolution to maximise the length of footage thay can capture - you'd need an awfully grunty SD card for 90 minutes of h-res footage. Only some still cameras can capture footage directly to an attached computer.
 
Some still cameras also use lower frame rates for video... don't know what the higher end cameras do though.

And there is no such codec as miniDV, it's DV, just the tapes are mini. There have been a few feature films shot on DV (28 days later!), so don't knock it completely.
 
No. It's not better. Simple answer.

Although resolution is higher in still photos, there is absolutely no other advantage outside of stop motion, timelapse, and other non-conventional video work.

One could argue that the limitations of still photography video function could be used to achieve a certain low quality 'look' desired in the film, and I would roll my eyes at them.
 
PS the camera you mentioned in the first post appears to shoot these modes for video:

• 640 x 480 @ 30 / 15fps
• 320 x 240 @ 60 / 30 / 15fps
• WAVE (stereo)


Notice it is shooting highly compressed footage at below DV resolution.

That is HORRIBLE video.
 
why? It's going to be awhile before we will see the ability to capture at 24+ frames per second at full resolution (of still photo camera such as 6 mega pixels, or 10 mega pixels). Not to mention getting away from that crap compression the cameras utilize to save space.

Those cams can't even shoot SD DV at 24/25 fps yet... meanwhile we are shooting HD at 60 fps. Even what they can do, has horrible compression which ruins the footage anyway.

It's going to be awhile until that dream comes true. To be honest, I see video camera's exceeding still camera's before the reverse happens. For all you Red fanatics you can hear me on this. I suppose you should start dreaming of a video camera that shoots stills, rather than your vice versa.

And then what? Will professional photographers just shoot video and freeze frame their photos? What a crazy world that would be.
 
rc144 said:
it would certainly be interesting to compare the image quality of a movie clip from a top-of-the-line digital SLR with that of say a 2/3" camcorder. What does everyone think?
Click to expand...

There are a couple of ways to look at this, I suppose. a 2/3" camera (like the VariCam) has so many parameters to adjust the image. The colors and everything are just beautiful. Much nicer than a D-SLR or RED before color correction, IMHO. But then again, there are vaporware (announced but unreleased) still cameras that have some interesting features, like 1/2" chips, 60fps capture. In a sub-$500 camera.

There are some interesting days ahead, that's for sure.

Prodigy said:
To be honest, I see video camera's exceeding still camera's before the reverse happens.
Click to expand...

Maybe, but is that really much to sing about?

Video cameras are, of course, expensive and have a "half life" of about 12-18 months before they are outdated. Still cameras are notoriously inexpensive and even though too have VERY short "half lives", the value of them over their lifetime is much greater because the depreciation is so much less. That alone will make a bigger impact, on society, as whole.

I think the trend will be more enhanced features in still cameras in a more dramatic way than enhanced still capture in motion cameras, that's my opinion...

To see high end features like 300FPS capture in a consumer camera is pretty impressive... http://world.casio.com/ngdc/en/features3.html
 
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