Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Cameras, Lenses and Shooting gear => Topic started by: hasselbladfan on February 10, 2012, 05:36:15 pm
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I am not sure how much this filter will influence the final print?
Will it be noticeable?
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I am not sure how much this filter will influence the final print?
Will it be noticeable?
It depends who you ask. Some MF back owners will tell you that the lack of AA filter makes a huge difference... one of an amplitude such that the limited vocabulary currently available in this planet's languages can't really describe it accurately. ;D
More realistically, the main difference is in the satisfaction one has when looking a the files at 100% on screen in terms of "feeling" sharpness.
From what I have seen, the actual impact in prints is limited and corresponds to 10-20% additional pixels.
This being said, my current intend is to get the D800E.
Cheers,
Bernard
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Im with Bernard on this: I think the removal of the AA filter is probably the icing on the cake, or the last 5% - dam nice to have.
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From my experience,when a file hits the press,the limits are set by the paper stock , how many dpi etc.
However,it's a different story ,when printed on a large format printer,especially at close up viewing.
Otherwise?
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Having owned a 5D with the AA filter removed and several digital backs w/o AA filters, it is well worth it. remember moire is only present when there is a pattern that "interferes" with the bayer pattern so for landscape use where there are rarely patterns the increase in pixel level sharpness is noticeable.
The word I use to describe it when printed is more "palpable" cant put a persentage improvement on it but your images just have more "pop" and realism. sometimes small details in digital look like a painting not a photograph, these fine details look more realistic.
I'm on my photographic knees praying that Canon has an equivalent!
Marc
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I don't think there will actually be an answer until these cameras are tested side-by-side. I was looking at the Nikon sample images on the Nikon site and I could not see anything that would suggest the difference is really significant. But as other pointed out, the samples may not give a clear impression of the performance. Perhaps it will be down to the optics you use, only the sharpest lenses will benefit from no AA filter.
I print regularly on 44" wide printers. I am not really sure not having an AA filter is a significant spec on my camera (Pentax 645D). The printing process adds softness and it can't render all the detail in my files already, even at 44x58. I have not found a 100% monitor view is a real world viewing condition for any display condition.
I would just buy the model you want. I am sure this is going to be a fine camera and give great results. I your gut says no AA, go for it--it is only an extra 10% and you will always be wishing you did if you buy the other model.
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If I was to buy this Nikon, I would buy the non E. I've seen pictures from hotrod 5D2's and the difference is hard to see at first glance. An extra 5% in resolution is not worth to have to worry about moire. Workflow is more important. imho. The exception would be of course to get this camera for photographing natural content only.
Eduardo
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Has anyone noticed a certain amount of halo artifacts in the D800E samples, or is it just me? I wonder if that is due to oversharpening, or if a straight capture shows up that way?
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The real question is moire exist, with LPF blurring it and non-LPF sensor seeing it easier. Perhaps LPF applied in a time when moire surpression software is not available or not effective, and now it is. I shot many camera, from P65+ to 1DsII to Sony Nex5, moire is sometimes here and there, I would rather have a camera without it and with a build-in software embedded on the processing chip of the camera that can be turned-on to avoid moire by user choice.
Pingang
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On general principal, my goal for high res photography would be to push sensor resolution beyond what I want and what is delivered to the sensor by the rest of the "image forming chain", meaning everything from subject motion through atmospheric effects and on to abberations and diffraction. And in that strategy, the best a to get both high true resolution (not just aliasing enhanced "accutance") and freedom from aliasing artifacts is to push sensor resolution high enough ("over sampling") that the OLPF filter still leaves you all the useful and desired resolution.
And 36MP might be close! Or look at it this way: the D800 is probably as sharp as with about 30MP and no OLPF filter, so well ahead of any previous Nikon or Canon DSLR even with OLPF removed, and into the territory where many MF users in this forum have said is enough resolution.
P.S. has anyone in the digital audio field advocated removing the LPF in A/D conversion, complaining about he loss of high frequency response cause by the LPF? Maybe that would happen if audio had the equivalent of 100% pixel peeping, which would be playing music back at half speed or less, and then complaining about the muddy highs caused by the LPF.
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Nikon has just one example of the same image taken with the 800 and the 800E here:
http://imaging.nikon.com/lineup/dslr/d800/features01.htm
It is the stones and moss in the picture with the path.
They also have an example of moire in the kimono shot with the 800E.
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The side by side from Nikon looks really too good to be true. Surprising difference.
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Realistically, I think the most anyone can say at this point is that they both will be pretty darn sharp. The differences won't really be known until production samples can be tested head-to-head. The rest is just speculation, and is not helping me make a choice...I have ordered both and am getting a headache thinking about it!!! ???
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I think that a lot of people will suddenly become unhappy with some of their Nikon lenses when they take delivery of either one of these cameras.
