The Top Layer

[DavidMillier]

I would say that people are beginning to demonstrate the process of creative and innovate thinking which is brilliant - but how do you go from that to testing whether these ideas are remotely relevant? Step 2...

Wish I had more time to learn how to use Roland's tools.

I wish I had more time period...

Time? Yeah ... that is one of the more sparse resources it seems.

Nice that some do try to think

Here is another try at thinking.

Lets say that you first duplicate the top layer to all three layers. Then you will get a monochrome image of high quality, that in the case of Merrill will be a saturated red after conversion.

Then you use some secret and clever algorithm to modify the middle and low layers, without adding noise, so that they look similar to the actual middle and low layers. And, and here comes the big problem, without adding halos and without adding desaturation of small details.

What do you say?

 

[xpatUSA]

There's no blotching on the various colors shown, however dark they are.

. . . very much used DP2M will be here on Sunday, and I can do my own blotch tests, or just take some photos around.

Once, I lit a letter-size white card (in portrait orientation) from about a foot above with small light bulb - so as to use the 'inverse square law' to get a gradient of illuminance down the paper. With the right exposure, the onset and fade-out of the infamous blotching is quite evident.

 

[DavidMillier]

Interesting that you're also using a Panny. The GH1 was a ground breaking camera, essentially popularising the idea of hybrid stills/video and introducing that mult aspect sensor.

I've been through a number of Lumix cameras (G1, GF1, GH2, G3, G6) and they seem to get better and better with every generation.

I find the G6 to be an almost perfect SLR substitute.

It's small and light (but not too small and not too light) and controls are better than earlier generations which makes it convenient to use. It's shape fits my hands very well - which is not true of a lot of mirrorless offerings which still seem to struggle to find the right form factor.

I stil have a Pentax K5 which is the best camera in terms of build, features, ergonomics and overall image quality I have ever used. It is beautifully build and fits my hand like a glove. But even though it is tiny for a pro level DSLR, I don't enjoy lugging it around or its bulky and heavy lenses, and the G6 is good enough to replace it for everyday shooting.

For me, at the moment, the G6 is the best fit SLR alternative, but there are still improvements I'd like to see:

- I prefer thumb operated controls to shutter finger controls as you don't have to take your finger off the shutter release, so I'd like a "G" that was similar to the G6 but which included a second rear command wheel for exposure comp - a dedicated one like Fuji/Sony would be ideal. And I'd like the wheels to be bigger.

- I'd like a dedicated dial for ISO positioned on the currently empty left shoulder rather than the push button + command wheel style

- the menu system could be clearer and tidier and they could settle on labels that make sense!

- the EVF display could be improved by making the option that creates separate areas for the view and the settings put a neat border all around the viewing area rather than just along the bottom edge. Moving all the settings icons and displays to this border. Let you to program the display to show only the settings you want. I like things minimalist but if I turn off the detailed display, I also lose the preview histogram which I want!

- If you are going to use a touch screen LCD, don't make it sensitive to accidentally touching things like AF point.

- Separate doors for SD card and battery

- improved materials and build so it doesn't feel quite so cheap - more rubber on grip.

- Slightly more prominent sculpting of the grip to give a more secure grip and prevent accidental pushes on buttons by the palm of the hand

- It uses the oversized multi aspect sensor from the GH2 but doesn't do mult-aspect! Make use of it and offer more ratios. Aspect ratios are important in composition and mirrorless cameras are ideal for allowing you to use them as a basic control. Why not exploit this to the max?

- I wonder if would be possible to design a LCD hinge that could offer the choice of sticking out the side or flipping up down in place...

It amazes me how good (non Sigma!) cameras have got in form factor and functionality but how there is still always room for little improvements and customisation to taste...

There's no blotching on the various colors shown, however dark they are.

. . . very much used DP2M will be here on Sunday, and I can do my own blotch tests, or just take some photos around.

Once, I lit a letter-size white card (in portrait orientation) from about a foot above with small light bulb - so as to use the 'inverse square law' to get a gradient of illuminance down the paper. With the right exposure, the onset and fade-out of the infamous blotching is quite evident.

