Which illustrates and highlights two important issues:
Our vision is very relative and so dependent on where we direct our attention and on the context of the viewing we unconsciously use as a reference and basis for interpretation and valuation. Who and what do we use to measure and compare ourselves and what we create with?
How we process an images should support what we want to convey with the image.
Your image immediately appealed to me when I first saw it, and what it told me was a poetic and tender story of softness and these quiet moments in life where we just can take in our own being and let thoughts run their own way or not run at all.
Some of these “less dull” alternatively processed images make me rather think of somebody in a market square shouting out to hawkishly grab some customers for their flowers, or somebody telling about this very lively party they were to last night.
So what do we want to achieve with our processing of an image?
With my version I have sought to improve on your image in the way that it initially spoke to me. I have just opened it in dt v. 4.2.1 with filimic v.6, without doing anything more than to take care of those three issues that disturbed me somewhat in the original:
I have sought to dampen that fairly strong shadow line across the upper petals of the yellow flower, and at the same time increased the light somewhat on a larger area of yellow flower while still seeking to maintain the impression of irregular and subtle lighting. (With more time and/or better skills, this could likely be done more elegant.)
I have darkened the green leaves in the upper right corner that “breaks out” of the frame.
I wondered if I should also darken the circular leaves a little tad. They work nicely as a small color accent to the two main colors of the flowers, but is so strongly lit that they grab a lot of attention – and because of that it creates a slight feeling of unbalance with me, in this otherwise “quiet” image, by being so close to the frame.
I have darkened those small spots of reddish color at right underneath the yellow flower.
Thanks for a beautiful image, (an image that requires almost no processing) and for the possibility to play!
Careful … DoF is coupled with distance to subject and aperture, so taking the same angle-of-view from the same position will give you the same DoF. This is due to the fact that Circle of confusion on a smaller sensor and the smaller focal length required will give the same ratio, basically cancelling out the effect.
Yes, very careful … This kind of discussion (“equivalence”) have been going on in some of the dpreview forums for years, without, as far as I’m able to discern, any indisputable conclusions.
Since they seem to lead to nowhere, (rather than knowhere …), it’s been nice to avoid this discussion here on pixl.
Well, the average dpreview discussion includes way too many folks that can not wrap their head around the implications of even a not too complicated formula like the one used for DoF.
Or read and comprehend the rather well written wikipedia article: Depth of field - Wikipedia
The executive summary has always been: DoF is dependant on positions in space and aperture.
As far as I’ve perceived it’s not the theory of lens optics that maintains such discussions, but how it translates to practical photography where i.a. the “position in space”/“distance to subject” part is influenced by different angle-of-view for same focal lengths when sensor size changes, and whether, in particular for discussions related to macro photography, where DoF is an essential factor, one need to take into account the “relative aperture” aspect.
Yes, there are some misconceptions (or at least sayings) around, like e.g. the corresponding “tele lenses compress the perspective”, which similarly is a practical matter of the wanted/required distance to subject related to angle of view.
But I don’t want/need to go there - I’m perfectly fine with the sensor sizes I have chosen for my photography, the available focal lengths and apertures and the DOFs they deliver wherever I prefer to stand, and with whatever others do and think. Luckily DOF has become less important with modern cameras with the advent of handheld camera with focus stacking with autofocus (even in-camera if not too many frames), without any special gear other than a normal small macro lens. Life is good, and we can concentrate on the images.
Random processing… I opened the image in photoflow and hit paste (so this is whatever I was using last somewhere else, crop, exposure, colour grading…)
I love these discussions… always give me pause to think.
Regarding equivalence, I just stop reading such after a few sentences. Seems to be looking for ways to treat all cameras the same, when I really know they’re not. Learned in my early 35mm days you bought a camera to do a certain job, and you got to that decision by understanding the job at hand. For instance shooting sports you went for the camera that was mobile and captured the most amount of light, and the lens that had the greatest reach to fill the frame with subjects dozens if not hundreds of feet away. Sensor size sorta indirectly played, as I didn’t see any pros shooting 110 film…
Correspondingly, if you wanted to get up in the morning, hike to a remote location, and set up to capture a specific moment where the light was just right in a compelling scene, you typically drug a 4"x5" view camera out there. The main consideration was resolution, getting the most film area you could for eventual printing for a magazine or to hang on some wall. Tripod was necessary to use the exposures required, well, and to hold the danged thing up in the first place.
Really, the choice of tools ultimately comes down to the rendition destination. Best tools for the job at hand and the product to be produced; if you’re considering trying to use something else you’re compromising your attention span, if nothing else…
Lets not hijack the thread and go too deep down a rabbit hole here, but I stand by my original statement although you bring up a strong advantage about full frame cameras when using the same focal length lens. Lets look at the circle of confusion and resultant DoF with a 14mm wide angle lens.
Crop sensor 14mm f16 hyperfocal distance 62.65 cm giving focus at least 33cm to infinity.
Full frame 14mm f16 hyperfocal distance 42.23 cm giving focus at least 23cm to infinity.