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I think that a lot of people will suddenly become unhappy with some of their Nikon lenses when they take delivery of either one of these cameras.
That is the way it should be. Each new generation of sensor can improve resolution over the previous generation with little or no increase in unit cost, while improving lens resolution is likely to increase unit manufacturing costs. So the cheaper upgrade should run ahead of the more expensive part: sensors should become good enough that lenses are the dominant limiting factor in resolution. Sort of like the way that speakers should be the main limits to sound quality in a digital system, since improving the performance of the electronic parts before them is less expensive.)
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Hi,
It's just a 22% improvement in resolution. I don't think it will change the world.
Best regards
Erik
I think that a lot of people will suddenly become unhappy with some of their Nikon lenses when they take delivery of either one of these cameras.
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I think that a lot of people will suddenly become unhappy with some of their Nikon lenses when they take delivery of either one of these cameras.
I think that is very true!
Zeiss glass ok and the 14-24 will pass but a lot won't ....... certainly of the kit I have!
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Zeiss glass ok and the 14-24 will pass but a lot won't ....... certainly of the kit I have!
I have here the Nikon 24mm 1,4G- the 24mm PCE and the 14-24mm d2,8
The clarity of the 24mm 1,4G and sharpness is on a whole new level compared to the 14-24 on 24mm.
The 24mm PCE is also very good and has better corners as one can suspect..
If you look at the library sample picture; The 14-24 does a very good job but it is not 36MP. I would like to see this picture from the d800e
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If someone is unhappy with their Nikon gear, I still have some old Leica R lenses for sale :).
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P.S. has anyone in the digital audio field advocated removing the LPF in A/D conversion, complaining about he loss of high frequency response cause by the LPF? Maybe that would happen if audio had the equivalent of 100% pixel peeping, which would be playing music back at half speed or less, and then complaining about the muddy highs caused by the LPF.
BJL: In audio D/A conversion one has similar choices to make with regards to frequency response (for audio, this would be the time domain, rather than spatial domain for still photography). You can use a classic sinc filter for reconstruction of the analog signal, but then you get ringing and other artifacts. You can choose other filters, which minimize ringing, but then you'll have lowered frequency response and some aliasing. Some D/A converters even offer user-selectable filter choices for this reason. There's no perfect solution -- just tradeoffs and preferences.
The choice of low-pass vs no lo-pass for the D800 vs D800E is not that different. They are really two discrete options on a continuous scale of possible choices (imagine a user-tunable filter!). Someone else posted recently in this forums that you can either start with a lower frequency response (give you a cleaner starting point) and then try to get back some of the highest frequencies with deconvolution / sharpening ... or you can start with a higher frequency response then deal with aliasing artifacts when/if they arise. I think that's a very sensible way of looking at it.
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BJL: In audio D/A conversion ... You can use a classic sinc filter ... You can choose other filters ...
The choice of low-pass vs no lo-pass for the D800 vs D800E is not that different.
I see a big difference of degree: "no LPF at all" is not an option I have ever heard seriously proposed in digital audio, or in any other area of signal processing. The options in audio are more akin to the varying strengths of OLPF's used in various cameras.
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P.S. has anyone in the digital audio field advocated removing the LPF in A/D conversion, complaining about he loss of high frequency response cause by the LPF? Maybe that would happen if audio had the equivalent of 100% pixel peeping, which would be playing music back at half speed or less, and then complaining about the muddy highs caused by the LPF.
Not the filter in the A/D to my knowledge, but the equivalent filter in the D/A:
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/digital-source/108227-nos-adc-discussion-3.html
"It’s unfortunate the term non-oversampled (NOS) usually implies no reconstruction filter (NRF), as well."
It seems that usually the lowpass chatacteristics of loudspeakers are relied upon.
-h
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You can use a classic sinc filter for reconstruction of the analog signal, but then you get ringing and other artifacts.
I dont think that a sinc filter can actually be implemented in a physical circuit. What can be done is a windowed approximation, and then there is the question of what window function is applied.
You can choose other filters, which minimize ringing, but then you'll have lowered frequency response and some aliasing. Some D/A converters even offer user-selectable filter choices for this reason. There's no perfect solution -- just tradeoffs and preferences.
It is hard to make the case that ringing in frequency ranges that no-one seems to be able to hear matters all that much. Off course, it _may_ drive some HF loudspeaker units into nonlinear operation, but that can certainly not be claimed to be a proven, general phenomenon that anyone have hear with any certainty.
I do believe that AD and DA functions from the major, established manufacturers tends to suppress aliasing down to levels where it is generally accepted hard to prove audibility in a listening test. But then, audible differences between properly designed AD and DAs are really hard anyways.
The possibility to use simpler analog filters is often asserted as a benefit of high-sampling-rate delivery formats, but I find this hard to believe - the same advantage can (and is nearly always) be offered through oversampling internally in the AD or DA.
