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Can You Tell the Difference? 4K Galaxy Note 3 vs. Canon 5D Mark III Video
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?"
No?
Yes, their exif meta tags are different ;)
-Alex. http://bit.ly/1iVPtfA
I assume the obvious difference is going to be the depth of field or DOF.
The Galaxy will have oodles of it but lacks the ability to isolate the subject, the Canon will make a nice sharp shot on the subject leaving the surroundings vague.
And then there's this thing with zoom/ interchangeable lenses...
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Can Joe Sixpack tell the difference between a $10 glass of house wine vs. a $100 glass of 1982 Chateau Gruaud Larose?
Besides, why would I use a DSLR to shoot video? Wrong tool for the job. That's like using a Ferrari to haul construction equipment or using an F-150 on racing day.
On the other hand, just try to use a smartphone to take pictures of fireworks at night or shoot a picture of your child making a layup at his basketball game in an indoor gym. Then tell me how the two compare.
4K just isn't here yet in monitors. If you've got a 1080p monitor, you can't see 4K unless you zoom in. That's the "NBSeeIt camera" effect on Sunday Night Football... a too high resolution camera lets them zoom in and still have 1080 lines of pixels.
seriously speaking, under good lighting conditions phone cams have been on par with SLRs for all practical purposes for quite a while now.
Sure, one is a shitty phone video and the other is a lovely professional video. Which one is the phone video? Um.... Well, it's so obvious I shouldn't even have to tell you!
It depends on how good your skills are with the DSLR. If you just point and shoot, then maybe no difference at all. To get the most out of your DSLR, you have to know what you're doing and how to do it. Handing a $1,000,000 dollar violin and a $500 dollar violin to a beginner produces the same results.
I can't tell the difference between a the of either a the of these. A the of Canon looks good but so does a the Samsung.
Let's see if the Galaxy Note 3 can:
1. Record usable, relatively noise-free video at EV -2
2. Use f/1.2 lenses
3. Record at effective focal lengths wider than 24mm or longer than 85mm...how about video at 300/2.8 or 600/4?
4. Use varifocal lenses of any kind, let alone a parfocal lens
I mean, this is silly. Under a very limited subset of possible shooting conditions and configurations, you *might* be able to get comparable output, but this has no bearing on the fact that if you're using a $3000 DSLR to shoot video, you're not merely some Android fanboy taking selfies of yourself beating off in your parents' basement. You're looking at using it with cine lenses or even just EF lenses like the 24/1.4L II, 35/1.4L, 50/1.2L, 85/1.2L II, 135/2L, 200/2L IS, or 300/2.8L IS II (if you're addicted to primes). Or Zeiss if that's your poison. Good luck with mounting a 55/1.4 Otus to that Galaxy Note.
Multiple 4k video streams have shuttered the server.
Under ideal conditions no it really doesn't matter.
But outside, when things are moving fast or there may not be adequate lighting, there's huge fucking difference.
In a studio where you have an interesting lighting setup and you need to trigger the lights from the camera, huge fucking difference.
I'll give you a hint, the secret to the difference isn't in the sensor.
Of course being a Canon boy, I'm guessing he's part of the megapixel's rule club.
We've reached the point where camera phones are good enough for 99%+ of uses, and the sales of traditional "just camera" cameras have been in freefall for a while now. There's still a small market for high end cameras, but it's not big enough to sustain the industry as it now is. Industry insiders think there will soon come a consolidation of the various companies that now produce SLRs, to cope with the new market realities.
I wouldn't want to be holding stock in an SLR company at the moment...
Most mobile phone videos seems to suffer from rolling shutter although not so much as they used to.
Some can make quiete nice videos under the right conditions and then just plain suck in the wrong.
Shooting raw video on Canon 5D MKIII should trump any 4K of overcompressed mud, while not shooting raw video on Canon 5D MKIII should be criminal.
Ezekiel 23:20
This is most likely a promo for galaxy. Aperture and focus were intentionally set wrong so that 5D mkIII looks just a bit worse. marketing at its best.
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.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
Wow.. haven't seen this in years!
DSLRs have lenses...
Just as most "audiophiles" can't tell the difference between a good MP3 and FLAC we have reached a point where most people simply won't notice a difference in video. They tried to sell us on 3D but anyone over 30 laughed that off and the latest target demographic is doing the same. Now they want people to "upgrade" to 4K TV but the market remains skeptical. I remember being blown away by the difference between HD & then standard definition TV but seeing a 4K TV next to an HD made me yawn.
