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Author Topic: Live Video on MFDB  (Read 5457 times)

willconnor

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Live Video on MFDB
« on: February 28, 2007, 01:24:33 pm »

The following link from the Alpa Forum provides some interesting information:

 Alpa Forum
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Graham Mitchell

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Live Video on MFDB
« Reply #1 on: February 28, 2007, 02:00:48 pm »

Some Sinar backs already offer live video. The main poster in that thread was talking about it as if it were a hypothetical.
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josayeruk

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Live Video on MFDB
« Reply #2 on: February 28, 2007, 02:36:38 pm »

Quote
Some Sinar backs already offer live video. The main poster in that thread was talking about it as if it were a hypothetical.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=103806\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I think they mean live video on the back of the physical display (OLED / LCD).

It would be ideal for an Alpa User as they don't tend to recommend the use of sliding backs.
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Graham Mitchell

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« Reply #3 on: February 28, 2007, 02:41:00 pm »

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I think they mean live video on the back of the physical display (OLED / LCD).

It would be ideal for an Alpa User as they don't tend to recommend the use of sliding backs.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=103817\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Ok, but that would be a futile proposition anyway, judging critical focus on those tiny screens.
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Morgan_Moore

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« Reply #4 on: February 28, 2007, 03:14:03 pm »

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Ok, but that would be a futile proposition anyway, judging critical focus on those tiny screens.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=103818\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I completely disagree

It seems dumb to me that back cant use information flowing into them in a useful way

(I am not talking from an engineering point of view but as a buyer)

$400 P+S cameras have live view even with face recognistion that draws a square around what is sharp !

Pro Video cameras have hatching the shows in their screens for focus assist

The new canon does it

It would seem that £30000 of back should have live view and the best instant

zooming hatching highlight flashing wonder LCDs available on the planet

(whatever is required to check focus easily) -

At that point ALPA would become useable to those who need quick and close focus and surely a new generation of mirrorles bodies would come about with the many advantages (weight size speed vibration non retrofocal etc) that that could bring

ALPA believe that the back makers are not thinking straight - I agree

SMM
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Sam Morgan Moore Bristol UK

Graham Mitchell

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« Reply #5 on: February 28, 2007, 06:15:51 pm »

Quote
I completely disagree

It seems dumb to me that back cant use information flowing into them in a useful way

(I am not talking from an engineering point of view but as a buyer)

$400 P+S cameras have live view even with face recognistion that draws a square around what is sharp !

Pro Video cameras have hatching the shows in their screens for focus assist

The new canon does it

It would seem that £30000 of back should have live view and the best instant

zooming hatching highlight flashing wonder LCDs available on the planet

(whatever is required to check focus easily) -

At that point ALPA would become useable to those who need quick and close focus and surely a new generation of mirrorles bodies would come about with the many advantages (weight size speed vibration non retrofocal etc) that that could bring

ALPA believe that the back makers are not thinking straight - I agree

SMM
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=103828\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Ah, I see what you mean about on-screen focus indicators, but let me play devil's advocate.

I still doubt that a tiny low resolution screen can indicate accurately enough where the points of best focus lie on a 39 MP image, for example. In a P&S camera, the user just wants to know whether the face or the background wall is in focus. That is easy to indicate even on a tiny screen. This feature is useful to EVERY P&S user.

With a MFDB or view camera, we need to know whether it is the eyelashes or the eyeball in focus. A whole eye is represented by so few pixels on the LCD screen that I don't think the user could reliably pick the difference. Tethered shooting solves this problem very effectively, so an LCD-based solution is only useful to the untethered crowd.

How many view camera users are working in the field (where tethering is difficult but not impossible) and not shooting landscapes (in which case achieving correct focus is not usually an issue)? There may be some but not many. That make the expensive add-on even harder to justify.

I expect that the R&D costs of adding such technology would add thousands to the price of each back. You can't really compare it with a player like Canon which might spend $1 million developing a custom chipset to provide this feature, and then amortize it across 500,000 bodies a year at $2 per body (those figures are estimates). MFDB makers are selling more like 1-5,000 bodies per year each.

