People ragging on the 7D/any CMOS cam seem to be FULL OF IT

J. Odoms

J. Odoms

Well-known member
So listen, I own a 7D, love it/hate it. Mostly because I had my heart set on the Scarlet, but who knows when that/if that is ever going to materialize. But hey, the positive side note is that today we'll get an announcment, regarding the next annoucment, which as it seems will in fact point us to one more annoucement, so hey thats good new right.....:(

But I digress....

So the reason I've chosen to start this thread is because of the lack of non-biased reviews, quotes, posts, threads, and the like which I've seen here over the last 2months since the 7D was released to the wild.

I'm talking about the Aliasing, and Moire. Yes they are present non of us can deny that. I believe we've all come to common ground there, but what has really upset me is how the allaying and moire have been approached as if only CMOS cams produce this.

I hear comments like "I expect this typeof image from any CMOS cam", and "The 7D/5D/GH1, all fall victim to similar fates, they just aren't great cams".... etc. you get the point. But those same people never desire to show how many, and I mean MANY HD cams produce these same issues.

That just frustrates me. I see members who post phenomenal results from these cams, and right after that someone goes into the video pinpointing a problem with the video. As if they went through it with a FINE TOOTH comb waiting for a problematic frame to arise so they can say

"AH HA..SEE LOOK THERE RIGHT THER 1:02-1:05, clearly you can see that hair on that guys back has artifacts in it, which were obviously caused by the artifacting of the Highly compressed .H264 codec. I told you guys this camera/these cameras can't do what we need them to do."

Yada yada yada...

You get the point. But let me point out what these so called non-biased pixel peepers have failed to mention anywhere.

Most if not ALL, yes I said it ALL HD cams have these same issues, no matter their method of image acquisition.

Case in point, I was watching Knowing the other day. Now we know that it was shot on the RED ONE, and from what I've read RED is actually quite pleased with the results from the cam. No mind you this is coming from a group of filmmakers/professionals, who have said that if people are getting bad results from their RED ONE's it's most likely got to do with Operator Error. So I took that into account as I began watching the film, and with the first 15mins or so, what did I see from this cam, which cost ~7X the price of a 7D. Aliasing. Yeah thats right our little friend, who seems to negate all progress obtained by the 7D. Aliasing.

The scene I was looking at was when Nicholas Cage was in the class room, and he has on some plad type suit jacket, an over the shoulder shot of his classroom clearly displays the jacket colors ROLLING all over the place.

So if this particular film, has these problems, with this high of a quality of camera, then why should we expect anything greater from a cam of this size. Or at least for posterity, why are we holding it up to greater standards, shouldn't it be the other way around.

Now thats only one example over the past 2 weeks I've encountered, there are countless others. I'll make the list brief:

CSI MIAMI: I was watching it and time, after time again all I saw was aliasing on the fences, Horatio's jacket, the desk, etc....

Criminal Minds: All over the scenes

SVU (Special Victims Unit): Again completely present

Now I encourage you, have a look at some HD films, or broadcast programing, it's there,

So my question is why is the current crop of DSLR's singled out as being inadequate at producing sub-High Def material. If anything, I would expect these same posters/professionals to push all manufacturers so that we can excel past the status quo and reach the true Hi-Def

What do you guys think, am I mistaken and far off base, or do i just have a misunderstanding regarding all of the critique of 7D footage, or even am I on target, and you also have noticed what I have? I wanna know.

:undecided
 
Ive seen moire and aliasing in TV too,youre not alone.I dont think its a big probem with 7d/5d if you know what youre doing,just avoid some type of scenes.
I can see aliasing in tv but i wont change the channel,IMO it would be moronic to do so because ive seen aliasing .Its just "funny" thing happpening with the picture thats all for average viewer.
 
Even though the aliasing may be present in the original Raw capture, I think what you may be seeing is the aliasing that is produced from a down converted image which is then displayed on a TV. A dvd doesn't have a very high resolution, so you will get it in certain situations.
I saw Knowing in the theater (from a film print) and didn't notice any aliasing that I recall.

