[grispie]

A moving subject in the frame when SR is turned on can induce nausea!!!
Steve

Maybe the bird was not feeling too well?

[Steve.Ledger]

Apparently the electronic SR system is based on subject tracking rather than camera inertia.

Exactly..

But can we stick to the topic - it's about the Pentax Movie SR - not my breathing, not compared to other systems or that I hand held at 300mm or even the bird's health.
(btw - Re: Hand held, I have a Panasonic camcorder that has mechanical Image Stabilization and can easily be hand held at 12x zoom with excellent results, longer than 300mm)

[stevebrot]

Ok...on topic.

I just spent a goodly amount of time fiddling with the K-3 SR both on and off and generally the SR worked pretty well. My "essential tremor" was minimized and nobody got sick watching the clips. The only time there was a problem was when panning or when the subject was very prominent and in motion relative to the camera. Now conventional wisdom is that SR should be turned off when panning, so that leaves the case where the subject is moving and the camera is stationary. That would be the classic wind-ruffled bird on a wire or leaf in the wind. In that case we can get a frame shift that can be pretty dramatic (say 20% of frame) That is is addition to whatever jello might be present due to rolling shutter. On a small scale these two can be hard to distinguish. It can be very disconcerting. I also tried SR off with a monopod held "in hand". That worked well...surprisingly well.

Now for comparison, I took a look at some of the hand-held video on DigitalRev TV. Ummmm...now I don't feel so bad about my K-3. Those guys make money with that kind of junk?

My conclusion? If I worked for the government, it would definitely be good enough. Since I don't work for the government and tend to be a picky sort of person, I may well tire of that joke of a SR system and move to another camera brand. If Joe was posting, he would chime in that it was about time I saw the light. Steve L. would simply post a smiley

For now, I guess that I will use what I have until the pain becomes more than I can bear.


Steve (the other)

[TomGarn]

I took a closer look at your example video (above) and I am not sure that the jerkiness of the bird is due to the SR system.
The wire and background objects seem to be immune. Are we seeing rolling shutter or something else related to subject movement?

Even K-7 and K-5 can't smoothen all tremor - they do produce ugly and oily roll-backs when panning and zooming.
But OK, that old sensor SR works well enough under certain controlled conditions. The K-3 SR is freaky and crappy.

The problem with digital SR in K-3 ... or in my case watching warp stabilisation on Premiere. I came to understand more.
It is bound to happen when the camera has not taken enough frames to be able to create a smooth new picture.
When you are moving fast - or trembling because of tele-mode - you will have missing links between your frames
and because the warp (or digital SR) doesn't render new inter-frame-content ... you either get a visible transition - or
in case of the K-3 it constructs artificial new objects beyond real laws of natural objects - it just shortens or extends
the body of the bird - which is nauseating and unwanted of course ... Here 50p might help a lot I suppose.

Also warp stabilisation only works if you got enough "flesh" (frames) or it starts bending and flickering the object
or background like on LSD ...

---

Last edited by TomGarn; 08-22-2014 at 12:28 PM.

[stevebrot]

Even K-7 and K-5 can't smoothen all tremor - they do produce ugly and oily roll-backs when panning and zooming.
But OK, that old sensor SR works well enough under certain controlled conditions. The K-3 SR is freaky and crappy.

The problem with digital SR in K-3 ... or in my case watchin warp stabilisation on Premiere. I came to understand more.
It is bound to happen when the camera has not taken enough frames to be able to create a smooth new picture.
When you are moving fast - or trembling because of tele-mode - you will have missing links between your frames
and because the warp (or digital SR) doesn't render new inter-frame-content ... you either get a visible transition - or
in case of the K-3 it constructs artificial new objects beyond real laws of natural objects - it just shortens or extends
the body of the bird - which is nauseating and unwanted of course ... Here 50p might help a lot I suppose.

Also warp stabilisation only works if you got enough "flesh" (frames) or it starts bending and flickering the object
or background like on LSD ...

Makes sense.

Steve

[PiDicus Rex]

Steve (s) : Yeah, the Movie SR is rubbish. Turn it off and just say you were shooting a new Micheal Bay inspired sequence at the time

300mm is tough to hold still, but the SR Jello just makes it worse - I won't even use it with a 24mm and 0.5 Wide Screw On unit.

[TomGarn]

Compare this to Pentax's good old (sensor) SR ... Here's Pansonic's (optical) O.I.S !
(... or dream nightmares about the movie SR on modern Pentax)

One test shows that even even while on tripod the Panasonic manages to pan better than
that oily Pentax roll-back ... (which of course is better than the movie SR of the K-3)

And finally we may wonder here about the handheld Optical Image Stabilisation (35 + 100mm)

[7samurai]

I wish they would add the option to use mechanical or digital SR for video.

[TomGarn]

I wish they would add the option to use mechanical or digital SR for video.

Yes, that would be better than now - but both ways of SR ultimately are not good enough.

If you go with that good'ole sensor-SR - Pentaxians lovingly prefer - every camera-movement is highly problematic.
Indeed we should have a red-button to immediately put SR out of order - and vise versa - at any wanted moment,
(at least) .... Or create a better stabilisation system together with a new and clever business-strategy !

But Pentax is in a logical mess, there is only one way out of this problem: Get an optical image stabilisation in the
lense which seems to do the job almost perfectly - - - But Penatx can't allow this new principle to mature in their
cameras (up to now) because this would end their history of sensor SR - they would need a new beginning then.

For years their shake reduction was not in the lense - and for photos this was a great job to help out on any old
glass that gratefully still works well with their on-body-stabilisation.
Tamron never needed to implement the stabi when they procuced their lenses for Pentax. Users could get Tamron's
good budget-lenses for half of the price a high-end Pentax glass would cost ....
If Pentax would dare to try a new beginning, Tamron would jump on that business and leave Pentax almost empty
handed - except for those rich users who would prefer waterresistant and dust-prooved expensive Pentax glasses.
That new path would kill the business for the masses - of course - and take away even more energy from Pentax.

Pentax has done a great job for their photographers - but for video they can only do suicide if they wanted to create
a really good video-DSLR ... That is the double-edged conflict with Pentax - and you can see a great producer tumble
as how to fix this problem with lots of courage and a very enlightened new business-vision. The dilemma can be seen.

I would love Tamron glasses with their shake reduction - I know that system when I filmed with Canon. But I can see
that Tamron's friendly coexistance with camera-producers would aggressively kill good reltions - they can't risk this.
Also Pansonic is far ahead in that segment of in-lense-stabilising.

Here some realy intelligent masterplan would be needed !