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Making pictures off of Vixia HV 40 camcorder frames
I have the Vixia hv40 camcorder/Canon.
Uses the mini dv tapes.
Now, of course, we can make pictures out of individual frames of the video footage.
I want to make pictures of some of the frames to be used in a book.
I was told that the pictures you can make off of the video footage is not as high a quality as if you were simply using a 35 mm camera.
How much of a difference is there in quality?
I can go back to the locations and take pictures w 35 mm if need be but just wondering if I can get by using the pics made off of the video footage?
I guess I can just go ahead and make pictures both ways and compare.
I will do that but just wondering if there is any feedback here?
I can also ask Canon, but they are the ones who told me that the quality of pictures off of the camcorder frames/footage is not as high quality as you would get w a 35 mm.
Lenovo quad core i7 16gb of ram, Windows 8.1 MS 13 64 bit
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6 Replies
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[Jeff David] “I was told that the pictures you can make off of the video footage is not as high a quality as if you were simply using a 35 mm camera.. How much of a difference is there in quality? “
The difference HUGE!
NTSC DV is 655×480 square pixels. That’s 314,400 pixels. That’s less than 1/3 of a megapixel!!! Most modern DSLR’s are 12 megapixel (that’s 36x more resolution). Even 7 year old DSLR’s were 5MP. Heck, my iPhone 6 is 8MP. So your’e talking about an incredibly small picture.
If you were to print it on paper, it would be 2.4 inches by 1.6 inches. That’s probably not enough quality to use in a book unless it was a very small insert.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
OK I see, it’s all about the pixels. Duh? I guess I should have known to go by the pixel count.
I see now that is the measure of quality.
Uh I sort of knew that but wasn’t thinking along those lines.
Now I will always remember quality = pixels.
I was going to try to get by w making pics off the frames of video but I now understand that would be a hugh mistake.
OK so I can go out w my 35 mm and take the pictures I need that way.
I’ll have to go back to all of the same places, w the 35 mm but that won’t be too hard to do.
Besides, it’s a hobby anyways.
Thanks John!
Lenovo quad core i7 16gb of ram, Windows 8.1 MS 13 64 bit
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I went schlepping around this weekend taking pictures w my 35 mm camera of the historic spots that I want to make into a book.
I want to do a book version of my video project after I finish the video project. Of course, that’s all about all of the historic location around where I live in Boston.
Now, I understand what you were saying about the pixels and why printing pics off of my video frames won’t cut it.
Don’t laugh at this, well ok – you can laugh but what if I took pictures w my 35 mm camera right off of my computer screen, of the frames that I want to make into conventional type pictures?
I.e. stop my video on the frames that I want to make into pictures, take a picture of the picture on my computer screen?
It wouldn’t be too too hard to go back to all of the actual locations and take the pictures w the 35 mm camera, but it would be somewhat of a pain in the neck. I’ll go back if I have to, but I actually video taped pictures our of books (that were in the public domain) and put them in my video project and they look fine. So I’m thinking it might be the same if I just take 35 mm pictures right off of my computer screen?
I guess I can DO it and then see how the pictures look.
Yea, I guess I can just find out that way.
Hope this all does not sound too absurd but it will be a pain to go back to those places again, but I will if I have to.
Lenovo quad core i7 16gb of ram, Windows 8.1 MS 13 64 bit
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In a way you’re just scaling them up on the screen so you could do the same with an image editor. ON1 makes Perfect Photo Suite that has a really good upscaler called Perfect Resize. I’ve used it to upscale photos before and it does an outstanding job.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Oh wow. Great! Cool. I felt kinda stupid asking that question but maybe not. I’m going to take the pictures off of the screen w my 35 mm and see if there is a difference w live shots.
It worked pretty good when I video taped pics out of books (in the public domain) and put them in my video project. The pictures looked perfectly fine in the video.
I know taking pics w the 35 mm off of the screen shots is not the same but all I have to do is take a few shots w my camera and see how they look compared to live shots taken.
I’ve been working on this project for 3 years as I can only do it in off hours and there were lots of times I could not work on it at all but Im pretty much had it w going all over the place and just want to get it done now.
Thanks again!
Lenovo quad core i7 16gb of ram, Windows 8.1 MS 13 64 bit
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