--
Cheers,
Ted

That is a clever trick, to get "fading" light effect. But then again, if there is no cure other than to add more light, the real life photography should take place under conditions the camera is able to produce decent result. To be honest, I think, as well as most other that there is no other way, but to use the camera in the limits of its capability. Sigma has the "mechanics" and software, so one must be humble and use what is given.

I couldn't agree. I study and test this kind of thing so as to "know my enemy".

As to poor light or close-up stuff, I am beginning to use my Panasonic m4/3 GH1 more often than hitherto.

--
Cheers,
Ted

--
"...while I am tempted to bludgeon you, I would rather have you come away with an improved understanding of how these sensors work" ---- Eric Fossum
Galleries and website: http://www.whisperingcat.co.uk/
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidmillier/

 

[Roland Karlsson]

I would say that people are beginning to demonstrate the process of creative and innovate thinking which is brilliant - but how do you go from that to testing whether these ideas are remotely relevant? Step 2...

Things do happen Kalpanika

 

[xpatUSA]

Interesting that you're also using a Panny. The GH1 was a ground breaking camera, essentially popularising the idea of hybrid stills/video and introducing that mult aspect sensor.

I've been through a number of Lumix cameras (G1, GF1, GH2, G3, G6) and they seem to get better and better with every generation.

Yes, I bought the G1 and sold it in error. I got the GH1 because it was a) the last one with the wheel at the front b) reasonable file sizes for my purpose and c) no touchscreen.

The jewel in the my crown is the Panasonic Leica 45mm Elmarit Macro - awesome lens!

Just to tempt you, the GH4 now has the Electronic First Curtain Shutter option . . .

 

[montera2]

xpatUSA wrote:

I study and test this kind of thing so as to "know my enemy".

-That is true, know your enemies and you may be the conqueror, or a winner, or just get the job done. I'm too impatient to study it to the very bottom, despite the fact that I worked 30 years in a research lab, with very delicate instruments. Or is it because of it, I'm now seeking a straight path to the goal, unless of course I'm paid for it. For me the Fuji cameras will handle the low light situations.

 

[Tom Schum]

Here again we find an assertion that two sources can provide a color which flies in the face of the whole CIE tri-stimulus thing.

There were two commercial applications years ago that produced color imagery.

The first was a lo-fi color movie film that just could not reproduce some colors. It was moderately popular in the 1950s because it was lower in cost than full-fledged color movie film. We used to see this in movies at the drive-in in the early-mid 1960s. It was called Cinecolor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinecolor

Another application was for early color TV cameras in which only two image tubes were needed, each with a special filter. Other cameras of the time required three image tubes. Again, reproduction of some colors was not good, but good enough for some uses. Later, both filters were used on one imaging tube. The output was low resolution as well as mediocre color, again useful for some purposes (sorry I don't know what uses this had).

I guess it was like MP3 to an audiophile: Good enough for non-discriminating people.

 

[DavidMillier]

The GH3 and GH4 look nice in the pictures and the control layout looks like highend DSLR but the cost seems to be they are as big as a DSLR.

My pany outfit it deliberately minimalist and light: the tiny 17/2.8 pancake, the not so small but light, cheap and excellent Sigma 30/2.8 and the tiny and light 45-150. I use wide angle very little and the 17mm is fine as a very portable occasional lens. I think it weighs about 80g.

Interesting you should seek out the front command dial early G series. That front dial is what made me get rid of mine! I prefer rear dials. We use the GH2 at work for video - nice camera but for stills I find I prefer the G6's shape - fits my hand better.

User interfaces:

I still find it bizarre how inconsistent these are after more than 15 years of consumer digital cameras. For example, my G6 is festooned with programmable function buttons. And very nice it is too to be able to set the camera up as you like. However...

...they work so inconsistently it's infuriating!

I have one function button assigned to control aspect ratio. The way this control works is reasonable. Press the button an a menu appears. Repeatedly press the button to cycle through the options. The selected option becomes active when you half press the shutter release to clear the menu. Not perfect, but not bad.

ISO sensitivity is on a dedicated button and this works differently: you press the button and up pops the sensitivity menu. But if you press the button again, instead of cycling through the options like the aspect ratio button, it cancels the menu without doing anything! To cycle through the options you have to use the rear command dial instead. To select an option you have to click the OK button, then you have to press the ISO button or the shutter release cancel the menu. Uh!!!

