p.3 #1 · Sony A900/850 users jumped ship to Nikon D 800/E?
Sorry, I'm not impressed my micro-contrast in those examples. From all I've seen, the 5D2 is the king of Zeiss micro-contrast compared to D3/D700 and A900. That's my take.
As for Leitax, all my 6 mounts have been perfect in every way. David is also super helpful, so I can recommend him without hesitation.
p.3 #2 · Sony A900/850 users jumped ship to Nikon D 800/E?
Mortyb, I think we have discussed this before, and agreed it was the flat curve in the mid-tones of the A900 that was responsible. However, the suede, who also uses an A850, attributed the weak micro contrast to the characteristics of the AA filter. I am no scientist but the suede is, and I have confidence in his opinions, as they are based on actual measurements.
p.3 #3 · Sony A900/850 users jumped ship to Nikon D 800/E?
mortyb wrote:
Sorry, I'm not impressed my micro-contrast in those examples. From all I've seen, the 5D2 is the king of Zeiss micro-contrast compared to D3/D700 and A900. That's my take.
As for Leitax, all my 6 mounts have been perfect in every way. David is also super helpful, so I can recommend him without hesitation.
I have to agree with the A900/D700s pretty much killing good micro contrast.
I owned the A850 and ZA 24-70, which I was really never overly impressed with. Maybe it was because it's a zoom, and a very good zoom, but there's a marked difference to me between that lens on my former A850 and my former 5D2 using a 35 ZE.
I've never used Zeiss on any of my former D700s, but knowing the strong AA filter it has, I could see it killing micro contrast too (especially combined with a low MP count).
p.3 #5 · Sony A900/850 users jumped ship to Nikon D 800/E?
cputeq, the 24-70 is an exceptional zoom, and especially at 35mm, is better than many primes. It is very frustrating to know that the infamous blurred corners at 24mm were caused by the AA filter not the lens itself. I have experienced this personally when I used my ZA lenses on Minolta 7 film cameras. There were no blurry corners at 24mm.
p.3 #6 · Sony A900/850 users jumped ship to Nikon D 800/E?
edwardkaraa wrote:
cputeq, the 24-70 is an exceptional zoom, and especially at 35mm, is better than many primes. It is very frustrating to know that the infamous blurred corners at 24mm were caused by the AA filter not the lens itself. I have experienced this personally when I used my ZA lenses on Minolta 7 film cameras. There were no blurry corners at 24mm.
Maybe so, but I never really got that "wow" look from any of my 24-70 shots. Not that I was disappointed with them, mind you, but they never looked to me to be bleeding edge sharp. Of course, there is photographer skill involved, so I may have not been able to handle the combo as adequately as others
p.3 #7 · Sony A900/850 users jumped ship to Nikon D 800/E?
cputeq wrote:
Maybe so, but I never really got that "wow" look from any of my 24-70 shots. Not that I was disappointed with them, mind you, but they never looked to me to be bleeding edge sharp. Of course, there is photographer skill involved, so I may have not been able to handle the combo as adequately as others
Of course there is also the sample variation issue. My second copy of this lens was visibly better than the first one. However, I do believe that most variations are due to small differences in AF accuracy. It's amazing how much sharpness suffers from a very tiny amount of FF or BF.
p.3 #8 · Sony A900/850 users jumped ship to Nikon D 800/E?
I never noticed any issues with micro contrast on my a900. The result was always dependent upon the lens used. With say the Zeiss ZF 35 F2, micro contrast was there in spades.
Regarding the Leitax mounts, every one I owned was perfect with regard to infinity focus.
p.3 #9 · Sony A900/850 users jumped ship to Nikon D 800/E?
Edward, yes, I remember those discussions. I liked the A900 okay, but it didn't really excite me after a while, and I just don't use it anymore. I'll probably keep the Minolta lenses. Gotta say, as an AF system, the A900 + Minolta 35/2 and 100/2 + Sony 50/1.4 is solid as a rock. I also had the ZA 24-70 for a while. Waaaay too heavy combo for me. Nice results, but not wow. Sold it.
p.3 #10 · Sony A900/850 users jumped ship to Nikon D 800/E?
I've seen many mention the D800 has an A900 Mk2. I can't really disagree with that. I hear the viewfinder isn't quite as good, but it seems to tick a lot of boxes as a natural upgrade... but of course, a different system. So I could see those wanting to move from an a900 as seeing a D800 as a natural progression.
How many have broken a900's here that can't be serviced? Mine still work great, so I see no reason to upgrade for the foreseeable future.
Oh, and I don't buy the EVF manual focusing argument. If you can't focus manually with the a900 viewfinder, M screen, you need to get your eyes checked - seriously.
p.3 #11 · Sony A900/850 users jumped ship to Nikon D 800/E?
edwardkaraa wrote:
However, the suede, who also uses an A850, attributed the weak micro contrast to the characteristics of the AA filter. I am no scientist but the suede is, and I have confidence in his opinions, as they are based on actual measurements.
I remember Joakim saying that the A900/850 have a much cheaper AA filter than the D3x (one of the reasons why the Sonys are much cheaper) which causes more astigmatism.
p.3 #12 · Sony A900/850 users jumped ship to Nikon D 800/E?
AhamB wrote:
I remember Joakim saying that the A900/850 have a much cheaper AA filter than the D3x (one of the reasons why the Sonys are much cheaper) which causes more astigmatism.
