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Archive 2013 · Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX1R Full Frame with no AA filter

  
 
philip_pj
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p.12 #1 · p.12 #1 · Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX1R Full Frame with no AA filter


Yes, its the technical aspects I have in mind for the scope here, which I would have thought would be apparent. But we can expect oursleves to be very literal in a technical forum.

So just to spell it out, the remarks made above are independent of the aesthetic considerations raised, which some of you might have granted me after a few years - but never mind. They do relate to the comparison between the camera's technical qualities listed in my post - and you see that they are, and the almost vanishingly small significance of the AA removed from the R model.

However I do feel cameras like the RX1 make it easier to produce images with the qualities you raise, TW and Rich. I was reading in the Zeiss newsletter that showed up today some photographer thought it was important to like your equipment. And it is still improving fast. Even those magnum fellows are interested in new gear, so Spyro informs me;-) And they are very good at it by all accounts.




Jul 13, 2013 at 02:50 AM
philip_pj
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p.12 #2 · p.12 #2 · Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX1R Full Frame with no AA filter


Re the AA, does anyone who has an RX1 intend to 'upgrade' to the R model from the RX1? New buyers, I can understand theSuede's retail stocking point and therefore for new buyers it's a more of a straight choice.

Maybe we are getting close with the top gear in 35mm (and even APS-C) digital now - D800, latest C/N lenses, Leica lenses, CZ high resolution series - maybe it's close to 'good enough', and other characteristics might get more attention? Just a thought...



Jul 13, 2013 at 02:55 AM
Tariq Gibran
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p.12 #3 · p.12 #3 · Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX1R Full Frame with no AA filter


millsart wrote:
...so that with all that said, we can get back to the shallow and cold technical debate of actual issues of the thread, discussion of the AA filter on resolution, corner performance et al .



Well said!



Jul 13, 2013 at 07:07 AM
sebboh
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p.12 #4 · p.12 #4 · Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX1R Full Frame with no AA filter


decided to test what aperture i need to use to negate any color moire on my rx1 classic today. just pointed out a (rather dirty) window towards downtown and went through the aperture range. here is the whole frame shot:
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7360/9289175421_cbd59a8904_o.jpg
distant sky scrapers aren't as good as corrugated aluminum buildings for provoking moire, but i figured there'd have to be something in there that was good frequency and i wasn't disappointed. here's the 100% crops of a "problem area" at all full apertures with adobe LR4 defaults. you can see that i needed to stop down to f/16 to fully banish the color artifacts (use magnifying glass to see at actual size):
http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3695/9291956040_15a90c2014_o.jpg
you can draw your own conclusions about how much worse that would be for the R version. i'd guess only a little and it probably wouldn't be visible to anyone who wasn't looking for it on this particular shot.

i'm happy the lens has no trouble producing moire at full aperture though.



Jul 15, 2013 at 03:56 AM
Jonas B
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p.12 #5 · p.12 #5 · Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX1R Full Frame with no AA filter


Maybe not infinity enough for some - but I think your series show the myth about the RX1 not being good at infinity is just a myth. I get the same results from my copy. OK, I opened the windows before firing away but anyway...


Jul 15, 2013 at 05:10 AM
sebboh
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p.12 #6 · p.12 #6 · Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX1R Full Frame with no AA filter


Jonas B wrote:
Maybe not infinity enough for some - but I think your series show the myth about the RX1 not being good at infinity is just a myth. I get the same results from my copy. OK, I opened the windows before firing away but anyway...


those buildings are more than a mile away, i don't think there's going to be any difference going even further away other than more atmospheric haze.

i suspect a lot of the alleged rx-1 weakness at infinity came from people looking at poorly downsized images and poor autofocus technique. i found in my brief test of AF that if you stop the lens down aways and than focus at infinity it will often just focus kinda close to infinity. better to focus it to infinity at large aperture and then stop down. better still to use manual focus.



Jul 15, 2013 at 12:33 PM
douglasf13
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p.12 #7 · p.12 #7 · Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX1R Full Frame with no AA filter


sebboh wrote:
those buildings are more than a mile away, i don't think there's going to be any difference going even further away other than more atmospheric haze.

i suspect a lot of the alleged rx-1 weakness at infinity came from people looking at poorly downsized images and poor autofocus technique. i found in my brief test of AF that if you stop the lens down aways and than focus at infinity it will often just focus kinda close to infinity. better to focus it to infinity at large aperture and then stop down. better still to use manual focus.


Yeah, I think the AF on the X100s is pretty finicky at infinity, too.



Jul 15, 2013 at 12:46 PM
Jonas B
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p.12 #8 · p.12 #8 · Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX1R Full Frame with no AA filter


sebboh wrote:
those buildings are more than a mile away, i don't think there's going to be any difference going even further away other than more atmospheric haze.


I understand the distance. I was just thinking of the lot saying the RX1 Sonnar lens is bad at infinity.


i suspect a lot of the alleged rx-1 weakness at infinity came from people looking at poorly downsized images and poor autofocus technique. i found in my brief test of AF that if you stop the lens down aways and than focus at infinity it will often just focus kinda close to infinity. better to focus it to infinity at large aperture and then stop down. better still to use manual focus.


