# A7RIII from Sony: Dpreview is impressed by Pixel shift



## xps (Nov 12, 2017)

As this body is still not available, posted in this subforum.

Dpreview seems to be impressed by this feature....

https://www.dpreview.com/news/5645755619/sony-a7r-iii-pixel-shift-lifts-a-veil-off-your-landscapes

If you modify the studio scene with the 5DSR, the pixelshift feature seems to work quite well.
Not in every area of the picture (seems to create CAs)


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## raptor3x (Nov 12, 2017)

It looks good, although it seems to my eye that Pentax gets the best results out of all the pixel shift implementations as the moment, at least for the studio test scene as presented.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Nov 12, 2017)

It is likely useful for still life photos, its my impression that any movement spoils the effect. 

That's a example of how something like the still scene at DPR could mislead less experienced photographers into believing that all their photos will benefit. 

I know that some, including me, have a camera support that's bolted down (mine is literally bolted down) In that case I could benefit, except that most of my product photos are drastically downsized for the internet, so my support is bolted down for convenience and to prevent accidental bumps rather than ultra high resolution.


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## 9VIII (Nov 12, 2017)

Even Tony Northrup said pixel shift was effectively useless for landscape.
The fastest it can take the four shots is about four seconds. Your effective motion blur is the same as a four second exposure.
Trees, waves, traffic, clouds, all move too much for it to be effective, and good luck getting a human being to sit still enough.

This feature is about as useful as Canon’s dual pixel focus shift.


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## privatebydesign (Nov 13, 2017)

9VIII said:


> Even Tony Northrup said pixel shift was effectively useless for landscape.
> The fastest it can take the four shots is about four seconds. Your effective motion blur is the same as a four second exposure.
> Trees, waves, traffic, clouds, all move too much for it to be effective, and good luck getting a human being to sit still enough.
> 
> This feature is about as useful as Canon’s dual pixel focus shift.



At least the Canon version has an extra stop of DR in it and is taken at the some exposure, it just takes some work to get it out of the RAW file. But if you do you have wider DR from the 5D MkIV than the Nikon D850 and the Sony A7RIII.


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## neuroanatomist (Nov 13, 2017)

I've shot static landscape scenes. Maybe two of them. Things move, which renders this feature effectively useless outside of the studio. 

I'm unsurprised that Rishi loves it, his nose is that special Sony shade of brown. 

Having said that, I've used pixel shift in photomicroscopy for a long time. It was quite innovative when implemented on my Zeiss AxioCam...around the turn of the century.


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## 9VIII (Nov 13, 2017)

The really funny thing is you could just take a four shot burst in a fraction of a second and use regular multi-shot noise reduction to get most of the same benefit with an order of magnitude less movement in the environment.

I’m actually _really_ surprised that cameras don’t commonly have a super quick automatic bracketing mode.
I’ve seen auto bracketing modes, but they never seem to be very fast. Any 8fps burst camera today should be able to take four shots in half a second (with a different exposure for each frame).


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## privatebydesign (Nov 13, 2017)

9VIII said:


> The really funny thing is you could just take a four shot burst in a fraction of a second and use regular multi-shot noise reduction to get most of the same benefit with an order of magnitude less movement in the environment.
> 
> I’m actually _really_ surprised that cameras don’t commonly have a super quick automatic bracketing mode.
> I’ve seen auto bracketing modes, but they never seem to be very fast. Any 8fps burst camera today should be able to take four shots in half a second (with a different exposure for each frame).



I've commented before that has been an unexpected (but obvious with hindsight) benefit of the 1DX MkII over my old 1Ds MkIII's. Shooting brackets fast helps me a lot in post, the less movement of foliage the easier time the software has.

The 1DX MkII can shoot five shot brackets in well under half a second.


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## 9VIII (Nov 13, 2017)

privatebydesign said:


> 9VIII said:
> 
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> > The really funny thing is you could just take a four shot burst in a fraction of a second and use regular multi-shot noise reduction to get most of the same benefit with an order of magnitude less movement in the environment.
> ...



Does it actually progressively adjust the shutter speed at maximum burst or do you just spin the command dial while holding down the shutter release?


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## privatebydesign (Nov 13, 2017)

9VIII said:


> privatebydesign said:
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If you are in Av it changes shutter speed, if you are in Tv it changes the aperture. If you put safety shift on and set shutter speed preferences it will adjust ISO. 

