|
|
  | 20 February 2012 11:14 |
|
| Allinthemind Photographer  Location United Kingdom Gloucestershire | Andy, The more buckets that you try and cram into a space, the more "Bucket edges" you get that can't collect light. As you say, with the current layout, there is an optimum light gathering/micro-lens/noise etc spacing. We shall see if the D800 produces better pictures than the D4 soon. I use a D3 at the moment and also have a D7000 (more pixels), the D3 pictures are sharper and cleaner. I though you might be interested in a test I did with portrait film, since this test my RZs have been in the cupboard. D2x v a 35mm portrait film. I tried to get central 100 crops. I scanned the film with a dedicated film scanner (not wet mount).  Si |
|
| In the "Information Age", continued ignorance must be a choice motivated initially through inherited beliefs. | ||
| 20 February 2012 11:35 |
| kenp Photographer  Location United Kingdom Dorset Weymouth |  Quote from Andy_BI think you're looking back with rose tinted glasses. 35mm was never that good on a double page spread, and reportage was never about getting the last ounce of quality. A lot of Capa's images would be outclassed in pure picture quality by a 3MP phone camera... that doesn't detract from their impact. How many magazines would have been happy going double page with a 35mm fashion or advertising shoot? Not many. I think this analysis of film vs digital is good. I swapped some emails with him 10 years ago about his work, and he was very thorough in his reasoning. He came up with a figure of around 8MP as being a digital equivalent of 35mm film, which I think is on the money. You are missing my point, you asked why people would not want to use MF in order to get quality and my answer is that MF lacks the portability. Technological advance has led to minaiturisation in many fields, so it is not unreasonable for camera manufacturers to strive to produce MF quality in 35mm. I'm afraid I can't agree with the 8Mp conclusion, even this wiki report (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodachrome) puts the recoverable data at 20Mp. Sesor technology has moved on two generation since the D3 and four since the D100. There are a number of other variables that people don't seem to take into account and those are the variables of resolution of print emulsion (that's how prints used to be viewed), printer resoltion, monitor resultion, scanner resolution etc. |
| 20 February 2012 11:43 |
| kenp Photographer Location United Kingdom Dorset Weymouth | Quote from Allinthemind Andy, The more buckets that you try and cram into a space, the more "Bucket edges" you get that can't collect light. Si There have been significant advances in micro lens design where the edges not only overlap into unused space between photosites, but actually function as light funnels . In fact cameras like the D100 had nearly 50% 'unused' space on a sensor. |
| 20 February 2012 12:07 |
|
| Allinthemind Photographer Location United Kingdom Gloucestershire | Quote from kenp There have been significant advances in micro lens design where the edges not only overlap into unused space between photosites, but actually function as light funnels . In fact cameras like the D100 had nearly 50% 'unused' space on a sensor. there has indeed, also angled lenses (nearer the corner of the sensor) and thinner CFAs. The edge argument still applies though. Light can't get throuh the edges. |
|
| In the "Information Age", continued ignorance must be a choice motivated initially through inherited beliefs. | ||
| 20 February 2012 12:21 |
| kenp Photographer Location United Kingdom Dorset Weymouth | Quote from Allinthemind Light can't get throuh the edges.  |
| 20 February 2012 12:25 |
| dannyrich Photographer  Location United Kingdom West Yorkshire Leeds | Jesus, just go out and enjoy the damn thing. It will be alright, big files sizes but technology will advance with that. |
| 20 February 2012 12:28 |
|
| Allinthemind Photographer Location United Kingdom Gloucestershire | The above has been in designs for a while Ken. There is a layer of lenses in front of that bit. The diagram you have posted is for the photon collector. Even if you join the lenses to each other there is a join. Light can't get through that join. The wider you can make the photon collectors, the less you have to bend (and therefore lose) the light going through them. These lenses suffer from the aberrations that all lenses suffer from, consider the effect of the demosaicing algorithm when the CA from these lenses spills into pixels around the edges and starts to smear across multiple pixels. Si |