As always, indeed. For casual, laid-back shooting the AF works very very well.

As we are in the no AA filter thread - what do think about the RX1r for other images but landscapes?



Jul 15, 2013 at 12:51 PM
sebboh
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p.12 #9 · p.12 #9 · Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX1R Full Frame with no AA filter


Jonas B wrote:
I understand the distance. I was just thinking of the lot saying the RX1 Sonnar lens is bad at infinity.


yup.

Jonas B wrote:
As always, indeed. For casual, laid-back shooting the AF works very very well.

As we are in the no AA filter thread - what do think about the RX1r for other images but landscapes?


honestly, i think the R version will be slightly better for everything except cityscapes and stopped down model shoots with a flash. i just don't think the difference will be very noticeable and certainly not worth an extra $800 to me.




Jul 15, 2013 at 01:14 PM
sebboh
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p.12 #10 · p.12 #10 · Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX1R Full Frame with no AA filter


douglasf13 wrote:
Yeah, I think the AF on the X100s is pretty finicky at infinity, too.


seems to be true for pretty much all cameras, independent of the autofocus type.



Jul 15, 2013 at 01:15 PM
millsart
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p.12 #11 · p.12 #11 · Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX1R Full Frame with no AA filter


Very few cameras are actually good at infinity. My Sigma DP2m just kills the RX1 when it comes to things like fine detail, foliage et al, at longer distances.

RX1 just a little soft and mushy on things like trees and bushes when viewing 100%, but then so is my XE-1 which gets even softer still.

Thing is, I'm not really using those cameras for taking pictures of distant tree lines. They aren't very good tools for that. They aren't "bad", as even a D800e can get a bit soft, but they just aren't going to amaze with pixel level details either.

On the other hand, if you want something such a human subject standing in front of the landscape, the resolution and overall rendering of the RX1 is fantastic, as is the ability to shoot at high ISO's etc (same goes for my XE-1 too)

In a perfect world I'd like to have a camera with the per pixel sharpness of a Merrill, the RX1 lens/sensor combo for its rendering style, DR and high ISO, and the AF and articulating touch OLED of a Olympus OM-D, topped off with a built in (yet tiltable) EVF ala a NEX6 or XE-1.

Not going to happen though so we have to pick a given tool based on what we want to shoot. Luckily there are tools for darn near anything we could need/want on the market these days.

Look at the DPR RX1r samples, AA-less camera but distant detail still isn't pixel sharp. Just taking an AA filter of a Bayer CMOS sensor isn't going to really change that.



Jul 15, 2013 at 01:20 PM
naturephoto1
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p.12 #12 · p.12 #12 · Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX1R Full Frame with no AA filter


millsart wrote:
Very few cameras are actually good at infinity. My Sigma DP2m just kills the RX1 when it comes to things like fine detail, foliage et al, at longer distances.

RX1 just a little soft and mushy on things like trees and bushes when viewing 100%, but then so is my XE-1 which gets even softer still.

Thing is, I'm not really using those cameras for taking pictures of distant tree lines. They aren't very good tools for that. They aren't "bad", as even a D800e can get a bit soft, but they just aren't going to amaze with pixel level
...Show more

Is the softness based upon the camera/sensor or is it based upon the lens and focus of the lens at or near infinity (as in the case of the XE-1)?

Rich



Jul 15, 2013 at 01:25 PM
sebboh
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p.12 #13 · p.12 #13 · Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX1R Full Frame with no AA filter


millsart wrote:
Look at the DPR RX1r samples, AA-less camera but distant detail still isn't pixel sharp. Just taking an AA filter of a Bayer CMOS sensor isn't going to really change that.


honestly, i find the sigma distant landscapes to be pretty unrealistic looking even when all the sharpening that can be turned off is turned off. distant landscapes just aren't sharp in reality. atmospheric distortion, particulates, and haze insure that. shots of distant landscapes from the d800e and m9 look much better and more real to me than shots from the merrills.

p.s. regarding dpr, i'm always a little suspect of their technique, plus they shoot AF jpegs for their samples don't they? i stopped looking at their pictures a while ago, their reviews are helpful for learning a camera's menus without opening the manual though.



Jul 15, 2013 at 01:32 PM
millsart
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p.12 #14 · p.12 #14 · Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX1R Full Frame with no AA filter


Some lenses can have a bit of a field curvature effect such as the X100 which doesn't help things, nor does atmospheric distortion/haze but really no matter how great of lens you have, your just not going to be counting the leaves on a tree on a distant hilltop with any Bayer based CMOS sensor. The spacial frequency resolution is just always going to have a limit regardless of pixel size.

Realistically unless you have some real need to be able to accurately count the number of tiles on the roof of a house a quarter mile away, it really doesn't make or break a photo.



