Gary Clennan wrote:
Nice detail in that first pic Michael! Do you do your own scanning?
It was a low resolution scan from local lab about 1800x1200. But I guess it is enough for 1024 web presentation.
According to theSuede here, The Sony RX-1 is really only about 10.8 bits. Apparently the difference between that and 14 bits is insignificant, visually.
Somewhere else recently, I read, I think again from theSuede, that 10 bits seems to be a kind of 'tipping' point.
Ryan - great set and the first one in particular is excellent! Who says you must have AF to photograph active kids?
Michael - like the last one.
Did an event at the local university and got to hang out in the faculty club afterwards. Unfortunately they closed at 8pm and I couldn't wait longer for the outside exposure value to drop more to better match that of the interior. I had to dig the foreground out of the shadows instead.
M9 & 50 Lux ASPH:
28 Cron:
A few shots from the event... nothing fancy or special, other than I was once again really impressed by the 21 SEM. Images have a great sharpness and roundness at the same time. If I was shooting with my Canon 16-35 I'd be bothered by how soft it gets towards the edges. No such concern with the SEM. It just looks natural. It's also reasonably flare resistant with strong light sources in the frame.
For example, here's the venue and set-up (21 Lux wide open):
This is a difficult venue to light. Long, narrow, non-neutral color scheme (not ideal for bouncing light off walls/ceiling), few good spots for light stands without also being tripping hazards, and very few power outlets. I set up a couple Elinchrom Quadra packs and heads in 86" Paul Buff PLM soft silver umbrellas. This gave a rather tight ~30 degree light spread, but worked well here to shoot the light down the hall. On 13' light stands, this tight beam also served to shoot much of the light over and just feathering enough on those positioned nearby so that near-to-far light falloff was only around 1.5 stops, or so. Because I wasn't just after the podium shot and needed to get a lot of candids, I set up a third light at the opposite end in a 64" soft silver PLM for cross lighting to allow me more options when not shooting with the main lights. But it was also inevitable the lights would get in some of the shots. At its peak, the event was well attended, which meant lots of fairly tight clusters of people, with tables and chairs in the way, which made the 21 pretty invaluable...
Here's shooting down the hall with the light from the main lights and the third light in the background. The SEM handled the strong backlighting really nicely...
And just a few more examples with the SEM:
Looking at the 21 Lux shot, available light would have been an option at times, and I did in fact shoot some with the Canon and 70-200 for tight shots, but the light quality and intensity was quite variable and I really prefer shooting with strobes for the much better color quality and greater consistency in post (which saves some time too).
Anyway, kind of boring stuff - guys in suits - but at the same time was a fun event with interesting people (not uncommon in a university environment). It pays the bills and is an excuse to use the M9 some more.
Ron, very interesting to read about your lighting technique. Love the faculty club portraits. Lighting and colors are fabulous. The event shots are very nicely executed. you added art to documentary. Also I'm still amazed at your ability to frame the 21 without viewfinder
rscheffler wrote:
Anyway, kind of boring stuff - guys in suits - but at the same time was a fun event with interesting people (not uncommon in a university environment). It pays the bills and is an excuse to use the M9 some more.
Not at all, Ron, that is awesome post. the results are very professional. I enjoy the photos very much. Lighting setup is field I know nothing, I am sure I will revisit your thread to pay more attention to your description again.
I am surprised to hear that about less than 11 bit dynamic range with Sony sensor. I get the impression from DXO rating that DR is more than that. I have good understanding about fundamental of this SNR, DR thing since a lot of them are related to my field but I think there must be fundamental difference of definition between sensor DR and DXO's capture photo DR, I don't know.
Thanks Edward! Very nice series of images. Again, the last one in particular looks like it was shot on transparency film!
The great thing about the 21 is I can crop it to taste. Framing is not usually that critical for this kind of work. I think the ones I posted here were all uncropped, but in the final edit, there were many images where I cropped the 21 to probably closer to 28 and the 28 to 35, and the 50 to 75... At least for this kind of work, where the client is not expecting 20" print resolution, 18MP offers a good file size to support such cropping. I don't really miss not having the zooms I would otherwise have used on my DSLR prior to the M9.
I also had to do an impromptu group photo with about 30 people during this event... I shot it with the 21 SEM. The final crop is probably closer to about 24mm, but what I want to mention is with the lighting I had set up, the exposure on the M9 was f/4.5 @ ISO 640 and the shot was sharp across the frame. Granted, I could have shot it on the DSLR at ISO 1600 and got closer to f/8, but even at f/8, there would have been noticeable sharpness falloff towards the edges. In the past I always felt the 16-35 was a pretty significant compromise for such a shot, but now I can confidently do such a shot at a moderate aperture value and not need to worry about across frame sharpness. While that's not to say other WA primes for DLSRs couldn't also do this, such as perhaps the ZE/ZF 21/2.8... for me at least, it's great to have this fabulous sharpness in such a compact package.
rscheffler wrote:
Anyway, kind of boring stuff - guys in suits - but at the same time was a fun event with interesting people (not uncommon in a university environment). It pays the bills and is an excuse to use the M9 some more.
zhangyue wrote:
Not at all, Ron, that is awesome post. the results are very professional. I enjoy the photos very much. Lighting setup is field I know nothing, I am sure I will revisit your thread to pay more attention to your description again.
I am surprised to hear that about less than 11 bit dynamic range with Sony sensor. I get the impression from DXO rating that DR is more than that. I have good understanding about fundamental of this SNR, DR thing since a lot of them are related to my field but I think there must be fundamental difference of definition between sensor DR and DXO's capture photo DR, I don't know. ...Show more →
Well, I also don't know! I can only assume theSuede is correct since he seems to have a reputable following here... But then I've also read this blog post by Jim Kasson, who concludes the RX1 is 13 bit... So who to believe?
My impression is it's not as important as many make it out to be. Is it visually noticeable? Probably not. I can recall a long-running discussion on the Canon board about whether or not 14 bits was a noticeable improvement over 12. There are probably many other factors in the imaging chain that have a greater influence over final image quality.
Having used the RX1 for about a week and a few hundred images, its image quality sure seemed impressive to me.
Having played around with M files from others, my gut feeling is the M sits somewhere between the RX1 and the M9 in terms of file malleability. Probably closer to the RX1. But what I've also found, when examining M9 and M files shot side by side, is it's pretty easy to match the two quite closely.
Earlier in the day last week on Good Friday - Grand Bend at Lake Huron:
21 SEM:
M9 vs. Google Nexus 4 (FWIW, the Nexus's camera flares badly when shot into the sun like this):
Thanks Carsten, hopefully the coming of better weather will motivate me to go out and shoot more. Previous winters I found my motivation mostly by buying new gear
Justin, nice shots but I really dislike flash in general.
Zhangyue, I like the 1st one.
Ron, nice electric blue skies and compositions. The last 2 shots are fantastic!
Luka, good to see you here I also like the last two shots. Beautiful work.
