Still not satisfied

thats a good explanation from Michal. "I do not care". With this I can live. When you are satisfied with the results, this is the most importing.

Telling however that digital noise can be compared with film grain is a bridge too far for me and has nothing to see with reality anymore.

Maybe waiting for Sigma is not that bad, but they have to proof that they will be better!!!

Mark, I am a Ricoh Fan you know, the look they have, the feeling, simply great. The day they start to think little bit further as they do now, I will become their best fan.

And about art Mark, is very simple in fact. Art is something that can be done only by a few people on earth. Once millions of people can do something it has nothing to see anything with art anymore. But it still can be beautyfull even without being art.

I paint and design myselves. As the way I paint can be done by millions, I do not call myselves an artist or call my work art. I do exhibitions and lots of people like my paintings and drawings but this is not a reason why it should be art. ART is something else than art!!

Lucridders,

I agree with you about art... art is not workmanship... that goes beyond, refers to a personal language associated with some king of message, and becomes independent of its author.

About the equipment choice, my thread seeks discussion about a better model of cam that is just a step away from what is availble by now. I cam that could give a little more considering a price very close to the dslr's prices.

Here its hard see a Ricoh, we have practicaly no support and is almost impossible to resale an used cam.

I had already been just before sell all my stuff and buy a new Ricoh, but I gave up for a while.

--
Marcelo
http://www.marcelosestren.com
http://www.brfoto.com.br

Marcelo, sorry, but all this talk about a "cam" just grates on my ears: no native speaker of English would ever say "cam" instead of "camera"; sure, there have been some abbreviations and expressions such as "handycam" and others, but "cam" for "camera", no. Ma no parlo italiano...

—Mitch/Bangkok
http://www.flickr.com/photos/10268776@N00/

Thank you Mith... and sorry.

--
Marcelo
http://www.marcelosestren.com
http://www.brfoto.com.br

You have nothing to apologize for. You've expressed yourself quite well in an international forum dedicated to photography. This is not an English as a Second Language or Grammar forum. Do your thing, you are making your points well.

Can we get back to the topic now?

Lucridders said:

And about art Mark, is very simple in fact. Art is something that can
be done only by a few people on earth. Once millions of people can do
something it has nothing to see anything with art anymore. But it
still can be beautyfull even without being art.
I paint and design myselves. As the way I paint can be done by
millions, I do not call myselves an artist or call my work art. I do
exhibitions and lots of people like my paintings and drawings but
this is not a reason why it should be art. ART is something else
than art!!

Click to expand...

I apologize to the OP for the off topic answer, I won't argue about cameras or photography because I can't stand loosing time with who doesn't deserve it, like our exclusive troll. But I can't stand reading such ignorant and arrogant posts about something so important as Art.

Art is a very subjective thing, and there are more definitions than the one's that comes from little minds.

A google search is enought to find some valuable information:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/art-definition/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art

Again, what do you need to shut up and stop giving your misconceptioned ideas? You may understand what you want about Art, or anything, but you don't have the right to misinform people supported only in your personal interpretations.

There are unquestionable things about Art. The creation of an object, and the exhibition to a "public". Here happens what is needed to a generic classification of Art: Comunication. If there is a sender (creator/artist), a vehicle (object, whatever the support or technic), and a receiver (public) of comunication, Art is definitely there.

Unfortunately I have to disapoint you. If you paint and design, if exhibit your work, whatever you may think about it, youre an artist. You may be a good or a bad one, popular or not, you may be respected by the community or not. It doesn't matter, you will always be an artist.

The massification or not, is another thing. Do you want to question Art because of the number of "user's" in some technic? This is not silly, is sad!

And it's a very stupid move to use this argument often and often, just to offend any poster that you don't like. I never saw anybody here claming that they were artists. Art appeared as an argument to justify personal realisations. If someone uses the tool he has in his own way, take it as valid. Don't take it down with your personal concepts. No one cares about you little world. I don't, but I can't stand the lack of respect for something so precious for mankind.

