sharper images with larger sensor?

[FingerPainter]

...

Which lens is better?

It doesn't matter.

What matters is which output is better, measured at the same viewing size and distance. and it is perfectly possible to get better output with a worse lens, if the sensor is sufficiently superior.

What I was trying to explain to the op is that there is no need to go and read DxOMark lens test to find out something that is already known.

No, one goes to DxO Mark to find out what one doesn't know, which is whether one particular combination of lens and sensor produces better images than a different combination of lens and sensor. There is sufficient overlap between MFT lenses on 20MP sensors and FF lens on 24MP senors that one doesn't know which will come out ahead without going to some place like DxO Mark. Or one can go to LensTip, but then one has to do some math.

 

[kenw]

An interesting comment about Oly applying some (pre)sharpening to its pseudo raw files. I've seen what I believe is good evidence of Panasonic doing that to its pseudo raws, but not much evidence of Oly doing it. If nothing else, the Oly HiRes files require more input sharpening than the Panny ones. What's your reason for saying that Oly is also doing the (pre)sharpening?

Early on when the feature first appeared on the E-M5II a fair number of folks went out and did imatest slanted edge MTF measurements of their lenses using "hi-res". Thing is the slanted edge test is already a super-resolution technique (that's why the edge is slightly slanted) and so pixel shift should do nothing to change the results. But the results did in fact change, they got a slight boost in MTF. This boost is due to the slight sharpening applied in the resampling kernel Olympus uses when they produce their "pseudo-RAW" file.

Similarly when folks analyzed the noise of HR shots it was a bit higher than one would expect from just averaging 8 shots. Again a slight sharpening kernel would account for that.

From what I saw it is a rather mellow amount inherent sharpening. And there is nothing inherently "wrong" about it. When they produce their pseudo-RAW they are doing resampling and for any resampling operation you have to chose some sort of kernel and there isn't a single "right" answer for what that kernel is or how much sharpening or blur that kernel inherently has in it.

Whether this is still true with cameras after the E-M5II is beyond me!

And interesting that the Panasonic files seem to perhaps do the same thing with a heavier hand.

So certainly if I zoom in to 100 or 200% then I can start to pick out differences in how demosaicing and moire behave between a native sensor with an AA filter, a native sensor without an AA filter or a pixel shifted image. But at least for how I think of "tonal gradations" none of that really matters.

Agreed, but where it DOES matter is at the adjustment stage. More often than not I'd rather start with a (soft) HiRes or AA filtered raw than the "comparable" AA-less high megapixel raw. It depends significantly on the subject, but I find it easier to add plausible digital detail in the form of sharpening or application of contrast strategies than to eliminate the harsh baked-in digital "detail" of aliasing/moire.

Yes, the whole AA vs no-AA thing is its own ball of wax and certainly subject and photographer variant! And it dovetails along with the lens choice into how much noise you actually get in the final displayed image after you've applied sharpening or other post processing.

Interestingly Jack Hogan appears to have discovered that the Z7 went even one step further. It appears the Z7 sensor is slightly under-filled - that is the pixel aperture is a bit smaller than you'd expect from the pixel pitch. Sort of more like sensors of old that didn't have microlens arrays on them (though of course the Z7 does have a microlens array). The end result of this is even slightly more detail and slightly more potential for moire or that "crunchiness" some object to from sensors without an AA.

Jack's excellent article: https://www.strollswithmydog.com/nikon-z7-insane-sharpness/

 

[ahaslett]

You answered the right question. I have an A7R2 and an EM1.2 and shoot landscape. Your answer makes perfect sense. If only Olympus had done base ISO 25, switched capacitance at ISO 200, 28Mpix sensor and RAW exposure aids....

If you can wade through the technical minutiae there is a good thread over in PS&T on the current limits of full well capacity:

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/64655513

Always nice to be treated with respect, even if unworthy. A pack of grant applications came in to review urgently today and I've a tricky client question to finesse by the New Year. However, technology is always interesting.

