lsquare wrote:
Listen, I don’t necessarily disagree with the premise of your post. However, you can’t possibly tell me nothing amazing will not happen within the next decade as technology continues to improve. A decade ago, no one could have predicted what we have today.
Amazing things will continue to happen, up to the limits imposed by physics and common sense.
Toothwalker wrote:
A high-quality original always matters. AI noise reduction does not retain details like as if it was a clean shot to begin with. It just adds fantasy detail to make the image look less noisy.
If that day comes, it will be the end of photography. You may as well leave the lens cap on, and leave all the drawing to the algorithms.
If the AI is good enough then that fantasy detail may in fact be identical to what was actually there but just wasn't able to be recorded by the camera.
duncangr wrote:
If the AI is good enough then that fantasy detail may in fact be identical to what was actually there but just wasn't able to be recorded by the camera.
We have some amazing developments due to AI, and no doubt there are many more in the pipeline, but it is a simple scientific fact that AI cannot improve the SNR of unknown signals in random noise. It just draws details that it thinks suit the scene.
Cliff L. wrote:
Why would you want open-gate recording from a low-resolution sensor instead of just shooting in 8K and cropping a tiny bit from a 45mp sensor?
Perspective/FL and DoF differences. Open-gate is utilizing the entirety of the sensor real estate versus cropped which, even at higher resolution, is not using the full frame.
JohnDizzo15 wrote:
Perspective/FL and DoF differences. Open-gate is utilizing the entirety of the sensor real estate versus cropped which, even at higher resolution, is not using the full frame.
The relatively insignificant number of pixels you're cropping from the top and bottom of the 8K frame would make no visible difference to the perspective or the DOF.
JohnDizzo15 wrote:
Perspective/FL and DoF differences. Open-gate is utilizing the entirety of the sensor real estate versus cropped which, even at higher resolution, is not using the full frame.
The relatively insignificant number of pixels you're cropping from the top and bottom of the 8K frame would make no visible difference to the perspective or the DOF. If either of those things actually mattered, you would be shooting the video in vertical format anyway.
Cliff L. wrote:
The relatively insignificant number of pixels you're cropping from the top and bottom of the 8K frame would make no visible difference to the perspective or the DOF. If either of those things actually mattered, you would be shooting the video in vertical format anyway.
Don’t get me wrong, it makes no difference to me, as I don’t do much video. For the guys I know that do it extensively though, they seem to care a decent amount about it.
As I understand it, it’s generally about a 10-20% loss from top/bottom without Open Gate on average for most full frame cameras. I tend to disagree that this amount of cropping doesn’t matter in any way at all. Even if one believes the perspective and DoF difference don’t matter, I think having that extra 10-20% is also helpful for reframing in post as well.
JohnDizzo15 wrote:
Don’t get me wrong, it makes no difference to me, as I don’t do much video. For the guys I know that do it extensively though, they seem to care a decent amount about it.
As I understand it, it’s generally about a 10-20% loss from top/bottom without Open Gate on average for most full frame cameras. I tend to disagree that this amount of cropping doesn’t matter in any way at all. Even if one believes the perspective and DoF difference don’t matter, I think having that extra 10-20% is also helpful for reframing in post as well.
The difference between 8K video and 7K open gate is only 320 pixels on the long aspect; after you downsample that to 4K the difference is about 5-6% - or put another way, it's about the same as zooming your lens by 1 or 2 millimeters. That's why I don't understand the open gate hype.
I'm probably the minority but I think open gate is completely over hyped unless you primarily shoot for the purpose of IG reels or TikTok. But even then, do you really need the resolution for that purpose? I've yet to see someone mount a 4k television on their wall in portrait mode, but I'm sure there are a few.
I guess what open gate recording really is just a workaround for low-resolution sensors, where conventional 6k or 8k recording is not an option and you think you still need to create a vertical video in 4k.
artsupreme wrote:
I'm probably the minority but I think open gate is completely over hyped unless you primarily shoot for the purpose of IG reels or TikTok. But even then, do you really need the resolution for that purpose? I've yet to see someone mount a 4k television on their wall in portrait mode, but I'm sure there are a few.
It's so you can shoot wide, and then crop to multiple aspect ratios after.
johnctharp wrote:
It's so you can shoot wide, and then crop to multiple aspect ratios after.
You can do that with current cameras, open gate just lets you go wider. Big deal. I prefer to frame my video shots as close as possible, but if I think I might need to crop for TikTok or a different AR I would just shoot wider.
artsupreme wrote:
You can do that with current cameras, open gate just lets you go wider. Big deal. I prefer to frame my video shots as close as possible, but if I think I might need to crop for TikTok or a different AR I would just shoot wider.
Do you mean it lets you go 'taller'? This gets weird to talk about when you have to really be specific about shooting aspect ratios as well as which set of aspect ratios you intend to post / deliver.
Open gate brings more flexibility here and is basically 'free' aside from time and cost to implement the feature in firmware, and what I've seen from content creators is an appreciation for being able to easily shoot for both horizontal and vertical video at once, where they were doing separate takes for each before.
aCuria wrote:
You can downsample to remove the megapixel difference to some extent
I did this downsample in the sample crop I posted.
