This is probably old news but I just read this comparison and found it interesting. Notwithstanding the author's conclusion, I found very little difference between the two and that speaks volumes about the D2x.
Jose, I have stated in the past that my D2X prints are better than my 6x7 prints and it was received with great skepticism I have 16x20 and 20x30 comparison prints, and the X prints are better. I'll spare you the details, but it was exciting to see.
The test i did shows clearly that the 6x7 format has better sharpness than the D2x. Ofcourse the differences are small. The difference you see will depend largely on the subject, the quality of the prints you make AND the quality of your own eyes.
D2x looks indeed very good but for really sharp photo's you need a good 6x7. I used the Mamiya 7 because it is famous because of it's quality lenses. Not every 6x7 lens is sharp enough to show the quality of the 6x7 format. The test method is very important.
An underestimated subject is also the quality of the viewers eyes. The question; is the viewer able to see the differences. I believe not all people are able to see the small differences in the prints of 6x7 and D2x, especially on smaller prints like 12x16 inch. there is a huge difference in sharpness of human eyes.
diax wrote:
The test i did shows clearly that the 6x7 format has better sharpness than the D2x. Ofcourse the differences are small. The difference you see will depend largely on the subject, the quality of the prints you make AND the quality of your own eyes.
D2x looks indeed very good but for really sharp photo's you need a good 6x7. I used the Mamiya 7 because it is famous because of it's quality lenses. Not every 6x7 lens is sharp enough to show the quality of the 6x7 format. The test method is very important.
An underestimated subject is also the quality of the viewers eyes. The question; is the viewer able to see the differences. I believe not all people are able to see the small differences in the prints of 6x7 and D2x, especially on smaller prints like 12x16 inch. there is a huge difference in sharpness of human eyes.
The test I did was not nearly as 'scientific', but was based more in reality. I used real people to choose between real prints that I made, and they weren't 12x16, they were from 16x20 to 30x40. These 'unscientific' people chose the D2X prints every time. I did not submit them to an eye test though, maybe that was the problem
The largest prints I've ever sold are 30x40, and the people that buy them love them, or they wouldn't put down the money. Heck man, the 6x7 should be much sharper, but it isn't. In your own words, "the differences are small" and it's subject to "the quality of your own eyes", so, the statement that "if you want really sharp photos you need a good 6x7" doesn't make sense in light of your own test.
diax wrote:
The test i did shows clearly that the 6x7 format has better sharpness than the D2x. Ofcourse the differences are small. The difference you see will depend largely on the subject, the quality of the prints you make AND the quality of your own eyes.
D2x looks indeed very good but for really sharp photo's you need a good 6x7. I used the Mamiya 7 because it is famous because of it's quality lenses. Not every 6x7 lens is sharp enough to show the quality of the 6x7 format. The test method is very important.
An underestimated subject is also the quality of the viewers eyes. The question; is the viewer able to see the differences. I believe not all people are able to see the small differences in the prints of 6x7 and D2x, especially on smaller prints like 12x16 inch. there is a huge difference in sharpness of human eyes.
I thought it was a very well thought out and executed test, and I thank you personally for taking the time and putting in the effort to enlighten us.
There are differences between the two, but the differences are small enough that the advantages of using a digital format far outweigh the small quality improvement of 6X7. Also, this is a web displayed test, and therefore one cannot look at a large print, framed under glass, hanging on a wall, under normal display light, etc.
There are only two display formats of interest - web and print. On the web the display size seems too small to make a difference in light of normal JPEG compression and related factors. In large prints, I don't know of anyone that looks a them with a loupe. This is what I based my comments on.
I have 20x30-inch Chromira prints hanging on people's walls done with my 6MP D70 and they are just fine. I also have a 30X30 Chromira print of the Moon that I did with a 2MP astronomy camera - I composited the final image from 6 different shots to yield a total of 12MP. The Tiff print-ready file was 680MB. This print can be looked at with a loupe! Here's the JPG compressed image - and as such, obviously of lesser quality than the print on the wall:
diax wrote:
The test i did shows clearly that the 6x7 format has better sharpness than the D2x. Ofcourse the differences are small. The difference you see will depend largely on the subject, the quality of the prints you make AND the quality of your own eyes.
D2x looks indeed very good but for really sharp photo's you need a good 6x7. I used the Mamiya 7 because it is famous because of it's quality lenses. Not every 6x7 lens is sharp enough to show the quality of the 6x7 format. The test method is very important.
An underestimated subject is also the quality of the viewers eyes. The question; is the viewer able to see the differences. I believe not all people are able to see the small differences in the prints of 6x7 and D2x, especially on smaller prints like 12x16 inch. there is a huge difference in sharpness of human eyes.
I also noticed that you were kind enough to include a download link for the D2X NEF file so I took the liberty of downloading it. I brought it into PS CS2 with minimal adjustments and enlarged it to 40X26 inches which is about 12000 pixels accross @ 300DPI. Then I ran it through Neat Image and after this I did some mild sharpenning back in PS CS2.
Now, to be able to accurately display print sizes on my monitor I have it adjusted 93.5 pixels per inch. This is a critical measurement so that the monitor can display a true image size. This true image size is 32.1% of any actual image that is sized at 300DPI. So, back down in size for the image to 3744 pixels across to give a true representation of size. Even with this resizing up and down the image still looks very acceptable to me. This is a full size crop of what a 40X26 inch image looks like on my monitor - your monitor should be slightly different (Warning 369KB!):
*** Image deleted to avoid further discussions ******
IMHO an extremly acceptable if not a great result. Notice the detail in the shadows - The door inside the window over the Audi, and the boat's anchor on the lower left. Also notice the detail in the highlights in the form of small patches on the concrete next to the rightmost window on the white building in the background.