Jul 15, 2013 at 01:40 PM
millsart
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p.12 #15 · p.12 #15 · Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX1R Full Frame with no AA filter


sebboh wrote:
honestly, i find the sigma distant landscapes to be pretty unrealistic looking even when all the sharpening that can be turned off is turned off. distant landscapes just aren't sharp in reality. atmospheric distortion, particulates, and haze insure that. shots of distant landscapes from the d800e and m9 look much better and more real to me than shots from the merrills.

p.s. regarding dpr, i'm always a little suspect of their technique, plus they shoot AF jpegs for their samples don't they? i stopped looking at their pictures a while ago, their reviews are helpful for learning a camera's menus without
...Show more


DPR can be a bit lacking in their technique, but then I can say the same for myself 95% of the time as well

Realistically the way I'm using a camera like the RX1 when out on a walk or a vacation etc is using AF and while I often will do jpeg/raw, I've increasingly been just using the JPEG's since on camera's like the RX1, RX100 and now XE-1, they are always pretty darn good. Sometimes I even just post SOOC shots to facebook or image threads (gasp! lol)

What we don't see with their samples though is a marked improvement over the RX1 files. Even if both are presented less than ideally, if there was a massive imrovement in resolution with the R, I think it would still be apparent, which I'm not seeing. Doesn't mean an extra few % can't be coaxed out, but its not a "wow" factor like magically taking a vasoline smeared filter off the camera.


As for distant landscapes not looking sharp.... well I agree and disagree. If you live in the typical city, then yes, to our eyes, the horizon usually isn't very sharp because we have so much heat distortion coming off the concrete jungle, particulates and haze. However, that doesn't mean those objects aren't in reality sharp.

Silly analogy but do stars look unrealistic from the Hubble space telescope because it doesn't have to have its images distorted by our atmosphere which is what we are used to seeing from a terrestrial telescope ? No

As I said, real world, no one is really going to care about counting leaves on a tree 3 blocks away. Unless your taking a close up a tree, I doubt the leaves really matter or get a second glance in any photo for that matter. But... I for one still do find it kind of fun viewing my Merrill files at 100% and seeing that fine resolution. Its really fun for things like cityscapes when you can pick out the silhouettes of construction workers onto of builders, window washers etc.

Doesn't really make a photo any better or affect the composition, lighting, etc, but just fun to see what isn't there with the naked eye so to speak. Kind of like macro shooting if you will.



Jul 15, 2013 at 01:53 PM
Jonas B
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p.12 #16 · p.12 #16 · Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX1R Full Frame with no AA filter


Thank you guys. As I shoot a lot of man-made things I prefer a lightweight AA filter and haven't contemplated switch my RX1 for the r-version. Now I understand there is no reason at all thinking about it.


Jul 15, 2013 at 02:05 PM
millsart
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p.12 #17 · p.12 #17 · Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX1R Full Frame with no AA filter


I wouldn't say there is no reason to do it. Granted there are probably more reasons not to such as moire, artifacts and the main factor for most, cost, but, in absolute terms, assuming your shooting RAW and PP'ing the maximum detail possible out of each file, the R version should be slightly better.

Measurable and observable differences though don't always go hand in hand.

Its like maybe in a wind tunnel test a given type of brake design modification on a cycling road bike could have less drag, but it may not translate into saving a rider even 1 second on a 30k time trial course. Plus that is assuming the rider is in peak form (and not doping we hope! lol) Put an average rider on and even things that can matter at the pro level, such as a the streamlining of the wheel seat or seat post won't have a measurable improvement.



Jul 15, 2013 at 02:17 PM
Chrissearle
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p.12 #18 · p.12 #18 · Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX1R Full Frame with no AA filter


A review of the 'R' over at Imaging resource seems to show significant resolution benefits for distant detail making it superior to the vanilla product for landscapes in particular, indeed, they mention that Sony is 'targetting' landscape photographers with this development. Damn! Just as prices for the RX! were starting to soften....


Jul 30, 2013 at 02:17 AM
Tariq Gibran
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p.12 #19 · p.12 #19 · Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX1R Full Frame with no AA filter


Chrissearle wrote:
A review of the 'R' over at Imaging resource seems to show significant resolution benefits for distant detail making it superior to the vanilla product for landscapes in particular, indeed, they mention that Sony is 'targetting' landscape photographers with this development. Damn! Just as prices for the RX! were starting to soften....


I pointed this out previously but download the Imaging Review full size images of that test and then properly sharpen the RX1 image (which will take more sharpening than the RX1r of course). Now compare. When I do this using the ACR settings below (or at least as a starting point), I see no real advantage to the RX1r in that Imaging Review comparison.

Amount: 60
Radius: .7
Detail: 70
Masking: 20




Jul 30, 2013 at 07:55 AM
douglasf13
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p.12 #20 · p.12 #20 · Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX1R Full Frame with no AA filter


Chrissearle wrote:
A review of the 'R' over at Imaging resource seems to show significant resolution benefits for distant detail making it superior to the vanilla product for landscapes in particular, indeed, they mention that Sony is 'targetting' landscape photographers with this development. Damn! Just as prices for the RX! were starting to soften....


That was just with camera jpegs. Like Tariq says, raws are a different story.



Jul 30, 2013 at 08:45 AM
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