This article at DVXuser has lots of people talking about the aliasing in all DSLR cameras shooting video.
http://www.dvxuser.com/articles/article.php/20
It’s probably the best article available that explains why this happens and, more importantly, what it does to real world images.
But is it the whole story?
Years ago I came across the concept of artifacts. One definition of artifacts is “evidence that work was done”. From an archeological perspective artifacts are left from human habitation. From a video perspective the biggest artifact is the video itself.
The question is… what other artifacts are you leaving?
If you use a DSLR to capture the images you’ll leave behind aliased pictures. If your video has nothing but people’s faces with soft focus backgrounds the aliasing will make everything look wonderful.
If your video is full of shots of brick buildings, waves on water, fluttering tree leaves, clothing with small patterns, or clear shots of lines running at angles the aliasing will drive some people crazy.
The audience attention can move from your story to the weird images on the screen. Or they may stop watching completely.
But the same thing is true about the artifacts of the sounds you captured, the edits you made, the mix, the compression of the final and every other part of the production. To say nothing of the artifacts left by the writing, talent, directing, lighting, sets, costumes, and camera work.
Everything you do create artifacts. Someone once said that the mark of a professional is that they make it look easy, like no work was done. The artifacts left behind are just the most pleasing ones, the ones that make the project actually work.
From one perspective, your job becomes a balancing act of choosing which artifacts to create and which to leave behind. Choosing the camera to capture the images is a key decision but far from the only one.
-a-
