{"id":610,"date":"2011-09-27T09:17:10","date_gmt":"2011-09-27T17:17:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/coldstreams.com\/video\/?p=610"},"modified":"2011-09-27T09:17:10","modified_gmt":"2011-09-27T17:17:10","slug":"reducing-image-noise-in-the-canon-xh-a1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/3d\/2011\/09\/27\/reducing-image-noise-in-the-canon-xh-a1\/","title":{"rendered":"Reducing image noise in the Canon XH A1"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/commons.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/File:XhA1.JPG\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"zemanta-img-inserted\" title=\"English: Canon Xh-A1 HDV camcorder\" alt=\"English: Canon Xh-A1 HDV camcorder\" src=\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/1\/15\/XhA1.JPG\/300px-XhA1.JPG\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">English: Canon Xh-A1 HDV camcorder (Photo credit: Wikipedia)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"List of Canon camcorders\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/List_of_Canon_camcorders\" rel=\"wikipedia\">Canon XH A1<\/a> is not very old, but it is tape-based, which today seems quaint and dated!<\/p>\n<p>However, the camera shoots excellent images and its 20x zoom lens remains amazing. \u00a0Even at 1440&#215;1080 HDV, it shoots sharper and lower noise images than most of the consumer 1920&#215;1080 camcorders.<\/p>\n<p>But when comparing to my <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Lumix\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lumix\" rel=\"wikipedia\">Lumix<\/a> GH-2 in daylight, the XH-A1 has some <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Image noise\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Image_noise\" rel=\"wikipedia\">image noise<\/a> that resembles film graininess. Some people actually like that &#8211; I do not. I like clean and smooth images and prefer clean over sharp.<\/p>\n<p>Some tips that I have discovered may be helpful to others.<\/p>\n<p>If you shoot using the default camera options, the camera applies no noise reduction strategies &#8220;out of the box&#8221;. Not surprisingly, there will be some image noise. \u00a0While each scene is going to be different, I have found that by configuring the custom presets with some noise reduction options, I get very clean imagery.<\/p>\n<p>I am using the following as a starting point:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>SHP set to -3<\/li>\n<li>Sky Detail to set to smooth\/soft<\/li>\n<li>NR2 set to &#8220;Low&#8221;.<\/li>\n<li>Coring set to +9<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Noise reduction\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Noise_reduction\" rel=\"wikipedia\">Noise reduction<\/a> can be improved a bit more by setting NR2 to its medium setting, or reducing the sharpness setting a bit more. These modest changes make a very large and noticeable reduction in noise. The NR1 noise reduction option only works on imagery that is not moving or barely moving, otherwise you get &#8220;ghost trails&#8221; in the video.<\/p>\n<p>You can also manually set the lowest gain setting to -3db (instead of 0 db). For <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Digital single-lens reflex camera\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Digital_single-lens_reflex_camera\" rel=\"wikipedia\">DSLR<\/a> shooters, the video gain setting on a video camera is the same idea as setting the <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"International Organization for Standardization\" href=\"http:\/\/www.iso.org\/\" rel=\"homepage\">ISO<\/a> level. More gain is the same as higher ISO, which also implies, more noise.<\/p>\n<p>I remain unconvinced that the -3db setting makes any difference in noise. It does buy an addition 2x neutral density equivalent, which can be useful in broad daylight.<\/p>\n<p>For maximum sharpness, I have found (as have others) that the sharpest images occur at an aperture of around f\/4.0 plus or minus.<\/p>\n<p>I shoot virtually everything in manual modes, usually shutter priority Tv mode, which means I adjust the <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Neutral density filter\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Neutral_density_filter\" rel=\"wikipedia\">neutral density filter<\/a> settings and the shutter speed to get close to around f\/4.0. Much above f\/5.6 and sharpness starts to degrade. \u00a0<strong>You can manually set the aperture to f\/9.5 and the camera&#8217;s automatic features will go as high as f\/22!<em> Images at those aperture settings produce garbage! Incredibly soft, grainy and ugly looking &#8211; don&#8217;t do that! This is the cause of widely reported and unexplained &#8220;grainy&#8221; footage captured with the XH A1 &#8211; using far too high an f-stop for the lens and sensor. The solution is to use ND filters and shutter speed to keep the f-stop in a low range.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Using these tips you can produce some very clean and very sharp video on the XH A1. I recently did some shooting using both the XH A1 and the Lumix GH-2. If you tweak your XH A1 well, it is very difficult to tell the difference between the XH A1 and the GH-2, unless you have a gigantic HDTV. The XH-A1 shoots at 1440&#215;1080 while the GH-2 can shoot at 1920&#215;1080\/24p and \/30p, or also 1280&#215;720\/60p.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>1080\/24p is 49,766,600 pixels per second.<\/li>\n<li>720\/60p is 55,296,000 pixels per second.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Because of how our eyes process images over time, the higher resolution image might not appear as high to our eyes. Weird, huh?<\/p>\n<p>Finally, if you have noisy images already on tape that you would like to clean up, get Neat Video (<a href=\"http:\/\/neatvideo.com\">http:\/\/neatvideo.com<\/a>). This product is fantastic. On my quad core processor, it can take nearly one hour to clean up a minute or two of <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"High-definition video\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/High-definition_video\" rel=\"wikipedia\">HD video<\/a>, but the results are stunning. (I think they just released a new version that may drop the time to 20 to 30 minutes per minute of HD video on my configuration but I have not installed the update yet.)<\/p>\n<h6 class=\"zemanta-related-title\" style=\"font-size: 1em;\">Related articles<\/h6>\n<ul class=\"zemanta-article-ul\">\n<li class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.techradar.com\/news\/photography-video-capture\/cameras\/noise-and-dynamic-range-results-explained-1027588?src=rss&amp;attr=all\">Noise and dynamic range results explained<\/a> (techradar.com)<\/li>\n<li class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nikonusa.com\/Learn-And-Explore\/Photography-Techniques\/g9mqnyb1\/1\/Understanding-ISO.html\">Understanding ISO Sensitivity<\/a> (nikonusa.com)<\/li>\n<li class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li\"><a href=\"http:\/\/adiboustead.wordpress.com\/2011\/09\/27\/shutterspeed\/\">Shutterspeed<\/a> (adiboustead.wordpress.com)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div class=\"zemanta-pixie\" style=\"margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;\"><a class=\"zemanta-pixie-a\" title=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" href=\"http:\/\/www.zemanta.com\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" style=\"border: none; float: right;\" alt=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" src=\"http:\/\/img.zemanta.com\/zemified_e.png?x-id=02fe1d36-76ec-4e7f-a4fa-98e225038fae\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Canon XH A1 is not very old, but it is tape-based, which today seems quaint and dated! However, the camera shoots excellent images and its 20x zoom lens remains amazing. \u00a0Even at 1440&#215;1080 HDV, it shoots sharper and lower noise images than most of the consumer 1920&#215;1080 camcorders. But when comparing to my Lumix &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/3d\/2011\/09\/27\/reducing-image-noise-in-the-canon-xh-a1\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Reducing image noise in the Canon XH A1<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,9,27,28],"tags":[111,139,219,261,264,320],"class_list":["post-610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cameras","category-editing","category-technical","category-techniques","tag-camera","tag-digital-single-lens-reflex-camera","tag-image-noise","tag-list-of-canon-camcorders","tag-lumix","tag-noise-reduction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/3d\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/3d\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/3d\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/3d\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/3d\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/3d\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/3d\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/3d\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/3d\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}