Hi, this is Jay P. Morgan. Today on The Slanted Lens I have to admit I screwed up when I shot the Sony A1 versus the Canon R5c. I saw a crop factor. I was confused by it. But I was getting it and consistently getting it. And of course I heard all the comments on the channel that pointed out the fact that I had messed up. And indeed, I had messed up. But this is what I was seeing when I was in 8k and I recorded in 8k. I get this beautiful full-frame shot. It’s amazing, right? Now when I stopped that and I go into menu and I go to 4K I get a major crop. It doesn’t matter which one of the different settings I did in 4k. They all had the same crop factor. And that’s what we ran with.

Unfortunately, we sent the A1 back. I didn’t have an opportunity to figure out exactly what I had done wrong. But when we got the A1 back it became very obvious that what had happened here was the APS-C was set to Auto. So what that does is it automatically turns on the APS-C when you go to the 4K modes. There is a sense that it’s just cropping the sensor. There’s no manipulation to that. There’s no binning. There’s nothing. That’s just giving you the sensor when you you’re in that mode. And that’s why that automatically comes on if you have Auto on.

If you turn that off, now when I shoot 4K I don’t get a crop. And it looks exactly the same as the 8K footage.

So let’s take a look at each one of the different file formats in 8k and 4K when the auto APS-C crop is on. So let’s take a look first at the 8K full frame. Great, 8K that’s the XAVC HS 8K. Now let’s take a look at the XAVC HS 4K. It crops in automatically. Now let’s take a look at the XAVC S 4K. It crops in automatically. Now let’s take a look at the XAVC S-I 4K. It crops in automatically.

Now let’s take a look at the different file formats when we turn that APS-C sensor from Auto to just off. We’re going to turn it off so it won’t crop. So there’s our 8K. We’ve seen that. Now let’s look at the XAVC 4K the HS 4K there’s no crop here now. Now let’s take a look at the XAVC S, no crop. Last of all the XAVC S-I 4K, no crop.

So what happens when you have an 8K sensor and you have to show the entire image in 4k? It’s got to throw some information away. It can’t show you 4K out of 8K unless it gets rid of something. So it has to go through a process either line skipping or pixel binning. It’s got to do something to be able to take that 8K information and get rid of it so it can show you the entire frame in 4k. So what I want to do now, just out of curiosity, I want us to take a look at that 4K where the camera has thrown away some of the information to give us the whole frame, but let’s crop in on that. And let’s compare that to just the 4K that automatically cropped with the APS-C sensor. Let’s compare those two at the same size and see if the one where the camera had to throw all that information away is not as good a quality as when you crop in using the APS-C sensor. I think you’ll find that it is much higher quality and looks better. So here are those two side by side.

So what did I learn from this? Well, I’ve learned that I need to get a hold of cameras faster when we have some questions so I can answer them quicker. But we at least resolved it and here we are. I understand that we did mess up. But we’re going to move on. Second thing I learned is that if you’re going to crop in and you want to show a crop, you’re better off to shoot the crop version than you are to take and crop in on the 4K version that has already been interpolated from 8K. So if you’re going to crop in on something use that 4K crop versus going to interpolate frame and then cropping in. That’s a bad idea.

So I’m not sure the application, how often would you use that? You know, if you just want to get tighter on something I used to think well if I go to the APS-C sensor I’m just getting tighter on things I’m just cropping in. But I am cropping in and it’s interesting that it is a pretty high quality crop in. Versus cropping in on interpolated image which doesn’t give you as high of quality. So a little tidbit there. I hope you enjoyed this. We set things straight and we’re just going to move on. So keep those cameras rollin’ keep on clickin’!

So I’ve been wandering around LA with the HEIPI Tripod now for several days and I have really enjoyed using it. It is very quick to set up. There are so many features on it that have been thought through. It is compact. It is lightweight. It’s super simple to use. That inner column becomes a column or a small tripod. And I have really enjoyed using it. It is made to travel. For a lightweight, compact tripod I don’t think you can find better than this.

Hey, over there. Hey, a little help here. I’m feeling green man. Come on. Come over here. I just need you to click on the 18 % gray on my Spyder Checkr. Come on, just give it, click on it. Click on it. It’s going to make me look better. There you go again, just click, click. Ah, there you go. Don’t I look better? You should feel better because I look better. It’s that easy. So get your Spyder Checkr and they’re my Datacolor. It’s just that easy. Shoot a few frames of video at the beginning. Click on the 18 % gray in editing and you can color balance your footage. You get a great starting point. It’s just that easy!