Now that my eyes are tuned to see it, it pops up everywhere. AHHH! :( The good thing is that most people don't notice it.
 
Here, here. I think you are right. There will always be distortion, because merely flattening out reality and projecting it on a screen is a distortion. The question is how visually literate one's public is.
 
J, are you referring to the infamous "bunkfurko" on Vimeo? I agree that these guys make it sound like we are all dilusioned into thinking we have a real cinema camera.
 
J. Odoms said:
So my question is why is the current crop of DSLR's singled out as being inadequate at producing sub-High Def material.
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Because the aliasing is being baked in at the camera level, on the SLRs. Into your source footage.

None of the other examples (NONE of them, I can almost guarantee you, none of the TV shows, none of the movies you listed, none of them) have that aliasing in the original source footage. It's introduced somewhere in the post processing chain or downconversion. But if you go look at the raw footage it's going to be clean as a whistle. Especially the Red One, which is nearly perfectly alias-free. Any aliasing happening there would likely have happened somewhere along the digital-intermediate process, or in the conversion from 4K to 1080p. Or on the conversion from 1080p to your 720p plasma, or upconversion from 720p to your 1080i plasma, or ... there's a million places it could happen. But the worst place for it to happen is in your source footage.

You are absolutely correct that this type of stuff shows up on broadcast television *everywhere*. But it doesn't happen in the source footage of an EX1, I haven't seen any rainbow moire in three years of HVX/HPX170 footage (even though HVX/HPX170 do rely on aliasing to get some of their sharpness), and I've never seen the tiniest hint of it on F900/VariCam stuff.

Once it gets squeezed and stretched and overcompressed and crammed into a 6-megabit subchannel and broadcasted, yes, it'll be turned to complete poop and the final broadcast quality is awful. Awful. (and yes, I did just use "awful" to describe HDTV broadcasts in America, sorry to all those it "offends", but it is true).

But do you want that in your source footage?

Professional video cameras are designed specifically to prevent the aliasing issues that the DSLRs don't even try to prevent. These things aren't happening at the source level, the anti-alias filters prevent it. You might get the tiniest hint of it, but nothing like what the DSLRs provide.

The reason this has become a big issue is because we haven't had to deal with it before, in HD acquisition. Dealing with aliasing in your source material is something new that shooters haven't had to face. Just like rolling shutter -- we never had to face that before, now we do, so we learn about it, learn how to avoid it, learn what you can and can't do. Aliasing is the same kind of thing.

You are also 100% correct in saying that the aliasing has nothing to do with CMOS. CMOS or CCD, doesn't matter, aliasing happens when you try to sample a high-frequency signal with a lower-frequency sampler.


(However, I will say that in analog NTSC aliasing was much more of a problem, and it kind of seemed like nobody really cared, because NTSC was such a mishmash ugly analog signal anyway, you tried to avoid aliasing if you could but there wasn't much you could do.)
 
J.Odoms...You are absolutely correct. I have been saying the same thing (not necessarily as colorful as you) but I see these problems all of the time in “broadcast’ work and mentioned it before. It’s funny though…I’ve never really paid attention or cared about it until these types of discussions. One other issue is rolling shutter. I’ve said in the past that, thanks to the negative hype, the HV20 brought that more into the mainstream and that camera got all of the blame early on. But then I started realizing that just about every camera (CMOS based) exhibited this phenomenon (some more than others). I think it’s great to know that these things exist so that we could find a way to work around them…but it’s strange how folks push the issue on one cam over the other (in this case the Canon 7D). I’ve learned a lot about aliasing and a whole lot of other things in the last month or so.

I really liked the movie “Knowing”…but even when watching it I found a lot of technical issues with the movie as a whole. Before hanging out in forums like these I would of never noticed or even cared. I just turned into some sort of pixel peeper looking for anything. But I still try to keep my opinions balanced. I’m glad I’m not the only one noticing these same issues in top end productions. Now….I just need to get over myself and enjoy the gear that I got (or will be getting soon).
 
