2010-04-15

HELP WANTED test your EXMOR against a CCD in low light video

10-4-19 15:45
I need your help in analysing a problem I stumbled over.
Well to be honest other people did the stumbling over , I just like to get to the bottom of it.
Some of you have seen the video comparison HX5 vs TZ10 where the video from the HX5 was very dark in low light situations.


If you have a Sony or other brand with a 10 Mp cmos sensor (what mostly is the EXMOR from Sony) and you have "normal" camera what than will have a ccd sensor could you please help me out here?

Just find a dark spot, place some items there so we can see how the color behaves and shoot a 5 second video each. No need to put it on you tube, just grab a frame each and post your results here in the forum please.

‹(•¿•)›

To see if that might be a problem with the EXMOR sensor and the Sony processing I took my HX1 and my old Canon S2IS shot a couple clips and took screen grabs.
As you can see the S2 is brighter with better colors but has much more noise. It looks much worse in a single frame than in the video (it is a bit like the HHT the grain cancels it self out partially in the video).






and here the HX1 against the camera the HX5 should replace, Ricoh R6
bad Ricoh, no cracker for you.



To give you an idea how dark it was, I took a couple fotos and the proper setting was ISO 400, 1/2 sec, f 2.8
In manual mode with ISO 800 (why Sony do you restrict my HX1 here?) and 1/30 sec at f2.8 the picture was as dark



A test from Raphael
There is no question about it. Sony's "Exmor R" CMOS sensor cameras such as HX5V and TX7 have much worse video quality in low light than the competition with CCD cameras. Here is my direct comparison video between Sony DSC-HX5V and Canon SX210 cameras:
It is important to note that the problem is severe when shooting subjects that reflect light as opposed to the ones that emit light.


brian8962 — April 17, 2010 —You Tube text copy
I have tested the VERY low light video capabilities of the Sony HX5v compact digital camera, I've tested it against all video 'camera's' I have at my disposal which include a Palm Pre, a Casio EX-Z1000 digital camera and 2 Canon video cameras .. a HV20 and a high end XH-A1. The scenario for this test are a very dark room with a lamp in the far corner. As a guide to how dark it was in real life comparable footage from this video would be the XH-A1 at +6 dB gain which is the last scene in the clip.
I experimented with the Sony's EV setting - raising it to +2.0 but in these very dark conditions it made little difference, The Canon camcorders artificially increased the brightness compared with reality and thus created more grain (but better than the other cameras), but even so resulted in reasonable picture quality considering how dark it was. The HX5 does get a bit grainy in this (very) lowlight test and definitely improves the picture quality by filming in MP4 25p as opposed to AVCHD 50i.
The Canon XHA1 in this test gives the best results (not surprising considering its price), and by opting for the +6dB gain setting the picture can be brightened up in post with minimal grain. For its size and cost the HX5 does a reasonable job with the MP4 setting (remember we are looking at the grain as well as picture brightness),with the AVCHD setting best used in better light where it is very good. See my other tests on You Tube & Vimeo.
I think it is fair to say that there is no substitute for a 'proper' video camera when the light gets this low!


here is an old comparison I made for my HX1 blog

5 comments:

  1. There is no question about it. Sony's "Exmor R" CMOS sensor cameras such as HX5V and TX7 have much worse video quality in low light than the competition with CCD cameras. Here is my direct comparison video between Sony DSC-HX5V and Canon SX210 cameras:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51ctGFW_1T8

    It is important to note that the problem is severe when shooting subjects that reflect light as opposed to the ones that emit light.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I don't think this is much of a problem. Brightness and contrast in the video can always be edited just like pictures.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Not really. The indoor video from HX5V is not only dark, but also noisy. Adjusting brightness makes noise noticeable even more.

    ReplyDelete
  4. There is also a program to eliminate noise from videos. Neat image does a great job in doing this. But it is a pain to have to edit videos for it to match the clarity of other digicams.

    I tested a night scene with my brother's Canon SD780IS in 720p mode compared to my Panasonic Lumix FS8 which was 480p. The Panasonic was clearer, brighter and the colors had more "pop" than the Canon which recorded in HD.

    I don't know why this is so but Panasonic is definitely doing something right with their digicams for night time videos.

    ReplyDelete
  5. My mistake, the program is Neat Video, not Neat Image.

    ReplyDelete

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