On Thu, 27 Jun 2002 10:00:50 +0100, "Peter McCall" wrote:

>Yes, it's all a bit of a minefield, isn't it?

Uh-huh....;-)
See: www.David-Ruether-Photography.com/vid_pict_characts.htm

>Can I propose - purely in the interest of debate and not to be contentious -
>that sharpness per se is not the ultimate goal. Indeed, if the final home of
>your footage is a DVD, super sharpness may not even be a Good Thing when the
>MPEG-2 encoder gets its hands on it. I've actually seen suggestions that a
>little Gaussian softening should be applied first!

This can reduce problems with some types of artifacting
and with compression of fine detail and of "gain-grain".
It is really nice, though, to see fine enough detail
in the video image to be able to shoot landscapes and
other hard-for-video subject types successfully (so long
as negative picture aspects are not exaggerated...).

>While I agree 100% that over-sharpening looks horrible (and the XM1 does
>have more than its fair share), there are other almost indefinable things
>like accurate colour rendition, fine gradation of tone, image stability that
>rank at least equally with sharpness.

Yes, as a group. I never thought the GL-1 picture was very
good in most of these aspects, though - but I do like its stabilizer, near the long end of the zoom range...

>One thing the XM1/GL1 has is a fabulous optical image stabilizer. Even with
>maximum zoom you can still (almost) hand-hold, with the image softly
>floating before you :) Frankly, this [image stabilization] is where
>manufacturers should be putting their efforts, rather than touch-screens,
>Bluetooth, memory sticks, popup flashes and God knows what!

I agree. I also would like to see the "energy" and
resources/money spent improving the basics and not adding
these "fripperies", but marketing being what it is.....;-)

>"Neuman - Ruether" wrote in message
>news:3d1c13af.26417329@newsstand.cit.cornell.edu...
>> On Wed, 26 Jun 2002 14:38:42 +0100, "Peter McCall"
>> wrote:
>>
>> >I see the new camera has analogue in, something the current XM1 doesn't
>> >possess, and one of the reasons I didn't buy it. Another reason was that
>the
>> >XM1 (PAL) is not quite 720 x 576; it leaves narrow, vertical, black bands
>at
>> >either side of the frame. I wonder if the new camera overcomes this.
>Does
>> >anyone know?
>> >
>> >If these two matters have been fully addressed, I think I'll get the new
>> >XM2 - even if nothing else is changed - because it will truly be
>> >sensational. The lens and stabiliser of the existing camera are the best
>> >I've ever used.
>> >
>> >Anyone want a nearly-new TRV900?
>>
>> Tempted, to add to my others...;-)
>> BTW, the GL-1 lens may have been fine but the
>> imager wasn't, so the resulting image was about
>> the least sharp of the 3-chippers, while also
>> having many picture "nasties" resulting from
>> excessive sharpening and contrast. The higher
>> pixel-count of the replacement should help
>> fix these problems...
>> DR