However, crop sensor would not have the same wide angle of view due to crop factor of 1.5. This makes the full frame superior at getting the most out of wide angle lens which is great for landscape photographers and others needing the most wide angle shot possible from a given lens.
To get the similar angle of view the crop sensor would need a 9mm lens.
Crop sensor 9mm f16 hyperfocal distance 26.21 cm giving focus at least 14cm to infinity. This means a crop sensor is capable of more depth of field if a shorter focal length lens is used to achieve the same angle of view.
The picture posted in this PlayRaw was shot with a 54mm lens and focus was at 330 mm. The DoF calculator I used worked in 100mm increments so bear with the next piece of information.
54mm f11
300 mm focus distance produces 1.719 cm DOF
400 mm focus distance produces 3.227cm DOF
However, a crop sensor would need a 36 mm lens to get the same angle of coverage.
36mm f11
300 mm focus distance 2.771 cm DOF
400 mm focus distance 5.105 cm DOF
In summary: Crop sensors give more depth of field due to shorter focal length lenses being used. Full frame sensors give wider angle of view from the same focal length and due to circle of confusion also more depth of field from the same focal length. These are the characteristics of the sensor size and lens combinations which can be seen as an advantage or disadvantage depending what your subject is.
Thanks for the interesting comment because the effect of circle of confusion is overlooked generally. That also brings into question the depth of field guides printed on prime lenses because they would not be accurate if designed for a 35mm film camera and used on a crop sensor. I had never thought of that myself before your comment and my reflection on your comment. Have a good weekend
Thanks for sharing Glenn, I did have a quick look yesterday but didn’t have much time to respond.
I certainly agree, but having had a good poke around in the RAW I don’t see anything extraordinary happening as far as image quality is concerned. I would certainly still be applying some amount of sharpening in post, and most of the best editors here have clearly thought the same. The image quality is great, but its as great as I would expect from any 24mp full frame camera with a decent lens in front of it - emphasis on any.
I’ve been shooting mirrorless for a while now and I enjoy a lot of the features made possible by a constant readout from the sensor, but they appear to be the only advances being made in the shift away from SLRs as far as I can tell. The bottom line in photography is always image quality so I understand why manufacturers would try to leverage that into their sales pitches, but the real reason to sell your SLR kit is for the usability upgrades and nothing more. Granted, these usability can and will enable you to capture better photos at least some of the time, and that’s the real win.
We all base our observations on experience, mine was comparing the D7000 images to the Z 6. A lot of things going on there, DX → FX, 16MP → 24MP, almost 1.5 stop of DR* and so on. What you see in the PlayRaw image is what stunned me just after buying it.
When I bought the Z 6 I was after dynamic range. That being the angst of the day, I almost bought the D750. However, I didn’t have but one lens, and the things I was reading about the Z mount let me to do something I almost never do, that is buy a just-released product. Kinda sweated that decision, but I’ve not been disappointed…
I can’t bring myself to sell any camera; I still have the F2 and lenses. Last use it got was to shoot a brochure photo of the family for my wife’s school board race (she won, picture notwithstanding) about 30 years ago. Even back then I had a hard time finding a darkroom to make the print; ended up at the Ft Carson army base hobby shop, and they were about to dismantle it. I’m keeping the D7000; as long as I’m just shooting for web viewing it’s a fine camera.
But I was struggling with the D7000 in high-dynamic range situations. Spending a lot of time trying to compress the scene with shadow and highlight sliders, and dealing with the shadow noise of that sensor. With the Z 6 I still work on pulling up shadows because I shoot with the highlight-weighted matrix metering, but the noise problem is just gone. Love that camera…
Me neither, you do become attached to them and often they will have depreciated too much for it to even be worth it.
Might have dodged a bullet there with the D750 though, I think they were one of the very few cameras Nikon ever made with questionable reliability. One day I hope to see someone trying to get rid of a D850 that I can swoop on, but its the sort of camera no one would ever need to upgrade from and that’s exactly why I want one… the absolute pinnacle of DSLR tech from a Nikon perspective. It could only be obsoleted by the failure of the last compatible shutter mech or battery on Earth.
It’s interesting in regards to dynamic range though, while on one hand you never argue against the fact that more is always better, but at the same time you have to wonder what we’ve actually done to make the most of all this dynamic range we’ve been given.
Here someone has compared the dynamic range of a Canon 1D MkII (which you can add to the graph on photons to photons to see how poorly it stacks up against both your D7000 and Z6) to Kodak Gold 200 and Fuji Velvia. To quote his report:
This shows that the Canon 1D Mark II has a much higher dynamic range than either Fujichrome Velvia slide film and Kodak Gold 200 print film. Kodak Gold 200, in this test, showed 7 stops of information, Fujichrome Velvia 5 stops, and the Canon 1D Mark II, over 10 stops of information!
There are some landscape photographers out there making the most of it, but in the main I think most of us would be better off with negative film’s ability to roll off gently into pure white than having 4+ extra stops of headroom that are destined to blow in high contrast conditions anyway.
SNR processing has definitely improved a lot though. I guess the onboard computing capabilities would put a fairly low ceiling in place, but you have to wonder how much older cameras could be upgraded if the manufacturers had any incentive for doing so.