The galaxy note will record crap, because it has CRAP lens compared to even a $99 Canon 50mm 1.8 prime.
Hell my 1080p t4i will record far better than the galaxy note can in 4K using a low end canon lens...
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The question was "can you tell the difference in the videos." Not to compare the equipment... But go right ahead and try to convince everyone why you needed to shell out $.3000. Doesn't a video file usually note the source and say what specific model of equipment took it? My answer is: The notes would be different.
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?...
Yes, the videos made by the Galaxy Note show more details (in this particular comparison which only included sunny outside scenes). But what does that mean? That under optimal lighting situations the DSLR from 2012 which can only do 1080p video shows less detail than a smartphone from this year which can do 4K? I could have told you that before. He could have also used a GoPro Hero3+ Black, which can also do 4K and costs half as much as the Galaxy Note.
Film makers use DSLR to make movies because of the lenses and the low light performance of the sensors, which are far better than what you will ever find on a smartphone - it is simple physics, nobody would want to carry around a smartphone which weighs 2kg or more to get the same optical performance / depth of field which the DSLR lenses allow. Yes, the DSLR makers are a bit behind when it comes to shooting video (as far as I know, Nikon is so far only considering making 4K video available and from Canon, only the obscenely expensive EOS-1DC can do 4K) - but that is because these cameras are primarily PHOTOGRAPHY devices and not video cameras.
If you'd switch the test around and made a comparison of photos shot with the DSLR and the Galaxy Note (and compared stuff like noise, distortion, sharpness in the corners of the picture, picture quality when using the built-in flash of the phone and a dedicated flash on the DSLR), you'll see that the DSLR is better at what it is designed to do than the smartphone and that there is a reason why it is more expensive.
So yes, under optimal lighting conditions, the 4K video mode of the Galaxy Note has a better resolution than the EOS 5D Mark III. It's just a bit of a pointless comparison, because it only compares one single aspect, like only comparing the acceleration of two vehicles and then declaring the faster one the better car, completely ignoring that some people might be interested in a different aspect, like ride quality, space, top speed or fuel consumption.
To tell which video is from a phone, don't you just look for the video with the big black bars down the sides?
That's pretty obvious really!
I'm guessing since most have a 1080ish display and very few have a 4k display, there will be very little perceived difference.
i'd rather take my phone and a good lense in my pocket from a pool of thousands of variations available, screw on a lense and its then down to the sensor, think more modular in construction, we only want to use the phones sensor, than cram it lense and all into a 7mm phone, fit it with a basic lense and have the ability to screw an external 35mm standard lense to it, otherwise i have to carry 3 things, 35mm camera, lenses AND my phone..we can cut out one of those surely
Which one will let me capture at a high frame rate (>60fps)?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Why the comparison to a still camera? Ya I know that it can shoot video, as basically all DSLRs can these days but that isn't what it is made to not, isn't what it is best at. Why not compare it to a 1080p video camera? A Panasonic X920 maybe. Not only is the processing circuitry optimized for video, but so in the sensor. Generally, for video you want to do three separate sensors, one for each primary colour, rather than a sensor with a Bayer filter on it. Gives you better results with motion and such.
The video I've seen from 5Ds was pretty soft overall. Whatever kind of processing it does internally for video softens the image a lot. I'm not sure the reason they chose to do that, but it does not look near as good as a consumer camcorder like the one I mentioned.
I'm amazed at how good smartphones can do for pictures and video these days, and ti is really nice to have a reasonable quality camera with you at all times. However it just can't compete with something that has a big lens on it.
Yes, I can.
The smartphone has post-processing artifacts, blown out contrast and no depth of field.
All rites reversed 2010
The comparison was a crock!
The Canon was outfitted with an average at best zoom lens and it still did a very decent job.
Put a 35mm Canon L prime lens on the Mark III, shoot the video using Magic Lantern in raw and see what that camera/lens combination can do.
Caution: Contents under pressure
The lens is just too small for 4K. It is impossible for that many different photons to pass through it at the same time. Photons are in practice about one millionth of a meter big, so about 1000 could fit beside each other passing through a 1 mm lens. But this is only valid for wide angle pictures, fish eye optics. Real phone cameras use just a limited angle, a limited view of this, removing even more photons. Even 1080p is often more than the cameras can really do.
IAARP, I Am A Real Physicst
I guess the real question is... why would someone want to take 4K video with a cell phone anyway? What's the point? If the lighting conditions aren't perfect, the output is going to be crap.