The MFDBs have a lot more data to process too, up to 10x a typical P&S, which means a lot more heat. The MFDB makers seem to want to keep the volume of circuitry to a minimum to prevent increased temperature and therefore noise. I doubt the point and shoot manufacturers are concerned about this.
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Morgan_Moore

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« Reply #6 on: March 01, 2007, 12:14:29 pm »

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With a MFDB or view camera, we need to know whether it is the eyelashes or the eyeball in focus.

Yes I understand the engineering problems but as a customer of a $30k product I expect engineering solutions !

My vision would be probably a screen around the size of and I paq or so 6.9 with a fast user interface that allows easy zooming or a very high resolution screen of normal size that is properly shaded (like the GG inside a 645 camera)

It would be interesting to see if a mac mini and a very small lcd sceen could be rigged up wityh our eyelikes

A mad idea for the screen could be as a heads up display inside some funky goggles (like fighter pilots) the comupter could be in a backpack (!!!)

Talk about RoboSnapper !
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Sam Morgan Moore Bristol UK

Morgan_Moore

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« Reply #7 on: March 01, 2007, 12:28:21 pm »

This is about the smallest MAC I can find on the web..

http://riscx.com/news/mkII/

8 inch screen

Almost mountable with the camera on the tripod !

SMM
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Sam Morgan Moore Bristol UK

Graham Mitchell

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« Reply #8 on: March 01, 2007, 01:03:33 pm »

Why not just get one of those small-form notebooks and shoot tethered with all the other advantages? You can mount it on a belt and you hardly know it's there. I shot on location this way once using a Hass H1 with P1 H25 back.
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pss

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« Reply #9 on: March 01, 2007, 01:11:11 pm »

Quote
This is about the smallest MAC I can find on the web..

http://riscx.com/news/mkII/

8 inch screen

Almost mountable with the camera on the tripod !

SMM
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=104015\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
i think the modbook would be a much better solution....and more elegant...
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Morgan_Moore

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« Reply #10 on: March 01, 2007, 02:15:15 pm »

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i think the modbook would be a much better solution....and more elegant...
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=104025\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Of course

Alpa are speculating about the future in thier thread - so am I

I was investigating what sort of device could actually be almost built into a back or camera body

I reckon a 6 by 4 inch screen would be about handholdable and useable ish maybe as part of intergated device

SMM
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Sam Morgan Moore Bristol UK

David WM

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« Reply #11 on: March 01, 2007, 10:18:33 pm »

When I first got a Kodak SLRn on specs it had video-out capacity. So I got a small 6inch TFT monitor from Varizoom
http://varizoom.com/products/monitors/vztftu.html
with the idea of avoiding buying a laptop and shooting tethered.  The problem was that the image displayed on the Varizoom monitor was the same resolution as the one on the camera back, so it was very pixelated and of no advantage.
If DB's had a higher res video out jack then I don't see why this would not be a practical solution to our location needs, which is mainly focus, composition and histogram. We don't really need the other features a laptop offers. With this small monitor it can mount on a hotshoe.

David




Quote
Of course

Alpa are speculating about the future in thier thread - so am I

I was investigating what sort of device could actually be almost built into a back or camera body

I reckon a 6 by 4 inch screen would be about handholdable and useable ish maybe as part of intergated device

SMM
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=104032\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
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BJL

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« Reply #12 on: March 02, 2007, 11:37:32 am »

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Ok, but that would be a futile proposition anyway, judging critical focus on those tiny screens.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=103818\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
When you can work slowly enough to zoom on the LCD to focus, you could see full sensor resolution, which is far better than you get looking at the secondary image scattered off the ground glass of an optical viewfinder. Just 10X zoom (as Live View from Olympus/Panasonic/Leica and Canon offers) from even 39MP is enlarging a 390,000 pixel portion of the image, a pixel within reach of LCD's soon if not already. And MF backs should have room for a 4" LCD, given that some pocket cameras are up to 3".
« Last Edit: March 02, 2007, 11:58:27 am by BJL »
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Morgan_Moore

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« Reply #13 on: March 02, 2007, 01:40:54 pm »

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When you can work slowly enough to zoom on the LCD to focus
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=104230\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

This process could be automated easily in software - the LCD auto Zooms ither to the sleected focus point or item with highest focus/contrast
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Sam Morgan Moore Bristol UK
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