# Toshiba Camileo S20, 720p image quality issue?



## -Lithium- (Nov 10, 2010)

This has been bugging me for a while and i cant figure out if its a camera issue, a lense issue, a zoom issues or there's an actual fault with the cam or its just the quality of the camera. Its brand new, perfect day, sunny, daylight/auto settings changed numurous times and still having this issue.

Anyway basically whats going on is, in 720p mode with 0% zoom, so fully unzoomed, the image appears blurry and unsharp, not massively but enough to ruin the quality enough for it be a noticale issue. but...when zooming to around 50% of the way on the bar, the image is suddenly clear and sharp and working as normal :4-dontkno. It's so bizzare as 1080p mode has no issue with this as 1) i cant zoom with it and 2) without zoom anyway its fine. the quality is 100% perfect in 1080p mode, this only is happening in 720p when i have no zoom applied.

I just dont get it, is this a fault? or is it just the cam quality? Its pretty much brand new ive had it only for a few months and ive never dropped or it used it stupidly so i cant grasp what the issue is, ive only really only now started to notice it, like i said, a perfect day, no funny conditions what so ever its been doing this, and looking back through all my old videos, it appears its always done this :4-dontkno.

Here provided is a youtube link with a 40 second video showing exactly what i mean, with me obviously using the camera. the video starts out with me zoomed in at just below 50% showing the blurryness, zooming in a bit more so you can see the transission of it becoming "clear", then zooming out a bit till you can clearly see the blurryness occure at less that 50% zoom and 0% zoom, etc etc.

This isnt just with text, or certain colours or things like that, its the ENTIRE image and its bugging me now. Here is the link, please obviously view it in 720p mode in the youtube quality setting otherwise the test is redundant lol: 

YouTube - test

So yeah, after seeing that, does anyone have any ideas of what is going on? Any help greatly appreciated in advance


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## zuluclayman (Dec 16, 2005)

Without seeing another camera's test footage (some on this page) to compare it to it will only be an opinion and guess on lens quality and function - many less expensive cameras - both still and video - have cheaper lenses, particularly if they have high zoom ratios (yours only has 4x zoom so suggests better quality glass)
The factor that may be coming into play here is focal length of the lens - again many smaller cameras have a wide range of focal lengths available - on still and video cameras this gives wide angle to full zoom. Usually at either extreme (fully wide or fully zoomed) the lens is at its most inefficient quality wise. I haven't seen such a pronounced step from one quality step to another but .... 
This would suggest that your camera when zoomed out fully (widest angle, lowest focal length) has poor quality which then improves as you zoom in, getting closer to its most efficient focal length. The zooms on the page linked to above are a bit fast to really compare but does seem to get clearer when zoomed in.


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## -Lithium- (Nov 10, 2010)

That was the exact footage i looked at on the review site of it and thought it was much less pronounced than mine, i just dont understand why this happens on 720p mode only, looking at 1080p mode it is actually zoomed in a bit more so i guess thats as you said just a better "scene" for it to be or w/e, its a pain and its odd how it behaves like that is tbh i would just prefer 1080p but i cant zoom so...ah well, doesnt REALLY matter that much i suppose lol, just a shame it seems to be like this.

Anyway, thanks for the help


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## zuluclayman (Dec 16, 2005)

The only other thing I can think of is an autofocus glitch that isn't allowing the camera to focus correctly at its shortest focal length and/or clicks in more suddenly than it should on zooming.
Does your camera have any settings for zoom speed or is it just the variable zoom? If it does have any of these and any settings for autofocus variations try playing with those too.


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