Tuesday, 25 September 2012

Sony A99 - Gimme Moire!

Actually, I like this camera alot looking at what Sony are doing to gear it towards serious videography. Still, judging by the video examples released there sadly seems to be the same moire and aliasing issues seen on the Nikon D600 which uses the same sensor. I've posted examples below from this video:


Sadly aliasing and moire seem to mar quite alot of the shots, and so I've included some screenshots below. The first image is an example of the aliasing with false color that recurs throughout the video in high contrast areas - here it is visible in the grill of the car. In my opinion this is from the original footage as the screenshot is from the 1080p version of the YouTube video and so isn't subject to downscaling in the compression. H264 compression in itself to my experience doesn't produce this type of artifacts in this manner.


In the following are a few examples of the moire that pops up throughout the film.





And here's an example of how to hide moire (a technique apparently honed to perfection in the Canon 6D launch film 'My Journey'). Overexpose the moire-causing subject:


It's still hard to say how bad it is, although it doesn't look to promising. Also, the Sony A99 seems to tackle highlights pretty poorly with alot of false color artifacts, although this can hopefully be mitigated some by editing the picture profiles. Judging by the way the color artifacts occur I do not thinking it is fringing from the optics used.

Well, are the Canon Mark III and the old Panasonic GH2 the only DSLR's that will give clean images concerning aliasing and moire (and yes - the GH3 has these issues as well with its new Sony sensor)? If that's the case, it's a bit sad.

2 comments:

  1. I shot an interview last night and noticed horrible Moire from my a99 on my subject. The vg20 performed better than the A99

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  2. Yes. It's a real shame Sony keep crippling their DSLR's with poor downscaling. But for this, the A99 would have been a sure buy for me too.

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