p.13 #1 · Digital Medium Format / 35mm equiv difference
RustyBug wrote:
Funny how Fuji and Kodak (i.e. history of film making) seem to have a better understanding of color than consumer electronic gadget makers ... I wonder why that would be?
It doesn't surprise me at all, with Fuji and Kodak having decades of experience making films/papers with attractive color they must have a very thorough understanding of colors, much more so than camera and optics manufacturers I would expect.
p.13 #2 · Digital Medium Format / 35mm equiv difference
Personally I noticed that since 7D blues in Canon cameras seems to shift toward magenta, as opposed to cyan in 20D and 5DC.
It was interesting to read about metameric failures, though surprising that MFD came up at the bottom of the list. Perhaps we are not looking for accuracy but most aesthetically appealing colours instead?
p.13 #3 · Digital Medium Format / 35mm equiv difference
Yes, appealing colours are where it is at. Some like Canons, I find that I prefer Nikon's colours for most things, except perhaps skin tones. The Fuji S3/S4/S5 are perennial favorites, and if you want to play around with an old APS-C camera, that would be a great one. I have an S5, and it is a sweet sensor in a sweet body. Talk about film-like highlights! Match it with a good AF lens, and it rocks. Manual focus, not so much. Some like the Kodak SLR/n (or c), but I never really fell in love with mine, and will probably sell it soon.
p.13 #4 · Digital Medium Format / 35mm equiv difference
I quite like Nikon colours as well, but it's case of "close but not quite a cigar", isn't it?
I remember Paul Yi was an avid SLR/c shooter?
Few stores advised against buying it saying Kodak SLR series break easily. They didn't elaborate on what seems to be the exact issue though.
Film wise I preferred Pro400x but it is now discontinued
p.13 #6 · Digital Medium Format / 35mm equiv difference
Fuji S series = Fuji SuperCCD iirc
The thing that I thought was unique about the SuperCCD was that it used a matrix of two sizes of pixels @ small and larger ... just made sense to me as its DR smoked everything else on the DSLR market at the time. Would have gotten one if it had been FF .. may still some day (fire sale) now that there is some pretty good UWA glass for APS-C. Went SLR/C instead for FF.
DMR (which I forgot to mention earlier, thanks Telyt) was on my radar conceptually as well, just not my budget or glass lineup.
p.13 #7 · Digital Medium Format / 35mm equiv difference
Rusty: that's what I found as well. I see some for sale between $400-600 here.
Fuji's later models went CMOS, so perhaps not as interesting as S5 to me.
Should be interesting to try few ZF on it...
p.13 #8 · Digital Medium Format / 35mm equiv difference
The thing with the S5 is that it only gives 6MP files if you use the high DR mode, which is kinda low.
Its DR is still impressive though, according to dxomark only just below the Nikon D600 (pretty much the current DR champion I believe) at ISO 100-400 and even it surpasses the D600 by almost a stop at ISO 800 (1600 and 3200 go downhill quickly though).
p.13 #10 · Digital Medium Format / 35mm equiv difference
I think the D800 probably has larger DR at this point, but the files don't look the same. The 12MP sensels in the SuperCCD SR sensor are half small, half large, and the small ones are less light-sensitive, and thus can capture the bright parts of the image without clipping. The information from both parts are then joined to give a single 6MP image with large DR. The highlights looks much better than other cameras I have tried. The AA is a tad strong, and it is hard to manual focus with. If Fuji would release a FF 24MP, light AA version, I would buy instantly, almost regardless of the price.
It is a really nice camera to play around with, if you don't need the resolution. Beautiful colours and pliable files.
The body is a D200, which is a prosumer APS-C (DX) body. The menus were messed up a bit by Fuji, but it is workable.
p.13 #13 · Digital Medium Format / 35mm equiv difference
So, did you gain an understanding of the differences between a MF and a FF digital or are you still wondering? I only read the first page - lazy me. What were the net findings?
p.13 #15 · Digital Medium Format / 35mm equiv difference
There ARE synergistic effects between optics and electronics that CAN make post-processing of images result in something that many perceive as "smooth but with good detail contrast" and "good gradation".
The better the tonal gradation and color separation is, the easier this post work gets. It IS however possible to mimic this to a very close similarity from "lesser" equipment if you work the lighting setups a bit, though it takes more PP work to do so.
Advanced lighting setups do more for the MF look (in gradation) than the camera and lens combo.
The way the focus plane goes from in- to out of focus in a well corrected MF lens on a MF camera however is very hard to mimic with smaller format lenses. And when you put a MF lens on a smaller format, even if you get a uniform rendering over the image surface, the relative DoF gets so much deeper that most of the overall combined "wow" effect is lost.
p.13 #16 · Digital Medium Format / 35mm equiv difference
Ya, I have no idea myself. What the Suede said in post 9 makes sense but I can't say I've seen those differences. Of course I've looked at maybe 100 to 150 MF images and only about 10 or 20 where I had access to the RAW original unscaled image.
