Lol. It sounds a bit nebulous. The “hybrid shooter” YouTube channel said the full frame lumix S5ii looks a little less digital and processed than the m43 G9ii but I think that was more to do with internal sharpening of the RAWs.
Skimmed the video and noticed he also used the ill defined term “filmic” to describe the FF camera compared to “digital” for the m43. Crunchy and smooth are the established terms… as of two post ago on the pixls.us forum.
Joking aside it seems he’s describing the same thing as I am. My cameras have never had raw sharpening though.
It could be that smaller formats tend to be more aggressively postprocessed in an attempt to reach the same look. I can’t say I’ve done tests. If thats the case the question is why smaller formats gets overprocessed.
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If you’re focussed on stills rather than video and don’t need the best auto-focus, you could look at the Pentax K-1: high image quality and access to all those lovely K-mount lenses. I guess it may not qualify as small, though, even if not the biggest: 136.5 x 110 x 85.5 mm, 925g without battery.
The top few results on US eBay are $1,000, from Japan.
My K-3 II (APS-C) PixelShift test back in 2016. RawTherapee supports PixelShift, but I don’t think Darktable does, despite some work having been done.
Wow! It looks nice and compact, too.
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https://www.mu-43.com/threads/brightin-star-35mm-f-0-95-mft.122121/
Another option. I wonder if there’s a large variability in these Chinese lenses because the views are so varied in their performance
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Could also be differences in default Lightroom sharpening. Same with the colors. The problem is that he didn’t explain his methodology, so we won’t know. But since he used the term “color science”, I’m inclined to discard his conclusions as being unreliable.
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Lightroom is the mother of bad comparisons. Vanishingly few are aware of just how much the hidden default settings affect the results. People end up comparing Adobe settings rather than the gear they think they are comparing.
The gist of the argument matches my open source experience though. Smaller formats look more digital, I mean crunchy.
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Possibly, when developed using the same settings (if that makes sense).
But the corollary to @Donatzsky’s point is that a someone experienced in post-processing can achieve whatever look they want (up to the relevant resolution, conditional on the equivalent aperture).
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Makes sense. I always flinch a bit at the phrase. There have been some complaints on the web about noise reduction and then sharpening in some of the video profiles and jpegs on the S5ii vs the mark 1, though not RAW.
People have speculated that noise reduction has been used by canon in cameras like the R5 even at low ISOs to reduce the noise floor and boost apparent or measured dynamic range.
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I have a pet theory that many of Lightroom’s algorithms operate on a pixel scale, and therefore look different for photos with varying megapixels.
I’ve heard it said that part of the “medium format look” in the analog days were due to developer diffusion. Naturally, it would diffuse over a small area, but that area was relatively smaller in the frame for larger negatives. Hence, larger negatives looked “smoother”.
In both cases, this resulted in a “crunchy” look for smaller sensors/film. But in digital, this is very much avoidable. This theory would also imply that higher-megapixel sensors should look “smoother”.
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I think the grain would be the same size on all negatives (or all made from the same emulsion), but less apparent on a MF image printed at the same size.
I remember in my flatbed scanner days I tried scanning halftone images from books at 72dpi and got wavy lines on them, so always used 300dpi and then scaled them down
in later years I went to a photography lecture and all the guys pictures had the wavy lines, he was a university lecturer, so maybe his entire library of images was scanned at 72dpi
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I thought the “medium format look” was also the very narrow depth of field you can achieve even with wide angle lenses. I think you can fake it by using a smaller sensored camera with a standard lens with it’s widest aperture focused on a nearby subject and then taking and stitching like 8 shots around the central shot.
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Yes, discussed in detail here:
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Yes, you’re right. That’s the most important bit. I should have been more clear about that. But I theorize that the diffusion scale also plays a (minor?) role. And in particular, is perhaps to blame for the “crunch”, or lack thereof.
Obviously I figured this out from first principles rather than watching this video a while ago and then forgetting all about it…
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I agree, there’s a certain “look” that is hard to describe. I first noticed this in some of Steve O’Nions’ large format photos, even with very small aperture where almost everything is in focus, where the increased bokeh is not as noticeable. I don’t know how to describe it but lack of crunch is a good way, coupled with a strange “depth” if that makes any sense.
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OT: Kasey from Camera Conspiracies calls extreme bokeh “Toneh” in reference to Tony Northrup who regularly goes all out on max bokeh, to the point that the background in many of his videos is just one big amorphous blob. IIRC it got Kasey banned from Tony’s videos, plus the word “Toneh” is wordfiltered there
As far as small setups go, I got an A7C II with a Sigma 28-70 (not that I could remotely justify this purchase). It’s still a surprisingly chunky piece of camera kit, but manageable at ~1kg. I’ll eventually get a small prime lens for a really portable setup. I just found that heavier/bulkier gear stays home most of the time, which I want to avoid.
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Some Fuji gear pr0n:
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I’ve just been experimenting and trying to work out how much bokeh I can experience with my own eyes, and it turns out I can’t experience any. The way our eyes work just doesn’t allow it. You can be vaguely aware that the background is out of focus, but you can’t actually “see” any bokeh. As soon as you move your eyes to look around, they re-focus. At least mine do.
I really enjoy James Popsys and his style of photography, and I love that he has popularized/legitimized the art of the “snapshot”. It’s considered a derogatory term, but I do think there’s an art to creating a great snapshot, especially when photographing the mundane. Arguably, it can also be more difficult than the tripod / golden hour approach, where the location and light do a lot of the heavy lifting. You have to think quickly and creatively in a completely different way.
Anyway, I digress. I think moving away from the obsession with bokeh and buttery backgrounds is laudable. But of course there’s no correct or incorrect approach. Photography can be all about capturing reality (like James Popsys); it can be used to create a new perspective on the world (like macro, wide-angle, bokeh to the max); it can be used to create the abstract (ICM); and countless other approaches. It’s why it’s such a great hobby.
Personally, I’m starting to prefer / return to the more natural look that doesn’t rely too heavily on dynamic range, focus-stacking, bokeh… It’s how I started photography when I was 6 years old, and it’s how I’m still doing it decades later. And thankfully it means less bulky gear. But ask me again in a year or so and I’ll have probably changed my mind!
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General question for anyone who owns a full frame and a crop sensor camera of relatively recent era. Other than stuff that can be dealt with in post, is there that much difference, particularly say for low light or night photography? Hopefully this isn’t too far off topic… thanks
For low light/night, you’re mostly talking about noise. Its likely to be a personal threshold for what is acceptable, but I think it isn’t a huge deal.
Clearly, the larger the sensor, the better the performance, so the difference is the delta in price, which really depends on specific bodies/lenses.
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