Can you see a difference in small prints between an MFDB and a DSLR?

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

The wonder is so many folk here spend so much time worrying about the least important thing in photography.

I'd guess that the operators of e.g. the Hubble Space Telescope camera would disagree to a large extent. I also prefer if the specialists in my hospital use the imaging equipment they think will allow to do the better job, not just good enough, but the preferably the best.

Cameras are enablers, without them (or rather a model best suited for the task), there would be little photography that's worth looking at (unless one promotes Lomography to an art form). I also get more joy out of operating a good camera than an mediocre one, and that will also show in the end result because my creativity did not suffer from distractions. The process of creation should be smooth, not an uphill battle if possible.

Cheers,
Bart

[eronald]

Bart,

 What would you prefer: A car with a very good engine and nice gearing, nice steering and nice seats, or a car with a wonderful engine, mediocre gearing, horrible steering, and a bicycle saddle seat?

 In your hospital, with wonderful imaging equipment, should they be using 13" uncalibrated monitors?

 MF sensors are still the best, but the complete imaging experience has suffered. Look at the way all these companies refuse to put an iPhone or Galaxy phone LCD on the back of their thingies - it's not like they cannot get mobile phone displays on the Chinese open market. Look at the outdated focus module of the Phamiyas.  

In Europe we make lab or industrial technology and repurpose it, in the US they make military tech and repurpose it, and in Japan they make consumer technology straight out of the box.

Edmund

I'd guess that the operators of e.g. the Hubble Space Telescope camera would disagree to a large extent. I also prefer if the specialists in my hospital use the imaging equipment they think will allow to do the better job, not just good enough, but the preferably the best.

Cameras are enablers, without them (or rather a model best suited for the task), there would be little photography that's worth looking at (unless one promotes Lomography to an art form). I also get more joy out of operating a good camera than an mediocre one, and that will also show in the end result because my creativity did not suffer from distractions. The process of creation should be smooth, not an uphill battle if possible.

Cheers,
Bart

[Theodoros]

Bart,

 What would you prefer: A car with a very good engine and nice gearing, nice steering and nice seats, or a car with a wonderful engine, mediocre gearing, horrible steering, and a bicycle saddle seat?

 In your hospital, with wonderful imaging equipment, should they be using 13" uncalibrated monitors?

 MF sensors are still the best, but the complete imaging experience has suffered. Look at the way all these companies refuse to put an iPhone or Galaxy phone LCD on the back of their thingies - it's not like they cannot get mobile phone displays on the Chinese open market. Look at the outdated focus module of the Phamiyas. I worked in a top applied maths lab once, we had Fields medals but not enough money for a Matlab license.

Edmund

I don't see the relevance of …cars, neither their spec comparison or why the specs must be like this…..

[KevinA]

I like the way the thread title includes "can you see the difference..." and in order to see the difference a scientific measurement is used.

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

Actually, properties of human vision are quite well known. I would even say that scientists know a lot more about human vision than photographers do.

Best regards
Erik

I like the way the thread title includes "can you see the difference..." and in order to see the difference a scientific measurement is used.

[Theodoros]

I like the way the thread title includes "can you see the difference..." and in order to see the difference a scientific measurement is used.

It's like asking people how good their eyes are… isn't it? …he doesn't ask "can you see A difference?"… he asks if one can see the difference that exists... it is admitted in the enquire that there is a difference and the question is if one has good enough vision as to spot it….

[Theodoros]

Hi,

Actually, properties of human vision are quite well known. I would even say that scientists know a lot more about human vision than photographers do.

Best regards
Erik

Exactly… soooo, why the question?

[Fine_Art]

As long as this discussion is still centred on the title of this thread.
'We have long known that it takes larger and larger amounts of money to achieve smaller and smaller incremental gains in quality. Once you reach a certain plateau, the curve gets very flat, very quickly.'

And if you want to know where that came from, try
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/kidding.shtml

That review says it all. The rest is "sound and fury, signifying nothing"

Now you have to consider limited contrast of the print vs a good screen. I bet the difference will be clear on a 4K screen.

[tho_mas]

That review says it all.

that "review" - the comparison respectively - is based on a very soft capture of the Hassy/P45+ kit (it's misfocussed). So I am not sure it says anything at all ... 

[EricWHiss]

Yeah, that review has been debated many times here in LuLa in the past - maybe do a search.  Somewhere there are also posts that claim that early digital cameras are equal to 4x5 sheet film as well.  Hmm…    Like anything you read YMMV.

The internet is great for self validation of ideas.  If you search for something, you'll find someone that says what you searched for.  But is it really true?

