Can You Tell the Difference? 4K Galaxy Note 3 vs. Canon 5D Mark III Video 201
Iddo Genuth (903542) writes "Photographer and videographer Alec Weinstein was in the market for a new smartphone. He realized that the new Samsung Galaxy S5 and the Note 3 both have 4K video recording capabilities and decided to compare those to his 1080p 5D MKIII pro DSLR camera – the results are extremely interesting — Can you tell the difference between a Canon 5D MKIII shooting 1080p video and a Samsung Galaxy Note III smartphone shooting 4K video?"
In a school zone all cars are the same. (Score:5, Interesting)
However, the moment you're doing anything else, the differences show. So, yes, at two paces away in perfect daylight, with no need for special considerations, yes, a smart phone will take decent photos. Given that even at press conferences telephotos and zooms are needed to see the podium, or you're shooting in imperfect light, or you need a polarizer, or you need to add off-camera flash, you'll need a decent camera.
A few years ago, people were saying that new manufacturers would emerge because Nikon and Canon were wedded to an old-fashioned camera format and the multimedia still/video camera would emerge as a new UI. Well, PJs are still shooting with a design perfected over generations and those needing to shoot video bolt the cameras onto harnesses that make the rigs no smaller than Betacams.
Re:DOF (Score:4, Interesting)
That phone was awesome!
But I would also like to see some footage out of the sun or on a gray day.
Re:No different than asking... (Score:5, Interesting)
The capped recording time is actually the fault of the European Union's import duties, which charge a higher tax rate for anything that can record 30 minutes or longer. Blame excessive government bureaucracy for your DSLR being crippled.
Re:No different than asking... (Score:4, Interesting)
As long as it allows people to take:
obnoxious duck faced selfies
obnoxious pictures of food
cell phone cameras have been 'good enough' for years.
Now when it comes to joe and/or jane sixer taking pictures of 'real important events' (that like 99% of the photos taken, will never be viewed -- ever) does the DSLR's better image quality really matter? Looking back at childhood photos (my parents had a polaroid) I couldn't possibly care less that the photo is a bit grainy, or that the camera didn't take pictures with the sensitivity of a fucking CIA spy satellite.
5D III video is inherently soft (Score:5, Interesting)
The 5D Mk. III applies a strong low-pass filter after a rough line-skipping down sampling step when transforming an original 21 megapixel image into 1080p video (the Mk. II is worse). This results in soft looking video with a subjective resolution more like 720p than 1080p. It's an unfair comparison.
However, professional film makers that use the 5D Mk. II and 5D Mk. III cameras shoot in 2K and 4K Raw by using Magic Lantern (no in camera re-sampling or low pass filters, just pure sensor data). Magic Lantern is a end user project that has produced an alternative firmware for Canon DSLRs which has greatly extended camera capabilities and video quality.
The results are spectacular:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re:No different than asking... (Score:5, Interesting)
Are you a cork guy as well? You do know that screw caps are far superior closures for wine, don't you
I prefer corks. Because I enjoy opening wine bottles with corks. I can't tell the difference in the wine unless its actually spoiled. I know screw caps are better seals but its not as much fun.
(as cans are over bottles for beer,
And I prefer bottles too. Because i like the sensation of a cold bottle on my lips more than a cold can.
Just as I prefer like drinking anything from a glass or mug over drinking it from a plastic or paper or metal cup (whether its water, juice, milk, tea, or coffee...)
I would LOVE to see wine in cans
I'm sure that'd be fine in terms of taste as I'd still drink it out of a glass.
Dining is very much about the taste, but you shouldn't discount the value in the pageantry, theater, and traditions of the experience. They may not affect the taste, but they are still part of the whole experience.
Re:OMGPWNIES (Score:4, Interesting)
It doesn't work like that. Your tires and the lug nuts are always the same size.
With a camera, if you pair a small lens with a small sensor, you can produce the exact same image size upon viewing. So long as the minimum conditions of diffraction/resolution, optical quality, and sufficient photons per pixel to keep noise below a threshold level are met, the images from a small camera (your leatherman) and a large camera (the socket wrench set) are indistinguishable. It's only in the more extreme cases (low light, telephoto) where the larger camera starts to pull ahead.
The images from a modern cell phone camera are competitive with the images from a DSLR from about 15 years ago. Sensor noise has been reduced and sensitivity increased. You can apply these improvements by either holding the sensor size (and pixel pitch) constant and getting much higher ISOs (we've gone from 1600 ISO as a max to 256,000 ISO as a max on DSLRs). Or you can hold ISO constant and reduce sensor size. Cell phone cameras just do the latter. As long as you aren't trying to make a telephoto or shoot in low light, the tiny lens size doesn't hurt you because we aren't yet close to the diffraction and resolution limits for the 20-40mm equivalent that's typically found on cell phone cameras. We still have some size reduction that's possible before we'll hit diffraction limits.