You sound just like the stablishment any time some new thing appears. Like the Academy reacting to the Impressionists. But photography is not a new thing, and "old" as you are, you should know better!

I'm sorry to see how a good, friendly and helpful forum is beeing destroyed by the acts of a single person. Bye
--
Cheers.............. Rui
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ruinog/sets/

Hi there,

I just purchased a GR-D II a few weeks ago, and of course it is not as good as a DSLR, but i can tell you i'm very happy with it...

Comparing a 1/1.8 sensor to a DX-size sensor is of course like comparing apples to potatoes, so eventually you will have to make some sacrifices. But in the end the quality of the GR-D II is outstanding in it's class... The lens is simply amazing, the controls of the camera make you want to use it all the time, and the GR-D II is really a major upgrade to the first GR-D when it comes to quality and speed.

The new sensor and the new processor make it a very good camera, and if your shooting B&W all the time (like i mostly do too), the noise indeed looks like filmgrain, and only the highest setting of 1600 isn't that usable anymore.

I still use a DSLR for all the work that needs the highest possible image quality, but the bulk of a DSLR sometimes just isn't worth it carrying around...

It would also be more fair to compair the GR-D II to it's film operated predecessor, the GR-1v (which i also own one), rather than comparing it to a SLR. And it holds out very well in that comparison.

The only thing they screwed up in version II, is the noise-reduction; it's way too heavy and destroys all detail. I recommend leaving that 'off' and reduce noise whilst 'developing' your RAW's.
Truly a great photographers tool... I'd say; get one!

Cheers, Marco

Actually, GRD2 RAW files can be quite usable at ISO 1600:



—Mitch/Bangkok
http://www.flickr.com/photos/10268776@N00/

This image looks bothersome in that the underexposed areas are very noisy(face) and the properly or over exposed areas show no noise at all(mirror,towel). I'd rather have noise across the entire image at 1600iso. I don't know if this is a problem of the GRDII only or my GRD also exhibit this(Although I don't recall ever seeing this).

mitchall said:

Actually, GRD2 RAW files can be quite usable at ISO 1600:



—Mitch/Bangkok
http://www.flickr.com/photos/10268776@N00/

Click to expand...

Well...i think if you see this printed on A3+ you'll defenitely will see noise all over the image... and nice kind of it too i think...

I my opinion you'll have to print pictures to really be able to judge the quality... In analogue times we didn't watch pictures from a screen... be aware that that makes a major difference (unless you made slides)...

Well I present my images primarily on the web. So the characteristics of the image on the monitor is also important to me.

Sorry, but apart from the fact if you like the pics or not, the 1600 Iso pictures (also the others) have nothing to see with film grain. If yes, than I was wasting my time in my darkroom years and years, or I am blind, or I am stupid, or I am both. You may choose.

Art, maybe the "real" art of painting, is definitely a much more market driven thing than any camera manufacturer. It's a case of personal marketing and nothing to do with a corporation.

Artists live in filth in their garrets until some dude thinks they may be the next great investment and then the prices and demand rise.

It has very little to do with the quality of the art, just the name of the artist. Hence forgeries abound with famous signatures.

There's good artists and bad artists and scam artists and their success usually is not due to perceived quality of their work. The market for paintings in Australia tends to follow overseas trends with a few (very few) local heroes.

As for photography as art, it just does not generally sell as art in Australia, people starve to death trying to sell photography here. Just a very select few get up and running and basically their results are usually nothing amazing, just good groundwork and marketing is what makes them successful. And selling to rich tourists who may think they are buying an investment.

The art market is more about investment (no capital gains tax on art here in Australia) and that distorts the market completely. Some total junk is worth millions and some total gems are worth little, just because of the name.

So I drop back to just appreciating what I like and can dismiss some really expensive art as junk if it looks no good to me. It's a pity the market in general didn't work that way, for then a local (paint) artist friend would be a millionaire instead of doing a hum-drum job.

There, that's my morning waffle out of the way.