-h
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It seems that usually the lowpass chatacteristics of loudspeakers are relied upon.
I think I recognize that one: high enough PPI compared to ink dot smearing size.
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I'm interested to see some more examples (from raw files). The D800 files may be able to be sharpened far more making the difference very close and not worth the moire/aliasing risks.
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http://www.ephotozine.com/article/nikon-d800-d800e-digital-slr-hands-on-review-18420
Scroll about 1/3 of the way down the page to the shots of the snowy landscape.
The D800E 100% crop is noticeably "sharper" but does it actually contain any additional information? Hard to tell from this shot. I took the D800 crop and applied some unsharp to it and I was able to get it to look almost exactly like the D800E crop. Of course, when I applied some unsharp to the D800E shot it went even sharper, but I started noticing artifacts more.
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I think we need RAW files to play around with. JPEGs, even at 100% quality setting, will soften the files somewhat.
I do suspect though that with typical landscape f-numbers (some diffraction onset) and after deconvolution sharpening there will be very small difference between the two.
I think AA filter is a good thing generally, and the advantages of not having it has been greatly exaggerated (by medium format, Sigma and Leica owners I suppose :-)), but still I would probably buy the D800E out of curiosity and I think that the resolution is high enough that I won't have much problems with aliasing or moiré. I don't do much short DOF photography at high res, and at large DOF I think the f/8-f/11 diffraction alone will work good enough as an AA filter, so blurring it further would be unnecessary.
Having overly sharp aliased pixels sucks for post-processing (lens corrections, rotation, upscaling etc), but as said I don't think it is a risk here as the resolution is sufficiently high.
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Read the recently released Nikon Technical Guide ( http://www.nikonusa.com/en_US/o/Y6wrkA9OU_z04IreazIXl_22UII/PDF/D800_TechnicalGuide_En.pdf ). The summary is that your technique better be spotless as everything is magnified. Tripod, Live View or mirror lockup, perfect focusing and nothing smaller than f11! Makes me think the 'e' model might be slightly less forgiving. Neither camera will tolerate sloppy technique... Nikon didn't pull any punches on this one.
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Read the recently released Nikon Technical Guide ( http://www.nikonusa.com/en_US/o/Y6wrkA9OU_z04IreazIXl_22UII/PDF/D800_TechnicalGuide_En.pdf ). The summary is that your technique better be spotless as everything is magnified. Tripod, Live View or mirror lockup, perfect focusing and nothing smaller than f11! Makes me think the 'e' model might be slightly less forgiving. Neither camera will tolerate sloppy technique...
I just love the very open and down to the earth content of this white paper.
Cheers,
Bernard
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Hi,
All that applies to the D7000, too. The test below were shot with a Sony SLT 55, a 16 MP camera. Also, solid tripod, non moving mirror, cable release, live view focus and flash.
Check out: http://echophoto.dnsalias.net/ekr/index.php/photoarticles/49-dof-in-digital-pictures?start=1
The top right image would be considered sharp by most DoF tables. The left column shows effects of diffraction, and in my view it's quite obvious that we start loosing sharpness already at f/8.
That said sharpening plays an important role: http://echophoto.dnsalias.net/ekr/index.php/photoarticles/49-dof-in-digital-pictures?start=2
Also we need to keep in mind that differences may be much smaller in print than at 1:1 view.
Read the recently released Nikon Technical Guide ( http://www.nikonusa.com/en_US/o/Y6wrkA9OU_z04IreazIXl_22UII/PDF/D800_TechnicalGuide_En.pdf ). The summary is that your technique better be spotless as everything is magnified. Tripod, Live View or mirror lockup, perfect focusing and nothing smaller than f11! Makes me think the 'e' model might be slightly less forgiving. Neither camera will tolerate sloppy technique... Nikon didn't pull any punches on this one.
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It's just a 22% improvement in resolution. I don't think it will change the world.
Erik, I find it odd that in two pages of this thread I find the most useful answer so far in your reply despite it being the shortest!
I'd add from hands-on experience with digital backs I'd say 15-20%. If you're lenses aren't very sharp, your focus is off slightly, or the aperture selected has moderate or high diffraction, then the difference is much less. There also seems to be a slight change in the "feel" of the sharpness that I don't pretend to be able to qualify mathematically, nor would I claim is night and day.
I don't know how closely that experience will correlate to this Nikon given that the D800E is not an AA-free filter in the sense of just removing the AA filter.
It seems to me that resolution and IQ seem are often used as interchangeable terms. I suppose it's somewhat subjective but I'd argue very strongly that resolution is one facet of IQ and that pure resolution is often 3rd or 4th on our client's lists of facets of image quality.
Doug Peterson (e-mail Me) (doug@captureintegration.com)
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still a significant jump, a lot of people would have been delighted with 22% improvement. especially in a 22% reduction in cost or 22% bigger screen on a digital back ::)
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Hi,
Lest not forget, the 22% increase in resolution comes from a 60% reduction in cost for Nikon owners.