I use it mostly in Av and have it vary shutter speed. 

I have also done 9 frame high speed shots with the same settings and averaged them for the combination of higher shutter speed and comparatively low noise, I just haven't had an actual reason to do that on a paid shoot though.


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## weixing (Nov 13, 2017)

privatebydesign said:


> 9VIII said:
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Hi,
I thought this is a common feature... just set AEB, high-speed continuous mode and press and hold the shutter button. The camera will auto stop shooting once the bracketing shots is completed. The max number of bracket shots available will be depend on the number your camera can support... M5 is 3 and 7D2 is 7.

Have a nice day.


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## privatebydesign (Nov 13, 2017)

weixing said:


> Hi,
> I thought this is a common feature... just set AEB, high-speed continuous mode and press and hold the shutter button. The camera will auto stop shooting once the bracketing shots is completed. The max number of bracket shots available will be depend on the number your camera can support... M5 is 3 and 7D2 is 7.
> 
> Have a nice day.



Yes it is, not sure why 9VII is new to it. Just that the higher burst rates of newer cameras has an advantage when using it.


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## raptor3x (Nov 13, 2017)

neuroanatomist said:


> I've shot static landscape scenes. Maybe two of them. Things move, which renders this feature effectively useless outside of the studio.
> 
> I'm unsurprised that Rishi loves it, his nose is that special Sony shade of brown.
> 
> Having said that, I've used pixel shift in photomicroscopy for a long time. It was quite innovative when implemented on my Zeiss AxioCam...around the turn of the century.



I find it kind of funny that Rishi writes:

[quote author=DPReview]
What's more: Sony's recent lenses have enough resolving power to take advantage of this mode. You see the resolution increase at least partly because the lenses have enough resolving power to take advantage of the extra pixel-level sampling (theoretically, increasing the resolution of any part of the imaging chain has the potential to increase sharpness, but your lens needs to resolve enough to begin with to see the dramatic differences we're seeing here). You can't always take that for granted (see the limited increase in resolution of Pixel Shift modes on Micro Four Thirds cameras in our studio scene, for example).[/quote]

even though the m43 pixel shift models show a much more dramatic increase in resolution than what Sony is showing. They don't reach quite the same final resolution as Pentax or Sony since they're starting with a much lower resolution sensor but the increase is much more noticeable.


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## moreorless (Nov 13, 2017)

I notice the "landscape" chosen was actually a cityscape with limited potential for movement, DPR generally do seem rather suspect for me when Sony products are involved these days.



raptor3x said:


> even though the m43 pixel shift models show a much more dramatic increase in resolution than what Sony is showing. They don't reach quite the same final resolution as Pentax or Sony since they're starting with a much lower resolution sensor but the increase is much more noticeable.



Given that there does seem to be a lot more potential for resolution increases in m43 optics it does seem a little strange there sticking with 20 MP. I spose you could argue that the higher end sales have naturally tended to move towards action shooting with the size saving on optics it offers where lower resolution aids FPS but there seems plenty of room to up things to say 28-30 MP without getting into diminishing returns.


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## 9VIII (Nov 13, 2017)

privatebydesign said:


> weixing said:
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> > Hi,
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Personal experience is limited to the 5D2 at best, and video reviews have _never_ demonstrated this feature (at least not the usual “TCS/Kai/Fro/Northrup” type).
(Actually I do seem to remember seeing a demonstration, but the impressoin given was that the feature was mostly useless, thus my surprise when suddenly I hear someone say they’re reasonably satisfied with it.)


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## 9VIII (Nov 13, 2017)

raptor3x said:


> neuroanatomist said:
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> 
> > I've shot static landscape scenes. Maybe two of them. Things move, which renders this feature effectively useless outside of the studio.
> ...



even though the m43 pixel shift models show a much more dramatic increase in resolution than what Sony is showing. They don't reach quite the same final resolution as Pentax or Sony since they're starting with a much lower resolution sensor but the increase is much more noticeable.
[/quote]

The worst part is that clearly the new G9 has a much better pixel shift implementation, even taking 8 shots it looks much faster than Sony’s 4 second minimum.
If the G9 has a regular 4 shot mode it’s probably much more practical (and it should be able to do regular bracketing at 60fps). Which is not to say that it negates the lack of sensor size on M4/3 (though the pixel shift does sound great for Macro, and Panasonic arguably does the best 4k), but as far as feature implementation goes Sony should be getting hammered for releasing this with such a slow shot to shot pace.