Ian-T said:
I really liked the movie “Knowing”…but even when watching it I found a lot of technical issues with the movie as a whole. Before hanging out in forums like these I would of never noticed or even cared. I just turned into some sort of pixel peeper looking for anything. But I still try to keep my opinions balanced. I’m glad I’m not the only one noticing these same issues in top end productions. Now….I just need to get over myself and enjoy the gear that I got (or will be getting soon).
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LOL! Watching Knowing was painful from a technical standpoint...so was Che. That's all i'm adding to this discussion though because the moment something new springs up...i'm on it so there is no reason to take these discussions (any of them) personally. The pros and cons are well documented and we work with what we can afford.
 
Mr. Green your statements seem to always bring a sense of validity to our post. I haven,t been involved with HD acquisitons this year, so I don,t have a long history with it as yourself but can see how your points ring true.

So my question back to you is if this ist the delima we are in what is our choice, other than awaitng RED's potentially never materialalizing revolutionary product, or.......?

I'm cust curious.
 
I would never advocate waiting for a mystery product, over getting out there and shooting NOW. The 7D is, in my opinion, the best micro-budget digi-cine rig on the market. Yes it has problems, and people who pretend they're not there are just fooling themselves. But so what? It's $1700. At its price point it's fantastic, and it becomes your responsibility to avoid problematical situations.

If you don't want to worry about the problems (like I don't) then get a Scarlet if you can afford it (I probably can, many many folks can't). For those who can't afford a Scarlet, get a 7D or a GH1 and go shoot. They're amazing. They're also flawed. Too bad, you can't have your cake and eat it too (well, you can, but not for very long). :D

Just like CMOS -- it's funny that Ian says the "HV20 got all the blame early on", because I was getting attacked for writing that article because it was supposedly anti-Sony... sigh. I think Canon caught the heat for the HV20 because it was so amazingly popular (and rightly so; what that little camera did for under $700 is pretty fantastic. And yes, I can say that while simultaneously saying it didn't hold up to my standards and I donated it to Isara.org... the two are not mutually exclusive! I can well understand its amazing appeal for budget-oriented folks who were willing to make the compromises it demanded. I didn't want to.)

The articles I write aren't anti-7D or anti-HV20 or anti-HDV, they're anti-ignorance. I've said for years, and continue to, that if you go in unprepared, these new technologies (rolling shutter, long-GoP, and aliasing sensors) can leave you screwed over with bad footage, especially if you're using the products on a paying job and putting your reputation on the line. But if you know what you're doing, you know how to deal with the issues, and you can predict and counteract the problematical situations, then why not take advantage of the revolutionary low-cost and high resolution they offer? My HMC40 is a long-GoP rolling-shutter camera. I won't use it for certain things. But man, for $1995, it does a phenomenal job on wides, vistas, outdoor shots... it's really pretty stunning as to what you can get for $1995. My 7D is a long-GoP, aliasing, rolling-shutter product. Yes it has wobble and jello and moire, and no it's not as sharp as the HMC40 or as much dynamic range as the HMC150. But when you use it right, it's stunning. I don't use it as an A-camera for paying jobs. That is just not something I'm comfortable with (same with the GH1). Plus, the budgets I get, there's simply no reason to try to shoehorn an SLR into those types of jobs, where it's a poor fit anyway (what with the ergonomic, monitoring, and audio considerations.) But I would use the SLR for small stuff where I control the situation, I'd use it for budget indie-cinema stuff, short films, things like that, yes. But not for wide deep-focus shots, etc.

So you ask about the dilemma -- and the answer is, as always -- it depends. It depends on what you're trying to do, and what hoops you are willing to jump through, and what you can afford. You can buy products that don't have the issues; an HPX3700 is pretty flawless for a 2/3" camera, but it's $60,000 (or $30,000 with the rebate). At $1700 you simply have to be willing to accept that it is your efforts, your workarounds, and your hoop-jumping that is going to be necessary to overcome the $58,300 price difference! If you do, you can get really, really, really great footage from these incredibly inexpensive products.