Alternatively, you can assign ISO to one of the programmable function buttons. But then it works differently again! This time you get a kind of quick menu with various settings on it but with ISO the default. To cycle through the options on this one, you have to use the left and right controller keys!!

Why,oh why! it's like different teams are in charge of different bits and they never talk to one another. Maddening.

Interesting that you're also using a Panny. The GH1 was a ground breaking camera, essentially popularising the idea of hybrid stills/video and introducing that mult aspect sensor.

I've been through a number of Lumix cameras (G1, GF1, GH2, G3, G6) and they seem to get better and better with every generation.

Yes, I bought the G1 and sold it in error. I got the GH1 because it was a) the last one with the wheel at the front b) reasonable file sizes for my purpose and c) no touchscreen.

The jewel in the my crown is the Panasonic Leica 45mm Elmarit Macro - awesome lens!

Just to tempt you, the GH4 now has the Electronic First Curtain Shutter option . . .

--
Cheers,
Ted

--
"...while I am tempted to bludgeon you, I would rather have you come away with an improved understanding of how these sensors work" ---- Eric Fossum
Galleries and website: http://www.whisperingcat.co.uk/
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidmillier/

 

[DavidMillier]

Tom

I'm a lover of good sound and fussy but it is pretty difficult to tell the difference between high bit-rate compressed sound and uncompressed sound. All the double blind tests I've read show that even the most obsessive audiophile can't either, reliably, despite swearing they can.

People's opinions often seem to be strangely at odds with what they do. We've seen this at work many times when doing web usability testing. People will tell you one thing, or write down an answer in a survey that contradicts what you just filmed them doing. Someone might say this screen was easier to use than this other one, whilst they performed better on the one they disliked. If you play back the truth to them, they just can't understand it.

I've almost come to feel that that in many cases you might as well ignore what people say in favour of observing what they do. People's accounts are just so unreliable, despite this, we seem to have such unshakeable faith in our perceptions and beliefs. Evidence seems to play such a small part in human thinking processes....

Here again we find an assertion that two sources can provide a color which flies in the face of the whole CIE tri-stimulus thing.

There were two commercial applications years ago that produced color imagery.

The first was a lo-fi color movie film that just could not reproduce some colors. It was moderately popular in the 1950s because it was lower in cost than full-fledged color movie film. We used to see this in movies at the drive-in in the early-mid 1960s. It was called Cinecolor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinecolor

Another application was for early color TV cameras in which only two image tubes were needed, each with a special filter. Other cameras of the time required three image tubes. Again, reproduction of some colors was not good, but good enough for some uses. Later, both filters were used on one imaging tube. The output was low resolution as well as mediocre color, again useful for some purposes (sorry I don't know what uses this had).

I guess it was like MP3 to an audiophile: Good enough for non-discriminating people.

 

[xpatUSA]

I have one function button assigned to control aspect ratio. The way this control works is reasonable. Press the button an a menu appears. Repeatedly press the button to cycle through the options.

Similarly, the SD14 came as a bit of a surprise with that button where you cycle through stuff depending on which arrow button you push. Quite good when you get used to it.

However, I'm still mourning the loss of the SD9/10 shutter speed selector . . . :-(

 

[xpatUSA]

A) Why 3 detectors? Why not 2 or 19? What difference does it make?

In layman's terms you need at least three channels to simulate eye color response. There's such thing called metamerism (if you see same color for different spectral compositions, then sensor must detect same color for these spectras either and vice versa) and based on that it is assumed that for proper color reproduction eye spectral response must be representable as linear combination of sensor spectral responses. There can be more than three channels, but this makes both sensor technology and processing more expensive. There are some sensors with four different color channels produced (RGBE from Sony for example), but these sensors are abandoned due to processing difficulties.

What difference more channels can make? Maybe a bit better color reproduction, maybe wider operating conditions (from candlelight to very high color temperature scenes or while using lapms with weird spectra) - not much for ordinary photography. For scientific or forensic uses such sensors would be more interesting - but using external filters is usually much better and more flexible solution.

B) If 3 detectors are the minimum (and this is presumably why Foveon has 3 layers), how does the Quattro work: It has asymmetric layers with each top layer detector sharing the lower layers with its neighbours.If you take a group of 4 top layer pixels then the top layer could yield different values for each detector but the two lower layers would be the same for each pixel. A pixel that allows only the top layer to vary within each group of 4 doesn't sound as if it would actually work very well....yet it does...

