Let's play a little game of what camera shot what.

[Ken R]

Yeah, just a wee bit too much cynical attitude around here. I don't think he needs defending but treating a person like Doug like he is selling snake oil is just rude.

[EricWHiss]

Actually this was a great exercise and thread and I thank Sandeep for going to all the work to set this up. 

[BernardLanguillier]

Curiosity killed the cat … what was the amp ?

A Devialet D-Premier.

Cheers,
Bernard

[BernardLanguillier]

it might remind you of a lot of things, but I am not trying to sell anything.
the scientific technobabble that goes on here does remind me of the story of a man who tried learning swimming via mail though...

That's not how I meant it, nor was I talking about Doug by the way.

My point was more about the fact that we often tend to have a certain perception about the qualities of the equipment we use/like, that is not always backed up by some objective/third party experiments.

As a generic rule, the more we pay for a piece of gear, the less objective we tend to be about it once we have receptioned it, but there are obviously many exceptions to this rule.

It typically applies first and foremost to me, although I don't intend to spend more than a few thousand US$ on photographic equipment in the coming years...

Cheers,
Bernard

[synn]

That's not how I meant it, nor was I talking about Doug by the way.

My point was more about the fact that we often tend to have a certain perception about the qualities of the equipment we use/like, that is not always backed up by some objective/third party experiments.

As a generic rule, the more we pay for a piece of gear, the less objective we tend to be about it once we have receptioned it, but there are obviously many exceptions to this rule.

It typically applies first and foremost to me, although I don't intend to spend more than a few thousand US$ on photographic equipment in the coming years...

Cheers,
Bernard

That's not entirely against my PoV either. My point was that these "Qualities" that we desire in our equipment go beyond test charts or side by side experiments. Sometimes it's the user experience or even the feel.

Going by the audio analogy, I am sure some test out there that proves CDs or FLAC files to be better than vinyl records, but I know more than one audiophile who prefers the latter.

[BernardLanguillier]

That's not entirely against my PoV either. My point was that these "Qualities" that we desire in our equipment go beyond test charts or side by side experiments. Sometimes it's the user experience or even the feel.

Going by the audio analogy, I am sure some test out there that proves CDs or FLAC files to be better than vinyl records, but I know more than one audiophile who prefers the latter.

Absolutely.

Cheers,
Bernard

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

That would be different CFA designs. Tim Parkin (publisher of the english publication On Landscape) started looking at this in this article: https://www.onlandscape.co.uk/2012/02/the-myth-of-universal-colour/

Here he notes that the SMI rating by DxO mark correlates well with his findings of his and friends cameras. This comparison, made a couple of years ago, include Sony Alpha 900, Nikon D3X, Canon 5D , Canon 5DII and the Phase One P45+.

Sony Alpha 900: 87
Canon 5D:         84
Canon 5DII:       80
Nikon D3X:        79
Phase One p65+:76
Phase One P45+:72

The D800E was not available at that time but the SMI is given to 77.

I am sceptical to the SMI value, but Tim says it corresponds well to his experience. The problem I see with SMI is that it is a simple measurement of colour accuracy for a given source of light. DxO doesn't use these values in their DxO mark.

DxO also measures color sensivity, the number of colours the sensor can separate, the enclosed screen dumps illustrate this. The top one shows color sensivity at actual pixels view (ignoring the size of the sensor) the one at the bottom corresponds to a standard size print.

All this is not very conclusive, and I would guess that the quality of the camera profiles may be more important than sensor characteristics. I guess that the DxO data tells a lot about what data is given to those profiles, but little about what is coming out of those profiles.

Best regards
Erik

There are many scientist types here who would gladly explain the how part.
I can only speak from experience.