p.14 #1 · Digital Medium Format / 35mm equiv difference
Ken Rockwell's earlier stuff often has a surprising amount of useful comments. His later stuff is often done without the benefit of having the equipment in hand
His S5 colour page has some nice skin tone examples. I don't know why he doesn't like its general colours more, he is rather alone in that. Note all the shadow detail in the S5 shots, much better than the other cameras:
p.14 #2 · Digital Medium Format / 35mm equiv difference
Btw, Ken Rockwell (Rockhead?) is really the granddaddy of all these other fast-talking sensationalist pseudo-reviewers, like Steve Huff, Zack Arias, and so on. Same shit, different day.
p.14 #3 · Digital Medium Format / 35mm equiv difference
Very much so.
I tried to browse his site for some useful information on film, but completely failed.
He comes across as a complete cowboy and I have 0 appreciation of his "humour" as it is non-existent.
Arias is to the point in his lighting setups, but when it comes to equipment I wouldn't trust him for a second.
Besides, his 1 light setups work with DSLRs, but looking at his MFD review article - he just botched the model shots and did sod all to showcase MFD's advantage.
I would guess he doesn't like Fuji's colour to the favour of Nikon. Probably personal...who knows what goes on in his head...
p.14 #4 · Digital Medium Format / 35mm equiv difference
Matt Grum wrote:
...There's an advantage from the use of longer focal length lenses ...
This has been said repeatedly in this thread, by theSuede and others too, and I'd like to better understand why this is.
Is it that longer lenses are easier to build, have less distortion, smoother transitions, more separation?
Let's say I have a Leica M9 with a 50 Lux and an S2 with a 70 Summarit, and let's assume they have exactly the same FOV. I compensate for DOF by further stopping down the 70 mm. Why would the longer lens have the advantage? And how would this be visible?
p.14 #5 · Digital Medium Format / 35mm equiv difference
I don't know the reasons for it, but if you use medium format and 135 format regularly, or at least view them regularly, you will start to see differences in the rendering styles. My theory, somewhat backed up by facts, but not completely, is that the smaller max apertures and larger negative areas allow for more relaxed designs, whereas the smaller 135 negative and faster lenses (for same depth of field) force more strained designs, and this somehow becomes visible in a subtle, but important, way.
Probably someone more educated than me has a better answer.
p.14 #6 · Digital Medium Format / 35mm equiv difference
I might be wrong, but it seems like the sharpness transition is steeper on the larger format.
Probably one of the reasons Mamiya 80/1.9 on 35mm produces sickeningly busy bokeh.
p.14 #9 · Digital Medium Format / 35mm equiv difference
carstenw wrote:
I don't know the reasons for it, but if you use medium format and 135 format regularly, or at least view them regularly, you will start to see differences in the rendering styles. My theory, somewhat backed up by facts, but not completely, is that the smaller max apertures and larger negative areas allow for more relaxed designs, whereas the smaller 135 negative and faster lenses (for same depth of field) force more strained designs, and this somehow becomes visible in a subtle, but important, way.
That is true for most 55mm MF lenses and up. One really good indicator of a "relaxed" optical design giving a "relaxed" rendering style is looking at the aberration lines. It doesn't really matter if they have quite large total deviations, as long as they are straight they will give smoother transitions both in-out of focus and in-out of aberrations. A strained design will typically have wavy lines caused by higher numerical order corrections.
Shooting an 80mm planar standard 2.8 on MF at one stop higher aperture values does give a lot more linear aberration lines than what you get from a slightly BFD-restrained and larger aperture value FF lens.
A lens like the new Zeiss 55 will work around this by halving all aberrations compared to the current standard, but that comes at a cost. An 80mm Zeiss, HB or Mamiya costs next to nothing, but you'll pay for the body/back.
Actually about the same conceptual difference as between µFT/APS and FF... - But they are getting the hang of miniaturization now, the latest generations of µFT and APS-only lenses are truly outstanding works, in their own right and in their own ramifications.
The problems are mainly related to short-DoF images. A good electronic side will do good work with stopped-down lenses, even in a quite small format. As you shorten the image-related DoF, the relative aperture you need grow linearly with sensor scale (crop factor). Since most aberrations grow with aperture squared or even more, this is a hard case for smaller formats. APS is about 2x crop from the smaller MF sensors, so you need to halve aperture value to get the same overall image "look". This means four times stronger optical aberrations (minus some change for the smaller image circle needed) to be corrected to get the same image quality per output resolution.
p.14 #16 · Digital Medium Format / 35mm equiv difference
True. But I really jinx my shots by believing they are in focus.. By the time I get home and view them on the large screen they turn OOF, and vice versa..
p.14 #18 · Digital Medium Format / 35mm equiv difference
There we are on aggregation of marginal gains
I have a bit of mixed impressions with S5, but the negative side of it can easily be explained with expectations not matching the factual performance.
1. File writing is slow, but that I don't care much about. I believe it's one of the CCD sensor traits?
2. High ISO performance is not that important either. I was able to recover 2EV in shadows without any noticeable noise in comparison to 5D MkIII.
Besides, where I normally shoot the latter at ISO800 and 1.4 lens WO, I shot with 5S at ISO100 and approximately 1/30-50s shutter.
3. Colour is beautiful though subtle. It is a bit challenging atm to correct Camera Calibration colours in ACR as each slider creates a massive difference in one-two point in- decrease.
4. Fine detail - would be of course really, really nice. At the same time, the pores and imperfections in skin are not that welcome. Can't have cake and eat it.
I really would like to shoot with lighting setup and see how skin is rendered.
There is one thing that puzzles me: Is the DR percentage setting applying only to JPG or RAW as well? Files I got were fairly contrasty as opposed to "washed out" preview...
p.14 #20 · Digital Medium Format / 35mm equiv difference
Perhaps it's a preview thing.
5D MkIII gives me a steep transition between well defined high and low, limiting the mids.
S5 seems to deliver a much smoother transition. The images are likely to be contrasty because I exposed for highlights. At night with large lights such as windows and contrasting dark alleys it will be difficult to produce a well exposed average, I suppose.
2nd shot I posted in s5 thread (https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1234768) is pretty much unprocessed with few minor HSL adjustments in Orange/Yellow. This is kind of what I was looking for.
only thing I would love is a bit more microcontrast in focused area.
I suppose that is what P45+ would bring to the table..
At the settings I shot, I am surprised anything turned out at all..
Mind you, as I went to ISO400, I blew all the highlights completely out of proportion.
I think I need to spend more time with Miss Fuji..