For example, look at Philip Bloom's discourse on working with the 7D. He talked about using the 7D on a short narrative film, but he also talked about the products he had to add to make it workable. Did you add up what the additional equipment cost? I'm not talking about lenses, mics, or a monitor, as hey, I think anyone would want lenses, mics, and a monitor anyway, but the other stuff -- all the Zacuto gear, needing an external audio recorder, variable ND filters, etc. He needed all that stuff to overcome limitations to make a kit that worked like he wanted to, and he used about $4873 worth of gear (base plates, rods, follow focus, z-finder, etc). He used almost 3x as much worth of support gear as the camera itself cost. That was the compromise Philip Bloom was willing to make, in order to get it to perform the way he needed. If you can't afford that, you'll have to make other compromises.

It's just the nature of the beast.
 
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Barry_Green said:
You can buy products that don't have the issues; an HPX3700 is pretty flawless for a 2/3" camera, but it's $60,000 (or $30,000 with the rebate). At $1700 you simply have to be willing to accept that it is your efforts, your workarounds, and your hoop-jumping that is going to be necessary to overcome the $58,300 price difference!
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Amen.
 
Barry_Green said:
I've said for years, and continue to, that if you go in unprepared, these new technologies (rolling shutter, long-GoP, and aliasing sensors) can leave you screwed over with bad footage, especially if you're using the products on a paying job and putting your reputation on the line.
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And this is why the good old DVX comes out when I'm on the job, and the 7D stays quietly inside the bag.
 
To OP. firstly I dont think you should worry too much about what people are saying about a product you purchased.

As Barry said anything will have limitations, but you need to know what they are so you can you work around them? Many PEOPLE can. The question is can YOU? If you answer yes, then you dont need to pay any mind to what anyone else's says or is doing, right? Sheesh, you think the last two, thats right the last two DVXfest winners sat there and thought, awww Joe Blogs said its no good it has aliasing, let's not do it?


Im grabbing a 7d shortly - after a quick trip to Japan and Xmas is outta the way Ill be grabbing one and a bunch of other stuff until Scarlet materialises.

Anyway, Ive been shooting with larger format gear for some time including pet projects. And I tell you one thing Ive been dreaming about lately, and that is literally, I cant wait to get that little rig set up, with it's low weight.

A big hinderance in low budget can be rig size. More expensive tripod, dolly, jib and crane etc etc. It adds up.

Small is beautiful, even with rods, mattebox, ff etc. Its still low weight. So whilst there are workarounds needed for some things, it can make other components easier. Focus on the positives mate and use them to your advantage. No stop posting your concerns here and go shoot.
 
All products have their limitations, but it seems that things are getting worse. First it was VHS-C/Video8, which were sucky analog standards, but one would not lose a frame or a series of them because of dirty heads, nor one would ever see quilting (macroblocking, tiling). Then DV came along. A pretty robust interframe codec paired with CCD sensors, good deal. Yeah, occasional dropouts and ugly frames full of bands and squares, but overall pretty decent. Then HDV came along. Super-duper HD when no movement is involved, it would get either blocky or mushy or both in a scene with high movement or high detail. Then CMOS sensors added rolling shutter niceties. Then AVCHD came along, and it turns out that Panasonic's bitrate calculator cannot keep up with fast strobe lights, and allocates only 5 Mbit/s instead of 24 Mbit/s, turning a night club scene into classic MPEG mosaick. So much for bit-saving VBR as opposed to HDV's CBR. Not even mentioning the horrible codec in the GH1. Then video-SLRs came along, with their sensors and optics not intended for HD video, so one barely gets 500 lines full of aliasing.

Is it going to get better? Consumer and prosumer video is caught in the number game (1080p, woo-hoo!) but there are more and more limitations that makes the whole high definition thing to look like a gimmick.
 