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

Quite true but those industry insiders didn't notice the defocus either, it may depend on dowsizing for print masks the differences.

Some audio expert made a simple experiment. He had two amplifiers, a McIntosh and a  better grade "consumer" amplifier. Hooked up one of them to a pair of loadspeaker through a box with a switch on, without connecting any cable to switch. So whatever they switched they were listening to the same set. The switch was simply a fake. Of sixteen testers there was only one who could not hear the difference.

I cannot really recall the exact circumstances, but is was a fake experiment and 15 of 16 listeners could hear the non existing difference.

Best regards
Erik

that "review" - the comparison respectively - is based on a very soft capture of the Hassy/P45+ kit (it's misfocussed). So I am not sure it says anything at all ... 

[tho_mas]

Quite true but those industry insiders didn't notice the defocus either, it may depend on dowsizing for print masks the differences.

obviously those "experts" didn't see the defocusing even when viewed on a screen:

That evening I looked at the files on my laptop screen, along with several other people, and we were amazed to see that the differences between the 39 Megapixel medium format system and the 15 Megapixel pocket digicam didn't seem that dramatic

I wonder why nobody noticed that the Hassy/P45+ shot is nowhere near what this kit is capable of under normal circumstances.

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

The issue is a bit complex. The eye has a finite resolution, depending on the density of the cones in the fovea. They act as a sensor, much like a digital sensor. The spacing of the cones gives an angular resolution of about one minute of arc, that corresponds to 20/20 vision. Once resolution of an image exceeds one minute of arc it will be perceived as sharp. Another factor is edge contrast. Contrasty edges will be perceived sharper than less contrasty edges. Some folks have better than 20/20 vision, as far as I recall 0.7 minutes of arc seems to be the absolute limit.

You can measure edge sharpness by MTF, but it is very much dependent on sharpening.

What I have seen is that I can feed images with obviously very different quality on screen into a printing pipeline and have virtually indistinguishable results. Now, I print from Lightroom which does it's own uprezzing and output sharpening, and to that comes dithering in the printer driver. So what you see on the screen is not what you get.

Experience and science seems to converge on 180 PPI being good enough for an excellent print when viewed by a person having 20/20 vision at 50 cm. A young person with 20/20 vision would need 360 PPI at 25 cm which is the probable reason Epson has chosen 360 PPI for photographic rendition.

So yes, science says that there is no visible difference in resolution, contrast, etc if you print at 180 PPI and view at 50 cm and have 20/20 vision. To that comes colour rendition, but that is not dependent on either print or sensor size, but much dependent on CFA (Color Filter Array) and colour profiles.

Best regards
Erik

Exactly… soooo, why the question?

[bcooter]

- bcooter -  has recently acquired S2 to extend the use of his Contax lenses, but even upon request had not posted any images form the new tool while in almost every
                recent post has extolled the virtues of Olympus OMDs

This is simple truth.

You use what you like, or you use what you got.

If you like it you shoot better, if you don't you usually don't and you want what you want.

Just because someone else doesn't use, or like or even find it reasonable means squat.

I shot this with an m-8 and nobody pointed a gun to my head and told me to use anything.  I used it because I wanted to.  Did the camera matter.

It did to me at the time and that's all that really matters.


I haven't posted new images in a while, actually haven't even really updated our website in two years.

What we do now has a lot of motion content, plus the stills.  

One project last year had 180 final minutes of multiple videos in multiple languages so the videos and the accompanying stills are either under embargo or contract until everything is disseminated.

I can't explain what pre and post work it takes to produce 180 minutes of dialog videos and from that project we just finished the first retouching session of 117 still images.

This week we will begin using the Leica for the first time in production and even then I probably won't show an image of this shoot for a year.    I just stopped showing recent work in world view for a lot of reasons, some contractual some because
it does me no good to blast it out without the ability to control the audience.

I think I might have a schedule break this year and we'll either shoot something personal or editorial (what editorial is left) and then I'll post that.

IMO

BC

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

My guess is that we are going to see more of 4K and even 8K in a few years. 4K is available right now on screen and hopefully also on affordable projectors, soon. With 4K the colour gamut is also greatly expanded so much will improve. YouTube and Flicker still stay the way they are, of curse, but there are and will be better places to share images like SmugMug and Vimeo.

Best regards
Erik

One question I have in the back of my mind is how much print work is even happening anyhow?  It seems like these days half of all content is viewed on a phone and a big chunk of the other half on a computer screen.   More often I see artwork displayed on a framed LCD too.  It seems like for a lot of work the turnaround is more important than the actual quality and maybe justifiably so since most of its going to the web.

