Hi Keith,
Yes, I agree. I am even considering to write an article about it.
The reason is really that images have some intended purpose, and actual pixels viewing is seldom one of those purposes. The way I see it, we either print an image or view it as a small image on screen. By definition a screen image is small, even 4K is just 8 MP or even less if aspect ratios don't match.
With prints it is a bit different. Printing large enough we can use every bit of information in a large file. But even with large prints it will be low to medium frequency detail that dominates our visual impression. So, pixel peeping and sharpening for actual pixels may ignore the part of the image that dominates our visual impression. So, we actually need to optimise for print.
Colour can be judged pretty well on screen, however. But, showing small JPEGs say very little about the source of the image. Some posters here, me included, feel that colour is much dependent on colour profiles. CFGA (colour filter grid array) differences may play a lesser roll than colour profiles.
A couple of things worth mentioning:
- Michael Ezra, a very fine art photographer, did look at "Synn's" raw images of the night scenery shots and could not reproduce the Aptus images with the Nikon shots using any of his profiles. That may speak for those images having spectral separation that Nikon's CFGA cannot separate. But, to learn anything we need to se the raw image.
- "Synn" has produced a comparison of his own, where he has presented three different images shot with different cameras. It was kind of a blind test, hardly one reader identified the involved cameras correctly.
- Another point is that Tim Parkin is known to have issues with colour rendition with the P45+ and enjoys the colour rendition of the Sonya Alpha 900. I have both cameras and I have tried to look into that issue. What I have seen is that the issue is a bit more complex. Tim also told me that Joe Cornish (a friend of his and a well know photographer) feels that the P45+ is quite problematic with colour and needs a lot of fine tuning in PS to fix. But, I also have the impression that Joe Cornish is more happy about the Dalsa based IQ-180 (?) he uses now.
From some recent work and discussion by Anders Torger, I got the impression that colour profiles may matter a lot more than we may think.
What I also would say is that white balance plays a great role.
Personally, I shoot both P45+ and Sony Alpha 99. In general I find the Sony more dead on accurate. I could say, with the Alpha 99 it is more like marksmanship while the P45+ is more like archery. I like shooting both ways. Obviously, the P45+ delivers more pixels, that is an advantage when printing large.
On my last exhibition, not a single P45+ image has made it to the wall. I don't know why, but they seem to be a bit boring or dull.
Best regards
Erik
If you, or Synn, or Erik, or Uncle Tom Cobley, judge images by looking at raw files at 100% on screen in Photoshop then I'd suggest you're looking at the wrong thing.