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Even
more DV questions: good for stills?
Aug
12, 1999
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Q:
I'm thinking of getting a DV camcorder for
capturing still images. But I was
wondering:
i)
Will it have better resolution than an S-Video
camera?
ii) Will there be less noise in the image?
iii) Will it be worth the price of a FireWire
card to a nonprofessional, home user?
iv) Is there a place which offers samples of an
image, captured from a DV camera, using FireWire
as well as S-VIDEO?
Mike
A
It seems like I'm getting a lot of DV
questions; maybe I should change this section to
"Ask the DV Guru?" Well, not to knock it. It's a
topic I'm very interested in. I'll do my best to
answer your questions.
Will
you see better resolution?
Not
really. The resolution of the DV frame is going to
essentially be the same as your analog capture (as
an example, I reviewed a Fuse video card compared
with a Radius DV card/software and found that the
Fuse captures at 640 x 480, the DV image is 720 x
480.) Both are "limited" to the resolution of
television. Of course, the actual information in
the image itself depends upon the quality of the
camera; but a professional Hi8 camera may have a
better CCD than a low cost DV camera.
Will
there be less "noise" in the image?
Maybe,
but doubtful. It greatly depends upon what you are
using to capture analog at the moment. If you have
a high quality analog capture card then it'll be
very similar to DV. There will be differences, but
you won't necessarily know which is which. You may
even prefer the analog capture.
Will
it be worth the price?
Depends
what you are doing, and what equipment you already
have. Do you already have a DV camera? There are
two big advantages to DV. If you transfer a file
from the camera to the computer and back again,
without adding filters or other effects, the data
does not have to go through an analog to
digital/digital to analog transfer. It stays as
digital information. The other great advantage is
in selecting and transferring to the computer the
segments you want. FireWire includes deck control,
so if the software is any good it will let you
easily shuttle about and find what you want to
transfer. For
your application, really only the latter feature
applies to you. If you're only capturing a few
images anyway, then maybe it's not worth the extra
cost.
The
image quality difference - provided the analog card
is reasonable - may be difficult to
detect.
What
are you using the stills for? A digital camera will
do a lot better job than a camcorder of any kind.
Cameras like the Nikon 950 have double the
resolution (1600 x 1200) and cost about $800 (and
falling.)
The
real advantage (I think) in DV is for editing
video. The images are high quality, but it's still
video resolution. If you want to do video, and some
still images at comparatively low resolution, then
DV is great. I know people who've been very happy
with using DV camcorders for stills, but if you're
thinking DV will give you an order of magnitude
better than S-Video, I think you will be
disappointed.
Is
there a place I can find samples of
an image,
captured from a DV camera, using FireWire as well
as S-VIDEO? Check
out an article at this website: <www.m2w.net/reviews/fuse9810images.html>
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