Regards................ Guy

booggerg said:

This image looks bothersome in that the underexposed areas are very
noisy(face) and the properly or over exposed areas show no noise at
all(mirror,towel). I'd rather have noise across the entire image at
1600iso...

Click to expand...

This statement bothers me in several ways. First, there are no underexposed or overexposed areas because the subject is backlit in light that is of very high contrast; hence in the real scene, as opposed to the the picture, the eye, obviously sees very dark and very light areas — not a question of over- or underexposure. Had this picture been taken with Neopan 1600 at that speed or Tri-X pushed to 1600 the negative would have been difficult to print and the grain unpredictable.

Second, as I stated earlier, I am not really concerned with whether the grain looks like film grain or not, but more concerned with the aesthetics of the photograph itself. Also, as someone said, the important thing to me is how the print looks; and this one looks very good. In contrast, none of these pictures at 100% view on the computer monitor don't look good, but a 50% view usually gives a good indication of how the print might look.

Finally, with the advent with digital, many people are obsessed with having pictures without grain, even for B&W, which makes no sense to me. Here is a picture shot with a Leica M6 on Tri-X rated at ISO 200 with very good grain that in a 100% view looks terrible:



—Mitch/Bangkok
http://www.flickr.com/photos/10268776@N00/

My statement is correct.

I estimate a 2 to 3 stops of difference between the light on the towel/mirror and the woman's face. The towel shows some clipped highlights so I suspect the camera was set to expose for a level somewhere in between the towel and the woman's face. The small sensor in the Ricoh can't expose for both so it's either the towel is over exposed, or the face is underexposed - that's what I was talking about.

Anyway back to the image:

The grain pattern on the face is distinctively different than the grain pattern on the towel and mirror. The face has fairly large blotches of noise pattern. This is almost none existent on the towel and mirror. This tells me the noise behavior of the GRDII is vastly different depending on whether the image is underexposed.

This image from the GRD was at 800iso and as you can see, it has VERY uniform noise/grain pattern in both the underexposed shadow areas on the left and the properly exposed highlights on the right:

Your example has completely different lighting. You're ignoring the fact that there is a very strong light behind and above the subject's head in my picture, which is falling directly and strongly on the towel, and is lighting the subject's face only by refection from the wall behind me.

—Mitch/Huahin
http://www.flickr.com/photos/10268776@N00/

Come to think of it, the lighting in my picture above is somewhat similar to the lighting in the following GRD picture at ISO 800, which not in this small JPG, but in a large print shows similar grain characteristics in the faces of the two men as in the woman in the picture:



Similar situation in the following GRD picture at ISO 800:



—Mitch/Huahin
http://www.flickr.com/photos/10268776@N00/

booggerg said:

This image from the GRD was at 800iso and as you can see, it has VERY
uniform noise/grain pattern in both the underexposed shadow areas on
the left and the properly exposed highlights on the right:

Click to expand...

The noise from the shadow to lit areas is not even close to being "uniform".

Grain or no grain it basically comes down to whether you like the pictures. Does the grain enhance or detract from the overall image. I confess that these and similar ones posted aren't generally to my taste. Much too contrasty for me. The tuna filetters is acceptable beacause the grain in the faces is well hidden at this size and it's sharp overall. The grain in the faces in the last one isn't pleasing to me but if the picture was part of a series considered "reportage" then fine. The girl and towel would have been clicked through if it was in a series I had taken unless the girl really wanted a copy.

I don't want a show of hands or to start a mass critique of these, only to say that personal tastes vary a lot and once you step over the line between record and art, criticism often comes down to "I don't know anything about art but I know what I like". However, variety is the spice of life.

I mean to say similar noise pattern

finalcutstudio said:

finalcutstudio said:

This image from the GRD was at 800iso and as you can see, it has VERY
uniform noise/grain pattern in both the underexposed shadow areas on
the left and the properly exposed highlights on the right:

Click to expand...

The noise from the shadow to lit areas is not even close to being
"uniform".

Click to expand...