Long story short<snip>

So basically at the moment around 3000e-/um^2 is the rough limit for FWC regardless of sensor size. So we couldn't improve the FWC of m43 much beyond what the E-M1II and GH5 already achieve in a single exposure.

Seems like I've been tilting at the wrong windmills.

Now proper RAW exposure aids and modes - that would be a win for any camera! Why are forced to kludge this basic thing???!?

In order to keep film photographers happy that digital cameras are the same as film ones, maybe?

<snip> Still for a landscape photographer would be very useful. And as sensor read rates improved and stacked architectures allow for more on chip processing this could become a very functional feature on almost any camera - dial the ISO arbitrarily low via repeated exposures read fast and accumulated on the sensor.

So smaller but more expensive sensors might be the answer. Probably get into phones first and then trickle upwards. I wonder if MFT will be a stable enough platform by then for them to stick there. Terrible shame that Olympus stuck with the Exposure Triangle myth, given their imaginative approach to other aspects of functionality.

Andrew

 

[knickerhawk]

An interesting comment about Oly applying some (pre)sharpening to its pseudo raw files. I've seen what I believe is good evidence of Panasonic doing that to its pseudo raws, but not much evidence of Oly doing it. If nothing else, the Oly HiRes files require more input sharpening than the Panny ones. What's your reason for saying that Oly is also doing the (pre)sharpening?

Early on when the feature first appeared on the E-M5II a fair number of folks went out and did imatest slanted edge MTF measurements of their lenses using "hi-res". Thing is the slanted edge test is already a super-resolution technique (that's why the edge is slightly slanted) and so pixel shift should do nothing to change the results. But the results did in fact change, they got a slight boost in MTF. This boost is due to the slight sharpening applied in the resampling kernel Olympus uses when they produce their "pseudo-RAW" file.

Similarly when folks analyzed the noise of HR shots it was a bit higher than one would expect from just averaging 8 shots. Again a slight sharpening kernel would account for that.

Interesting. Thanks for the info.

From what I saw it is a rather mellow amount inherent sharpening. And there is nothing inherently "wrong" about it. When they produce their pseudo-RAW they are doing resampling and for any resampling operation you have to chose some sort of kernel and there isn't a single "right" answer for what that kernel is or how much sharpening or blur that kernel inherently has in it.

Whether this is still true with cameras after the E-M5II is beyond me!

The "character" of HiRes raws produced by the EM1ii and iii look very similar to me as what I've seen in the EM5ii, so I'd conjecture that it's still true.

And interesting that the Panasonic files seem to perhaps do the same thing with a heavier hand.

Yes, I don't know what the thinking was, but the "heavier hand" led a lot of those who looked at the Panny implementation vs. Oly's to conclude that Panny did a better job because of the (default) sharper output when using ACR/LR. In this post I illustrated the apparent difference in (pre)sharpening between the Panny G9 and the Oly EM1ii:

G9 vs EM1.2 Hi-Res Observations

In my previous post I attempted to get the EM1.2 and G9 to look the same, the idea is that these are the same sensor, same lens and same High Res implementation. The results should be more similar than not. Here you can see the equalized images from ACR. From this point any adjustment that can...

www.dpreview.com

And in this post that preceded the above one, I speculated that Panny was using a more aggressive demosaicing algorithm (what I believe you're referring to as the "kernal" above) during the prep of the pseudo raw:

G9 vs EM1.2 Hi-Res Observations

In my previous post I attempted to get the EM1.2 and G9 to look the same, the idea is that these are the same sensor, same lens and same High Res implementation. The results should be more similar than not. Here you can see the equalized images from ACR. From this point any adjustment that can...

www.dpreview.com

I'd be interested in your reaction to my speculation there.

So certainly if I zoom in to 100 or 200% then I can start to pick out differences in how demosaicing and moire behave between a native sensor with an AA filter, a native sensor without an AA filter or a pixel shifted image. But at least for how I think of "tonal gradations" none of that really matters.

