Quality and Sharpness - What Do They Mean?

[TeriTerryTarry]

On an SJ4000 Wi-Fi there are menu settings for Quality and Sharpness, but what do these terms really mean? Do they apply to recording videos and taking photos? What does the image processor do when these settings are changed? In the world of full-featured digital cameras or camcorders would they go by a different name?

 

[jokiin]

quality most likely changes the bitrate (that's what would normally happen), sharpness is best turned off or to low as it generally does a poor job, if any sharpness is needed it's often better to do it in post processing

 

[TeriTerryTarry]

quality most likely changes the bitrate (that's what would normally happen), sharpness is best turned off or to low as it generally does a poor job, if any sharpness is needed it's often better to do it in post processing

Okay, I understand about bitrates. The SJ4000 has a choice of Fine, Normal or Economy. I presume you get the best quality with Fine but use up the least memory space with Economy, correct? Given that the Quality setting has to do with bitrates I assume it applies only to videos, not photos.

 

[jokiin]

Okay, I understand about bitrates. The SJ4000 has a choice of Fine, Normal or Economy. I presume you get the best quality with Fine but use up the least memory space with Economy, correct?

correct

Given that the Quality setting has to do with bitrates I assume it applies only to videos, not photos.

same settings can be applied to photos, you'd need to check if they have done that or not

 

[TeriTerryTarry]

sharpness is best turned off or to low as it generally does a poor job, if any sharpness is needed it's often better to do it in post processing

I did more digging about sharpness and came across this tutorial:

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/sharpness.htm

Sharpness has primarily to do with resolution and acutance among other things.