I find this very impressive considering that the DX2 format's 372 mm^2 compared to 6X7's 4200mm^2...
[ This is a full size crop of what a 40X26 inch image looks like on my monitor ]
I am sorry but i disagree. The file you uploaded shows a lot of jpeg artefacts on my monitor at 100%. I don't see this artefacts on the orignal file. The noise is terrible, i don't know what you did with neat but it sure didn't help.
All the crops you made are already in the test a i did. I'm not sure you discovered them.you have to click on the red boxes to see them.
The crop you made from the original NEF file is much worse than the one i use for the comparison.
I don't understand your testmethod. You cannot simulate a 40x26 image on the screen. Your screen is about 100dpi. It is absolutely not the same as a print of 300 dpi. Your method of looking at 1/3 of the resolution is useliess as a comparison tool.
i f you read the test carefully you will read that even at 12x16 inch there is some difference to be seen between mamiya 7 and d2x.
Of course the differences are small. The purpose of the test is to determine what the possibilities of 6x7 are. Of course d2x has a great sharpness and is very usefull in a lot of situations. Still for really sharp images Mamiya 7 is better.
if you want to test it yourself, just download all the original fiels and print them with 300 dpi at 26x40 inch. That is the only real comparison. not your monitor.
If you like a d2x, fine, i like it a lot, it is a great camera.
If you like a Mamiya 7, fine too, it is a great camera too but a completely different purpose.
Learn about Diffraction and Photography
also Learn about Genunine Fractals and other softwear on the market then make a print as big as you can get and see if people know what camera the images was made from. In the long run when you look at a image what is the first thing your going to say Oh I know that image was made from a Nikon or Oh that image was made from a Mamiya7 in other words you can never know until your told, besides who cares it's all on whats best for you and what you like. If your selling your images and making money on them do you really care what camera is the so called best, if your stock house is selling your work and there making money to do you think there going to care if you shoot with a Nikon or Canon, of Mamiya NO THERE NOT. Hell I also still shoot film as well as Digital and I am making money on film as well as digital images.
Sometimes these Threads just get so long winded. Some food for thought
"A Picture is a Picture within a Picture the more you see the less you know."
Have a great day fellow shooters and Let The Light be With You
diax wrote:
[ This is a full size crop of what a 40X26 inch image looks like on my monitor ]
I am sorry but i disagree. The file you uploaded shows a lot of jpeg artefacts on my monitor at 100%. I don't see this artefacts on the orignal file. The noise is terrible, i don't know what you did with neat but it sure didn't help.
All the crops you made are already in the test a i did. I'm not sure you discovered them.you have to click on the red boxes to see them.
The crop you made from the original NEF file is much worse than the one i use for the comparison.
I don't understand your testmethod. You cannot simulate a 40x26 image on the screen. Your screen is about 100dpi. It is absolutely not the same as a print of 300 dpi. Your method of looking at 1/3 of the resolution is useliess as a comparison tool.
i f you read the test carefully you will read that even at 12x16 inch there is some difference to be seen between mamiya 7 and d2x.
Of course the differences are small. The purpose of the test is to determine what the possibilities of 6x7 are. Of course d2x has a great sharpness and is very usefull in a lot of situations. Still for really sharp images Mamiya 7 is better.
if you want to test it yourself, just download all the original fiels and print them with 300 dpi at 26x40 inch. That is the only real comparison. not your monitor.
If you like a d2x, fine, i like it a lot, it is a great camera.
If you like a Mamiya 7, fine too, it is a great camera too but a completely different purpose. ...Show more →
Hi,
My apologies if this has offended you in any way and I will be remove the image from the last post.
Yes, there are some JPEG artifacts but that's unavoidable at that size enlargement on the WEB.
Yes, this image is at 1/3 resolution compared to a print - this should make the print look much better. It was resized twice on purpose just to make it worse.
You mentioned that you used Neat Image on the 6X7 image, there is no mention whether you did this or not for the D2X image, which you resized to 180%; you could just as easily downsized the 6x7 image.
On my monitor the size of this crop is exactly 100% of a 40X26 inch print, and of this I am certain. My monitor is calibrated at 93.5 pixels/inch so that if I put a ruler next to the PS ruler in print size mode it's an exact match.
As I mentioned before, at normal web sizes and taking into account JPEG compression, it's very hard to tell the difference in a full frame image.
The red squared crops in your web page translate to aproximately an 84x56 inch print on my monitor, albeit and again at 1/3 print resolution - that's a 7 foot wide print.
At that scale I would expect media with 4200 square milimiters of area to outperform media with just 327 square milimiters, by at least 10 to 1, which it does not.
For practical purposes however, the differences in media at the more common enlargement sizes, up to 30-inches, is negligible, which goes to my orginal post which mentioned that this speaks volumes for a detector with such small a comparable area.
And for what it's worth, I still believe 4X5 format to be superior.
Again, my apologies, and I'm going back to taking pictures .
I think Schifferphotog is completely right. Nikon, Mamiya, who cares?
just did the test betweeen these just for curiousity and to know what sensor technology is capable of at this moment. Of course is the performance of the d2x incredible if you look at the size of the sensor. No discussion.
I just wanted to know if people are speaking the truth if they report that d2x is as sharp as 6x7. I couln't believe it. When i saw that 6x7 is in fact sharper than d2x i wanted to share this information. When i mention the fact that 6x7 is maybe a bit sharper it doesn't implicate automatically that D2x is a worthless camera.
What wonders me is the reaction of some when i suggest that the D2x is maybe not the best camera. Who cares. The best camera is probably a 8x10 inch, but i think it will be pretty difficult to make a nice shot with it in a marketplacein Thailand.
'Best' is depending of your needs at he moment. let's make photo's.
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