I caught up with Taylor Wigton recently, and found he’s been pretty busy. One of the articles he contributed to showreel.org is on real-world testing of the Canon HX A1 camcorder and it’s 24f mode. He conducted a variety of tests and comparisons on the “fake progressive” mode along with Randy Wedick, the Digital Cinema Tech at Band Pro.

“We captured footage in 24f and compared freezeframes of 24f versus a variety of processed 60i footage and also against true progressive capture…The final image from the tape is 1440×1080. This begins as a single field that is 1440×540. It is then processed and intelligently interpolated using a host of Canon’s processors, and the resulting image is smart up-rezzed to 1440×1080 and laid to tape. This image is much nicer looking than a line duplicated image. When you are watching it, it has a great deal more perceived resolution than a 1440×540 image.”

“We then decided to compare the 24f image with a true 24p image. When looking at the video playback, a loss in vertical resolution was apparent when compared with a much pricier 1440×1080p camera…The true 24p image resulted in about 20-25 per cent more vertical detail.”

Read on for tons more details and information from the test and other real world shoots. Taylor has also been kind enough to share some footage from a shoot, a short sequence of 1080p/24f outdoor shots (31mb QT mov).

B&H has the Canon HX-A1 for only $3250 after rebate, you can also purchase the camcorder at Amazon for $3267 after rebate. Purchases made via those links directly benefit this site.