Will 10x zoom be enough?
I will be using the HV30 to shoot a standing speaker in an auditorium. The subject will be about 60 feet from the camera. The camera will be on a tripod. Will 10x zoom be enough to fill the frame with the subject from the waist up?
I would just see for myself, but I don't own the HV30 yet and this will be its primary use
Most likely, you should be able to get a pleasing medium shot. Of bigger concern is panning or any camera movement when you're zoomed in that far. Unless you are locked down (or own a professional fluid-head tripod), your every move (and those footsteps around you) will be magnified on-screen.
Keep in mind, you can get a tele-extender lens and go closer, but your quality will suffer, and camera jitter will be magnified.
"To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war." Winston Churchill
If you intend to output SD only, you can actually turn on digital zoom to 40x. After down sizing to SD, the footage will still looks good.
With HDV I have found that the 200X zoom does NOT pixelate and will look great at whatever zoom you have selected. I did a speaker at a large auditorium, filled the frame with the speakers FACE and it was great. It is VERY difficult to hold still, so if handheld, BRACE YOUSELF and turn on OIS (optical image stabilization). I just did a long shot across a valley at full 200X WITH A TRIPOD - it blew everyone's mind (including mine!) and the only thing to make it look 'off' was the heat waves across the valley. You said you will be on a tripod, so you should be good at whatever you like.
I now leave full 200x on and pick what I like.
Try it...you will be greatly surprised!
Tim
Tim
- Dude with a Camera -
I would recommend buying a telephoto lens adapter so that you won't have to deal with digital zoom and degrading quality.
-PadawanGeek
HV30, Azden SGM-1X, Raynox HD6600, Irvb's focus ring, Hoodman H-300.
Shooting talking heads in 16:9 tends to leave a lot of dull, boring space on the sides. One idea is to shoot the speaker to one side of the frame and put the text of his speech on the other. Or create a slideshow to illustrate whatever he's talking about. This works real well with instructional lectures or demonstrations.
I quess you missed my post about it NOT degrading quality? I quess I will have to post a look...Originally Posted by PadawanGeek
Tim
Tim
- Dude with a Camera -
Great! That was the only possible snag, but it seems that there are a few workable solutions.
Last edited by meekish; 2008 August 16th at 00:45.
A look has been posted! Have a peek and decide for yourself. I have no idea what the green flashes are...they are not in the original...
When in the dark of an auditorium, be conscious of the focus...if on auto, your camera may focus on the head in front of you and if in manual you may not be able to see well enough to get a sharp focus.
Tim
Last edited by Timay; 2008 August 16th at 10:26.
Tim
- Dude with a Camera -
I guess that the term "pixelated" is in the eye of the beholder. Digital zoom is almost equivalent to cropping and then enlarging a picture in an video editing program. The digital zoom feature does use some real time interpolation, but not so that it's noticeable.
If you use 20X zoom, which is 10X optical zoom (f=43.6-436 mm, 35mm equivalent) and 2X digital zoom, you end up with half the number of pixels selected from the center of each frame. By the time that you get to 200X (if my feeble math skills are correct), you hypothetically have only 5% of the original pixels. Now there are some unknowns, when it comes to the Canon HDV camcorders. First, the CMOS sensor is a 4:3 sensor, which is digitally masked for HD video to 1920X1080. The sensor size is roughly 2048x1536 (or about 3 MPixels).
Now here's where I get confused. The HV30 stores its images as HDV (1440x1080) which is a 4:3 format with a 1.333 pixel aspect ratio. Does the digital zoom "start out" with the full 3 MPixel sensor size of 2048x1536? Because if it does, you will get some enlargement of the image, without any loss of pixels (roughly either 2X or up to 20X total zoom or possibly 1.5x/15X zoom if you start with 1920x1080). Canon has not been clear about this either publicly or via email (I've asked.). Once you go beyond 20X zoom, the pixels are still lost, but maybe the loss isn't as bad as was initially thought. At 200X, you would still only have 10% of the original pixels, but that may not look all that bad, especially if you downcovert the video to 720p (1280x720, or 0.9 MPixels) for the web or 480p (720x480 or 0.35 MPixels) for a DVD.
Now what happens if you shoot in SD mode altogether with 200X zoom? If the full sensor is used, you would have virtually no loss of pixels. Note: I am speculating a bunch in this post, but if someone knows the actual behavior of the digital zoom, I would be most appreciative.
Reply With Quote