But I gotta question the Canon setup... was he intentionally trying to create the worst setup possible? It was clearly not in focus, and I sure hope he wasn't running that Sigma lens either wide-open or fully stopped-down because its junky when it isn't mid-range. And if the intent was to compare 4K video he should have done all the tests with Magic Lantern on the Canon and the YouTube video should have been cropped rather than down-sized. There's so much post-processing being done that those videos just aren't meaningful as-shown. He also didn't define what he meant by 'raw' vs 'not raw'. What exact video mode was he using for the two halves?
Well, you get the picture. It's just not a valid comparison. Apples and Oranges.
In anycase, I think a large percentage of people will be quite happy with their cell-phone cameras and video. Cell phones have taken a huge bite out of the camera maker's point-and-shoot cameras as well as the DSLRs. But it's like the pad-vs-PC war. Those people didn't need the DSLRs in the first place, and the people who care about quality are still going to stick with their DSLRs.
It only takes once expensive vacation with poor shots for someone to start wishing they had brought something a bit better than their cell phones along.
-Matt
What we could use are very, very small sensels (in order to maximally limit photon intercept by area) that are insanely fast photon detectors with very deep counters behind them. The latter is easy, the former, not so much. But given that, you'll have a camera that's as sensitive as possible to low light (count a photon, there you go) and has as much dynamic range as you care to implement counter stages and allow for continuing exposure, and extremely high data resolution, certainly more than our lens tech can take advantage of. Which in turn provides some statistical advantages in analyzing data from neighboring sensels. Or in other words, if the resolution of the lens is much lower than the sensor, then the behavior of the *group* of sensels is going to give you the information you want, which in turn will reduce noise.
Major problems include extremely small XY geometries required, extreme speeds required for first few counter stages, noise photons (electrons) that are not part of the incoming stream -- some kind of ultra stable, effectively "cold" material seems to be needed. Perhaps something analogous to a ping-pong-ball accumulator for orderly counting of captured PPBs/photons.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
That Canon can actually do 4K video uncompressed. Why he wasn't using Magic Lantern I just don't understand. There's no point comparing ANY 1080p output against 4K output under those lighting conditions, the post production run has so much more information to work with when downsizing 4K output it isn't even funny. Not to mention the poor lens choice.
-Matt
FTFY
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
By the time YouTube is done compressing the video, you no longer have much difference in dynamic range and per frame image quality left. This on top of the lens quality and control/ergonomics of the individual settings that won't show in the end product, but will make some video extremely hard to shoot with one of these devices.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
...is the one you have with you, when you need it.
The DSLR has all the features one would want for a video camera, full control etc... balance.. etc... zoom lens,
Wow, it can take photos, hey dude, do you know what a video is, its nothing more than 30 stills per second in sequence.
Yeah, id rather carry two devices, made by canon, using the same Chipset.
Still camera, video camera, both have SDHC and lots of storage, dont be a dumb stupid ass, and compare it to phsyically carrying a load.
Your comparison is just plain DUMB.
Dude, wait till your phone has the same digichipset as a $400 DSLR. Technology will advance past your old stereo types and NEED to have a 1980s video of a VIDEO CAMERA vs a STILL CAMERA.
There is no reason why both can merge and NEED to.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
We can already fab counters that are *way* faster than that. 1 ns is 1 GHz. 10 is only .1 GHz or 100 MHz. I must be missing something here?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
This is why I still own video cameras. I use one at work - an older Sony tape-based one that cost about $5000 - and my personal video camera cost about $2000. There's nothing about a dSLR that screams "buy me". My video cameras have great auto focus, built in mics, the ability to attach XLR mics, the Sony has 3 CMOS sensors as well as built-in ND filters.
Around $5000 today will get a professional 4K video camera that is just as easy to handle and records in a 422 high bit rate codec without any external equipment, nor does it need a viewfinder attached.
There is a place for dSLRs, but they are not a replacement for most videography.
You can have the biggest, baddest sensor you like on a smart phone, it is NEVER going to compare favorably to a DSLR, or proper video camera simply due to the ability of the lense to capture light and give you proper depth of field.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
obviously, under ideal conditions for the samsung (brightly lit, mounted to a tripod, canon lens stopped down, canon footage graded in post to match the overly sharp look & oversaturated colors of the galaxy), they will produce similar videos. but that's the one exception, not the rule.
I have a Note 3 and while the video quality is pretty good, the low light photography (as in anything not perfectly lit) is shockingly bad.
Night is when small sensors and show all their noisy crappyness.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Here's an open source firmware project for Canons that can help free your camera.
http://magiclantern.wikia.com/...
"If you're not passionate about your operating system, you're married to the wrong one."
