Non-Smooth Pan with Digital Camcorder

[russ hirst]

Hi,
I have a question, as I have noticed that sometimes the smoothness of "pans" isn't as good on a digital camcorder as I found them to be on my old analogue camcorder.

What I mean is that the pictures "jumps" in tiny steps, rather than flowing, if you see what I mean?

This seems to be more noticeable when using zoom. Another thing I notice is that when you zoom in, any slight movements of the camcorder are not shown but then the picture will "jump" a little, almost as the camera catches up with reality.

Does anyone know if this is a setting issue, a digital camera issue or maybe my own camcorder thats a little faulty please?

Thanks guys.
Russ

[GaryB]

Do you have the anti-shake feature switched on? If so, switch it off and try it. You will probably find it much smoother.

[russ hirst]

Gary,
Thanks for that. As soon as I read it I could see it made sense and, sure enough, a couple of tests and you are spot on.
Thanks for that - now just need to solve the camera shake!!
Cheers

[MarkE19]

Is the digital camcorder a miniDV or DVD cam? DVD cams are well know to not be able to keep up with fast moving objects as they can not create the MPEG-2 compression in full time with too much of the frame changing too quickly.
Are you useing digital zoom? Most digital camcorders have a small optical zoom (normally around 10x) and then a much larger digital zoom (anything up to 200x or more). Useing digital zoom lowers the resolution of the picture and could result in jumpy pans etc as the digital compression tries to keep up.

Mark.