Bit depth shows up more in the subtle color gradations, especially in skin tones. Megapixels will show up as more fine detail in the sample
As humans, we’re actually pretty good at seeing the difference between bit depth and resolution as long as you know what to look for.
Back in the film days there were similar discussions. Compared with what we call full frame today, medium format was credited with better tonality, color gradation, skin tones, etc. That had nothing to do with bit depth. The film type could be the same. However small or large the differences were, they were simply due to comparisons being performed at the same print size. This gives more averaging with medium format, and hence more gradation.
At any rate, it makes more sense to perform these comparisons with the same camera. With my Canon I don't see a difference between a portrait taken with 14 or 12-bit ADC. And that is not because Canon cannot do 14 bit (like you suggest a few post back). It can, but it switches to 12-bit ADC for the electronic shutter to get a reasonably short read-out time. If the Hasselblad can do 14 bits, I bet there is no discernible difference with a 16-bit capture. For skin tones at least. I am not talking about shadow detail recovery.
Toothwalker wrote:
Back in the film days there were similar discussions. Compared with what we call full frame today, medium format was credited with better tonality, color gradation, skin tones, etc. That had nothing to do with bit depth. The film type could be the same. However small or large the differences were, they were simply due to comparisons being performed at the same print size. This gives more averaging with medium format, and hence more gradation.
At any rate, it makes more sense to perform these comparisons with the same camera. With my Canon I don't see a difference between a portrait taken with 14 or 12-bit ADC. And that is not because Canon cannot do 14 bit (like you suggest a few post back). It can, but it switches to 12-bit ADC for the electronic shutter to get a reasonably short read-out time. If the Hasselblad can do 14 bits, I bet there is no discernible difference with a 16-bit capture. For skin tones at least. I am not talking about shadow detail recovery. ...Show more →
I get what you’re saying, but your argument would basically imply that if we shot the same focal length lens on full frame and medium format, then kept the same distance to the subject, and therefore normalized the sensor area being used, then the color gradation should come out the same after cropping both images to look the same.
This does not compute for me. I do not expect the full frame sample to be that much improved by just going from 48mm to 55.
It is more likely we are seeing differences in the digital "film stock" used in each camera.
Personally I doubt the Canon is capable of clean 14 bit, and I doubt the x2d is capable of clean 16 bit. However, the x2d is likely legitimately 2 bits better than the canon, that's probably what we are seeing here.
Seems like theres image quality gains to be had when you allow the readout speed on the x2d to be a whopping 0.37 seconds...
aCuria wrote:
I get what you’re saying, but your argument would basically imply that if we shot the same focal length lens on full frame and medium format, then kept the same distance to the subject, and therefore normalized the sensor area being used, then the color gradation should come out the same after cropping both images to look the same.
This does not compute for me. I do not expect the full frame sample to be that much improved by just going from 48mm to 55.
It is more likely we are seeing differences in the digital "film stock" used in each camera.
Personally I doubt the Canon is capable of clean 14 bit, and I doubt the x2d is capable of clean 16 bit. However, the x2d is likely legitimately 2 bits better than the canon, that's probably what we are seeing here.
Seems like theres image quality gains to be had when you allow the readout speed on the x2d to be a whopping 0.37 seconds......Show more →
I don't know the background and context of the images that you shared. A straightforward way to assess the role of bit depth is to take the Hasselblad file as a starting point, and reduce the bit depth gradually from 16 bits to 15, 14, 13, ... etc. until people see a difference with the original. I cannot do that now, because I am travelling with only my phone.
I don't think any images in a discussion about perceptible or imperceptible differences between 16, 14 or 12-bit files should be shared as 8-bit JPEG files.
Toothwalker wrote:
I don't know the background and context of the images that you shared. A straightforward way to assess the role of bit depth is to take the Hasselblad file as a starting point, and reduce the bit depth gradually from 16 bits to 15, 14, 13, ... etc. until people see a difference with the original. I cannot do that now, because I am travelling with only my phone.
I don't think any images in a discussion about perceptible or imperceptible differences between 16, 14 or 12-bit files should be shared as 8-bit JPEG files.
Yes you should look at the raw files. I linked to them together with the crops.
If you start with a 16-bit file and then reduce the bit depth, it’s kind of like supersampling. You’ve got a lot more tonal information to begin with, so when you downsample to 8-bit it still looks really good. That’s why 8-bit exports from high bit-depth sources often hold up better than people expect.
Because of this, tests where you just take a high-bit-depth file and reduce the bit depth aren’t that meaningful. You’re still benefiting from all the extra precision upstream. If you really want a fair comparison, you need to look at sensors that are natively 8, 10, 12, 14, or 16-bit and compare those directly.
Where lower bit depth really starts to show is when you begin editing. That’s why white balance adjustments look much better on 10-bit video than on 8-bit, and why a 14-bit RAW photo holds up even better when you push it. You’ve got more headroom before things start to break apart.
If the original 16-bit image has smooth gradation, especially in areas like skin tones, then exporting to 8-bit for the web will still look great. The tonal values get mapped through the gamma curve, and you can retain visually smooth transitions even in 8-bit.
But if the original file already has poor gradation, an 8-bit export will just faithfully preserve those limitations, and it’ll look flat or banded as a result. Garbage in garbage out.
