Photo vs Photo from video

[AstroEd]

I was wondering if there was a quality difference between a straight dedicated photo shot vs a Photo grabbed from a 4k or 8k video? (I do not know how to grab a single video frame for a photo but I was curious.

Also I come from Astro Photography where I would take Video and stack the desired frames to gain sharpness and lessen noise in a final image, would this be useful in normal Wildlife imagery?

 

[Anjin San]

Photo grabbed from video will be jpeg instead of RAW…and depending on video settings will be lower resolution. Stacking frames might give a little better result in very low light…but needs a subject that is not moving which isn’t that common in wildlife.

 

[TurtleCat]

I have wondered if the still frame is actually a readout from the sensor or built from the video stream as it is recording/encoding.

 

[FB101]

The settings to get great looking video are very different from the settings for great images.
To get smooth video, you need to use a shutter speed ideally 2x the frame rate of the video (so 1/60s for 30fps video, all the way up to 1/250s for 120fps video)
Those shutter speeds ensure a level of blur that seamlessly blends from one frame into the next.
That's not conducive to the best looking stills, especially when action / movement involved.

Of course you can shoot videos at higher shutter speeds - but the higher the shutter speed, the more choppy the video looks.

So yes you can but you'll sacrifice one or the other - they can't be both equally good.

 

[Alistair]

I frequently use stills from 8k video on my Z9. Both 12 bit raw and 10 bit 265. IQ is great. , in fact I very rarely shoot stills. Remember, a ML camera is a video camera with codecs for stills.

The Z9 does 12 bit raw at 60fps. Given the number of frames per second, you are likely to luck out and get a sharp one regardless of shutter speed. This is from 8.3k/60 footage at 1/120 second of a fast fly catch. (click to enlarge).

EDIT: BTW, to grab a still in Davinci Resolve, RH click on the preview from the Colour module.

 

[FB101]

I frequently use stills from 8k video on my Z9. Both 12 bit raw and 10 bit 265. IQ is great. , in fact I very rarely shoot stills. Remember, a ML camera is a video camera with codecs for stills.

The Z9 does 12 bit raw at 60fps. Given the number of frames per second, you are likely to luck out and get a sharp one regardless of shutter speed. This is from 8.3k/60 footage at 1/120 second of a fast fly catch. (click to enlarge).

EDIT: BTW, to grab a still in Davinci Resolve, RH click on the preview from the Colour module.

Impressive. I think that’s where the far superior ibis / in lens stabilization of the z9 / Nikon lenses shows versus my Sony A1. I very rarely ‘luck out” on a sharp frame even at 120fps.

 

[wotan1]

I start from the perspective that I know very little about video. I was going to get involved but when i started reading into it I felt I already had my hands full with still photography.

The THom Hogan book on the Nikon z8/9 does an excellent job of explaining how video works and introducing a lot of information on various settings and modes. It was an eye opener for me.

I start with a little common sense. I think the human eye sees an image evey 1/30 or 1/60 a second. Because of the way our eye works we can't stop action at for instance 1/3200 second to capture detail on a bird in flight.

Now imagine a video is shooting at 1/60 a second. Now imagine you are shooting RAW stills with the camera and are taking a new picture every 1/60 second. Plus you are doing that for 1 hour straight. That is a LOT of still images.

Well video doesn't work like that. A single video image does not capture the same detail as a single still shot. Instead the video blurs the image for things that are moving so things look similar to the way we see things in real life.

If I understand all this a program that extracts stills from a motion picture must have some kind of algorithm to extract pieces from different frames and combine them into a single still image. So yeah you can get a pretty sharp photo extracted in this way from a video feed.

Like I said video is not my thing and I may have all this backwards.

But I do strongly recommend the THom Hogan books for an intro to video.

 

[Alistair]

I start from the perspective that I know very little about video. I was going to get involved but when i started reading into it I felt I already had my hands full with still photography.

The THom Hogan book on the Nikon z8/9 does an excellent job of explaining how video works and introducing a lot of information on various settings and modes. It was an eye opener for me.

I start with a little common sense. I think the human eye sees an image evey 1/30 or 1/60 a second. Because of the way our eye works we can't stop action at for instance 1/3200 second to capture detail on a bird in flight.

Now imagine a video is shooting at 1/60 a second. Now imagine you are shooting RAW stills with the camera and are taking a new picture every 1/60 second. Plus you are doing that for 1 hour straight. That is a LOT of still images.

Well video doesn't work like that. A single video image does not capture the same detail as a single still shot. Instead the video blurs the image for things that are moving so things look similar to the way we see things in real life.

If I understand all this a program that extracts stills from a motion picture must have some kind of algorithm to extract pieces from different frames and combine them into a single still image. So yeah you can get a pretty sharp photo extracted in this way from a video feed.

Like I said video is not my thing and I may have all this backwards.

But I do strongly recommend the THom Hogan books for an intro to video.

That is not really how it works. The blurred frames in video come from the slower shutter speeds used - generally the shutter speed is twice the frame rate. So 1/120 for 60 fps. There is no chicanery involved in blurring or removing blur. Extracting a sharp image is a game of chance but with reasonable to good odds depending on the population size (frame rate). At any point of an action sequence there is generally a minute pause, a change of direction for example, where the main subject of interest is sharp.