Which one looks better?

April 19, 2010 9:35 AM

Camera nerds: Which HD pic looks better?

I have an HD video camera rig and recently created a comparison test.

I shot two different test charts and from each clip generated two sets of pics. Each pic is color-corrected in the exact same way, but I did use two different techniques to derive the HD.

I'm trying to figure out which HD method is better, in terms of quality and detail.

So the question is, out of each set, which pic looks the best?

These links are only to the images themselves, which are quite large (4 - 5 mb each):

sampleA --- sampleB

sampleAA --- sampleBB

posted by shino-boy to Media & Arts (6 answers total)

sampleA and sampleBB both have sharper text than their counterparts.
posted by nitsuj at 9:39 AM on April 19, 2010

For me, it's sample A. There seems to be a bit of ghosting and color distortion on B. This is noticeable near the 5 marker, center bottom on sampleB.
posted by dirtdirt at 9:39 AM on April 19, 2010

Samples A and AA. By a hair. They show a bit more sharpness and better, deeper blacks. But, again, it's by a hair.
posted by Thorzdad at 9:52 AM on April 19, 2010

Samples A and AA, only because there is an artifact-y line of black on top of samples B and BB that is squeezing the rest of the image down.
posted by infinitewindow at 10:28 AM on April 19, 2010

Well, they all look fuzzy to me. Where did you get the test patterns? How sharp are they to begin with? Why are the png files not a proper HD resolution?
posted by gjc at 3:27 PM on April 19, 2010

Response by poster: I agree, they both look fuzzy. I got the test patterns here and here. I printed them from a standard laserjet @ 11x17 paper size.

While the sharpness of the printed charts look good, the flat greyscale areas are uneven.

My camera's video output is not standard HD (it's output at the size of the sensors). I did crop the sampleAA --- sampleBB pics to get rid of the pillarboxing.
posted by shino-boy at 5:05 PM on April 19, 2010