I think “shill” has become too kind of a word to describe the way DPReview behaves with Sony products.


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## Mikehit (Nov 13, 2017)

One problem with FF sensor stabilisation is the momentum from the size of the sensor - it will be much easier for Panasonic/Olympus to change direction of the sensor because the sensor is one quarter the size. 

No fanboy-ism, no shills needed - just plain old common sense and an understanding of high school physics.


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## privatebydesign (Nov 13, 2017)

Mikehit said:


> One problem with FF sensor stabilisation is the momentum from the size of the sensor - it will be much easier for Panasonic/Olympus to change direction of the sensor because the sensor is one quarter the size.
> 
> No fanboy-ism, no shills needed - just plain old common sense and an understanding of high school physics.



But a small one needs to move faster and be four times more accurate, more high school physics.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Nov 13, 2017)

neuroanatomist said:


> I've shot static landscape scenes. Maybe two of them. Things move, which renders this feature effectively useless outside of the studio.
> 
> I'm unsurprised that Rishi loves it, his nose is that special Sony shade of brown.
> 
> Having said that, I've used pixel shift in photomicroscopy for a long time. It was quite innovative when implemented on my Zeiss AxioCam...around the turn of the century.



Back in or around the early1990's, I bought a gadget at EggHead computers (remember them?) It converted video to high resolution still images by merging multiple frames. The principle was basically pixel shift, so a video needed to be hand held rather than on a fixed mount. It consisted of a box with a composite video input and RS-232? output. It required a video where the camera was held steady, but still had a slight movement, the subject could not move. The software then merged frames to put out a image with resolutions as high as 1080 pixels. This was just shortly before Apple released their digital camera, but put out higher resolution images when things went just right(which was not a common happening for me). I used a Panasonic SVH-c camcorder for the video.


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## Mikehit (Nov 13, 2017)

privatebydesign said:


> Mikehit said:
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> > One problem with FF sensor stabilisation is the momentum from the size of the sensor - it will be much easier for Panasonic/Olympus to change direction of the sensor because the sensor is one quarter the size.
> ...



And yet it appeared on MFT before FF. Go figure.


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## Don Haines (Nov 13, 2017)

Mikehit said:


> privatebydesign said:
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Yes, but if it is not on a Canon FF camera, does it really exist 

And despite the collective internet knowledge telling us that pixel shift only works on static scenes when mounted on a super-stable tripod, there are people out there getting great hand-held results with their toy Olympus cameras..


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## raptor3x (Nov 13, 2017)

Don Haines said:


> Mikehit said:
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I haven't seen anyone claiming to have successfully shot in HiRes mode handheld. The current implementation are sensitive enough to motion that vortex shedding off the legs of a tripod is often enough to spoil the image when using longer lenses.


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## Don Haines (Nov 13, 2017)

raptor3x said:


> Don Haines said:
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Handheld covers a wide range of stability..... some people are more stable than others, some of us like leaning against things, I like resting the camera against a tree, lamp post, building (or whatever)..... and yes, I have seen people use that technique to hand hold the Oly in high res mode....


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## raptor3x (Nov 13, 2017)

Don Haines said:


> Handheld covers a wide range of stability..... some people are more stable than others, some of us like leaning against things, I like resting the camera against a tree, lamp post, building (or whatever)..... and yes, I have seen people use that technique to hand hold the Oly in high res mode....



Do you have any links to examples of hand held HiRes?


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## Don Haines (Nov 13, 2017)

raptor3x said:


> Don Haines said:
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> 
> > Handheld covers a wide range of stability..... some people are more stable than others, some of us like leaning against things, I like resting the camera against a tree, lamp post, building (or whatever)..... and yes, I have seen people use that technique to hand hold the Oly in high res mode....
> ...



I could ask for the original files, but when I saw them, it was at a club slideshow and projected (and yes, I am aware of how silly it is to take a 50mpixel image, downsample it to a smaller image, and then project it onto a screen at LESS than 2K resolution)..... but hey, it was a new toy and they were happy with it


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## OSOK (Nov 14, 2017)

It really doesn't matter what the specific topic is regarding this camera or Sony in general, the people here will be negative, dismissive and critical. Are we to believe that NOTHING about this camera is good? That it does not have a single feature or capability that can be recognized as excellent? Or, perhaps - even better than Canon?

