Barry_Green
Moderator
quote of the decade.
550D/GH13 comparision shot
- Thread starter Grunf
- Start date
Here's a GREAT lowlight example PRE Hack:
http://vimeo.com/6530150
Forgot all about that. Don't cheat and look at the other video. Decide for yourself which shots are which then check out the next video which tells you exactly which is which.
http://vimeo.com/6530150
Forgot all about that. Don't cheat and look at the other video. Decide for yourself which shots are which then check out the next video which tells you exactly which is which.
ROCKMORE
Veteran
Thanks for another test Barry.
I'm curious though, why you thought it was necessary to add the Photoshop Auto corrections as apposed to posting the uncorrected files? I downloaded your shots, loaded them into Photoshop and did my own close crops of the people on the boats and the duck details. It would have been nice to try my own corrections from the flat original camera files.
Rakesh Jacob
Veteran
Although it doesnt take much to work at least one of them out, LOL.
Exactly!!!
adammada
Well-known member
see you Barry's #208 (1-C and 3-C)
Barry_Green
Moderator
Because from past experience doing this, I've learned that people simply won't see past the color differences. Even after equalizing the colors, you can see people have posted here that "this one's yellower" or "I like this one's color."
The main reason I did this comparison is because people were disparaging others' pictures, and calling them "fake" or the shooters "untalented" or whatever, and that kind of thing is just not welcome here. So I set out to get the highest-res, sharpest images that each of these three can create. I used $2,500 worth of lenses, at their optimal apertures, to get the sharpest images they can possibly deliver. I set them to identical iris, hyper-critically focused, and identical exposure.
I set the sharpness settings in the middle, because other folks had said that the problem with the t2i shots were that they didn't have in-camera sharpening, whereas the GH1 shots did. By setting them at the central level, avoiding either extreme, I figured it'd be reasonable to expect them to deliver a comparable level of sharpening. In fact I found that the Canon, at middle value, is delivering noticeably more edge enhancement than the GH1 was, so that particular argument should now be settled.
I wanted them judged on their merits and capabilities as to what they can actually deliver, without the distractions of color or gamma or tone getting in the way. All that other stuff can be pushed and pulled and tweaked and stretched in post.
If interest persists I can make available some of the .mts and mov files.
Barry_Green
Moderator
Okay, the results...
First of all, some of you saw through my attempt at misdirection, and correctly surmised that "A" was always the same camera, "B" was always the same, and "C" was always the same. I will admit that it's pretty obvious, but I figured, hey -- let's get you critically examining what you actually like, and not playing "gotcha".
Now, the competitors: a 7D, kindly loaned to me for this comparison. A GH1 with the Vitaliy Kiselev "tester13" firmware, hence known as a GH13. And, as correctly guessed by many, an HMC40 (it being the only camcorder I have that has native 1080p chips and a native 1080p recording format; it is also price-competitive with the DSLRs, costing more than a GH1 kit but less than a 7D kit).
The HMC40 only appeared in a few shots because it was pretty much a pain in the patootie to wrangle the two-camera rig and get precise focus, framing, and exposure on each camera, and then to a) remember to use the HMC40, b) to handhold and aim it, and c) to get usable results on all three, simultaneously. The GH13 and 7D were mounted on a single tripod, side by side, using an extendable/sliding arm that came with a cheapo $30 LED light I bought off B&H or Spec-Comm. The HMC40 was hand-held, zoomed in to Z65 to match the framing of the 7D at 100mm and the GH1 at 85mm.
As said before, all reasonable attempts were made to remove any "flavor" from the image. I used neutral on the 7D, smooth on the GH1, and cine-D on the HMC40, to provide neutral/flat contrast and extended dynamic range. I did boost the sharpening on the 7D to the middle of the range, the same as the GH13 and HMC40. No additional color saturation was applied, and contrast was slightly lowered on the GH13 and 7D. Then, all pictures were taken into PhotoShop and had auto-color, auto-tone, and auto-contrast applied, so that they would be relatively equally exposed, colored, and toned. I wanted to remove the glaring flavor differences and isolate the core imaging capability.
Exposure was set by putting both DSLRs on 100 ISO, setting the iris fixed at f/8 to get ultimate sharpness with no diffraction, and using the shutter speed to adjust exposure. I used the GH13's live histogram to determine when exposure was "right"; it turns white when it's happy. I then set the same shutter speed on the 7D, so they were identical iris, shutter, and ISO.
