woodcarver
Well-known member
Been hunting around and haven't found a clear explanation. Is there an inherent loss of resolution? If there is already a full explanation of this out there, would someone point me to it? Thank you.
Can someone explain how the crop mode/teleconversion works?
- Thread starter woodcarver
- Start date
So far Vitaliy is the only one who has seen footage from that mode. His initial impressions were that it is very good and usable in almost all situations.
Think of it as taking a full resolution 16 megapixel image or video and then cropping out the center. If you had a 16 megapixel video it would still look good when you cropped out a 1920x1080 section of it since the original image had so much resolution.
It simply crops out the center of the sensor instead of scaling the image or video and then cropping the image. This means that you can digitally zoom in at 2.6x and 3.9x and not have any of resolution losses that are typically associated with a digital zoom.
The reason that this zoom does not lose resolution is that it utilizes the fact that the sensor has so much more resolution than the videos or images displayed on the web do. Therefore, you can effectively crop out the center of an image without doing any scaling.
This mode does not change the focal length of the camera though. You will not get the same image or video as you would if you used a lens with an equivalent focal length and equal aperture. It will have the same light absorbing capabilities though which is extremely important when taking long distance pictures in large indoor places like stadiums and arenas.
You might be able to sit in the way back of a indoor concert and still take amazing 720p video with the GH2 and the 20mm pancake. I have a feeling that concerts are going to have to specifically start banning the GH2 because it would be so easy to super high quality footage with it from anywhere in the venue.
Think of it as taking a full resolution 16 megapixel image or video and then cropping out the center. If you had a 16 megapixel video it would still look good when you cropped out a 1920x1080 section of it since the original image had so much resolution.
It simply crops out the center of the sensor instead of scaling the image or video and then cropping the image. This means that you can digitally zoom in at 2.6x and 3.9x and not have any of resolution losses that are typically associated with a digital zoom.
The reason that this zoom does not lose resolution is that it utilizes the fact that the sensor has so much more resolution than the videos or images displayed on the web do. Therefore, you can effectively crop out the center of an image without doing any scaling.
This mode does not change the focal length of the camera though. You will not get the same image or video as you would if you used a lens with an equivalent focal length and equal aperture. It will have the same light absorbing capabilities though which is extremely important when taking long distance pictures in large indoor places like stadiums and arenas.
You might be able to sit in the way back of a indoor concert and still take amazing 720p video with the GH2 and the 20mm pancake. I have a feeling that concerts are going to have to specifically start banning the GH2 because it would be so easy to super high quality footage with it from anywhere in the venue.
Last edited:
woodcarver
Well-known member
Thanks very much for the response. I think I get it. Using the 20mm pancake with the crop mode on will essentially get you digitally zoomed footage of high quality--or you could use a lens that normally doesn't cover the whole sensor. So I guess the big question is whether a cropped sensor isn't that far off scaling down the full resolution image in terms of quality (because the scaling effects the image)?