I'm surprised nobody has brought up color gamut yet. I have to roll my eyes whenever I see that Samsung vs Apple commercial "So your Galaxy has more pixels" So what? You could be shooting 8k video and it would still suck if the device were only 8-bit.
I don't know about this case, but the claim that oenophiles, or even normal wine drinkers, can't tell the difference between wines is total bullshit.
I am from a European wine-producing area, and I often played "recognize the wine" with friends, and we have daily conversations about which wine to serve for friends coming over.
Very rarely we would mistake one of our wines for another.
It is however true that what matters is the wine itself, not the price tag.
There are very good wines that are very reasonably priced, and overpriced wines that are no better or worse than much cheaper ones.
But this kind of ideas, very present on slashdot, by which experts don't know what they are talking about, and everything is more or less the same, comes from childish, smartass attitudes.
Depth of field.
Well, I know for sure that the 5D Mark II was used to shoot some scenes of the Captain America movie. Not sure if it's right to call it a wrong tool.
http://www.digitalcamerareview.com/default.asp?newsID=4799
You know, if I go and dig a square hole with a showel, then dig another one with excavator, you couldn't tell the difference either. Or maybe you could, if you looked carefully, but for all practical purposes the end result would be the same. That doesn't mean the people who dig holes for a living do it with showels. This is actually a pretty damn good analogy, and it's almost about cars. Showel is easier to carry around, if the ground is soft and the hole you have to dig isn't too big it might be on par with the excavator. If the ground is rocky, or the needed ditch is large, or any other non-normal situation, the excavator wins.
That's only true if you want documentary style pictures with no DOF and, as you said, the conditions are good. That being said, my phone has replaced my tiny pocket camera. My phone cam isn't as good, but it's good enough, as the most important property of the tiny pocket cam was the tinyness, and the fact that it was always with me. My DSLR? Big, bulky, and you can pry it from my cold dead hands (not so far off scenario, as it actually does work in minus 20 degrees of celcius, and I do shoot in the winter as well. My phone wouldn't work.) Different lenses, depth of field, _WAY_ more control over the exposure, _WAY_ more ergonomical to use. Instant shutter release, tracking fast autofocus, manual focus, easily exchangeable memory cards, batteries, weather proofing. And the one thing that I guess wins the image quality war hands down; it doesn't fit in my pocket, so so, in real use the lens isn't covered with grease and lint from my pocket as my phones camera is.
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 end result with the tires is also the same. After he is done you can't tell if he did the job with a torque wrench or a leatherman. I have a small olympus mirrorless camera, and compared to my 7D it sucks balls. Not image quality wise, but from usability point of view. Yes, if the target isn't going anywhere so I have time to fiddle around menus making the settings the end result will be same for all practical purposes. But for gods sake the camera is annoying to use. It's too small to hold comfortably. Every setting is hidden in some sub menu of a sub menu. The only roller it has is doing stupid things by default. It severely lacks buttons. Yes it's small and light, but it won't fit in my pocket, and it's really not that much smaller than my 7D. So now it's waiting for my kid to grow one more year so he can have it as a toy.
The bonus round suggests that most of the softness in the Canon images lies in the camera's JPEG processing. There is much more visible detail in the RAW images, bringing them on a par with the Samsung images, and they retain the advantage in dynamic range. The Sigma zoom lens was probably also not the best choice to get the most out of the Canon body.
So... the phone isn't going to take the place of a good camcorder or DSLR for shooting movies. Yet. Besides the problems with shadow and highlight detail, it also falls down on creative control, low light ability, and lens flexibility. And probably audio as well. But the twilight of the dedicated camera may be closer than we think.
The canon eos 6d's quantum efficiency is about 48%, latest generation top end dslr's hang around that area, not 10%. Still pretty far away from cameras often used on telescopes, but decent.
What surprised me in this video and in the 5D Mark III 14 bit RAW Video with Magic Lantern video is how low resolution you seem to get from the 5D Mark IIII. It seems rather blurry even in 1080p. I did not expect that.
Actually it seems slightly worse than my full-HD car dvr.
I have a long time been angry at my pocket camera (Sony) for not giving me the 14Mp it should have. The image files are that big, but it seems to be blurry and grouped in a way that I can maybe use a fourth of those pixels.
Where does this blurring come from?
If it needs to be there, I can totally see why you would want to use a sensor that is 4x the size of the target resolution.
I have no doubt whatsoever that the Canon 5D is a more useful full-HD camera when it comes to lenses and settings. But I didn't expect the sensor resolution to be that bad, and the effects from it.