Best regards
Erik
still a significant jump, a lot of people would have been delighted with 22% improvement. especially in a 22% reduction in cost or 22% bigger screen on a digital back ::)
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Hi,
Lest not forget, the 22% increase in resolution comes from a 60% reduction in cost for Nikon owners.
Besides, the removal of the AA filter should be worth a few bonus extra %, no? :-)
Cheers,
Bernard
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If you download the Technical Guide for the D800/D800E, Nikon seem to be saying the the E version will lead to enhancements with some type of image but detract from others.
Reading between the lines, just as several professional photographers have said that they will need to use both the D800 and the D4 to cover all situations, it seems like Nikon are saying they will require both a D800 and a D800E (as well as the D4, of course).
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The choice of low-pass vs no lo-pass for the D800 vs D800E is not that different. They are really two discrete options on a continuous scale of possible choices (imagine a user-tunable filter!). Someone else posted recently in this forums that you can either start with a lower frequency response (give you a cleaner starting point) and then try to get back some of the highest frequencies with deconvolution / sharpening ... or you can start with a higher frequency response then deal with aliasing artifacts when/if they arise. I think that's a very sensible way of looking at it.
It would be interesting to compare the same image taken with both cameras and deconvolution sharpening applied to the D800. How close would it get to the D800E.
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It would be interesting to compare the same image taken with both cameras and deconvolution sharpening applied to the D800. How close would it get to the D800E.
I agree, this is what I want to see before making my purchase decision; hopefully I'll be able to get a hold of some optimally-shot RAW images that I can sharpen myself to compare. The D800/D800e comparison in that Nikon article is interesting, but I can't help thinking the D800 image isn't optimally sharpened.
To be honest I'm not so much worried about moire as a landscape shooter, it's more the false color and to a lesser extent edge aliasing that concern me. Some people don't seem to mind these artifacts, or even like the fact that they can create an initial impression of extra sharpness. I think they make images look 'digital', and they only get worse as you sharpen (even if you use mild or no capture sharpening, output sharpening can be problematic).
So to me, if a D800 image with deconvolution sharpening gets me almost the same detail/sharpness but without the artifacts, that would be my preference. I'm just not sure how close they two will be after careful processing, we'll have to wait till more samples are available to judge.
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I agree, this is what I want to see before making my purchase decision; hopefully I'll be able to get a hold of some optimally-shot RAW images that I can sharpen myself to compare. The D800/D800e comparison in that Nikon article is interesting, but I can't help thinking the D800 image isn't optimally sharpened.
Hi Jeff,
Postponing one's decision until actual useful comparison material is available makes a lot of sense to me. The D800 vs D800E resolution differences will probably be small when proper (deconvolution) sharpening is applied to the 'non-E' files. Sharpening 'E' files is probably bad idea because it will enhance the (depending on image content) unavoidable artifacts such as false color artifacts and jaggies. Paying a bonus for a higher chance on artifacts (which will also hamper further enlargement capabilities) seems like a bad decision ...
Cheers,
Bart
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Postponing one's decision until actual useful comparison material is available makes a lot of sense to me. The D800 vs D800E resolution differences will probably be small when proper (deconvolution) sharpening is applied to the 'non-E' files. Sharpening 'E' files is probably bad idea because it will enhance the (depending on image content) unavoidable artifacts such as false color artifacts and jaggies. Paying a bonus for a higher chance on artifacts (which will also hamper further enlargement capabilities) seems like a bad decision ...
That's my current view also.
So I don't see the value of buying a camera today that makes me spend time look for moire for those non landscape images I know I would be taking with it... for a few % of additional sharpness.
Cheers,
Bernard
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I find it interesting that most descriptions of the D800E say that it's targeted to those requiring hi-resolution images such as Landscape and FASHION photographers. Wouldn't the moire problem of the E be worse for Fashion photography since it's all about the clothing where moire is more prominent?
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BJL: I completely agree with you; oversampling is the way to go. In fact, I would go a bit further: If it were practical, digital imaging could be improved by increasing sampling to the point that the optical (lens) components were the fundamental limitation to image quality. If this could be achieved, issues like aliasing could be made negligible. This solution would not necessarily sentence us to living with huge files. The oversampled raw image could be processed in the camera aand downsampled to increase SNR at the pixel level, reducing the size to more manageable proportions.
The approach of oversampling, followed by filtering then down sampling is used in digital audio to improve the performance of CD playback. Why not in digital photography?
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The approach of oversampling, followed by filtering then down sampling is used in digital audio to improve the performance of CD playback. Why not in digital photography?
Because there's a difference between sampling a few channels per unit time, versus tens of millions ...?
