Sand on the fire

Let's throw a little sand on the fire created by the sandy filmy Quattro image issue.  Rather than argue about whether there is a problem or what the cause of the problem is I'm interested in doing whatever I can to fix it when I see it.

As I've said before I'm, probably like Nick and others, an accutance freak.  My brain just craves detail and that is what brought me to the Foveon fold back in 2004.  I've had other cameras since then, but none have ever delivered what the Sigmas do at their best.  I've continued to play around with the sand issue.  My tools are a SD1 Merrill with 18-35 and an SD Quattro with 18-35 (different lenses because the Merrill is a Canon Mount).

Today I took some f1.8 18mm shots with each camera on a dirt road with the intent of seeing if I could replicate the hills issue in Meuh's shots.  I was successful.  Then I went back and tried what I tried with Meuh's images again on these images.  I've created a couple of screen shots to illustrate what I found.  I did not alter anything but luminance NR and the detail slider.

In the first screen shot there are 100% crops of the same area on the SD1 at default settings, the SD Quattro before alteration on the far right and after alteration in the middle.  The alteration was full crispy on the detail slider and minimum luminance noise reduction.  Of interest is the appearance of the smaller details in the modified middle image from the Quattro.  The changes have brought out a lot more detail.  Larger things like stones look pretty much unchanged.  The level of detail is now much more similar to the ooc images from the merrill.

Merrill left modified Quattro middle and original quattro right.

The second pic is of the differences made in order of magnitude of difference.  The taller images are at 800% and the bottom smaller images at 100%.  On the left is the Merrill again, then the Quattro with both full crispy and min luminance nr, then crispy alone with normal luminance nr, then detail at neutral and min luminance nr, and finally the original unchanged quattro image.

Merrill on left, fully modified Quattro, Crispy only Quattro, Luminance NR only Quattro, Original Quattro

I think that these two adjustments will help with images where a lack of fine definition is a problem in Quattro images.  Not every image will need them but it is good that the tools are available.  Sharpening and Contrast while not used here are also useful.

Mike