It does sound to me as if it would work quite well. You need to consider, that a) human eye doesn't separate little details color very well and b) in real images color channels are strongly correlated. (Both of these are basis of CFA sensor processing too.)

I would process Q data as follows (noise removal and many other corrections omitted):

1. group/bin top layer pixels 2x2
2. calculate pixel values (HSV or Lab or RGB + Y - in whatever color space it is most correct to process next steps) from resulting 5MPix three-layer data as usual
3. resize result to 20MPix
4. redistribute intensity (luminance, lightness - let everyone choose correct term here, I don't know) in these 2x2 areas according to top layer real pixel values

I think such approach would create relatively few visible artefacts for most images, even without residual color fringe correction. Is someone willing to try that approach on real data?

Yes - I think this is how the do it - in principle. At least that would be a good way of doing it. And maybe they do the same for Merrill in order to fix the problem with the noisy lower layers.

Hi Roland,

I've managed to find some noisy lower layers, see here:

Loading…

www.dpreview.com

Might be of interest to you.

 

[richard stone]

There's no blotching on the various colors shown, however dark they are.

That is also an interesting observation.

So - blotches normally are found on certain areas.
Mid tones - and normally grayish.

Hmmmm ... I have seen it on a reddish brown surface also.

So ... I am not sure.

But - it seems like it is very hue/darkness dependent. Looking at an image, the blotches are not found everywhare, rather in certain areas.

 

[richard stone]

Tom

I'm a lover of good sound and fussy but it is pretty difficult to tell the difference between high bit-rate compressed sound and uncompressed sound. All the double blind tests I've read show that even the most obsessive audiophile can't either, reliably, despite swearing they can.

People's opinions often seem to be strangely at odds with what they do. We've seen this at work many times when doing web usability testing. People will tell you one thing, or write down an answer in a survey that contradicts what you just filmed them doing. Someone might say this screen was easier to use than this other one, whilst they performed better on the one they disliked. If you play back the truth to them, they just can't understand it.

I've almost come to feel that that in many cases you might as well ignore what people say in favour of observing what they do. People's accounts are just so unreliable, despite this, we seem to have such unshakeable faith in our perceptions and beliefs. Evidence seems to play such a small part in human thinking processes....

My favorite in regard to testing is double blind beer tasting, which is both humbling and rewarding.

Evidence is something else altogether, and there is some hope for evidence, in terms of utility. Proof is a matter of definition. Truth is slippery, at best, and worst of all, in my view, is causation, or cause and effect, which generally fails to meet acceptable levels of proof and meaning. In the end we are left with uncertainty and incompleteness, and good enough.

Richard

Here again we find an assertion that two sources can provide a color which flies in the face of the whole CIE tri-stimulus thing.

There were two commercial applications years ago that produced color imagery.

The first was a lo-fi color movie film that just could not reproduce some colors. It was moderately popular in the 1950s because it was lower in cost than full-fledged color movie film. We used to see this in movies at the drive-in in the early-mid 1960s. It was called Cinecolor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinecolor

Another application was for early color TV cameras in which only two image tubes were needed, each with a special filter. Other cameras of the time required three image tubes. Again, reproduction of some colors was not good, but good enough for some uses. Later, both filters were used on one imaging tube. The output was low resolution as well as mediocre color, again useful for some purposes (sorry I don't know what uses this had).

I guess it was like MP3 to an audiophile: Good enough for non-discriminating people.

 

[Vector12]

Tom

I'm a lover of good sound and fussy but it is pretty difficult to tell the difference between high bit-rate compressed sound and uncompressed sound. All the double blind tests I've read show that even the most obsessive audiophile can't either, reliably, despite swearing they can.

People's opinions often seem to be strangely at odds with what they do. We've seen this at work many times when doing web usability testing. People will tell you one thing, or write down an answer in a survey that contradicts what you just filmed them doing. Someone might say this screen was easier to use than this other one, whilst they performed better on the one they disliked. If you play back the truth to them, they just can't understand it.

I've almost come to feel that that in many cases you might as well ignore what people say in favour of observing what they do. People's accounts are just so unreliable, despite this, we seem to have such unshakeable faith in our perceptions and beliefs. Evidence seems to play such a small part in human thinking processes....

