Shooting in 16:9 VS. shooting 4:3 & manually cropping (miniDV)

[TheWitchesTit]

Hi! I have a project ahead of me and I'm going to be using a miniDV Camcorder (Sony DCR-HC51e / HC52) for which I recently bought a little wide angle lens adapter. The adapter works fine, creates quite a Fish-Eye-effect, but that's fine I want that. What I don't want so much is the adapter ring's black border that shows up on the outer edges of the screen. I can eliminate it by shooting in 16:9 mode, but then I'm killing off quite a bit of frame content with it.

Now, I'm wondering:
Does shooting in 16:9 produce higher quality results than shooting in 4:3 and then cropping it down to 16:9?

The latter method would leave me more options, so I'd prefer it. But I wouldn't want too much quality loss.
All this camcorder does when enabling 16:9 is add black bars to the viewfinder/display. The image doesn't actually get wider (as is the case with the Canon XL-2 in 16:9 mode for example). The captured avi-file naturally has a 16:9 aspect ratio, but I wonder whether the whole chip gets used for recording in 16:9 mode or if the camera just crops top and bottom like I would do in editing later on.

[jagabo]

Does shooting in 16:9 produce higher quality results than shooting in 4:3 and then cropping it down to 16:9?

It depends on the camcorder. Some shoot 4:3 then crop and resize -- so it would be the same as doing it yourself. Others shoot natively at 16:9 in which case you'll get better quality.

[TheWitchesTit]

How can I find out which type the camcorder does? It's a Sony DCR-HC51e (which is exactly the same as DCR-HC52, the e is for Europe I guess).

I reckon the fact that it just adds black bars on the viewfinder is an indication for it NOT shooting native 16:9 (also it's a rather cheap model), but I'd like to know for sure.
Will this be listed under the technical specs over at Sony?


edit:

it says "16:9 Wide (Full) Recording: NO" - is that it?

[Steve Stepoway]

Does shooting in 16:9 produce higher quality results than shooting in 4:3 and then cropping it down to 16:9?

It depends on the camcorder. Some shoot 4:3 then crop and resize -- so it would be the same as doing it yourself. Others shoot natively at 16:9 in which case you'll get better quality.

Yeah, except the camcorder is probably cropping and resizing nearly raw image data, before the DV compression is applied. If you do it yourself, it's DV-compressed images being resized. That almost certainly costs you a little. Is it enough to notice? The only way to know is to try it and see what happens with that particular camcorder. That's why people do all kinds of test shooting.

[aedipuss]

How can I find out which type the camcorder does? It's a Sony DCR-HC51e (which is exactly the same as DCR-HC52, the e is for Europe I guess).

I reckon the fact that it just adds black bars on the viewfinder is an indication for it NOT shooting native 16:9 (also it's a rather cheap model), but I'd like to know for sure.
Will this be listed under the technical specs over at Sony?


edit:

it says "16:9 Wide (Full) Recording: NO" - is that it?

you found the answer. it doesn't have a 16/9 sensor, so it's cropping 4:3.

[TheWitchesTit]

Alright, thanks for the replies!

That bit about the raw data is to consider... I will do a little test shoot. It's quite a lo-fi project, so the quality bar isn't set all that high, but I may want to brighten up the footage in editing, and less compression would be better for that.

Speaking of compression, here's another thing I've been wondering about...

Is it possible (with traditional hardware, camcorder + firewire) to capture a miniDV-tape in a higher resolution than regular DV-avi? Maybe as an HD-mp4-file, to avoid compression...? Wouldn't the result look slightly better, even though the resolution of the camera is only 720x576?