Here is another example of the superior Canon lens and fantastic image processing abilities of the camera. You can see the slight depth blur of the building in the background. This is clearly a 35mm image shot through a high quality lens. There is detail in every corner of the screen – no falloff or brightness inconsistencies. And its not only the detail that is phenomenal, but also the range of colors and the color depth in the shading that gives this image an extremely rich look. Remember, this is not a still image shot with the camera. This is one frame from an HD video clip.
The thing that amazes me the most about the video from this camera is the texture of it. It’s one thing to get good color, good detail, 35mm sharpness and depth of field. But it is another thing for the imagery to have the sort of visceral feel to it that you get with film. With film, you can sometimes literally feel like you could reach out and touch the item on the screen. You could tell if it were hot or cold, soft or hard, flexible or rigid.
I don’t know what causes this difference. I suspect that when the image is just right that it gets passed to a different part of the brain for additional processing that allows us to extract the texture information from what we are seeing. But just exactly what the details are that create texture in a flat image is something I don’t understand. I can just tell you when I see it, and point out the difference.
In the previous clip, I tried to isolate part of the image to show you the detail in that area. And then I blew up another part of it to show the subtle details in the shadowing. That kind of color detail gets lost in most compression algorithms or due to lens quality. So that must be part of the recipe of texture.
All I can tell you is that the video this camera records is just about the best quality I’ve ever seen.
