Let's discuss Canon's crippling?

Emanuel

Emanuel

Cross-Examiner
What about to address our customers thoughts to the company?

When was reading this out there:

>> Open a still image from the 5d3 in Photoshop. Change the canvas size to 5,760x3,240 pixels. That is 3x HD. Then apply the filter -> pixellate -> mosaic. Set the cell size to be 3 square. View the full image on a HD capable monitor. That is the level of sharpness the 5d3 is capable of in video mode. Averaging the RGB values of 9 pixels is computationally trivial. You wouldn't even need to de-bayer. The fact that the actual video output is significantly softer than this tells us all we need to know - Canon have written the firmware to deliberately blur the image.

We need to stop saying that it is a limitation of the current state of the hardware. It isn't. It is a deliberate decision on Canon's part.
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...had the idea to open this thread. Why not to tell to the world the truth behind the facts? This won't change it, but at least nothing else will be necessary to say. It happened when they delivered a firmware update " by popular demand ":

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That is the level of sharpness the 5d3 is capable of in video mode.
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where on earth do they get that from? The processor in a camera does not match the processor of a computer + photoshop
 
Canon has deliberately blurred the image - to get rid of the moire and aliasing. It's called a Digital Optical Low Pass Filter.
 
J Davis said:
where on earth do they get that from? The processor in a camera does not match the processor of a computer + photoshop
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+1.

And also last time I checked, Photoshop couldn't resample 5760x3240 images to 1920x1080 in 1/24th of a second either.

Of course with a good GPU algorithm, it should be do-able.

And yes, it should be pretty trivial to implement on hardware silicon if Canon wanted to.

But that hardware is not in the 5DMk3.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
it also amazes me how everybody demands and expects canon still dslr's to server the video community even after canon cinema eos division has been announced.

Its a hack. Its an add on. Its an after thought. Its a still camera. It has a mirror in it for gods sake.
 
The guy from prolost (stu) had a point I agree with, never attribute to malice what can equally attributed to stupidity. Video usually has aliasing, removing all of it really softens an image, and there is a balance most camera manufactures tread over what the best sharpness to aliasing ratio is. I think Canon was so scared of alaising from the last gen of DSLRS they essentially completely removed it, which leaves a rather soft image.
 
Jim, yoclay, Bruce & Co, I agree it would be more comfortable to all of us to believe OLPF is the only filter they added ;-) The fact is 5D series is not anymore a still photography camera when Canon knows very well where has been massively used.
 
Not sure why this basic axiom seems to have been forgotten, but I'll throw it out there again (in terms of the "crippling?" comments):

You get what you pay for. And you don't get what you don't pay for.
 
I call it then: no rumors, no myths... : D
Take a look on what Barry says instead, he's right as usual, even though, 'popular demand' demands ;-)
 
Emanuel said:
Jim, yoclay, Bruce & Co, I agree it would be more comfortable to all of us to believe OLPF is the only filter they added ;-) The fact is 5D series is not anymore a still photography camera when Canon knows very well where has been massively used.
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Um, I am not making any such claim!

All I was pointing out that there is currently not the hardware in the 5dMk3 to do a perfect Photoshop-quality downscale to 1080p from the original 5760x3240 image at 24fps.

Yes it could be done in silicon quite cheaply... but the point is that the silicon is not there and no firmware update will "unlock it".

Clean HDMI output is quite possible via firmware update though. But perfect downscale... nope!

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
Still about axioms ;) there is one I love to quote by the danish physicist Niels Bohr:

« The opposite of a trivial truth is false; the opposite of a great truth is also true. »

:-)
 
If you haven't already, you should watch Philip Bloom's review. He spends a good amount of time talking about the sharpness\softness "issue" with many examples.
 
Barry is this why the Porsche next door always seems to smoke my VW Golf.... Why is Volkswagen crippling my ride????????
 
my theory is that the 5D3 is still doing line-skipping, reading only 1/3 of the lines, then using a very soft debayering algorithm (aka crazy math) that averages information from photosites somewhat far away in order to avoid aliasing
that's why the convolution sharpness filter, which tries to undo a digital AA filter, works so well
and I don't think it's because of malice, it's just that the sensor readout is not fast enough and line-skipping is needed to keep jello in check (actually, I'm a bit disappointed with the 5D3 in this regard, after seeing how the D800 performs), and they wanted to avoid aliasing/moire by all means

in any case, yes, it's crippled:
* no clean HDMI-out
* only 11.5 stops of DR in video mode, through software hard clip (which ML may remove)

the porsche-vw analogy doesn't work, because manufacturing a porsche is more expensive than manufacturing a vw, whereas manufacturing a 5D3 with clean hdmi-out and without that DR limit would be basically free

btw, I'm working on a Nikon version of Flaat, and it looks like the D800 is going to get at least 13 stops of DR in video mode (not sure yet, and it may not be useable, but so far it's looking good) - pity about the aliasing/moire, we're going to have a very disperse set of niche cameras in the coming years (GH2 for untra-detailed shots, 5D2 for clean vistavision, D800 for high DR and no jello)
 
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