I'm not sure what testing you're referring to. The good study that I've seen shows that red book CD and SACD were not distinguishable in double blind testing, when hybrid SACD/CDs were used on an identical playback device.

MP3s are distinguishable from lossless formats. There are several studies. Here is one (via the blog link below):

Loading…

seanolive.blogspot.de

Here is another:

Loading…

www.music.mcgill.ca

Tom Schum wrote:

Here again we find an assertion that two sources can provide a color which flies in the face of the whole CIE tri-stimulus thing.

There were two commercial applications years ago that produced color imagery.

The first was a lo-fi color movie film that just could not reproduce some colors. It was moderately popular in the 1950s because it was lower in cost than full-fledged color movie film. We used to see this in movies at the drive-in in the early-mid 1960s. It was called Cinecolor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinecolor

Another application was for early color TV cameras in which only two image tubes were needed, each with a special filter. Other cameras of the time required three image tubes. Again, reproduction of some colors was not good, but good enough for some uses. Later, both filters were used on one imaging tube. The output was low resolution as well as mediocre color, again useful for some purposes (sorry I don't know what uses this had).

I guess it was like MP3 to an audiophile: Good enough for non-discriminating people.

--
Tom Schum
Celebrate mediocrity (in moderation)

--
"...while I am tempted to bludgeon you, I would rather have you come away with an improved understanding of how these sensors work" ---- Eric Fossum
Galleries and website: http://www.whisperingcat.co.uk/
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidmillier/

 

[victorgv]

iso 1600

I thought about this for a while and yes, of course, it is ISO 1600. And yet still, there is the blotching, right in a textured area in the lower to mid-tone. And we could very likely expect the same blotching in an ISO 400 image of the scene.

I do not see obvious blotching in the image on the scale presented in the solid colors. Could blotching somehow, in some circumstance, be induced, perhaps by insufficient lighting on the solid colors in the image? Possibly, but I do not see it as an obvious issue in the image as presented.

Blotching is not some random occurrence. We seem to be looking at noise and frequency and the intersection and interaction of the noise from the various sensor levels and (if what I am seeing is part of it) from image detail resolution (a luminance function).

Richard

And my experience is that blotching doesn't show up when there is no light.

That is an interesting observation, Yes, blotches are mostly in the mid or mid-low tones.

Personally I think the blotches are created by the difference between the middle and the lower layer. And I guess that the dark tones are mostly taken from the top layer. That makes sense if the blotches are not found in the dark tones.

We're only saved by SPP - the best de-blotcher on the planet .

That is probably the scary truth.

 

[Truman Prevatt]

Tom

I'm a lover of good sound and fussy but it is pretty difficult to tell the difference between high bit-rate compressed sound and uncompressed sound. All the double blind tests I've read show that even the most obsessive audiophile can't either, reliably, despite swearing they can.

People's opinions often seem to be strangely at odds with what they do. We've seen this at work many times when doing web usability testing. People will tell you one thing, or write down an answer in a survey that contradicts what you just filmed them doing. Someone might say this screen was easier to use than this other one, whilst they performed better on the one they disliked. If you play back the truth to them, they just can't understand it.

I've almost come to feel that that in many cases you might as well ignore what people say in favour of observing what they do. People's accounts are just so unreliable, despite this, we seem to have such unshakeable faith in our perceptions and beliefs. Evidence seems to play such a small part in human thinking processes....

My favorite in regard to testing is double blind beer tasting, which is both humbling and rewarding.

Evidence is something else altogether, and there is some hope for evidence, in terms of utility. Proof is a matter of definition. Truth is slippery, at best, and worst of all, in my view, is causation, or cause and effect, which generally fails to meet acceptable levels of proof and meaning. In the end we are left with uncertainty and incompleteness, and good enough.

Richard

One of the bigger issues in criminal justice is the unreliability of "eye witnesses." Over and over they swear to and honestly believe their accounts but their accounts are wrong.

