Hmm, I've been eyeballing my desk the whole evening, no exciting boxes have magically appeared. (and tomorrow is my 40th...)
But, I got an envelope that I got to open this evening, it was a starting place in the Stockholm Half Marathon in September. Need to start grinding my shoes down a little.
Well, make haste and unwrap them boxes and let us know your findings...
My goodness the difference in the rendering of the red VW between the M9 (very realistic) and the X pro-1 (like a cartoon) is enormous.
If the detail gets lost in red things then presumably that also carries over into any B&W conversions. I really don't want detail holes in my B&W prints thank you.
Not sure what effect you're referring to, but the focus point is clearly different between the M9 and X-Pro1 images. So you may just be seeing more detail in the background in the Fuji image.
Tariq Gibran wrote:
Quick question for anyone with an X-Pro1. If you look at the back of your optical finder, do you see the black line pictured below in the finder window?
nothing in mine either, clean as a whistle (even though I've lost my diopter god knows how many days now)
The Fuji AF point was aimed on the red VW (license plate ). The rest was up to the Fuji.
itai195 wrote:
Not sure what effect you're referring to, but the focus point is clearly different between the M9 and X-Pro1 images. So you may just be seeing more detail in the background in the Fuji image.
kosmoskatten wrote:
I haven't shot much RAW much with my X10 and I have seen similar output with a bluish cast and reds that are slightly magenta, which does not do well for skin colors. As long as the RAW output from the X Pro 1 is fine it is not a problem, and even so it would be manageable.
Hmmm... sounds like a pretty accurate description of how I remember many Fujichrome films.. often with a slight magenta cast, though I realize you're saying here it's in the reds. I think some of it is WB issue - just set too cool. If you look at the VW Beetle images, you'll see the WB between the two is quite different. And the blocked-up red is very Canon-Jpeg-like (though I understand this image was RAW converted).
BTW Henrik - Happy Birthday!
Tariq Gibran wrote:
One trick in interpolating up to larger sizes is to add some noise/grain and it sounds like Imageprint did that.
Good to know. Do you add the grain prior to up-rezzing or afterwards?
Also Tariq, I'm not surprised to read you're suspicious about Fuji's voodoo being applied to the 35mm images in-camera. I'm sure this is the way forward nowadays as we're seeing with other systems, like m43, NEX, etc., applying various in-camera adjustments to files to optimize optical characteristics. I actually think Fuji's doing a pretty good job with the 35's rendering, though as you've pointed out, there may be some processing side effects if one looks very closely.
I think Fuji are going the same route as many others; using software fixes to correct lens and sensor shortcomings. Though in many cases they do it really well (in the X Pro 1 case they pull it off nicely) finding out what they have been covering up is often the penalty you pay when using third party RAW developers, i.e. when those automagic corrections no longer apply.
Personally I am no fan of software corrections of hardware problems.
I like the Fuji rendering of the greens too. Leica seems to render the car colors better.
I don't like the blotchy shadows from the X Pro 1, though they are arguably Jpeg artifacts.
vovkinson wrote:
The Fuji AF point was aimed on the red VW (license plate ). The rest was up to the Fuji.
Then the lens is backfocusing by quite a bit. The steps are much sharper in the XP1 shot, not so much in the M9. And it looks like you've got the same problem in the white car shot. The color balance is off and the reds are blown, but that doesn't appear to be endemic of the camera if the other samples I've seen are any indication. Is the software making any auto-adjustments or setting everything to a default profile?
kosmoskatten wrote:
I like the Fuji rendering of the greens too. Leica seems to render the car colors better.
I don't like the blotchy shadows from the X Pro 1, though they are arguably Jpeg artifacts.
Agreed. And happy birthday, sir. I hope you got to celebrate with family and good friends.
The blackpoint is also higher in the Fuji images, but who's nitpicking?
The M9 can quickly go nuclear with bright yellow-green hues, like days-old foliage in spring, but of the two images the M9 color rendition is overall more pleasing to my eyes. The Fuji looks a bit garish. Maybe it's the RAW processing? The images posted in mfoto's gallery from the Victoria trip linked a couple pages back looked pretty good.
rscheffler wrote:
Good to know. Do you add the grain prior to up-rezzing or afterwards?
Also Tariq, I'm not surprised to read you're suspicious about Fuji's voodoo being applied to the 35mm images in-camera. I'm sure this is the way forward nowadays as we're seeing with other systems, like m43, NEX, etc., applying various in-camera adjustments to files to optimize optical characteristics. I actually think Fuji's doing a pretty good job with the 35's rendering, though as you've pointed out, there may be some processing side effects if one looks very closely.
I use Alien Skin BlowUp and sometimes Alien Skin Exposure/ Color Film. Blow Up allows adding general grain during the interpolation up in size while Exposure offers much more control of the grain such as how much is in specific tonal areas - highlights, midtones, shadows as well as the grain size, color randomness, roughness and so forth. So, I might interpolate up with BlowUp and then use Exposure once at the larger size for grain and color/ contrast adjustments (I usually start with one of the film emulations and go from there). It really just depends on the image.
The Fuji 35 1.4 is a very good lens, at least as far as the optics are concerned. I did some more testing with it today and it basically peaked in sharpness by F4 at which point even the corners were pretty much tack sharp (processed using raw with sharpness off). Oddly, the central area did not appear as sharp as the corners when stopped down at F4 and beyond - and this was a landscape shot taken at least 70 - 80ft away. I focused on the corners so I guess there is an outside possibility of some field curvature going on.
kosmoskatten wrote:
I think Fuji are going the same route as many others; using software fixes to correct lens and sensor shortcomings. Though in many cases they do it really well (in the X Pro 1 case they pull it off nicely) finding out what they have been covering up is often the penalty you pay when using third party RAW developers, i.e. when those automagic corrections no longer apply.
Personally I am no fan of software corrections of hardware problems.
The Fuji 35/1.4 has excellent rendering.
Happy B-Day as well!
I'm definitely not a fan of such shenanigans either!! A bit of a cop out and it does come with some major disadvantages. I'm still somewhat perplexed about why this Fuji designed sensor with no AA filter renders so softly at the pixel level natively (with no added Fuji "magic" sharpening applied). It actually looks at least as soft as most sensors with AA filters. Below is an example. This is a 100% crop taken with the 35 1.4 at F4. On the left is the Fuji default settings for the raw converter and on the right, sharpening set to 0. With ooc jpegs, folks will only see something like the left version and think "wow, this camera/ lens is so sharp!". Thing is, most of that "wow" is due to processing, not the sensor sans AA filter nor the lens (though the lens is good. This crop is towards the edge of the frame, not in the center.). http://www.gibranstudio.com/fujimagic.jpg
Tariq - It will be interesting to see your 50 Cron-R images in comparison.
As for your point about the softer center - I would suspect it's field curvature. IIRC, someone in one of the XP1 threads here said it's pretty obvious with the 35 - was it you?
Regarding sharpness:
FWIW, I posted the images below in https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1100128/0#10497815 as a reference of an image pulled from my M9, though shot with the 28 Summicron. Please forgive the crooked horizon. Exif says f/9.5... but with the M9 the aperture is an estimation. From what I recall, it was at or near f/8, though at ISO 320... peak sharpness might have been slightly better with this lens at f/5.6..
The overall image and 100% crops, unsharpened, from the unsharpened LR export (though -10 red/cyan CA correction was applied):
So this is what an unsharpened AA-free M9 file looks like (which I think you saw in the other thread already). Set LR to something like 25/1/25 or 25/1/75 and it will look quite a bit better.
(and tomorrow is my 40th...) 