Cranky said:
All products have their limitations, but it seems that things are getting worse. First it was VHS-C/Video8, which were sucky analog standards, but one would not lose a frame or a series of them because of dirty heads, nor one would ever see quilting (macroblocking, tiling). Then DV came along. A pretty robust interframe codec paired with CCD sensors, good deal. Yeah, occasional dropouts and ugly frames full of bands and squares, but overall pretty decent. Then HDV came along. Super-duper HD when no movement is involved, it would get either blocky or mushy or both in a scene with high movement or high detail. Then CMOS sensors added rolling shutter niceties. Then AVCHD came along, and it turns out that Panasonic's bitrate calculator cannot keep up with fast strobe lights, and allocates only 5 Mbit/s instead of 24 Mbit/s, turning a night club scene into classic MPEG mosaick. So much for bit-saving VBR as opposed to HDV's CBR. Not even mentioning the horrible codec in the GH1. Then video-SLRs came along, with their sensors and optics not intended for HD video, so one barely gets 500 lines full of aliasing.

Is it going to get better? Consumer and prosumer video is caught in the number game (1080p, woo-hoo!) but there are more and more limitations that makes the whole high definition thing to look like a gimmick.
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Though I'm not anyone "in the know", it seems that the video and HD video technology has developed a little bit ahead of its time. I mean this in the sense that each step forward seems to have introduced many problems which were swept under the rug. After a few generations, they've kind of piled up. But I think all of this is being cleared away. Really, it has been at the much higher price-points - any camera over $30K will give some stunning results. RED brought the pricepoint down some. And it seems that issues like rolling shutter and so forth with CMOS sensors will soon be no more problem than they are with film.

With knowledge, power. With time, refinement.
 
Michael Olsen said:
Though I'm not anyone "in the know", it seems that the video and HD video technology has developed a little bit ahead of its time. I mean this in the sense that each step forward seems to have introduced many problems which were swept under the rug. After a few generations, they've kind of piled up. But I think all of this is being cleared away. Really, it has been at the much higher price-points - any camera over $30K will give some stunning results. RED brought the pricepoint down some. And it seems that issues like rolling shutter and so forth with CMOS sensors will soon be no more problem than they are with film.

With knowledge, power. With time, refinement.
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Money can solve a lot of engineering problems. But the RED (and all the other CMOS Digital Cinema cams) still suffer from the same kinds of issues we have on the EX1, the Canon's and the GH1. They are not immune to it. However, you aren't going to put an outfitted RED in your hands and chase your dog around. You have to shoot it like a film camera because it weighs what a film camera weighs. You aren't going to put it on a wal-mart tripod and head because it won't hold the camera. The sheer weight and size of the cameras preclude some of the movments that get DSLR and handycam shooters into trouble.

The 5D production I worked on recently didn't use any tripods or dollys. All shoulder mount handheld, and FigRig. While that was fine SOME of the time, there were scenes that called for locked down shots. Just like in most movies. And the wobble and stuff is just too much. There is a REASON Hollywood has dollies and tripods.

I don't think that HD is ahead of it's time. I think that for the first time, home shooters are having to deal with the problems pros have been solving for quite some time. More of a "welcome to the party" than anything else.
 
Barry_Green said:
None of the other examples (NONE of them, I can almost guarantee you, none of the TV shows, none of the movies you listed, none of them) have that aliasing in the original source footage. It's introduced somewhere in the post processing chain or downconversion.
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Just playing devil's advocate here, but if your end product is just going to be shown on TV (commercials, etc.), why does it matter when the aliasing is introduced?

By this I mean - OK, so great, you shot with the Red ONE and your source footage is alias free. But what does it matter if it is gonna get riddled with aliasing anyway? You might as well shoot with the 7D - assuming this isn't a complex commercial - and have a much lower budget and smaller crew. 99.99999% of the viewers wouldn't notice the difference between a 7D and a Red on their HDTV in normal shooting conditions.

Again, just playing devil's advocate.
 
Jester...I asked myself the same question. But I think it comes down to having the cleanest possible footage "before" it gets butchered by whatever medium you deliver it on. In the case of these DSLRs it's possible the results might be more than just "garbage in and garbage out".....but more like "garbage in and poo-poo hit the fan garbage out."

But I say...find a way to work around the possible garbage in...so as to minimize any issues on the back end.
 
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