Agreed, but where it DOES matter is at the adjustment stage. More often than not I'd rather start with a (soft) HiRes or AA filtered raw than the "comparable" AA-less high megapixel raw. It depends significantly on the subject, but I find it easier to add plausible digital detail in the form of sharpening or application of contrast strategies than to eliminate the harsh baked-in digital "detail" of aliasing/moire.

Yes, the whole AA vs no-AA thing is its own ball of wax and certainly subject and photographer variant! And it dovetails along with the lens choice into how much noise you actually get in the final displayed image after you've applied sharpening or other post processing.

Interestingly Jack Hogan appears to have discovered that the Z7 went even one step further. It appears the Z7 sensor is slightly under-filled - that is the pixel aperture is a bit smaller than you'd expect from the pixel pitch. Sort of more like sensors of old that didn't have microlens arrays on them (though of course the Z7 does have a microlens array). The end result of this is even slightly more detail and slightly more potential for moire or that "crunchiness" some object to from sensors without an AA.

Jack's excellent article: https://www.strollswithmydog.com/nikon-z7-insane-sharpness/

Very interesting, indeed. I wonder if this could explain why the S lenses seem to vignette pretty strongly on the z7 (per DXOMark and elsewhere). I've seen some claims that this is the case (relative to "comparable" lenses mounted to the D850), but I'm not a Nikon user anymore and haven't followed the debates much.

I understand the point Jack was trying to make about the Z7 being a better landscape camera because of this pixel aperture contraction, but I think this somewhat downplays the effects of aliasing even in all natural landscapes. Color moire manifesting as those annoying little color specs between branches and leaves, etc. is a not infrequent challenge.

 

[sportyaccordy]

Usually resolution improves with smaller pixels so lpmm for MFT are around double of full frame

what does that mean for a photo i take with system A vs B?

i couldnt find the Tamron 28-200 on lenstip, but the 28-75 that i hear is about as good.

https://www.lenstip.com/564.4-Lens_review-Tamron_28-75_mm_f_2.8_Di_III_RXD_Image_resolution.html

https://www.lenstip.com/497.4-Lens_...ED_12-100_mm_f_4_IS_PRO_Image_resolution.html

so when i compare 50mm to 25mm @f4 it gives me above 70 lpmm for the Olympus and below 70 for the Tamron. So does that mean the Olympus gives me sharper images than the Tamron? I dont get why DXO sharpness rating is so low then?

Because the scores are line pairs per millimeter. What's of significance is line pairs per picture height which is how Optical Limits scores sharpness.

That said I would not get lost in all these scores. Find photos taken with various formats and look at them in the way you typically look at pictures. If you can't see a difference then all these charts and data are irrelevant. If you can and the differences matter then yea maybe think about changing systems. But don't let scores you don't understand or biased shooters of any system sway you one way or another. Garbage in garbage out. Think for yourself.

 

[Donald B]

Here is an informative video of cinematographers discussing the advantages of high resolution in their craft. They cover the range of 2k, 4k, 8k, and 11k and what the combination of the eye and brain does in interpreting images beyond apparent "sharpness".

The video: https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/64133810

They demonstrate with examples the advantages of 8K large format to their work and describe why they are anxious for future technology to bring them closer to getting Hasselblad 100mp images at 30 fps.

Starting at 25:30 in the video is a 25 minute detailed discussion of the physiology of human vision. I hope you find it as fascinating and informative as I did.

At about 35mp resolution (8k in video) and above with high quality pixels (i.e. color accuracy, tonality, dynamic range, absence of digital noise), the smoother tonal and luminance transitions start to look realistic to the brain. This gives the brain enough cues to signal depth and dimensionality. This phenomenon is separate from and in addition to the classic lens 'depth of field'.

Thanks for this post ,this is exactly what im experiencing shooting video with the a7r2 vers the em12. the a7r2 videos are life like not digital looking.

Here are a couple of screenshots from the video.

