How sharp is the FP-L?

left eye wrote:

Sigma added a AA filter to the fp-l which makes it the softest FF camera of similar resolution out there.

Oddly the fp which should be more video oriented, Sigma didn’t use an AA filter.

For video an AA filter is pretty much essential. For stills, on the whole it better left off. It’s almost as if there was a mix up with the sensor spec at the point of manufacture, the AA filter added to the wrong sensor!

The AA filter adds an analogue quality to fp-l results - which looks apt with vintage adapted lenses, but IMO degrades the potential of the latest glass.

If you want that crisp pixel level sharpness you can only get without the use of an AA filter, look elsewhere.

I can't really agree with this. In my opinion, the obsession with optimising pixel level acutance by omitting AA filters is a problem.

You only have to check the DPR test chart to see what happens. The only non-AA filter equipped cameras that avoid triggering hideous colour moire are the 100MP+ medium format cameras, the pixel shift cameras and Foveon sensor cameras.

AA filters don't 100% fix the problem but they help by lowering the MTF energy present beyond Nyquist. With sensible sharpening/deconvolution you can recover some of the micro-contrast lost from an AA filter.

The pixel shift cameras are interesting. The aliasing is all but eliminated, noise is reduced and there appears to be more detail despite a softer pixel level result. I notice the aliasing on my GFX50s seems bad. The result of the reduced pixel aperture, I suppose.

Microcontrast is not the only desirable attribute of a sensor. You can have excellent resolution without it having to be high microcontrast. The acquistion of an A2 printer has taught me the way I prepared prints for A4 paper really doesn't look good at the bigger size. I'm slowly educating myself to dial back on processing for extreme sharpness. A gentler, smoother, reduced artefact, yet still high resolution result looks better and more "natural" once you wean yourself off the addictive attraction of eye-wateringly high acutance.