[EricWHiss]

Quite true but those industry insiders didn't notice the defocus either

This probably explains the title of that article.  You'd think they knew… but maybe not until they had made sufficient progress on the article as to not turn around.

But a serious comment - one can't assume that what they see is what others see or hear for that matter.   Erik K dumped out some information about eyesight but that's a generality - in fact the eyesight varies quite a bit person to person and sadly as we age we loose a lot of what we started with.   Years ago I remember showing some of my prints to some older people and watching the eyeglasses come out and then still they felt they needed to move to an area with more light.  Now I understand! 

If you can't see a difference doesn't mean it isn't there. 

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

Whenever I found an interesting case I usually tested on several people. But age plays a role. Anyway the 180 PPI figure I mentioned is based on Bruce Frazers research, and its corresponds to 20/20 at 50 cm.

There is really one way to find out, you can download raw images from say Imaging Resource, process on your own and print at the sizes you want. The problem is that they have only one MFD camera tested, the Pentax 645D. You can also test with different amount of sharpening, there is some probability that sharpening decides which of the prints is best.

The samples below were made from Imaging Resource test images from the Pentax 645D and the Nikon D3X (I have neither camera). The images are from A2 prints (actually crops printed on A4) and scanned at 300PPI. The images are:

Left: Nikon D3X sharpened with Lightroom's "Landscape" setting, which is the one that Jeff Schewe finds OK for images with fine high frequency detail
Center: Nikon D3X sharpened with my standard sharpening, still in Lightroom but more aggressive
Right: Pentax 645D at Lightrooms "Landscape" setting

At a larger size, like A0, the Nikon D3X falls apart. See second screen dump showing different detail. The third dump shows the "ancient mosaic" again in A2, and here the D3X does still remarkably well. Could be that the D3X resolves almost all existing detail, so sharpening matters  more than resolution in that case?

I know that you apply much different sharpening than I do, that of course may matter a lot, too.
 
This is also an experiment anyone can do, with zero cost. It costs some paper, but much cheaper than an MFD rental.

Best regards
Erik

But a serious comment - one can't assume that what they see is what others see or hear for that matter.   Erik K dumped out some information about eyesight but that's a generality - in fact the eyesight varies quite a bit person to person and sadly as we age we loose a lot of what we started with.   Years ago I remember showing some of my prints to some older people and watching the eyeglasses come out and then still they felt they needed to move to an area with more light.  Now I understand!  

If you can't see a difference doesn't mean it isn't there.  

[hjulenissen]

With 4K the colour gamut is also greatly expanded so much will improve.

I would not dare to assume that "4k" guarantees a larger gamut projected onto my retina.

The format change does carry some possibilities, given that the industry cares enough to actually implement them.

-h

[AreBee]

Eric,

If you can't see a difference doesn't mean it isn't there.

Equally, if one can see a difference doesn't mean it exists.

[torger]

Measurements is a necessary base for equipment discussion, nice A/B testing is even better, it's the only thing that can put a difference in context. Is it large or is it small? If a difference is "small" or "large" is a very personal thing, the same objective difference some will call huge and others will call so small it's irrelevant.

It's very common that those which prefer subjectivity and dislike measurements give exaggerated descriptions of the differences, ie differences are claimed to be huge and obvious in situations where most laymen and many skilled photographers would not be able to sort them out in an A/B test. I saw this a lot when I worked with HiFi audio, and I see this again in photography. If you don't have the golden ears/eyes you can't hear/see the magic unmeasurable "three dimensionality" difference, and the usual elitist discussions and eventually name-calling follow.

As golden eye folks just as little as golden ear folks want to do blind A/B testing (with a few exceptions) it's hard to know if differences are real or imagined. In a way it doesn't matter, for us deadly it's better to focus on things we can appreciate ourselves. When I built HiFi systems I didn't use expensive cables, I did A/B test and I could not differ a good quality cheap cable from a high-end expensive cable, but I could easily differ between a well-damped room with good listening position and a bad one, so I put energy there. An analogy for landscape photography could be to put effort/money into shooting technique and tripod/head than resolution in the back (and post-processing technique not the least).

When it comes to MF the reason I'm using it is not so much about image quality but from other factors: I just like making pictures with my view camera. As I tend to view prints on nosing distance I quite easily spot differences in resolution though, even in small prints if the printer is good. Images are easier to compare than sound. I'm less certain I would see a difference in "three dimensionality" when viewing prints at a distance though...