I've been following these threads, and the usual suspects form a hit squad of Sony bashers and make it a point to trash on the A7R3. 

If this were the only site on the internet, one would come to the conclusion that the A7R3 is an overpriced piece of junk. Sony a fraudulent, dishonest company. 


While it is true that this will not work with scenes containing movement - there's a lot of scenes where it will work. DPR's urban landscape is a good example. The quality improvement is stunning. Also, this makes any kind of still life that much better. Had the 5DSR have this feature, it would be praised as a worthy "studio" feature and select landscape use. Sony has it, it's criticized as useless.

It is fair to criticize the utility of this feature, but to do so to such an extreme extent shows blatant disregard for the truth. Sony isn't the only company to implement this. But when they do, it's time to downplay it.

I would not equate this to the 5D4's dual pixel raw. Dual pixel raw is truly worthless. Pixel shift is orders of magnitude more useful and practical.


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## SecureGSM (Nov 14, 2017)

yeah? how about an extra stop of DR that is hidden in the subrame B of the Canon DPRAW file? still worthless ?

https://www.rawdigger.com/howtouse/Canon-dual-pixel-technology

https://www.rawdigger.com/howtouse/canon-dual-pixel-mode-highlights-are-there






OSOK said:


> .. I would not equate this to the 5D4's dual pixel raw. *Dual pixel raw is truly worthless.* Pixel shift is orders of magnitude more useful and practical.


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## neuroanatomist (Nov 14, 2017)

OSOK said:


> It really doesn't matter what the specific topic is regarding this camera or Sony in general, the people here will be negative, dismissive and critical. Are we to believe that NOTHING about this camera is good? That it does not have a single feature or capability that can be recognized as excellent? Or, perhaps - even better than Canon?
> 
> I've been following these threads, and the usual suspects form a hit squad of Sony bashers and make it a point to trash on the A7R3.



Seems you can't distinguish between disparaging the message and shooting the messenger. Normally, the latter is frowned upon, but when the messenger is biased and has been previously shown to be a liar, the 'shooting' is justified. So far in this thread, pixel shift has been called 'good' and 'beneficial' albeit with some major caveats around use cases – which you, in fact, acknowledge. 

But perhaps we could also discuss the 'usual suspects' for whom every Canon body is crap. The 5DIII had 'poor, sub-par, unacceptable IQ', the 6DII was a joke, etc. Have you followed those threads, too?




SecureGSM said:


> yeah? how about an extra stop of DR that is hidden in the subrame B of the Canon DPRAW file? still worthless ?



More DR was useful and of incredible value...when Canon had less. But now that Canon has effectively matched (or in the case of a properly processed dual pixel RAW file, exceeded) the DR of their competitors...yeah, DR is useless.


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## raptor3x (Nov 14, 2017)

SecureGSM said:


> yeah? how about an extra stop of DR that is hidden in the subrame B of the Canon DPRAW file? still worthless ?
> 
> https://www.rawdigger.com/howtouse/Canon-dual-pixel-technology
> 
> ...



Do you know if anyone has written anything to capitalize on this yet? The potential is there but last I had checked there was no way to realize it.


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## Don Haines (Nov 14, 2017)

OSOK said:


> It really doesn't matter what the specific topic is regarding this camera or Sony in general, the people here will be negative, dismissive and critical. Are we to believe that NOTHING about this camera is good? That it does not have a single feature or capability that can be recognized as excellent?



Not everyone in the forum bashes everything.....

And on the subject of pixel shifting sensors.... Olympus does it.... Panasonic does it.... and now Sony does it.... it must work on mirrorless cameras, or why does everyone seem to have it?

Canon and Nikon are conservative companies.... They are slow to innovate, but what they have is usually rock solid. That is why a particular type of people gravitate towards those cameras..... Companies like Olympus and Panasonic (and now Sony) are more innovative and you see new features faster, but at a cost of stability. That is why the latest gadget type of people gravitate towards them.....

You can have stability, or you can innovative, but not both together.... unless you put a foot in both camps.

Personally, my ideal setup would be a 5D4 and lots of FF lenses for when quality and reliability is the answer, and an E-M1 MarkII for portability and playing around.....