Yeah, although I believe that his point was only that it increased astigmatism as you go towards the edges of the frame. Granted, the D3x was nearly 3x the price. I wonder how the AA quality of the standard D800 compares to the D3x?
p.3 #13 · Sony A900/850 users jumped ship to Nikon D 800/E?
douglasf13 wrote:
Yeah, although I believe that his point was only that it increased astigmatism as you go towards the edges of the frame. Granted, the D3x was nearly 3x the price. I wonder how the AA quality of the standard D800 compares to the D3x?
Yes, this particular comment was about corner performance if I remember well.
p.3 #14 · Sony A900/850 users jumped ship to Nikon D 800/E?
douglasf13 wrote:
Yeah, although I believe that his point was only that it increased astigmatism as you go towards the edges of the frame. Granted, the D3x was nearly 3x the price. I wonder how the AA quality of the standard D800 compares to the D3x?
Pretty good, its weaker than D3x. And about A900/A850 vs D3x. Just hah, cause A900 has more real resolution lp/h than D3x. You can download D3x RAW samples and see for yourself. To my liking D3x AA filter is bit too hard, pretty much like regular Canons.
p.3 #15 · Sony A900/850 users jumped ship to Nikon D 800/E?
mortyb wrote:
Sorry, I'm not impressed my micro-contrast in those examples. From all I've seen, the 5D2 is the king of Zeiss micro-contrast compared to D3/D700 and A900. That's my take.
As for Leitax, all my 6 mounts have been perfect in every way. David is also super helpful, so I can recommend him without hesitation.
Yup, Leitax is great.
Hmmm those are not the best examples but just the files I happen to be playing with at the moment so maybe I should dig up some better ones.
Can you perhaps show me some samples that remind you of where the 5d2 was the king of microcontrast? From what I recall of the 5d2, the files were not very pliable and there was over handed amounts of contrast processing and default oversaturation compared to Nikon or Sony.
From what I recall, except for the D3X, pretty much all the popular full frame DSLRs from Japan have about the same AA filters. Canon certainly has some image processing that is almost like a default "vivid" mode which is a bit different.
p.3 #16 · Sony A900/850 users jumped ship to Nikon D 800/E?
Mescalamba wrote:
Pretty good, its weaker than D3x. And about A900/A850 vs D3x. Just hah, cause A900 has more real resolution lp/h than D3x. You can download D3x RAW samples and see for yourself. To my liking D3x AA filter is bit too hard, pretty much like regular Canons.
I never had the opportunity to run same (or at least very similar) lenses on the D3x and the A850 while I had them both, but my definite impression was that the D3x was several notches better in both sharpness and "micro-contrast" than the Sony. Even when the D3x was used with fairly standard lenses.
1) the Sony AA filter is made from a much cheaper material (probably quartz crystal, never had one sent in for analysis...) :-) - and this makes the AA filter a LOT thicker to get the same spread. This affects corner sharpness and microcontrast in a very bad way. Same problem that the NEX7 has.
Corner sharpness goes due to increased astigmatism, increased AA angle response and an attenuation of spherochromatism and spherical aberrations.
2) The quarts crystal is harder to get a perfect surface on, and it has higher internal dispersion. This combined with the increase in spherical aberration makes the higher MTF's at every frequency suffer. It's like having a "glass roof" on microcontrast - "here, but no further!" :-)
The A850/900 can still have a very good MTF50 resolution after sharpening, especially since the resolution is only measured in the exact center of the frame... But the MTF70 does drop like a bowlingball in free flight as soon as you approach the sensor resolution. And the MTF 50 drops pretty soon as you leave the image center.
p.3 #18 · Sony A900/850 users jumped ship to Nikon D 800/E?
Now if Fly will excuse me, I will use one of his sample images from the last page to show some of the most revealing symptoms of internal reflections in the filter, and what I (me myself and I, no-one seems to have the same definition of "microcontrast"...) thick is one of the definitions of microcontrast.
A loss of contrast by this type of aberration is at its' most visible neighboring to areas of high photometric exposure, "bright parts". More light in an area of pixels > more "local veiling", or whatever you want to call it. At lower ISOs, htis is at least partly workable in post. Those two images, one original (but at a slightly smaller scale, to avoid re-compressing jpg at the same size, a killer for jpg artifacts...) and one with a slight "haze removal" in bright areas show some very distinct differences.
I recommend you open them in their own tabs (or download them!) and flip between them to make the differences more obvious. image link - edit image link - original
The edit isn't really "sharper", it's more of a clarity issue. Or "micro-contrast" visible in brighter ares of the image.
Fly, if you want me to remove the images, just give me a note by PM (or here) and I'll grab another sample. Yours was very good for the demonstration though. This is a fully automated edit, no local/manual detail work was done to the image.
p.3 #19 · Sony A900/850 users jumped ship to Nikon D 800/E?
Not sure if that is the best image to use simply because I was hand holding a filter and another protective filter was already on top of the lens as well... The file also suffers from about 2ev over exposure that had to be adjusted in post.
Any info in the toppings on the two other cameras I mentioned? I'm curious if the after armed AA filter removal uses a higher quality cover.
p.3 #20 · Sony A900/850 users jumped ship to Nikon D 800/E?
FlyPenFly wrote:
How about the D700 or 5D2, I think I recall reading they all use quartz.
There are several different suitable crystalline materials available, and I don't know the specifics for all cameras... The D700 is with almost no doubt quartz though. I would GUESS the 5Dmk2 is quartz too. It would fit the color of the plate, and the thickness vs spread.
No matter what the "best suitable" image or "best available" image might be, the image showed symptoms of what many seem to define as "lacking microcontrast". Overexposure and stacked filter will definitely not HELP the camera (or the PP work) though... :-)
