High or Low Rez?

richard stone wrote:

xpatUSA wrote:

Tom Schum wrote:

xpatUSA wrote:

Gotta love it.

I post a comparison where the difference in pixel sharpness should be quite obvious to anybody:

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/60609656

But, as soon as I do that, sure enough, someone comes along who cain't hardly tell the difference between the OP's images!

Such is Forum life, eh?

Ted,

I took another close look at the image in the link above.

It seems to me that the lens used was not capable of per-pixel clarity at full-res. So the hi-res crop looks blurry. In other words it seems to me that the sensor is out-resolving the lens. I don't think this would happen if the lens were better.

That could be bad news for Larry; looks to me like he used his 18-35mm f/1.8 Art for both shots. It would take quite a sensor to out-resolve that lens, methinks!

Other than resolution limited by the lens, it seems to me that image quality is the same, even in your image.

OK, we all see things differently. Let others be the Judge.

Ted

It looks to me like the hi res shots have more "detail" in the final image as a whole. The details look sharper and crisper. We can compare the printed letters in the images. That level of detail doesn't seem surprising. I don't see any of this as a lens issue.

But I also see more "noise" in the hi res shots, particularly in the featureless areas like the distant forest. The distant forest looks like a mass of tiny dots.

In the low resolution image the detail is somewhat reduced (as we might expect) and it seems as if the local (micro-contrast?) contrast is reduced. And the colors at low resolution seem slightly different and I think better. The sky seems more blue...

The Q sensor at high resolution seems to do very well with the detail and less well with the smoother areas.

I have tried a number of settings in SPP for the sdQ, and I have gradually settled on almost the smoothest setting and minimal NR, then using Raw Therapee to reduce noise and sharpen. I may try try the absolute smooth setting next, but that really seems to lose too much detail on the high resolution images.

I guess that I only commented on one area in the OPs images - the grass near the fence posts but didn't make that clear enough:

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/60609656

Which appears to have invited comment on anywhere but that spot; and one other here sees little difference anyway!

Think I'll stick to targets, Richard:- grass, distant hills and rolling plains are too much for my old eyes to analyze . .