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Nov 14, 2017)

Don Haines said:


> OSOK said:
> 
> 
> > It really doesn't matter what the specific topic is regarding this camera or Sony in general, the people here will be negative, dismissive and critical. Are we to believe that NOTHING about this camera is good? That it does not have a single feature or capability that can be recognized as excellent?
> ...



Beware, just because a camera advertises a feature does not tell you if its very useful. How useful to forum members is ALO? Some may find it useful, but I bet most turn it off. Dual Pixel RAW sounds good, and sells cameras, but how useful is it really?

Pixel shift works, but the circumstances are so limited that its only for specialized shooting. I looked at the test images, and the buildings that don't move are definitely and noticeably sharper. Even the trees looked sharper. The clouds that are, of course moving are blurred. So there is a benefit when you have a subject that does not move, and, of course, your camera needs to be very stable as well. It can be a benefit in that people who are moving will be blurred and unrecognizable which you would likely want if you are selling the images. 

From the image they posted, which studiously avoids things that move, like people, automobiles, water, and the like, I get the idea that there would be very few images that would benefit, but for those who are interested in landscape photography and have subjects that don't move, You can definitely get technically sharper images. Just how many of them would be interesting is another matter. What would a waterfall look like?


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## deleteme (Nov 14, 2017)

I shoot architectural interiors primarily and at first this seemed to have some promise. However contemporary fashion is to include humans and other elements to show use of the space.
This will not work.

What is useful is that my clients would never see the additional res so its absence is not missed.


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## SecureGSM (Nov 14, 2017)

Absolutely. One can open DPRAW file in Rawdigger and then export each individual subframe (A and B) as a separate TIFF file. Then blend these two TIFF files in Lightroom or any other HDR capable editor. This option is available in Rawdigger as of late August 2016. I am unsure why Adobe and others have not utilised this feature yet. It seems only logical to me but what do I know. 




raptor3x said:


> SecureGSM said:
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> > yeah? how about an extra stop of DR that is hidden in the subrame B of the Canon DPRAW file? still worthless ?
> ...


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## Don Haines (Nov 14, 2017)

9VIII said:


> Mikehit said:
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> > One problem with FF sensor stabilisation is the momentum from the size of the sensor - it will be much easier for Panasonic/Olympus to change direction of the sensor because the sensor is one quarter the size.
> ...


On the Olympus E-M1, it takes a shade under a second to take the 8 pictures, but it takes another 2 or 3 seconds to process them.... could that be what the Sony does?


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## traveller (Nov 14, 2017)

Don Haines said:


> 9VIII said:
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The A7RIII doesn't process the images at all, you have to import the files into Sony's "Imaging Edge" software.


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## Don Haines (Nov 14, 2017)

traveller said:


> Don Haines said:
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So it takes 4 times longer for the camera to take the pictures and then you have to export them and run them through special software? "innovative"......


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## 9VIII (Nov 14, 2017)

Don Haines said:


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It really seems like the limitation is arbitrary, why they allow people to set _more_ time between capturing frames is beyond me. This suggests it’s a simple issue of software designers doing weird things just because they can.


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## Don Haines (Nov 14, 2017)

9VIII said:


> Don Haines said:
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You are probably right.....

When Nikon started into digital cameras, it seemed like their menu system was designed by programmers with little or no thought as to how a photographer would actually use them.... They got a lot better with time.... This could be the same.....


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Nov 14, 2017)

Since no one mentioned it, how about 200 MP? From 2011! 

https://www.dpreview.com/articles/3698399703/hasselbladms

It has now quitely vanished, I suspect that few found the feature useful in actual usage.


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## Tugela (Nov 15, 2017)

Mt Spokane Photography said:


> It is likely useful for still life photos, its my impression that any movement spoils the effect.
> 
> That's a example of how something like the still scene at DPR could mislead less experienced photographers into believing that all their photos will benefit.
> 
> I know that some, including me, have a camera support that's bolted down (mine is literally bolted down) In that case I could benefit, except that most of my product photos are drastically downsized for the internet, so my support is bolted down for convenience and to prevent accidental bumps rather than ultra high resolution.



It would, because the final image is made up of multiple exposures. It would be a lot like HDR in that respect. Any element that is moving is going to blur out.

When they first mentioned this feature I was hoping that the shifts would happen a lot faster. Unfortunately it is too slow if anything moves in the frame, so I think it will only really work for some sort of still life/static subject matter. 

It should be great for images that work for the technology however.


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