SJ5000+ Timelapse Video of Exeter Quay

Half term and a sunny afternoon brought out the bird feeders. Taken using the time lapse function. One second interval, 100 ISO, AWB, (slightly cooled in processing), centre metering, -1.0EV. Assembled using Photoshop CC.

Here

quay from Anthony Collins on Vimeo.

Sj5000+ Post Processing to Improve Video Quality

As a photographer, one thing I can't abide is a washed out sky. Much action cam footage you see shot using default settings has horrible blown out patches of cloud or strange colour casts to what should be blue sky. This is because the small sensor can't handle the high dynamic range in many scenes so defaults to, (hopefully), exposing the main subject correctly whilst the sky takes its chances. If you want to achieve good exposure for the whole scene then a technique to try is to set exposure to the maximum that doesn't blow out the sky then bring up mid tones and shadows in post processing. In the clips below the original clip was shot with exposure set to -1.0EV and AWB at ISO 100. As you can see the sky looks fine, detail visible in the clouds and realistic blue sky patches. Shadows and mids took too dark though, and in the second video the original clip has had a curves adjustment made to brighten mid tones and shadows, with a little tweaking of saturation and colour balance. Unfortunately pushing adjustment of the 8 bit video files too far will result in banding and/or excessive noise but I was very pleasantly surprised that the adjustments I made for this demonstration have not caused any such problems and the SJ5000+ video files are more robust than I gave them credit for.

 

 

 

You can watch these samples together with a bit of pausing to synchronise.

 

The compression Youtube uses degrades video quality terribly so a couple of full 720 video stills:

 

 

One downside of post production adjustments is the resulting slow down in rendering video on my low spec PC. Today's trial was the first action footage I've shot using the SJ5000+ . Pausing allows examination of individual frames and the image is sharp from edge to edge (I won't bang on about the excessive in camera sharpening). Colour is natural looking and there is enough headroom in files to make some adjustments to brightness without images falling apart. Even if the WiFi problems aren't solved I'm inclined to keep the camera. It would be great if SJCAM could add a camera setting to mimic GoPro's Protune setting for the benefit of those of us wanting to squeeze out the last drops of image quality. I would definitely buy again based on the quality of video which can be obtained.

SJ5000+ wifi woes continue

 

 

Just posted a couple of Youtube Videos showing either lack of connection or dropout of SJ5000+wifi with two Android devices.

SJ5000+ Optimum Exposure Setting

Like all small sensor cameras the SJ5000+ has limited dynamic range. Out of the box it tends to blow out highlights resulting in white skies and strange colour casts. I shot some test dashcam video with exposure set to -1.0EV The sky looks pretty good but bright buildings are still blowing out. Other settings were 1080 60P and AWB, no post production adjustments were made. Even underexposed the level of shadow detail looks pretty good and could be boosted in post. I will test at -2.0EV and see if that improves things though I expect some Photoshop work will be required to bring up mid tones and shadows.

Summing up, video is pretty good here and I reckon that better is possible yet.

The Youtube link posted below doesn't do justice to the original which looks much better.

 

 

SJCAM SJ5000+ Firmware Wishlist

There is no doubt that the SJ5000+ is a work in progress and SJCAM may now be regretting their rush to get to market before the 2014 holiday season as the bad feedback from early adopters must be harming their reputation. Unfortunately much of far eastern culture and business relationships is about saving face and it would be a shame if this got in the way of squaring up to any shortcomings which have come to light.

May I suggest that SJCAM need to first address some existing issues:

1. Crashes and freezes.
2. Power management.
3. WiFi stability. (If this is hardware related then offer a rebate or recall)
4. Waterproof case obstructing corners of still images in 4x3 aspect ratio.

When these problems are solved SJCAM could retrieve some kudos from retrospectively adding some new features to the camera.

1. Control over sharpening. Offer a zero sharpening option especially in stills.
2. Auto Shooting. more interval options to allow production of 4K Super High Definition time lapse, 1/2sec, 1sec, possibly some longer than 60sec.
3. Zoom option which crops video image "on chip". That is uses a reduced area of the image sensor and real pixels rather than cropping the video output and uprezzing which exaggerates noise and sharpening artefacts and smears detail.

Finally a suggestion for a model option, (SJ5050?), with a narrower field of view and less fisheye distortion.

My SJ5000+ arrived from China yesterday and I'm just checking it out. First impressions of video and stills are satisfactory.