I notice kind of an airy quality to MF images but I see essentially the same thing from some APO lenses on FF and APS-C images too so I guess that could be the lens.
Back when DSLRs were stuck in the low 20's (of megapixels) I noticed a lot of difference in detail and micro-contrast but I see that now with the D800 so I guess that's only resolution.
Most of the uniqueness I'm able to detect in MF images follow over to FF and APS-C when the same lenses are adapted so I guess that's all lens uniqueness with not much to do with the sensor.
Thus if someone were to ask me I'd give a shrug and say: Resolution and lens design are the main (or only?) factors I can see.
p.13 #17 · Digital Medium Format / 35mm equiv difference
From what I can tell it's a case of "aggregation of marginal gains" (to quote Sir Dave Brailsford). There's an advantage from the use of longer focal length lenses and lower f-numbers for the same FOV/DOF, there's an advantage from the angle of incidence of light hitting the sensor, there an advantage from the choice of CFA (optimised for pleasing colour when shooting in good light), there's an advantage from the resolution and there's an advantage from the level of colour profiling and available software.
These things acting together deliver a level of image quality that is better than what is available when shooting 35mm (you can get some, but not all of the benefits). However whilst you may be able to see a clear difference between a 35mm and DMF image of the same scene when matching FOV/DOF whether you can look at a DMF image in isolation and conclude it couldn't possibly be 35mm remains to be seen.
My personal belief is that it would be difficult to reliably tell the difference with different images, given the same level of lighting / post production.
p.13 #18 · Digital Medium Format / 35mm equiv difference
Aggregation of mariginal gains is probably most accurate summary of it.
But then again, we already established that colour reproduction differs significantly which at lest for me affects tonal transitions.
Btw, I wanted to inquire into grey levels of CCD/CMOS sensors, or perhaps it is not applicable?
But on the subject of mariginal gains, I suppose say distagon 21 and Canon EF 24 given exactly same lighting and PP would produce result hard to distinguish
p.13 #19 · Digital Medium Format / 35mm equiv difference
I am just copying over this comment from the alt purchase thread for completeness (where I spotted that you bought an S5):
Maybe pick up an extra battery or two. Careful when you buy them, I believe that it uses a different battery than the D200 (which has a CCD, btw, and is meant to have great colour, if nonsensical high ISO performance; I have wanted to try one and compare).
I use the newer G zooms, the 24-70 is perfect, and don't know much about the older ones, but if you want to keep up the theme, the 35-70/2.8 is meant to be good (no typo).
For the studio, it could be a perfect set of focal lengths from normal to tele effective. As a neutral lens, the 60 Micro is very good, very neutral rendering, but maybe you have that covered with the 55 Micro, I don't know it. The 105 you have is obviously fantastic, one of the best lenses ever made with beautiful rendering.
Maybe try a manual focus length first, and see how you get on, perhaps the 55 or 105? The 50/2 might also be worth a try. Alex in Russia recently calibrated his focusing screen on his S5 carefully, and found that he got a high keeper rate.
I am very curious to hear how you get on with this camera, whether positive or negative. Do spend some time processing images from it and see how you like the files. Maybe read the manual first, to avoid getting stumped by the oddities in the menus.
p.13 #20 · Digital Medium Format / 35mm equiv difference
Carsten: no worries..
Arrrrrgh....Ken made his way in here.. hehe. I googled S5 manual and his page came up on top with "The Fujifilm S5 Pro excels for shooting directly into the sun. Every other digital camera I've used creates weird circular discs around the sun, while images from ..." and in horror I closed my browser window..
I was thinking about getting few Zuikos to convert, as well as Leitax one of my CY35-70. But that would be for outside studio work.
My friend shooting D700 and now D800 recommended 60mm warmly, so I will definitely give it a go. It shouldn't be awfully expensive either.
After a quick browse right now I found a rather large collection of FX af lenses. I believe those are older than DX?
I generally suck at 100-135mm focal length manual shooting, with exception of 105/2.5 on 5DC - I nailed pretty much every shot WO. Leica 100/2.8 - not so much. Most of the shots went oof. CV125 (even with AF confirm!) and any 135mm lens for that matter dives to keeper ratio of 100:1.
Downloaded the manual for the cam and already found few interesting particularities (formatting card using MENU + Trash buttons). In retrospect, this is something I observed in my GX680 manual. After all, concepts "simple" and "Japan" when combined in same sentence create a massive rift in space/time continuum....