|
| In the "Information Age", continued ignorance must be a choice motivated initially through inherited beliefs. | ||
| 20 February 2012 14:41 |
|
| LaurenceJPower Photographer  Location United Kingdom Surrey Esher | Quote from DCox thats my point.....i dont want video. I want Fx. I dont want 3999999MPixels. D700 is fine but foolish me held on until the 800 came out purely because I thought it would be the legitimate 700 replacement. it appears to be a bit of an overfed  son of itIn which case you can wait a few weeks and pick up a cheap old technology D700 cheap, possibly from one of those wanting the latest kit thinking it makes them look professional. |
|
| Laurence J. Power | ||
| 20 February 2012 15:24 |
| Andy_B Photographer  Location United Kingdom London London | Quote from kenp You are missing my point, you asked why people would not want to use MF in order to get quality and my answer is that MF lacks the portability. Technological advance has led to minaiturisation in many fields, so it is not unreasonable for camera manufacturers to strive to produce MF quality in 35mm. Your original point that I responded to was essentially 'why are people criticising 35mm lenses now, when we had 30MP equivalent resolution from film?'
In the past 35mm Kodachrome has been equated to being the equivalent to 32-35Mpixels.
Now we have people suggesting that modern lenses won't have the neccesary resolving power and images will be blurred because of misfocus and resolution. Can somebody please explain how 50 year old lenses had sufficient resolving power for Kodachrome and didn't suffer fro misfocussing/shake compared to Ektachrome?
To which my response was that back in the day you'd go MF if you wanted quality, and 35mm if you wanted portability. Yes, it's obvious that MF didn't have the portability - I never claimed that it did. But it's equally obvious that 35mm didn't have the 35MP+ of resolution. We weren't hitting the limits with glass back then, but now we are. So we're now in a new scenario where sensors vastly out resolve film and people want both resolution and portability, agreed. But I think we are encountering lens limits which were not recognised before. Quote from Allinthemind
Andy, The more buckets that you try and cram into a space, the more "Bucket edges" you get that can't collect light. As you say, with the current layout, there is an optimum light gathering/micro-lens/noise etc spacing. We shall see if the D800 produces better pictures than the D4 soon. I use a D3 at the moment and also have a D7000 (more pixels), the D3 pictures are sharper and cleaner. As KenP mentioned, micro lens performance has improved... I'm not sure if 'back illumination' has come to FF sized sensors yet, but essentially that turns the sensor upside down so the metal interconnects run on the dark side of the sensor, and don't cut off light on the light gathering side. However, what i'd say as well is that 'optimal' depends on your starting assumptions. If your starting assumption is that you'll always be shooting ISO100 in a studio, then perhaps higher resolution makes sense, because you'll always have plenty of light. For a photojournalist's camera, perhaps optimal is 18MP. Nikon seem to have got it about right I'd say - the heavy duty D4 is aimed at low light, big pixels, lower resolution. The lighter and less weather proofed D800 is for the studio and landscape. QuoteI though you might be interested in a test I did with portrait film, since this test my RZs have been in the cupboard. D2x v a 35mm portrait film. I tried to get central 100 crops. I scanned the film with a dedicated film scanner (not wet mount).Wow - that speaks volumes! Yes, I have an RZ in the cupboard - and it's been there ever since I bought my dirst DSLR (the 20D). The 20D resolution wasn't quite up there with the RZ, but for me it seemed much better than 35mm film and it was a lot cheaper to feed. Finally with the 5DII I begain to feel that quality was approaching MF. I still miss the RZ from a composition point of view. There's something about that large glass screen that makes taking pictures a lot more fun. |
| 25 April 2012 08:00 |
| myshoot Photographer  Location United Kingdom Kent Rochester | Well the weather is rubbish but ive just picked up my d800 and im walking the streets of London to test it out. At least ill find out if the weather sealing is any good. |
|