Cheers,
Bart
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There are just too many questions about the D800E for me to be able to make a decision without seeing meaningful comparisons form real people who are using them. If I have to make a decision between models before I see these comparisons (due to my position on B&H's waiting list) I will choose the D800. After all, the D800 will be probably be ever so much sharper than anything else we now have...
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Because there's a difference between sampling a few channels per unit time, versus tens of millions ...?
Cheers,
Bart
CD does 44100 samples a second at 16 bits precision.
Photography does 10s of megapixels of samples a frame at ~14 bit precision.
I think those are the most valid dimensions to compare.
I believe that Dr Eric Fossum have suggested sensors capable of registering (close to) every single photon hitting the sensor. If that is ever possible, you would be limited by the physics of light only. And you would have a very high spatial resolution, very low intensity resolution signal whose noise characteristics may or may not make it similar to the flopped SACD format that was suggested as an upgrade to the CD format a few years ago.
-h
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CD does 44100 samples a second at 16 bits precision.
Photography does 10s of megapixels of samples a frame at ~14 bit precision.
I think those are the most valid dimensions to compare.
I believe that Dr Eric Fossum have suggested sensors capable of registering (close to) every single photon hitting the sensor. If that is ever possible, you would be limited by the physics of light only. And you would have a very high spatial resolution, very low intensity resolution signal whose noise characteristics may or may not make it similar to the flopped SACD format that was suggested as an upgrade to the CD format a few years ago.
I agree. I think we are progressing from the intelligible pixel-level information to the level where pixels are considered in a more abstract information-processing model. In other words, as pixels become smaller, they undergo a qualitative shift from being intelligible as picture elements to being unintelligible as picture elements, but useful as information.
Fossum's "Jot" sensor imagines a sensor in which each photosite captures at the most a single photon. In what he calls the "sub-diffraction layer" there is still an abundance of veridical information that can be exploited by means known and unknown.
Tying it all together is the notion (which we've just started to explore in recent threads) that there is an information-preserving property in the oversampling methods that is not present in the non-oversampling methods, and that this is evident even at smaller viewing sizes. Identifying what those properties are and what information is preserved -- and how it could be best preserved -- would be a useful undertaking.
Luke
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CD does 44100 samples a second at 16 bits precision.
Photography does 10s of megapixels of samples a frame at ~14 bit precision.
I think those are the most valid dimensions to compare.
Yes, so we might have a way to go. However photography does have the advantage of massive parallelism, with the column-parallel approach of Sony. Each column of a D800 sensor gives about 5000 photosites to be handled by the ADC at the bottom, so even in some imagined 60fps super resolution video, only about 300,000 samples per second, far lower than off-board ADCs do now. Read-out beyond the ADC might need Gb/s digital signal handling, but that it not so hard these days for digital signal transmission and storage.
The bigger problem for now is per photosite read noise levels: they need to be kept safely below photon shot levels in the photosites over the "photographically interesting" of subject brightness levels, and that gets harder with very many, very small photosites.
Note: with the idea of the outputs from individual cells on a sensor being not "picture elements" in themselves, but "atoms" combined in large numbers into photographically significant output, I prefer to talk the sensor's cells as "photosites" rather than "pixels"; the pixels used to produce the final displayed image will likely be constructed from cell-level signals in subsequent processing. Actually, they always are, with demosaicing, moiré removal and such.
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Note: with the idea of the outputs from individual cells on a sensor being not "picture elements" in themselves, but "atoms" combined in large numbers into photographically significant output, I prefer to talk the sensor's cells as "photosites" rather than "pixels"; the pixels used to produce the final displayed image will likely be constructed from cell-level signals in subsequent processing. Actually, they always are, with demosaicing, moiré removal and such.
Right, it would help to keep the semantic levels distinct.
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Check out: http://echophoto.dnsalias.net/ekr/index.php/photoarticles/49-dof-in-digital-pictures?start=1
The top right image would be considered sharp by most DoF tables. The left column shows effects of diffraction, and in my view it's quite obvious that we start loosing sharpness already at f/8.
That said sharpening plays an important role: http://echophoto.dnsalias.net/ekr/index.php/photoarticles/49-dof-in-digital-pictures?start=2
Many thanks for those very useful tests!
IMHO, it's evident the diameter of the airy disk does not correlate with the one of a misfocus-generated circle of confusion - and as well illustrated in the deconvolution thread, most diffraction effects can be very decently cured with an appropriate sharpening.
Back to topic, I'd see three arguments pro-OLPF :
- even in landscape use, here in Europe there can always be a tile roof or stone wall to have the nasty repetitive pattern at the nasty frequency,
- the effects of OLPF blurring are more easily overcome in processing than some of the aliasing artifacts,
- anyway, if you want a very high quality print, you have to keep the output ppi beyond a certain threshold (around 300ppi?), to have the pixel-level artefacts and/or lack of textures mostly hidden by the printing process and not exposed in plain sight.
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Because there's a difference between sampling a few channels per unit time, versus tens of millions ...?
