HV20 Soft image problem

H

hganzler@earthlink.n

Active member
Hello; I bought a Canon HV20 last week and have been shooting with it for a few days. I have been very disappointed with the softness of the images I am getting. I have shot in HDV 24P, using both auto focus and manual focus with focus assist. I have tried both cinegamma and normal gamma. Whatever I do, the images are still pretty soft. They're not fully out of focus, but they're not very sharp either. Has anyone else had this problem? Is this just a characteristic of the camera? I know it's a consumer camera, but people have been raving about the images and I was just expecting better. It can't compare with my DVX100A in terms of the sharpness of the images. Not even close. Any suggestions or ideas would be appreciated. Am I missing something? Thanks for your help. Henry
 
Did you try watching it after removing the pulldown or as 60i. Also did you try the 60i mode?
 
Try using the Tv mode (shutter priority) and locking your shutter at 1/48 or higher. Even in decent lighting the camera will drop to 1/24 and the image will get a bit soft.
-Kevin
 
- Can you post some of these 'soft images' for our perusal? An image is worth a thousand words.

- Can you try out the camera in bright sunlight? Are the resulting images still soft?
 
Thanks guys; I did shoot in good light when I got the soft images. Also, I had the camera hooked up using a HDMI connector to my Sony 42" 1080i DLP TV when I viewed the images and they looked soft. I'll try the shutter priority mode at 1/48 or higher and the 60i mode and see if the images are sharper. I'll let you know. I'll also try to upload some of the images. Thanks again. Henry
 
What seems like "good light" to your eye may not be "good light" to a camera. "Good light" to a consumer camera means "outdoors on a sunny day".
 
Hi guys; Sorry I couldn't post any images. I'm not allowed to add any images to these posts. I have been experimenting with some of the suggestions you guys gave me. I find that I get sharper images when I use shutter priority set at 1/60th. I also find that the images are sharper when I am shoot objects relatively close to the camera. That is as opposed to images very far away like trees way off in the distance. This is a problem for me as I really enjoy doing nature videos and they often involve shooting trees and other object off in the distance. Perhaps the problem is that less light from the object gets to the camera for very distant objects. Also, they tend to be much smaller than objects closer to the camera. I'll keep experimenting. Any further suggestions for making sure my images are sharp (other than shooting at 1/60 and making sure I have plenty of light) would be greatly appreciated. Thanks again. Henry
 
Hi; Yes, I always shoot with a tripod. I'm not sure why far images would not be in focus. I used manual focus and focus assist to focus on them. At any rate, I'm much happier with the images I have been getting lately. Thanks for the information about how to post my images. By the way, even the images I thought were soft look much better as jpg stills. Thanks again. Henry
 
Here are a couple of images from the video I was talking about. The stills look sharper than the video. sorry I took so long to post them. I live in N. Californina and we have been having powerful storms and very bad power outages. Henry


 
If you want us to examine the images critically, then you need to present them at their original resolution, with minimal compression. I can't believe I have to tell you this. Grrr.
 
Please do.

I see a little bit of what you mean in this picture, though. barely, because of the resizing, so pls let's see the original image.

In the first picture, the duck closer to the camera is in focus and seems sharp, but the ducks and vegetation in the distance is out of focus and blurred. A lot of people buy expensive gadgets to get that sort of effect, but you got it for free!

It may be that you can't focus on both at the same time. You have to manually focus on the ducks and distant vegetation and accept the fact that the duck closer to your camera will be blurred.

Focus is a function of distance from the camera. Some objects can be in focus, while others are not.
 
You have to focus on the most important objects in your scene, and accept the fact that other objects may not be in focus.
 
It looks to me that what you might be referring to blurry is interlacing artifacts. I see them clearly in the first picture...but they (the jpgs) are all too small to investigate further.
 
Thanks. I'll download the images full size. I'm having a difficult time uploading all the images at once (perhaps because I only have a dial-up modem). So I'll download them one at a time. Here's the first one. Thanks again for all your help. Henry
 
You could try removing any filter you have in front of your lens to see if the image is still blurry.

As I mentioned, they look sharper as still than they did as video images.
Click to expand...
Hmmm. How could that possibly be? What do you mean by a "video image"? Try connecting the camera directly to a real HDTV while playing back the video. No resizing, no compression, no filters. Your problem may be your workflow.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top