For the HMC40, it has a fixed ISO, and for aperture I wanted to keep it in the happy zone and away from diffraction, so it typically ran at f/2.8 to f/5.6. Any deeper in the iris range will cause the image to start softening, and its ISO is lower than the other cameras so it needed the aperture more open to get equivalent exposure. I used auto-exposure on the HMC40, and adjusted the shutter speed so that the auto-iris would select an iris in the appropriate range of 2.0-5.6.
Again, the point is not to prove one is "better" than the other, it is to show the state of technology at the price point, and let you decide what you like. And, if anyone's eyes are opened and they find that they like something they didn't expect to -- well, that's a bonus. Divorcing yourself from marketing, hype, and peer pressure, and instead reviewing something for what YOU prefer... is the way I think we should all be proceeding.
Okay, enough blather, now the results:
If you liked and preferred the images from camera A, then you like the Canon 7D (and, by extension, the T2i/550D, since their video imaging performance is very very similar).
If you liked and preferred the images from camera B, then you like the newly-enhanced GH13, and much (MUCH) of the retained sharpness is due specifically to the enhanced codec. Trust me, a stock GH1 can't deliver images with that level of sharpness in the fine details in the trees! It is the new GH13 firmware that made such a profound difference.
If you liked and preferred the images from camera C, then you like the HMC40. Several people stated that where "C" showed up, they preferred it.
I think that if we were to tabulate the poll results, it would basically be summed up as "where the HMC40 was present, it was preferred; where the HMC40 wasn't present, the GH13 was the preferred choice." But every individual opinion is totally valid, because the only opinion that should really matter to you, is yours.
So -- now that you know what you like, buy one and go shoot something amazing.
First of all, some of you saw through my attempt at misdirection, and correctly surmised that "A" was always the same camera, "B" was always the same, and "C" was always the same. I will admit that it's pretty obvious, but I figured, hey -- let's get you critically examining what you actually like, and not playing "gotcha".
Now, the competitors: a 7D, kindly loaned to me for this comparison. A GH1 with the Vitaliy Kiselev "tester13" firmware, hence known as a GH13. And, as correctly guessed by many, an HMC40 (it being the only camcorder I have that has native 1080p chips and a native 1080p recording format; it is also price-competitive with the DSLRs, costing more than a GH1 kit but less than a 7D kit).
The HMC40 only appeared in a few shots because it was pretty much a pain in the patootie to wrangle the two-camera rig and get precise focus, framing, and exposure on each camera, and then to a) remember to use the HMC40, b) to handhold and aim it, and c) to get usable results on all three, simultaneously. The GH13 and 7D were mounted on a single tripod, side by side, using an extendable/sliding arm that came with a cheapo $30 LED light I bought off B&H or Spec-Comm. The HMC40 was hand-held, zoomed in to Z65 to match the framing of the 7D at 100mm and the GH1 at 85mm.
As said before, all reasonable attempts were made to remove any "flavor" from the image. I used neutral on the 7D, smooth on the GH1, and cine-D on the HMC40, to provide neutral/flat contrast and extended dynamic range. I did boost the sharpening on the 7D to the middle of the range, the same as the GH13 and HMC40. No additional color saturation was applied, and contrast was slightly lowered on the GH13 and 7D. Then, all pictures were taken into PhotoShop and had auto-color, auto-tone, and auto-contrast applied, so that they would be relatively equally exposed, colored, and toned. I wanted to remove the glaring flavor differences and isolate the core imaging capability.
Exposure was set by putting both DSLRs on 100 ISO, setting the iris fixed at f/8 to get ultimate sharpness with no diffraction, and using the shutter speed to adjust exposure. I used the GH13's live histogram to determine when exposure was "right"; it turns white when it's happy. I then set the same shutter speed on the 7D, so they were identical iris, shutter, and ISO.
For the HMC40, it has a fixed ISO, and for aperture I wanted to keep it in the happy zone and away from diffraction, so it typically ran at f/2.8 to f/5.6. Any deeper in the iris range will cause the image to start softening, and its ISO is lower than the other cameras so it needed the aperture more open to get equivalent exposure. I used auto-exposure on the HMC40, and adjusted the shutter speed so that the auto-iris would select an iris in the appropriate range of 2.0-5.6.
