On Sun, 16 Jan 2000 21:25:15 GMT, B&SY wrote:

[......]

>Arrrrrrrrrrrgh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I left in the relevant part....;-)
I know EXACTLY what you are talking about...
I tried my best to regularize/standardize our
terminology, but those efforts were rebuffed...
Without common terms, arguement is useless.
If you read my camcorder comparison, you would
find considerable mention of "stair-stepping".
You would also find that the various artifacts
have nothing to do with "sharpness" - one of
the mini-DV camcorders with the sharpest-looking
image is the GL-1, and it exhibits more artifacts
(the usual horizontal-line stair-stepping, PLUS
a large amount of vertical-line stair-stepping,
PLUS over-sharpening bright-edge effects) than
any other 3-chip camcorder I've seen, yet to call
the GL-1 picture "unsharp" would be an error...
The picture is "busy", "buzzy", "full-of-artifacts",
"un-smooth", etc., but it is not "unsharp"!
And, BTW, the "unsharpness" you speak of (the
stair-stepping) has nothing to do with the image
quality of the lens... And to insist that lenses on
mini-DV camcorders are all "crappy" is to ignore
the several good ones I have seen (the ones on
the PC-1, TRV-900, VX-1000, EZ30U, and GL-1 [and
on the XL-1, if you get a good sample...;-]),
which, BTW, do hold their own against the
expensive lenses quite well in the center, and
at the edges when stopped down enough. To hold
that a 500+ line format like mini-DV is somehow
"less sharp" than a 400+ line format like Hi-8
or SVHS is silly - less "smooth-looking", and
possibly with more visible compression effects
than Hi-8 or SVHS edited at low compression
rates, yes, but in terms of the level of fine
detail rendered, no. Your point is well taken
that if one prefers image "smoothness" to
"sharpness" (at the risk of dropouts, and
generation losses), one might well choose Hi-8
or SVHS over mini-DV. But you refuse even to
accept this characterization of your arguement!;-)
Methinks you should look up the definition of
"sharpness", since this is so central to our
differences...
This whole thing is getting silly, so I now
withdraw - I will respond no more to this thread.