Their paradigm. The elements are interrelated, not separate. They are keys to the image acquisition and manipulation. The points they make show that this is independent of how the image is viewed whether a 4k big screen, 1080 monitor, or smartphone.



View: original size

Perspective and magnification differences vary by resolution.



View: original size

Resolution affects depth perception, color, luminosity, tonality, and transitions dramatically. It is about more than just perceived sharpness. On the left is a 35mp(8k) image. On the right is a 100mp(11k) image. (The 8k and 11k "equivalents" are from the presenters.)



View: original size

Again 35mp left; 100mp right. The cinematographers hope that their technology continues to move toward 100mp(11k in video) because that is what science demonstrates that the eye/brain can see and interpret (this claim is by the presenters). Their opinion: who wouldn't want to see movies that matched the eye's capability and provide an almost completely immersive visual experience.

As still photographers we can enjoy the benefits of high resolution one frame at a time.



View: original size

--
Olympus EM1mk2, Sony A7r2

http://www.dpreview.com/galleries/9412035244

past toys. k100d, k10d,k7,fz5,fz150,500uz,canon G9, Olympus xz1 em5mk1 em5mk2

 

[PhotoHawk]

I was just checking out the DXO Lens database and all the M43 lenses have much lower sharpness ratings than even the most inexpensive FF lenses.

Can anyone explain this to me?

Im still looking for a new camera system so does this mean when i take pictures with

Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II + Olympus M.Zuiko 12-100mm F4 IS Pro

vs

Sony A7 iii + Tamron 28-200mm f/2.8-5.6 Di III RXD

the images on the FF are much sharper (cant find the lenses on DXO)?

I think you'll find a very good and somewhat technical answer to your question here:

Equivalence in Pictures: Sharpness/Spatial Resolution

So, is it true that a Four Thirds lens needs to be about twice as ‘sharp’ as its Full Frame counterpart in order to be able to display an image of spatial resolution equivalent to the l…

www.strollswithmydog.com

TLR would be Jacks summation:

"So yes, lenses from a smaller format need to be ‘sharper’ by the ratio of their sensor linear sizes in order to produce the same linear resolution on same-sized final images. mFT lenses need to be twice as ‘sharp’ as FF ones for instance, 102 lp/mm vs 51 lp/mm respectively, so that same-sized final images will look equally ‘sharp’ to the viewer."

As it turns out it takes pretty much the best MFT lens to equal the performance "sharpness" wise of an average FF lens. The format does indeed matter. But here is the kicker past a certain point and likely certainly within the capability of today's MFT cameras the extra image quality possible in a large format camera may not matter. Past a certain point improvement is a waste of money. See this article:

Format size and image quality - the last word

The format rhetoric seems to be heating up again. Maybe it never cooled off. In the last 7 or 8 years, I’ve owned and made many images with APS-C (with crop factors between 1.3 and 1.5), full frame (FF), and 33x44 (MF, or crop MF, depending on your level of precision – and maybe your

blog.kasson.com

in particular Jim Kasson's observations summed up at the end:

"Netting it out

• For IQ, size matters, and bigger is better
• But bigger is heavier and more expensive, too – and therefore less popular – and niche markets aren’t where you’re likely to find price/performance stars.
• Once an image is good enough for its intended use, there is little point in making it better, especially if doing so involves large amounts of cash and great inconvenience.
• There is no magic."

In the end performance, budget, intended use are very valid characteristics for a particular choice of equipment. Past "need" the rest is "want".

 

[Jan Chelminski]

Yes, when scaled, but thus, also the least important quality, sharpness.

Everyone has excellent sharpness, look at the sharpness and detail output of an iPhone, just amazing.

A point is simply,a point, after all.

It’s obvious m4/3 is sharper than 35mm and iPhone sharper than m4/3.

But nowadays not very meaningful, outside of being attendant to the other basic (and more meaningful, IMO) parameters.