In science there is the issue of "truth." However, as Richard Feynman often said, "It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong.” Feynman held that the role of science was to describe the outcome of experiments which needed to be performed - to test the underlying assumptions being made about nature. Often times the experiments could not be performed at the time. However, in general when they were performed the goal was to determine the validity of the underlying assumptions. A good example of that was "Bell's Theorem" gave a method to test the Einstein postulate of "local hidden variables" in quantum mechanics - blowing the Einstein Podolski Rosen paradox out of the water. When the experiment was performed some years after Bell's original paper, the results nullified the concept of "local hidden variables" as predicted by Bell.

Feynman also believed that there were very fee if any "laws" in science - it was more in inability to perform the proper experiment to falsify a theories. The scientific method is based on falsification. The greatest breakthroughs come when a "well established" theory is shown to be either incomplete or down right false - for example when Adam Riess from Johns Hopkins showed that in fact the universe was expanding at an accelerating rate which shatter the what was up to thing time since Einstein that the universe's expansion was slowing.

In reality the only truth in science - if you want to consider it as part of science - is mathematics. Personally as a practicing mathematical physicist for 40 years, I don't consider mathematics a part of science. It just so happens that it gives a precise language in which to formulate scientific theories and provide the technical frame work to make precise predictions in science. While many of the scientific breakthrough come from mathematicians, e.g., the work of Roger Penrose in establishing the existence of and describing what have been become known as black holes. Unlike physicist at the time - including Hawking who struggled to solve the Einstein field equations for a general singularity, Penrose use a topological argument to show singularities must exist and their general properties. These theorems were expanded by Hawking to establish the Hawking-Penrose singularity theorems. Of course these are theorems in mathematics whose predictions need to be tested as scientifically valid.

When people's opinions become part of the equation - things get even more murky and more difficult ascertain fact from opinion. My sister (a psychologist) will tell you about how people are very good at reading very subtle clues and will allow them to turn a double blind study into one which is not double blind. This I think is one reason many studies in medicine tend to have contradictory outcomes - namely what is being studied is the ability to design valid experiments more than the results of the experiment.

There is a vast difference in describing the performance of a sensor in well defined measurable terms and describing the subjective performance attributed by people - which will vary with different people. These forums often mix the two which seems to be the cause of much debate.

Sorry about the rambling, I took a spill this morning and fear I fractured a rib (at least bruised it badly) and can't do much.

BVR,

 

[DavidMillier]

My reading of those two links is:

Link 1: Young people (with perfect hearing) preferred CD over 128 b/s MP3

Link 2: The 320 b/sec MP3 was preferred marginally less than CD but the difference was not statistically significant

They both seem to support the results I've seen in the past which say that under double blind conditions no one can tell the difference between high resolution formats and Red Book CD and that hardly anyone can reliably tell the difference between minimally compressed MP3 and CD and even those few that can find the differences unimportant.

Under sighted conditions all bets are off as everyone is free to give free reign to all their prejudices and biases!

Tom

I'm a lover of good sound and fussy but it is pretty difficult to tell the difference between high bit-rate compressed sound and uncompressed sound. All the double blind tests I've read show that even the most obsessive audiophile can't either, reliably, despite swearing they can.

People's opinions often seem to be strangely at odds with what they do. We've seen this at work many times when doing web usability testing. People will tell you one thing, or write down an answer in a survey that contradicts what you just filmed them doing. Someone might say this screen was easier to use than this other one, whilst they performed better on the one they disliked. If you play back the truth to them, they just can't understand it.

I've almost come to feel that that in many cases you might as well ignore what people say in favour of observing what they do. People's accounts are just so unreliable, despite this, we seem to have such unshakeable faith in our perceptions and beliefs. Evidence seems to play such a small part in human thinking processes....

I'm not sure what testing you're referring to. The good study that I've seen shows that red book CD and SACD were not distinguishable in double blind testing, when hybrid SACD/CDs were used on an identical playback device.

MP3s are distinguishable from lossless formats. There are several studies. Here is one (via the blog link below):

http://seanolive.blogspot.de/2012/05/more-evidence-that-kids-even-japanese.html?m=1

Here is another:

http://www.music.mcgill.ca/~hockman/documents/Pras_presentation2009.pdf

Tom Schum wrote:

Here again we find an assertion that two sources can provide a color which flies in the face of the whole CIE tri-stimulus thing.

There were two commercial applications years ago that produced color imagery.