Cheers,
Bart
Hello Bart,
Are we overtaken by events? The announcement of the Nokia 41 MP camera phone seems to be just the development I was suggesting. From http://europe.nokia.com/pureview, "How good can a pixel be?It’s not about the amount of the pixels, it’s what you do with them. Nokia PureView imaging technology can distil 7 pixels into 1 for stunningly sharp and clear 5 MP photos that are easy to share.
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Hello Bart,
Are we overtaken by events? The announcement of the Nokia 41 MP camera phone seems to be just the development I was suggesting. From http://europe.nokia.com/pureview, "How good can a pixel be?It’s not about the amount of the pixels, it’s what you do with them. Nokia PureView imaging technology can distil 7 pixels into 1 for stunningly sharp and clear 5 MP photos that are easy to share.
It is unlikely that low-pass filtering is applied (because that is a computation intensive operation), other than relying on diffraction and optical aberrations. Binning of pixels can be done relatively fast (maybe on chip), but the result will suffer from aliasing artifacts. We'll see what kind of quality the actual production phonecams produce.
It is no surprise that sooner or later someone would actually implement such simplified oversampling technoloy, since Dr. Eric Fossum already discussed that direction (http://ericfossum.com/Publications/Papers/Future%20prospects%20for%20CMOS%20active%20pixel%20image%20sensors.pdf) in 1995, and Nokia/TexasInstruments' implementation is not even close to his updated (2008) vision (http://ericfossum.com/Presentations/2008%20Jan%20CMOS%20Image%20Sensors%20Past%20Present%20and%20Future.pdf) of single photon detectors (jots).
This lecture (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=JkBh71zZKrM) explains a bit more about the 0.1 micron pitch Jots towards the end of the 1 hour talk, from the inventor of the CMOS image sensor.
Cheers,
Bart
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It is unlikely that low-pass filtering is applied (because that is a computation intensive operation), other than relying on diffraction and optical aberrations. Binning of pixels can be done relatively fast (maybe on chip), but the result will suffer from aliasing artifacts. We'll see what kind of quality the actual production phonecams produce.
I have to disagree with you strongly.
1. low-pass filtering is absolutely not a computationally intensive operation. Most practical filters can be decomposed in a horizontal and vertical operation, making it very easily applicable in processing pipelines.
2. Binning is exactly the equivalent of one such low pass filter (block filter).
3. The amount of aliasing will depend on the amount of **overlap** chosen in the filtering. Suppose you want to take every 2x2 sensels for a single resulting pixel. You can then also take 4x4 sensels for every pixel, where there is a 1 sensel overlap between each block. This is what will reduce aliasing artifacts in exactly the way one wants.
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I have to disagree with you strongly.
1. low-pass filtering is absolutely not a computationally intensive operation. Most practical filters can be decomposed in a horizontal and vertical operation, making it very easily applicable in processing pipelines.
On a Bayer CFA sensor? Sure, the demosaicing could be dumbed down by not calculating the missing spectral bands, but still. Nokia say they added a separate processor for the pixel scaling which hands off the result to the image processor. Doesn't sound like a simple column and row process, does it?
2. Binning is exactly the equivalent of one such low pass filter (block filter).
Block filter on a Bayer CFA? It would require a significantly more complex readout than that, especially when digital zoom is involved. It will be interesting to see what the battery life is when using the camera a lot. The second processor must use some power it would seem.
3. The amount of aliasing will depend on the amount of **overlap** chosen in the filtering. Suppose you want to take every 2x2 sensels for a single resulting pixel. You can then also take 4x4 sensels for every pixel, where there is a 1 sensel overlap between each block. This is what will reduce aliasing artifacts in exactly the way one wants.
Yes, I'm well aware of what could be done, what would be optimal, and how much consessions to the optimal solution would save in processing overhead. What we do not know is what consessions were actually made. I also know that Texas Instruments is not new to the field of DSP, so maybe they found an elegant and energy efficient solution to produce those 5-8 MP output images. The 'full resolution' image would require regular demosaicing, and is probably not that high resolution, especially after noise reduction. The fixed focus lens (5 elements in 1 group, with all lens surfaces being aspherical), while a bit bulky on a phone, should make a good contribution to image quality though.
Cheers,
Bart
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I have to disagree with you strongly.
1. low-pass filtering is absolutely not a computationally intensive operation. Most practical filters can be decomposed in a horizontal and vertical operation, making it very easily applicable in processing pipelines.
41 million sensels at 12-14 bits each is still a considerable amount of data to transfer from sensor to memory, to do a single pass or more across, even if the filter itself was simple.
In a large-scale custom design like this, it might make more sense to do the appropriate amount of pre-filtering in lense/olpf, and then do binning within the sensor, so that externally it appears to be an 8 megapixel sensor (or whatever).
