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Samsung NX1's Smart Range+ and 0-255 luma


Andrew Reid
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The NX1 definitely has higher resolution than almost any other 4k camera, but it is definitely also sharpened digitally as well. It's more obvious in FHD too. 

Regarding the luma range; I'm really surprised you guys didn't know about this earlier. This is a "trick" that works on Sony files as well. However, I found there to be little difference in DR between shooting at 16-235 and shooting at 0-255 and using the Fast Color Corrector.

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11 hours ago, tugela said:

It is not oversharpened. It has higher resolution than most other 4K cameras due to the oversampled sensor.

People call it "oversharpened" because they are conditioned by cameras with poor resolution into thinking that is what it is supposed to look like, but actually those cameras just have poor resolution.

yh... RED Helium, Sony F65 and ARRI 65 have poor resulotion then. lol

nope.
The NX1 is just extremely oversharpened, even at -10.
Professional cameras don't suffer from that problem. But most consumers are conditioned by manufacturers that oversharpening means detail, it does not.

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Even if you do think it's over sharpened at -10 (I don't - it looks similar to a Canon JPEG on default sharpness and no photographers are rounding on Canon claiming their photos are 'over sharpened') then it is a rather easy problem to fix.

Downscale to 2.8K then upscale to 4K again.

And if you want to fix your shooting style to get a less 'sharp' result there are numerous techniques, easiest being -

Black Mist Pro on the lens and softer light, more diffusion.

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10 hours ago, deezid said:

yh... RED Helium, Sony F65 and ARRI 65 have poor resulotion then. lol

nope.
The NX1 is just extremely oversharpened, even at -10.
Professional cameras don't suffer from that problem. But most consumers are conditioned by manufacturers that oversharpening means detail, it does not.

It is not oversharpened. It has higher resolution than most other 4K cameras due to the oversampled sensor.

People call it "oversharpened" because they are conditioned by cameras with poor resolution into thinking that is what it is supposed to look like, but actually those cameras just have poor resolution.

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1 hour ago, tugela said:

It is not oversharpened. It has higher resolution than most other 4K cameras due to the oversampled sensor.

People call it "oversharpened" because they are conditioned by cameras with poor resolution into thinking that is what it is supposed to look like, but actually those cameras just have poor resolution.

The guy provided you with an article showing evidence of sharpening and you're still denying it. Why? 

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On 07/08/2017 at 1:21 PM, Inazuma said:

The NX1 definitely has higher resolution than almost any other 4k camera, but it is definitely also sharpened digitally as well. It's more obvious in FHD too.

In FHD it's the aliasing that causes the sharpened look, not the digital sharpening algorithm.

This is all a bit of a pointless argument because in 4K on the NX1 you have the option in post how sharp or soft you want to go.

The NX1 has a superb image.

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2 hours ago, Inazuma said:

I'm in the mood for pointless arguments.

I think I know the difference between digital sharpening, aliasing and real resolution.

And no one here is saying the NX1 has a garbage image just because of digital sharpening.

It's just, the camera would have so much more potential, if there wasn't the crazy internal processing.
The resolution is there, but fine low contrast detail gets smudged by heavy noise reduction and high contrast enhanced by strong sharpening. Very digital looking sadly.

Real detail:
RED Helium, ARRI 65, Sony F65
They all have perfect 4K with no aliasing and even worse sharpening nor noise reduction artifacts, since they don't use any.

*not sure about the RED Helium though, some Noise Reduction in shadows I think since there's not much detail, the RED Epic was way more detailed in shadow areas. But no visible sharpening.

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3 hours ago, deezid said:

It's just, the camera would have so much more potential, if there wasn't the crazy internal processing.
The resolution is there, but fine low contrast detail gets smudged by heavy noise reduction and high contrast enhanced by strong sharpening. Very digital looking sadly.

Real detail:
RED Helium, ARRI 65, Sony F65
They all have perfect 4K with no aliasing and even worse sharpening nor noise reduction artifacts, since they don't use any.

*not sure about the RED Helium though, some Noise Reduction in shadows I think since there's not much detail, the RED Epic was way more detailed in shadow areas. But no visible sharpening.

Incorrect. All cameras that use a Beyer filter are going to have artifacts, especially if they are not oversampled. It is the nature of the beast. The process of debeyering is going to produce halos at high contrast edges no matter what you do because color information is inaccurate at that part of the image. The only way to correct for that is to use either a high level of oversampling or to blur out the resolution of those edges, which is what your "detailed" cameras are doing. Do not make the mistake of confusing color resolution with what you get with a grey scale target btw, which eliminates the errors introduced by color. That just tells you what your lens resolution is, not what the camera is resolving in a real image after processing. Shooting at anything other than 4:4:4 is going to introduce artifacts as well. The only way to approach true 4K in terms of resolution is to shoot a 6K or 8K image. Any camera that does not do this is not delivering a true 4K image.

Detail in shadow areas has more to do with dynamic range than resolution.

11 hours ago, Inazuma said:

The guy provided you with an article showing evidence of sharpening and you're still denying it. Why? 

Whatever he provided is in german so who knows what they hell it says, or if they are even comparing what he thinks they are comparing.

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  • 4 months later...
On 8/4/2017 at 5:11 AM, Andrew Reid said:

When the NX1 came out Philip Bloom bought it but didn't use it very much as he said the dynamic range was limited.

I thought it was a bit limited too, turns out we were both wrong...

Here is the effect of Fast Colour Corrector in Premiere changing output levels to 16-235 for NX1 clips recorded in 0-255 RGB range mode.

nx10235.jpg

Original file - blown out clouds...

nx10255.jpg

And here is an additional 1-2 stops in the highlights from enabling Smart Range + in-camera -

SAM_0050b.jpg

SAM_0051b.jpg

I'd put this camera right up there for image quality now... Right near the top of the pile.

Both sample images shot with the superb NXL adapter by the way with Canon 50mm F1.2L full frame FOV and DOF. Thanks Luca :)

I think you got the order of the first two images mixed up?

Amazing how much range was actually preserved. Smart Range+ is just for stills correct? 

Do you (or anyone) have any experience with either Tiffen's Black Pro Mist (or any of their diffusion line) or Schnieder's Hollywood Black magic filters, specifically with the NX1?

I'm getting close to jumping to an Ursa 4.6k Pro but want to give my NX1 more exploration as far as pushing it to feel more filmic and creamy. I love the camera, it's weight, size, handling, features and menu are just very pleasant to work with. Besides, I have 4 NX glass. 

Having that highly detailed 6.5k sensor gives me a lot of bandwidth, but I need the option of subtle detail where it matters and better rolloff in the highlights and shadows, which if you examine footage from say a RED you notice these features. 

I've been applying a small amount of guassian blur to my footage to help in this effort, which helps with the over sharpness, but it doesn't solve rolloff, which is a big factor of high dynamic range and obviously why REDs and Arris and VariCams are king of the feature film industry.  

I'm also currently experiementing with Neat Video to help with 8bit banding, but it's so proccesor intensive, at least on my machine. If I could use a diffusion filter in front of my lens, I think it could be an interesting and much less taxing way to go. 

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