Grainy movie quality with iPhone 4

[bunger]

I wanted to compare the video quality of the iPhone 4 with my FlipHD camera ( both shoot 720p, 30fps, etc ), so I took a couple of video clips with the 4 this morning and then transferred them to my iMac by connecting the phone, launching iPhoto ( iPhone 4 showed up as a device ), selecting the movies, and then importing them into iPhoto. I then watched the clips with Quicktime and I am very underimpressed with the quality - very grainy and slightly blurry in a room with moderate light.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

tia,
Bill

 

[Kadman]

In my testing I specifically tried various lighting conditions from low light all the way up to the harshest bright sun. I would summarize my results as follows:

Low light. Good results as far as focus goes. I see many (and yes I'm comparing this to my Sony 3CCD camcorder) units that "hunt" on focus in low light. I see this as on par with my Sony. Colors aren't as vibrant in low light, but again, I'm comparing it to a 3CCD. Grain is a very common issue in low light and I consider the iPhone to be below average quality here. This I'm comparing it to both my 3CCD and also my Canon 870IS point & shoot camera. I attribute this to the small lens & large sensor ratio. It just can't let enough light in for the sensor size and this is the result. Again, it's common but below average in my mind.

Harsh light. I went outside in the harshest of sun and the iPhone did an absolutely wonderful job of cutting down the light so that hot spots weren't blown out. That said, if you focus on a darker area, it will meter for that area and blow the whites out. That's expected. Colors were great and the image extremely sharp.

Overall I'm impressed enough that I'll use this for video and stills for some situations and not bother taking a "real" camera along. In fact, I think it's actually good enough now that I don't see a need for my point & shoot. If I don't need my digital SLR, the iPhone 4 will do the trick.