By now between the Oscars Galaxy sponsorship & a lot of tech Vloggers going wild about the Samsung handset you should be pretty well informed on the Galaxy S9 capabilities. We covered it last week and went into the particulars of the super slow Motion feature which allows for 0.2 seconds of recording at 720p in 960fps frame rate. Needless to say, we were unimpressed with the quality initially based on early tests and we called it out for not really delivering 720p but some low-res aliased abstraction.
But with the new crop of video samples, we were impressed by some footage and let down by other attempts. There is a lot to like in this phone but also something to keep in mind is that a dedicated slow-motion camera will keep the edge over a phone at least for the next few years in quality and detail retention. Dig in for the samples and judge for yourself…→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
Samsung has unveiled the heavily leaked and rumored Galaxy S9 at MWC Barcelona 2018. It is now a reality and the rumors got most of it right but the frame rate mostly expected which was 480fps at full HD has now morphed into 960fps at HD 720p. You would be heavily excited about the new frame rate options except for the fact that the resolution is not really 720p but a heavily soft and aliased version.
Camera companies are too loose to call video formats HD and Full HD when they are really just upscaling lower resolution video up to save in an overly compressed format. The inclusion of now 1080p 240fps has to be the better spec here as the 960fps mode tops out at 0.2 seconds for a 6-second playback at 30fps. Hardly ideal and much like what we saw in the Sony Xperia XZ phones of 2017.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
The Chronos 1.4 Team has now posted the first incarnation of the RAW Camera data to DNG File tool to convert the sensor information files to usable Adobe DNG sequences. They also have posted a sample image comparing the before and after characteristics of the image quality if saved on H.264 in camera and then the same scene shot and saved in RAW format which converted to DNG yields a substantial improvement in image quality as we explored in our previous post about this issue here.
The camera is expected to allow direct to DNG format file saving in the future but now you can shoot in the camera RAW format and later convert as an interim solution without sacrificing quality on the H.264 files. Maybe in the future, the camera will be able to simultaneously save RAW and H.264 files as a proxy feature to be able to easily sample clips in editing before conversion. We believe the DNG format should be your one-stop solution for this camera if image quality is important for your use case.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
We received a set of Adobe DNG image samples from Krontech to check the resolution, dynamic range and grading potential of the camera when using the RAW recording mode. As of now the utility to convert the raw data is still being tested but we were impressed by the results the camera was able to achieve by offloading the de-bayering process to a more capable converter like the Adobe Camera RAW module.
The Chronos files were already good when properly exposed but did suffer from some aliasing and moire in fine detail while resolution also took a hit by saving in a compressed H.264 format. Now with the DNG RAW capability, we are glad to see that the camera image quality made an enormous improvement in the resolution, color fidelity, and dynamic range. It really brings out the real potential of the camera for a variety of applications, also creating a cleaner result in the noise department when processed correctly.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
The Galaxy S9 leaks are coming and we are glad to see super slow motion prominently displayed on the box spec list. However, there are no real specs when it comes to frame rates apart from a set of rumors we have received. The frame rate supposedly shipping with the S9 paired with the “Exynos 9 Series 9810” SoC will be capable of 120fps 4k and up to 960/1000fps 1080p video recording.
One problem, however, is that in the USA the phone will not ship with the Exynos 9 Series 9810 but the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 which may not support the slow motion frame rates. In other places in the world, however, the Exynos 9 Series 9810 will be on the phone. This is the fault of a 1993 agreement between Samsung Qualcomm which forbids them from releasing phones with their own chips. More info about it here at Forbes.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
As suspected in a previous article from HSC the Panasonic G9 bitrate for VFR or high frame rate mode is much lower than on the GH5. The Manual has been released for the G9 showing this lower spec. It is of note that the codec used on both cameras is very efficient which lends itself to good quality even at 20mbps. However, for those that want to prioritize fine detail and the utmost sharpness, the GH5 will, in the end, be the better option for slow motion.
There is also the upcoming announcement rumor of the GH5s Lumix camera now with leaked images here with 240fps at full HD using a completely new sensor which may be able to improve of the GH5 slow-motion quality which in our analysis was lacking when using 150fps and 180fps on the regular GH5. Aliasing and moire were evident in footage which is not present in the 120fps mode. Considering the GH5s might be recycling the same image processing engine but with a new sensor, we may still see some artifacts.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