--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The camera introduces us to to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses"
------
"The art of the critic in a nutshell: to coin slogans without betraying ideas. The slogans of an inadequate criticism peddle ideas to fashion."
-------
- Walter Benjamin
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Drawing is a constant correcting of errors, maybe a great deal of creation is exactly that."
-----
- John Berger
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"...to photograph is to frame, and to frame is to exclude."
------
-- Susan Sontag

 

[bobn2]

I was just checking out the DXO Lens database and all the M43 lenses have much lower sharpness ratings than even the most inexpensive FF lenses.

DXO doesn't publish lens sharpness ratings. They publish sharpness ratings for combinations of lenses and sensors.

This is the case for just about every lens test site, bar Roger Cicala's ones on Lens Rentals. There are pros and cons. An MTF for the lens by itself is useful data, and actually can be sued to calculate the resolution on just about any given camera if you know the camera OTF, but the calculation is likely not one that most users would like to do. A camera/lens test is arguably more useful in real life, where DxOmark has the advantage that they do test the same lens on multiple cameras (the reason being was that the original motivation for these tests being to provide profiles for DxO's image processing software) - but nowadays they don't publish MTF figures, just this rather unuseful 'perceptual megapixels' metric, which is not completely useless, but could be better.

 

[kenw]

Yes, I don't know what the thinking was, but the "heavier hand" led a lot of those who looked at the Panny implementation vs. Oly's to conclude that Panny did a better job because of the (default) sharper output when using ACR/LR. In this post I illustrated the apparent difference in (pre)sharpening between the Panny G9 and the Oly EM1ii:

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/61092704

And in this post that preceded the above one, I speculated that Panny was using a more aggressive demosaicing algorithm (what I believe you're referring to as the "kernal" above) during the prep of the pseudo raw:

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/61092054

I'd be interested in your reaction to my speculation there.

Yes I think your speculation makes sense. I can't think of a better explanation and the artifacts are telling as well.

Very interesting, indeed. I wonder if this could explain why the S lenses seem to vignette pretty strongly on the z7 (per DXOMark and elsewhere). I've seen some claims that this is the case (relative to "comparable" lenses mounted to the D850), but I'm not a Nikon user anymore and haven't followed the debates much.

That's an interesting question. I'm not that familiar with the effects of oblique rays on various pixel designs but from what I've seen folks post regarding the Z7 and adapted range finder lenses it seems to behave quite well. So I sort of suspect the S vignetting is just in the same boat as the S distortion correction. Being purely mirrorless the lenses are freed from the constraints of film or OVFs and can get away with more vignetting.

Also being that the Z7 sensor is BSI it really shouldn't have any of the oblique issues that low fill factor sensors of the past had. In those cases if I understand it correctly the issue was not so much the low fill factor but rather that the PD surface was buried under layers of metalization layers so it sat in sort of a "well" as it were. In the Z7 case the PD would still be right near the surface but I think Jack's speculation is a difference in the microlens design has reduced the fill factor.

I understand the point Jack was trying to make about the Z7 being a better landscape camera because of this pixel aperture contraction, but I think this somewhat downplays the effects of aliasing even in all natural landscapes. Color moire manifesting as those annoying little color specs between branches and leaves, etc. is a not infrequent challenge.

Yes, I don't think universally landscape photographers necessarily all want that kind of behavior. In fact I've seen others point out a specific preference for the opposite. Maybe it would be better said that some landscape photographers might find it appealing whereas I can't imagine a single wedding or fashion photographer liking it at all.

 

[sportyaccordy]

Yes, when scaled, but thus, also the least important quality, sharpness.

Everyone has excellent sharpness, look at the sharpness and detail output of an iPhone, just amazing.

A point is simply,a point, after all.

It’s obvious m4/3 is sharper than 35mm and iPhone sharper than m4/3.

But nowadays not very meaningful, outside of being attendant to the other basic (and more meaningful, IMO) parameters.

Iphones don't have excellent sharpness at the picture level.

