Blind Comparisons?

[al_biglan]

Just wondering...

Phil does a very nice job of reviewing the cameras, but I'm wondering if there isn't room for a blind comparison between cameras? I'm not all that experienced with Photography (digital or film) but it seems that there may be some benefit of comparing two similar shots without bias of knowing their source.

The Sigma forum seems to perhaps highlight this. Maybe a shot of Tower Bridge from the Sigma vs. a shot from 2-3 others?

Is the issue behind not doing this the set-up of the shot? I imagine a 10mp camera with a great 50mm lens and a 5mp with the same 50mm lens would have drastically different scaled images (a 200x200 pixel crop of one would appear "zoomed in" compaerd to a 200x200 pixel crop of the other)

Sorry if this is dumb... I don't have the "eye" some of the people here do, and I keep thinking "that's a better picture than the other" when all of a sudden, someone pipes in with an artifact that I notice when I look in the right spot.

Thanks
-al

 

[Michael Meissner]

Just wondering...

Phil does a very nice job of reviewing the cameras, but I'm
wondering if there isn't room for a blind comparison between
cameras? I'm not all that experienced with Photography (digital or
film) but it seems that there may be some benefit of comparing two
similar shots without bias of knowing their source.

The Sigma forum seems to perhaps highlight this. Maybe a shot of
Tower Bridge from the Sigma vs. a shot from 2-3 others?

Is the issue behind not doing this the set-up of the shot? I
imagine a 10mp camera with a great 50mm lens and a 5mp with the
same 50mm lens would have drastically different scaled images (a
200x200 pixel crop of one would appear "zoomed in" compaerd to a
200x200 pixel crop of the other)

Sorry if this is dumb... I don't have the "eye" some of the people
here do, and I keep thinking "that's a better picture than the
other" when all of a sudden, someone pipes in with an artifact that
I notice when I look in the right spot.

Imaging-resources does this (or at least did this in the past, which I used when comparing the Olympus C-2100UZ to the Canon Pro90 last year):

http://www.imaging-resource.com/CAMDB/compare_cameras.php

 

[SteveHorn]

Phil does a very nice job of reviewing the cameras, but I'm
wondering if there isn't room for a blind comparison between
cameras?

We human beings have our judgement influenced by prejudice much more than we think. Just recently, I tested a change to my hi-fi system and I really loved the rich full sound of the (expensive) new kit. I asked my wife to give me the old/new without telling me which was which. You guessed it, when I did not know what was playing I preferred the old system.

Regards

Steve Horn

 

[Dana Jacobsen]

Just wondering...

Phil does a very nice job of reviewing the cameras, but I'm
wondering if there isn't room for a blind comparison between
cameras? I'm not all that experienced with Photography (digital or
film) but it seems that there may be some benefit of comparing two
similar shots without bias of knowing their source.

Getting test shots from the various cameras can be difficult. Two I know of are the Yamada airport scenes and Imaging Resource's house shot. The problem with these is that they are shot at different times of the year as the cameras arrive and the reviewer doesn't always have his or her choice of lens to use, so matching focal lengths can be difficult. Phil has some nice studio scenes which do a good job of isolating the lighting so perhaps they can be compared across times. I haven't looked into that in great detail.

One thing I did at work last week was the following. I took the house scene from Imaging Resource on 4 cameras: Canon 1Ds, 1D, D60 and Sony F707. I then scaled them up to 4680 by 6840 (using Stair Interpolation), which is 13x19 at 360dpi, as if I wanted the best quality from an Epson 2200. Appropriate sharpening followed. I then cropped out a similar section from each picture, on the order of 7x8 inches. The idea here is that this could be printed on most 8.5 x 11 sized printers, while the 13x19 size is not absurdly large yet still requires even the 1Ds to go through some scaling. I happened to have access to a Fuji Pictro 3000, so I printed my samples on it (this is a 400ppi printer that produces fabulous output, so the printer shouldn't be the bottleneck).

Well, most people are able to sort them fairly quickly into resolution order (11MP, 6MP, 5MP, 4MP). I think the 1D was hampered by being blurrier than the others -- I'm not sure if this was due to the original photo or my sharpening abilities. The Sony is really obvious to me (somewhat saturated colors, oversharpened out of the camera, noise in the shadows, camera JPEG compression ruins some details), but to most people it wasn't apparent until pointed out -- the amount of detail (e.g. apparent resolution) was all they cared about. Looked at up close, the 11MP 1Ds is a clear winner. But get 6-12 inches away and it's hard to tell the difference between the 1Ds and the D60.

When Phil does his review of the Sigma SD9, I will grab any comparison shots (I'm hoping he includes the D60 at least) and do a similar process. I might also crop out a section (say a portion of the tower, the crayons, the Tanquaray bottle, the flowers, etc.) and try printing it at 8x10. Right now the biggest problem I have with print tests of the SD9 is that there aren't any shots with another camera (other than the F707, but I don't really care about that comparison) side-by-side.