BobDiaz
The Professor
Back in the early 80s George Urban produced a show for New York City Public Access. It was called, "The Ugly George Show". The show consisted of "Ugly George" going to the local bars and finding well endowed (and intoxicated) women to expose parts of their body to the camera. Many did flash the camera and others told Ugly George where he could shove his camera. You could say the show was both an early form of Girls Gone Wild and Reality TV. In general, this took place in dimly lit hallways and I'm sure Ugly George had the gain on his camera set to maximum. This somewhat bizarre show was loved and hated by many viewers. Either way, I'm sure that everyone was more interested in the content of the show and few, if any, cared about the high noise levels caused by poor lighting and excessive gain.
Roughly 8 years ago I had the opportunity to sit down and have lunch with Jerry Pournelle, he writes CHAOS MANOR for Byte Magazine. The one thing that I remember most was his telling me, "I never ask: Which is the best?" I was a bit surprised by this remark and he explained why, "Because figuring out which is the best is too subjective and everyone has a different criterion. No, what I do is determine is it good enough for my needs?"
Jerry really has a good point. Say you decide to create your own version of "The Ugly George Show" for the Pervert Channel, high levels of CCD noise in the image don't matter. What does mater is making your viewers wonder if you are going to be successful with this women or not. Now I'm not suggesting that anyone go out and make another demented show like Ugly George, but in many cases, content can be more important than technical quality.
As we obsess over which camera gives the highest horizontal and vertical resolution, does it really matter as long as both cameras produce a sharp enough image. Does anyone believe that if you purchase the camera with the slightly lower resolution that some day your client will see the final production and cry, "That's 50 to 100 lines of resolution less than what I expected!!!"
As we obsess over one specification or parameter, there is only one question that we need to ask, "Will this camera give me a final product that good enough for my line of work?"
With 4 cameras to chose from in the $5,000 to $10,000 range the process to decide which camera or cameras are good enough is straight forward. First make a list of functions, features and specifications you want in a HD Camera. Next, break the list into three parts: (1) CRITICAL, must have, (2) IMPORTANT, should have, but can do without if needed, and (3) NICE TO HAVE, but not too important.
Some things will be straight forward, either the camera supports 1080 (or 720p) or it doesn't. Either the camera offers removable lenses or it doesn't. Other things will not be as easy to determine. Both JVC and Panasonic support true progressive, but what about Canon? Canon acts like a true progressive scan with some loss in vertical resolution.
Some features will be relative to the other cameras, like low light performance. In that case, I hope Barry takes the 4 cameras and shoots the exact same dimly lit shot at +0dB, +6dB, and +12dB. If we have TIFF or JPEG images grabbed from the video, we can see for ourselves how the cameras compare. One complicating factor is should the detail be set to 0 for all cameras or should we minimum the detail to reduce the effect of noise. The engineer in me says do both a detail of 0 AND the lowest detail setting, but that would result in 24 different test images and Barry does have a life outside of testing cameras.
Right now there's a lot of information being posted about these cameras, some of it is very useful and some not so useful. As new users post their reactions to having worked with the camera, that is useful. When an image shot at night, under limited lighting, with maximum gain, showing strong CCD noise, the information and conclusion is not very useful. Why? Because the information is presented in a vacuum with no apple to apple comparison.
In the end, no camera might match your ideal, but is there one of the cameras that is good enough? The other possibility is that 2 or 3 cameras may be good enough for your needs. Now what do you do? Clearly these is some give and take between the cameras. Each will have its own set of advantages over the other. I'm not sure what Jerry Pournelle's answer would be, maybe he would say, "Go with your gut and if you're wrong, they're both Good Enough anyway!"
Bob Diaz
Roughly 8 years ago I had the opportunity to sit down and have lunch with Jerry Pournelle, he writes CHAOS MANOR for Byte Magazine. The one thing that I remember most was his telling me, "I never ask: Which is the best?" I was a bit surprised by this remark and he explained why, "Because figuring out which is the best is too subjective and everyone has a different criterion. No, what I do is determine is it good enough for my needs?"
Jerry really has a good point. Say you decide to create your own version of "The Ugly George Show" for the Pervert Channel, high levels of CCD noise in the image don't matter. What does mater is making your viewers wonder if you are going to be successful with this women or not. Now I'm not suggesting that anyone go out and make another demented show like Ugly George, but in many cases, content can be more important than technical quality.
As we obsess over which camera gives the highest horizontal and vertical resolution, does it really matter as long as both cameras produce a sharp enough image. Does anyone believe that if you purchase the camera with the slightly lower resolution that some day your client will see the final production and cry, "That's 50 to 100 lines of resolution less than what I expected!!!"
As we obsess over one specification or parameter, there is only one question that we need to ask, "Will this camera give me a final product that good enough for my line of work?"
With 4 cameras to chose from in the $5,000 to $10,000 range the process to decide which camera or cameras are good enough is straight forward. First make a list of functions, features and specifications you want in a HD Camera. Next, break the list into three parts: (1) CRITICAL, must have, (2) IMPORTANT, should have, but can do without if needed, and (3) NICE TO HAVE, but not too important.
Some things will be straight forward, either the camera supports 1080 (or 720p) or it doesn't. Either the camera offers removable lenses or it doesn't. Other things will not be as easy to determine. Both JVC and Panasonic support true progressive, but what about Canon? Canon acts like a true progressive scan with some loss in vertical resolution.
Some features will be relative to the other cameras, like low light performance. In that case, I hope Barry takes the 4 cameras and shoots the exact same dimly lit shot at +0dB, +6dB, and +12dB. If we have TIFF or JPEG images grabbed from the video, we can see for ourselves how the cameras compare. One complicating factor is should the detail be set to 0 for all cameras or should we minimum the detail to reduce the effect of noise. The engineer in me says do both a detail of 0 AND the lowest detail setting, but that would result in 24 different test images and Barry does have a life outside of testing cameras.
Right now there's a lot of information being posted about these cameras, some of it is very useful and some not so useful. As new users post their reactions to having worked with the camera, that is useful. When an image shot at night, under limited lighting, with maximum gain, showing strong CCD noise, the information and conclusion is not very useful. Why? Because the information is presented in a vacuum with no apple to apple comparison.
In the end, no camera might match your ideal, but is there one of the cameras that is good enough? The other possibility is that 2 or 3 cameras may be good enough for your needs. Now what do you do? Clearly these is some give and take between the cameras. Each will have its own set of advantages over the other. I'm not sure what Jerry Pournelle's answer would be, maybe he would say, "Go with your gut and if you're wrong, they're both Good Enough anyway!"
Bob Diaz