The first was a lo-fi color movie film that just could not reproduce some colors. It was moderately popular in the 1950s because it was lower in cost than full-fledged color movie film. We used to see this in movies at the drive-in in the early-mid 1960s. It was called Cinecolor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinecolor

Another application was for early color TV cameras in which only two image tubes were needed, each with a special filter. Other cameras of the time required three image tubes. Again, reproduction of some colors was not good, but good enough for some uses. Later, both filters were used on one imaging tube. The output was low resolution as well as mediocre color, again useful for some purposes (sorry I don't know what uses this had).

I guess it was like MP3 to an audiophile: Good enough for non-discriminating people.

 

[xpatUSA]

There is a vast difference in describing the performance of a sensor in well defined measurable terms and describing the subjective performance attributed by people - which will vary with different people. These forums often mix the two which seems to be the cause of much debate.

You got my vote on that :-D

Get well soon . .

 

[victorgv]

From my personal experience you can easily hear difference between mp3 320 and CD but you can't really say which is which and they all sound pretty good with LP's is slightly different story because of pops and noise but when you do MP3 from LP record again same thing there is difference but which one is which hard to say.

My reading of those two links is:

Link 1: Young people (with perfect hearing) preferred CD over 128 b/s MP3

Link 2: The 320 b/sec MP3 was preferred marginally less than CD but the difference was not statistically significant

They both seem to support the results I've seen in the past which say that under double blind conditions no one can tell the difference between high resolution formats and Red Book CD and that hardly anyone can reliably tell the difference between minimally compressed MP3 and CD and even those few that can find the differences unimportant.

Under sighted conditions all bets are off as everyone is free to give free reign to all their prejudices and biases!

Tom

I'm a lover of good sound and fussy but it is pretty difficult to tell the difference between high bit-rate compressed sound and uncompressed sound. All the double blind tests I've read show that even the most obsessive audiophile can't either, reliably, despite swearing they can.

People's opinions often seem to be strangely at odds with what they do. We've seen this at work many times when doing web usability testing. People will tell you one thing, or write down an answer in a survey that contradicts what you just filmed them doing. Someone might say this screen was easier to use than this other one, whilst they performed better on the one they disliked. If you play back the truth to them, they just can't understand it.

I've almost come to feel that that in many cases you might as well ignore what people say in favour of observing what they do. People's accounts are just so unreliable, despite this, we seem to have such unshakeable faith in our perceptions and beliefs. Evidence seems to play such a small part in human thinking processes....

I'm not sure what testing you're referring to. The good study that I've seen shows that red book CD and SACD were not distinguishable in double blind testing, when hybrid SACD/CDs were used on an identical playback device.

MP3s are distinguishable from lossless formats. There are several studies. Here is one (via the blog link below):

http://seanolive.blogspot.de/2012/05/more-evidence-that-kids-even-japanese.html?m=1

Here is another:

http://www.music.mcgill.ca/~hockman/documents/Pras_presentation2009.pdf

Tom Schum wrote:

Here again we find an assertion that two sources can provide a color which flies in the face of the whole CIE tri-stimulus thing.

There were two commercial applications years ago that produced color imagery.

The first was a lo-fi color movie film that just could not reproduce some colors. It was moderately popular in the 1950s because it was lower in cost than full-fledged color movie film. We used to see this in movies at the drive-in in the early-mid 1960s. It was called Cinecolor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinecolor

Another application was for early color TV cameras in which only two image tubes were needed, each with a special filter. Other cameras of the time required three image tubes. Again, reproduction of some colors was not good, but good enough for some uses. Later, both filters were used on one imaging tube. The output was low resolution as well as mediocre color, again useful for some purposes (sorry I don't know what uses this had).

I guess it was like MP3 to an audiophile: Good enough for non-discriminating people.

 

[DavidMillier]

Experimental design will never cease to be an issue (witness the recent neutinos travel faster than light debacle) but in experiments with people as the subject, I find it telling that the people most disparaging of double blind methods are the very people peddling unlikely, but lucrative, products whose "efficacy" magically disappears under blinded conditions.

I'm reminded of Ivor Tiefenbraun's anti-digital campaign back in the day when Linn made their money from a well known and religiously marketed turntable and his brave, but utter failure to justify any of his claims under blind conditions. Ironically, 25 years later, Linn seem to be a leading vendor of digital products and content!