 

[bobn2]

That's an interesting question. I'm not that familiar with the effects of oblique rays on various pixel designs but from what I've seen folks post regarding the Z7 and adapted range finder lenses it seems to behave quite well.

Jack Hogan has done a really interesting analysis:

The Nikon Z7’s Insane Sharpness

Ever since getting a Nikon Z7 MILC a few months ago I have been literally blown away by the level of sharpness it produces. I thought that my surprise might be the result of moving up from 24 to …

www.strollswithmydog.com

This also links in with some observations about the unexpectedly low QE of the D850 BSI sensor (essentially the same). What Jack finds in the Z8 is that the pixel aperture (effectively microlens size) is smaller than would be expected from the pixel size, so is providing a smaller sampling window. Given that this sensor has been custom designed for Nikon, it's unusual trading of image noise for sharpness is obviously intentional.

Also, if you go through Catrysse and Wandell (http://scarlet.stanford.edu/~brian/papers/ise/CMOSRoadmap-2005-SPIE.p) and look at the effect of smaller aperture microlenses, coupled with the zero stack height of a BSI sensor, is that the sensor becomes able to use very fast lenses and by implication, handle 'very oblique rays, without loss.

 

[jalywol]

And what do you intend to shoot?

That would be very helpful, actually.

One small tip: When it comes to most photography, sharpness is not the entire end game. Lenses can be blisteringly sharp and still produce output that looks like dross, and camera bodies can have the most advanced sensor tech in the world, but if their color science is off, it can be a beast to get the output you want from them.

So, knowing what you want to shoot and how you intend to use the gear would be very helpful in terms of helping you ascertain the right camera system for your purposes.

-J

 

[Phocal]

I was just checking out the DXO Lens database and all the M43 lenses have much lower sharpness ratings than even the most inexpensive FF lenses.

Can anyone explain this to me?

Im still looking for a new camera system so does this mean when i take pictures with

Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II + Olympus M.Zuiko 12-100mm F4 IS Pro

vs

Sony A7 iii + Tamron 28-200mm f/2.8-5.6 Di III RXD

the images on the FF are much sharper (cant find the lenses on DXO)?

Full frame will always produce sharper images than m4/3. You will unfortunately have to get use to soft images if you shoot m4/3.

 

[tko]

You can safely ignore the perceptual megapixes of DxOMark

Check for lpmm on lenstip to have an idea. Usually resolution improves with smaller pixels so lpmm for MFT are around double of full frame

That "resolution" you speak of is Lines Per Millimeter. It's relative to the size of the sensor. If a sensor is twice as large, it has double the resolution for the same LPMM. Even when MFT has double the LPMM rating, it still comes out about equal.

Of course, you also have to do an apples to apples comparison. Meaning, resolution increases as the lens is stopped down and MFT is effectively always stopped down. You should only compare a MFT F2.0 lens to FF lens at F4.0 lens. When you do this, you'll find a lot of FF lenses that equal the MFT LPMM, meaning they have double the resolution at the final print size.

This is the issue that DxOMark addresses in their ratings. They've already done the math for those who don't understand the subtleties.

 

[tko]

It's not magic. A tiny cell phone lens could have higher LPMM rating than M43rds but still not appear as sharp.

 

[LightCameraAction]

I was just checking out the DXO Lens database and all the M43 lenses have much lower sharpness ratings than even the most inexpensive FF lenses.

Can anyone explain this to me?

Im still looking for a new camera system so does this mean when i take pictures with

Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II + Olympus M.Zuiko 12-100mm F4 IS Pro

vs

Sony A7 iii + Tamron 28-200mm f/2.8-5.6 Di III RXD

the images on the FF are much sharper (cant find the lenses on DXO)?

Full frame will always produce sharper images than m4/3. You will unfortunately have to get use to soft images if you shoot m4/3.

Sigh...I am fine with the fact that full frame will typically produce sharper results than micro 4/3. However, that does not make micro 4/3 will images "soft." A bit of a silly statement in my opinion.