Nokia have previously introduced new ideas with "depth-coding" fixed focus lense/sensor cameras. I expect them to do something clever here as well. Too bad that everyone seems hung up on the "42 MP" headline, not the real perceptible IQ (that might be very good for a cellphone).
-h
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Guys, you lost me at "hello" :D.
(Wow, a lot of technical details. So D800E should have better IQ than D800? :))
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Guys, you lost me at "hello" :D.
(Wow, a lot of technical details. So D800E should have better IQ than D800? :))
OK the simple answer is if your subject is a bush yes the 800E would have better IQ if your subject is a buisiness man in a suit behind a screen door in a brick building, the 800 would be a better choice
Marc :)
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More D800-D700 high ISO samples comparisons:
http://nikonrumors.com/2012/03/05/another-nikon-d700-vs-nikon-d800-high-iso-comparison.aspx/
It looks like the D800 is about one stop better once resed down to 12 mp.
That is without Topaz application of course... Considering the progress made in 3 years by noise reduction packages, it can probably be said fairly confidently that the D800 will be close to 2 stops better in terms of actual prints compared to the days when the D700/D3 were released.
Cheers,
Bernard
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Comments from Nikon on the moiré issue, and a couple of additional D800 vs D800E crops for comparison.
http://www.nikonusa.com/Learn-And-Explore/Nikon-Camera-Technology/gy43mjgu/1/Moire-and-False-Color.html (http://www.nikonusa.com/Learn-And-Explore/Nikon-Camera-Technology/gy43mjgu/1/Moire-and-False-Color.html)
I don't see a lot of difference between the comparison images. If this is really the story, I don't understand why Nikon would go to the trouble of producing two different versions. Perhaps the advantages of the E are more apparent in RAW.
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I don't see a lot of difference between the comparison images. If this is really the story, I don't understand why Nikon would go to the trouble of producing two different versions. Perhaps the advantages of the E are more apparent in RAW.
For some reason NikonUSA.com put scaled down crops there - which is non-sense when you want to compare resolution. One of the comparison images at the original size is used in the article on the mansurovs.com here:
http://mansurovs.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Nikon-D800-vs-D800E-Sharpness.jpg
(whole article http://mansurovs.com/nikon-d800-vs-d800e)
When you look at the original D800E photo http://chsvimg.nikon.com/lineup/dslr/d800/img/sample02/img_05_l.jpg, you can see that the crops at the nikonusa.com are indeed scaled down. Hopefully that's only mistake and not intention to drive people away from D800E ;-)
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Anyone else notice the fairly limited depth of field at f8?
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Comments from Nikon on the moiré issue, and a couple of additional D800 vs D800E crops for comparison.
http://www.nikonusa.com/Learn-And-Explore/Nikon-Camera-Technology/gy43mjgu/1/Moire-and-False-Color.html (http://www.nikonusa.com/Learn-And-Explore/Nikon-Camera-Technology/gy43mjgu/1/Moire-and-False-Color.html)
I don't see a lot of difference between the comparison images. If this is really the story, I don't understand why Nikon would go to the trouble of producing two different versions. Perhaps the advantages of the E are more apparent in RAW.
In that Nikon article on moire, Nikon mentions 3 times that the increase in resolution from the D800E is slight. If one compares the crops that are claimed to be 100%, in the link provided by Mulis Pictus, http://mansurovs.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Nikon-D800-vs-D800E-Sharpness.jpg , one can see that the increase in resolution is indeed slight... very slight.
If this example that Nikon has provided is a fair and typical example of what to expect from the D800E, then all I can say is that the benefits of having no AA filter are truly trivial. When examining those crops at 200%, I feel like I'm comparing a 15mp sensor with a 16mp sensor, both of which have equal strength AA filters.
Perhaps Nikon have decided to offer a version of the D800 without AA filter purely for market research purposes. They want to find out just how big the market may be for an AA-less 35mm format camera. They are charging more for the D800E to ensure they don't make a loss if only 6 people buy the model. ;D
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Ray,
I have been to a Nikon NPS event here in the Netherlands were several comparison shots D800 vs D800E were shown. These shots were not printed though, but presented via a projector ...... so much for a projector, but alas.
The increase in detail/sharpness is there and indeed small, as is the increase in clarity. But what struck me was the increase in depth of the D800E shots - a more three dimensional look .... it is to be seen at the very first glance at the image and quite attractive. Hadn't expected this at all. The difference in depth won't knock your socks off, but is much more noticeable than the difference in sharpness between the D800 and the D800E.
cheers,
Remko
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Ray,
I have been to a Nikon NPS event here in the Netherlands were several comparison shots D800 vs D800E were shown. These shots were not printed though, but presented via a projector ...... so much for a projector, but alas.