Again, the point is not to prove one is "better" than the other, it is to show the state of technology at the price point, and let you decide what you like. And, if anyone's eyes are opened and they find that they like something they didn't expect to -- well, that's a bonus. Divorcing yourself from marketing, hype, and peer pressure, and instead reviewing something for what YOU prefer... is the way I think we should all be proceeding.
Okay, enough blather, now the results:
If you liked and preferred the images from camera A, then you like the Canon 7D (and, by extension, the T2i/550D, since their video imaging performance is very very similar).
If you liked and preferred the images from camera B, then you like the newly-enhanced GH13, and much (MUCH) of the retained sharpness is due specifically to the enhanced codec. Trust me, a stock GH1 can't deliver images with that level of sharpness in the fine details in the trees! It is the new GH13 firmware that made such a profound difference.
If you liked and preferred the images from camera C, then you like the HMC40. Several people stated that where "C" showed up, they preferred it.
I think that if we were to tabulate the poll results, it would basically be summed up as "where the HMC40 was present, it was preferred; where the HMC40 wasn't present, the GH13 was the preferred choice." But every individual opinion is totally valid, because the only opinion that should really matter to you, is yours.
So -- now that you know what you like, buy one and go shoot something amazing.
Michael Anthony Horrigan
More Cowbell Pictures
Great stuff, Barry. Thanks again for doing this.
I would say that most people got it very close and/or perfect in many cases.
I figured that the GH13 was edging out the 7D mostly due to the fact that it was sharper. Had a bit more detail in some cases as well.
I mentioned the sharpness difference between what I thought was the two cams in my guess. I didn't find the difference in this comparison as huge as what some of the others have shown but there is a real difference.
Great hack for sure.
The HMC40 looked fantastic!
Cheers,
MAH
I would say that most people got it very close and/or perfect in many cases.
I figured that the GH13 was edging out the 7D mostly due to the fact that it was sharper. Had a bit more detail in some cases as well.
I mentioned the sharpness difference between what I thought was the two cams in my guess. I didn't find the difference in this comparison as huge as what some of the others have shown but there is a real difference.
Great hack for sure.
The HMC40 looked fantastic!
Cheers,
MAH
Michael Anthony Horrigan
More Cowbell Pictures
bumkicho
Well-known member
Barry,
Well said. Might I add it was a test, nothing more. A frame grab is a frame grab. One thing I learned over time is it means nothing out in the field. When you shoot, you do what you can do with what you have. Yes, it is hard not to get sucked into these discussions regarding pixels, colors, codecs, and bitrates, etc., but regardless of what you have, whether it be 7D, GH1, or whatever, when you have the shot, you have the shot. You will always be satisfied when you have the shot you wanted to get. At that moment nothing else matters. Do you think about pixels, codecs, bitrates, when you have the shot? I don't. Like Berry said, let's go shoot something amazing!!
Well said. Might I add it was a test, nothing more. A frame grab is a frame grab. One thing I learned over time is it means nothing out in the field. When you shoot, you do what you can do with what you have. Yes, it is hard not to get sucked into these discussions regarding pixels, colors, codecs, and bitrates, etc., but regardless of what you have, whether it be 7D, GH1, or whatever, when you have the shot, you have the shot. You will always be satisfied when you have the shot you wanted to get. At that moment nothing else matters. Do you think about pixels, codecs, bitrates, when you have the shot? I don't. Like Berry said, let's go shoot something amazing!!
I was considering the HMC40 for a long time before moving on to the T2i -- now I'm wondering whether that was a good idea or not.
I'd definitely like to see the actual files from the cameras, especially for Comparisons 1 and 3
Also, still waiting on a low-light comparison from someone...
I'd definitely like to see the actual files from the cameras, especially for Comparisons 1 and 3
Also, still waiting on a low-light comparison from someone...
Low light comparison is out of the question as the Gh1 and HMC40 will fall behind ( especially the HMC40)
Also you cannot prove these test as concrete as many factors need to be included. I think it would have been nice if Barry would have gave us some close to medium shots as we know this is where DSLRS shine.
Overall we know that the HMC40 delivers a sharp picture, but the small chip which requires so much light for it to even be usable is something that I could not go back too.