You know I love you guys, but you are hilarious.
I know you probably think I'm more serious about this than I really am because I really just read this stuff and chuckle. It's all in good fun.
I honestly can't begin to fathom what it is you guys see and don't see, and I cannot for the life of me understand why anyone who believes that FF matches GFX image fidelity would spend one penny on GFX gear. It makes no sense. Why would anyone do that?
If I believed that for one second (and trust me - I don't), I would immediately dump all my GFX gear and buy a full set of Canon, Sony, Nikon or Leica FF gear.
You guys are just ribbing me, right?
Do you actually believe, I mean really ... no joking ... that any FF line is going to match GFX image fidelity? You seriously honestly believe that?
If you do, then fine. To each his own.
Buy the gear that best suits you....
I'm glad there are still a lot of choices.
What I believe, Greg, based on 24 years of owning many, many, many digital cameras, is that image quality generally improves roughly in line with pixel count. Sensor size makes a difference as does sensor generation.
But taking the current generation as an example, FF 60MP is a bit better than APS-C 26MP. FF 100MP is a bit better than 60MP FF. In this regard, I believe exactly what you believe.
Where we differ, is in how big the differences are. I have believed for a long time, that doubling pixel count generally makes a clearly noticeable improvement. Increases less than this make much smaller differences. For example, a 50% increase in more in the "barely perceptible in practice" class. When it comes to printing, image quality is limited by the printer, so in order to see a clear difference, you have to print big. What this mini discussion is telling you is that A3 and A2 print sizes are not big enough for the printer to be able to tell the difference between cameras. You have to print larger enough to be able to stress the full frame image quality. And with the current 40-60MP generation of cameras, that clearly means something like 40" or larger. Any print sizes smaller than this are all within the capabilities of full frame and thus 100MP medium format superiority is masked.
As far as on screen viewing his concerned, you can magnify hugely so you are viewing at magnifications equivalent to huge prints >60" wide. Then you can see a difference. But is this a realistic viewing experience? For some people, yes, but many of us actually want to view the composition as a whole, not pixel peep. Basically, there is a difference between the absolute quality of cameras, and the presentation quality at various display sizes. Below a certain size, the absolute quality is masked, so if you don't view beyond this threshold, there is no benefit from bigger, better sensors and higher pixel counts.
Then there is the question of personal subjective assessments. For example, you lobbied me to get a 4k monitor promising it would transform the GFX viewing experience. It clearly did for you, but I didn't find it so. I was reluctant to upgrade because I didn't believe the pixel count difference between 1440P and 4k was big enough to make much of a difference. I can actually see that 4k is somewhat crisper than 1440P, but while for you this is a transformative experience, my subjective rating would be "about 10% better", a number I consider insufficient improvement to be bothered about, and certainly not worth the hassle of dealing with the resulting tiny text and chrome.It took me about half an hour to forget that 1440p isn't quite as crisp, and now I'm used to 4k, images look exactly the same to me as they used to.
My wife is grateful, however, because she now has the old 1440P to connect to her work laptop!