The increase in detail/sharpness is there and indeed small, as is the increase in clarity. But what struck me was the increase in depth of the D800E shots - a more three dimensional look .... it is to be seen at the very first glance at the image and quite attractive. Hadn't expected this at all. The difference in depth won't knock your socks off, but is much more noticeable than the difference in sharpness between the D800 and the D800E.
cheers,
Remko
Remko,
I can quite well believe that, when both images have received the same processing. One would expect the D800E to have slightly better micro-contrast, that is, slightly greater contrast of fine detail and edges.
Really large images, such as those from a projector, tend to look better, more 3-dimensional if you like, when local contrast has been enhanced or exaggerated. The processing one might apply to an image to be printed at A3 or A2 size would not be ideal for a 4ftx6ft print or an even larger image from a video projector.
The question is, can one isolate and define the qualities in the D800E image which are responsible for that sense of greater 3-dimensionality, then reproduce the same, or very similar effect in the D800 image through different or additional processing, such as greater detail enhancement and greater clarity adjustments in ACR and/or greater 'local contrast enhancement' in PS and different settings in Photoshop's 'Smart Sharpen' etc etc?
Mind you, there is something to be said for getting a particular desired effect straight out of the camera without a lot of stuffing around in post-processing.
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Ray,
I have been to a Nikon NPS event here in the Netherlands were several comparison shots D800 vs D800E were shown. These shots were not printed though, but presented via a projector ...... so much for a projector, but alas.
The increase in detail/sharpness is there and indeed small, as is the increase in clarity. But what struck me was the increase in depth of the D800E shots - a more three dimensional look .... it is to be seen at the very first glance at the image and quite attractive. Hadn't expected this at all. The difference in depth won't knock your socks off, but is much more noticeable than the difference in sharpness between the D800 and the D800E.
cheers,
Remko
Years ago I had my 5D AA filter removed by MaxMax and the difference was a much more 3 dimensional print I described the difference as much more "Palpable" for lack of a better description. I've just ordered a 800E!
Marc
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Are there not any RAW NEF files available for comparison? I'm not going to make my decision until I see a comparable RAW file side by side. So much for pre-ordering.
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The question is, can one isolate and define the qualities in the D800E image which are responsible for that sense of greater 3-dimensionality, then reproduce the same, or very similar effect in the D800 image through different or additional processing, such as greater detail enhancement and greater clarity adjustments in ACR and/or greater 'local contrast enhancement' in PS and different settings in Photoshop's 'Smart Sharpen' etc etc?
I would think that a simple, low-radius sharpening would reduce the perceptual difference by a lot _if_ the image has sufficient SNR at those spatial frequencies.
The nature of aliasing is such that a periodic frequency at fs/2 will "wrap around" and manifest itself as a constant value. If this behaviour is desirable, I have a hard time thinking of any processing that will emulate it properly.
-h
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Are there not any RAW NEF files available for comparison? I'm not going to make my decision until I see a comparable RAW file side by side. So much for pre-ordering.
These are a couple of files from a Russian website. NEF ISO 100, similar lighting, 1 D800 other D800E. Clearly can see differences..
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10120389/_3081766.NEF
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10120389/DSC_4683.NEF
ACH
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The D800 file is only 40mb, while the D800E is 73mb. Shouldn't they be about the same??? Also, the lighting is different and the way the items are arranged is different. So, sorry to say this doesn't show me squat!
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The D800 file is only 40mb, while the D800E is 73mb. Shouldn't they be about the same??? Also, the lighting is different and the way the items are arranged is different. So, sorry to say this doesn't show me squat!
I wonder if high-frequency detail foils the lossless compression scheme a bit.
Without edges, you could represent much of the variation in 14-bit quantities as being localized in the least-significant byte. You'd only need one byte per photosite in many cases, with the value of the most significant byte being fixed for a run-length.
I have no idea if this is exactly the way the compression is done, but the compression depends upon the statistical shape of the data.
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Hi,
The images are different, but here is a quick comparison done in Lightroom.
The marked area seems very different between the two. It may have been fake detail "invented" by aliasing. Marking was done in Photoshop.
Best regards
Erik
These are a couple of files from a Russian website. NEF ISO 100, similar lighting, 1 D800 other D800E. Clearly can see differences..
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10120389/_3081766.NEF
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10120389/DSC_4683.NEF
ACH
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"The marked area seems very different between the two. It may have been fake detail "invented" by aliasing. Marking was done in Photoshop"
any competent photographer who understands light would have seen the seen the big highlight on the top of the camera (L/H pic) and noticed it's absence from the R/H pic, they would also have noticed the angle of the surface you have highlighted and made an educated guess as to why that particular surface is reacting to light differently in each image.
it's nothing to do with AA or no AA or false detail but everything to do with light placement and angle of reflection plus micro specular reflections in fine grained thermoplastic castings :)
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This behavior on the D800E worries me.. I mean the highlight border colors.
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10120389/Screen%20Shot%202012-03-12%20at%207.43.44%20AM.png)