 

[kenw]

That's an interesting question. I'm not that familiar with the effects of oblique rays on various pixel designs but from what I've seen folks post regarding the Z7 and adapted range finder lenses it seems to behave quite well.

Jack Hogan has done a really interesting analysis:

https://www.strollswithmydog.com/nikon-z7-insane-sharpness/

This also links in with some observations about the unexpectedly low QE of the D850 BSI sensor (essentially the same). What Jack finds in the Z8 is that the pixel aperture (effectively microlens size) is smaller than would be expected from the pixel size, so is providing a smaller sampling window. Given that this sensor has been custom designed for Nikon, it's unusual trading of image noise for sharpness is obviously intentional.

Yes, I linked to that same post of Jack's and made the same comments just a little bit up thread I do understand the challenge of parsing such a long thread as this, so still thanks for linking it again!

Also, if you go through Catrysse and Wandell (http://scarlet.stanford.edu/~brian/papers/ise/CMOSRoadmap-2005-SPIE.p) and look at the effect of smaller aperture microlenses, coupled with the zero stack height of a BSI sensor, is that the sensor becomes able to use very fast lenses and by implication, handle 'very oblique rays, without loss.

Thanks for the link to that paper, haven't seen it before.

 

[Donald B]

And what do you intend to shoot?

That would be very helpful, actually.

One small tip: When it comes to most photography, sharpness is not the entire end game. Lenses can be blisteringly sharp and still produce output that looks like dross, and camera bodies can have the most advanced sensor tech in the world, but if their color science is off, it can be a beast to get the output you want from them.

So, knowing what you want to shoot and how you intend to use the gear would be very helpful in terms of helping you ascertain the right camera system for your purposes.

-J

so true ,some of the sharpest lens have the harshest background blur.

Don

 

[tedolf]

Here is an informative video of cinematographers discussing the advantages of high resolution in their craft. They cover the range of 2k, 4k, 8k, and 11k and what the combination of the eye and brain does in interpreting images beyond apparent "sharpness".

The video: https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/64133810

They demonstrate with examples the advantages of 8K large format to their work and describe why they are anxious for future technology to bring them closer to getting Hasselblad 100mp images at 30 fps.

Starting at 25:30 in the video is a 25 minute detailed discussion of the physiology of human vision. I hope you find it as fascinating and informative as I did.

At about 35mp resolution (8k in video) and above with high quality pixels (i.e. color accuracy, tonality, dynamic range, absence of digital noise), the smoother tonal and luminance transitions start to look realistic to the brain. This gives the brain enough cues to signal depth and dimensionality. This phenomenon is separate from and in addition to the classic lens 'depth of field'.

Thanks for this post ,this is exactly what im experiencing shooting video with the a7r2 vers the em12. the a7r2 videos are life like not digital looking.

Here are a couple of screenshots from the video.

Their paradigm. The elements are interrelated, not separate. They are keys to the image acquisition and manipulation. The points they make show that this is independent of how the image is viewed whether a 4k big screen, 1080 monitor, or smartphone.



View: original size

Perspective and magnification differences vary by resolution.



View: original size

Resolution affects depth perception, color, luminosity, tonality, and transitions dramatically. It is about more than just perceived sharpness. On the left is a 35mp(8k) image. On the right is a 100mp(11k) image. (The 8k and 11k "equivalents" are from the presenters.)



View: original size

Again 35mp left; 100mp right. The cinematographers hope that their technology continues to move toward 100mp(11k in video) because that is what science demonstrates that the eye/brain can see and interpret (this claim is by the presenters). Their opinion: who wouldn't want to see movies that matched the eye's capability and provide an almost completely immersive visual experience.

As still photographers we can enjoy the benefits of high resolution one frame at a time.



View: original size

In the absence of a side by side comparison I would not see a difference and would be happy with either image. I was happy with images in the says of film with good lighting. Really, I think this is marketing B.S. just to create planned obsolescence. I will say this: clients would never see the difference.



Tedoloh