# Canon's Medium Format



## IsaacImage (Feb 10, 2014)

Hello dear friends.

What do you think - Canon need this market ?
Will we see any MF cameras and lenses of course any soon ?


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## privatebydesign (Feb 10, 2014)

IsaacImage said:


> Hello dear friends.
> 
> What do you think - Canon need this market ?
> Will we see any MF cameras and lenses of course any soon ?



No and no, would be my guess. The returnables are just not there as the market is just too small, all the money, effort, and R&D that might have gone into a MF line is going into the C line anyway.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Feb 10, 2014)

This would probably only happen if Canon bought a MF manufacturer. Its not a profitable business, many MF companies have been losing money and are consolidating.

Canon has been very conservative and has not jumped into a new area without some reasonable expectation of making a profit,.

That doesn't currently seem likely.


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## unfocused (Feb 10, 2014)

Agree with Private and Mt. Spokane. Heck, Canon doesn't seem to be in any hurry to offer a high megapixel DSLR, much less get into medium format.

Lesson: Internet chatter does not equate to an actual market for a product.


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## hgraf (Feb 10, 2014)

IsaacImage said:


> Hello dear friends.
> 
> What do you think - Canon need this market ?
> Will we see any MF cameras and lenses of course any soon ?



I'd say no.

The question you should be asking is this: what benefit would going into MF be for Canon? The market itself is tiny. It's tiny because the equipment big, hard to use and is super expensive. So say Canon went into it with the intention of undercutting the competition (cheaper, easier to use). How much would that grow the market? Enough to be worthwhile?

Now look at it from the technology viewpoint: what benefit does MF bring to the table? Does MF produce a better result in the "meat and potatoes" section of the photography business? 

My opinions? No. Due to pure physics (size, weight, lens focal lengths) MF isn't very convenient in pretty much any setting other then landscapes and studio work. Outside of that MF is too big, too slow and too unwieldy. Any improvement brought to the MF game would be equally applicable to the FF and APS-C markets (aside from size, can't get around that one). Even IN the realm of landscapes and studio MF really only helps if you're going WAY big with your image. I'm not talking about a 2 page spread. I'm talking about a 30 foot tall poster. How big is the market for that kind of photography?

So, would MF bring something to the table to say a wedding photographer, or a news photographer, or a sports photographer, or a travel photographer, that would make it worthwhile? IMHO, no. The image quality benefit just isn't there for those uses, and the equipment would be bigger and heavier then FF or APS-H/C sized solutions, again for no benefit.

MF has been a niche for a long time, and the physics IMHO just prevent it from leaving that niche.


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## pwp (Feb 10, 2014)

Canon would have a hard time getting an MF expansion past the shareholders. It's such a tiny market with dubious profit potential.

There's little profit for them in the pro market (1DX, big white glass etc) but these are reputation builders and highly visible, aspirational "halo" products. 

MF is generally hidden from view in studios and tightly managed productions, thus no "halo" effect.

As far as cameras go, they'll stick with core business.

-pw


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## 100 (Feb 11, 2014)

Not as long as medium format will have prices with 5 digits.
At those prices the market is too small. 
But if the price drops the market for medium format could grow substantially and Canon might be interested. 
Current full frame 35mm format might become the new APS-C and medium format the new full frame. 
I don’t see that happening in the next 2 or 3 years, but in long term…


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## Halfrack (Feb 11, 2014)

As a MF shooter, there is limited gains by going into this market. To do a whole new mount and the lenses that would be expected, plus the distraction it would be to their business just doesn't make sense. What does a MF camera give you that you currently don't have?

Resolution? - Sony has a 36mp chip shipping, rumors of a 40mp+ Canon chips are out there
sync speed? - it would be really nice to have a 1.4x tele-adapter that can be a leaf shutter that the focal plane can use 

Basically, when Canon puts their name on it, the expectation of perfection is there. Think of how much you'd laugh of Nikon put out a 'wannabe MF camera' that was slow, incompatible with anything else, and expensive. Canon is in that boat, their ability to half ass a product in this space is zero. I mean, look at how poorly the 35mm world is looking at the Hasselblad re-branded Sony products.


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## Drizzt321 (Feb 11, 2014)

Medium Format (in my limited experience) is obviously quite a bit bigger than 35mm, but from what I see briefly on Wikipedia the digital sensors are smaller than the smallest 'normal' film equivalent, which is 6x4.5cm (aka 645 format). That aside, the market is so incredibly smaller, it's already almost crowded. Canon would have to do something crazy like a full 6x6cm or 6x7cm format sensor and all new, super-high quality lenses in order to have pretty much anyone using digital MF even consider switching. And at that, it'd be insanely expensive, especially for full size sensors like that.


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## pdirestajr (Feb 11, 2014)

I would be surprised if Canon went into the medium format market.
They continue to develop and grow their EOS Cinema Division, which ties nicely into their DSLR/lens system. They are evolving in a smart way, contrary to internet forums where you are lead to believe Canon is "failing" because you can't raise the shadows in an underexposed image in Lightroom as much as a raw file from other sensor.


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## Don Haines (Feb 11, 2014)

Everyone seems obsessed with a bigger sensor, but forgets about bigger lenses and bigger price tag. 35mm does so well because it hits the sweet spot for ergonomics...


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## agierke (Feb 11, 2014)

A resounding no. I would actually be pissed if they wasted R&D resources in this manner.

I used to be a medium and large format shooter in the film days and I loved it. I had zero interest in the 35mm format as it could not come close to delivering the quality that even the smallest size medium format could deliver. Running around with a hassi or a 4x5 was worth the extra effort due to the phenomenal quality provided.

In the digital world that is no longer the case. Though there still may be a gap in quality between the formats it has been significantly reduced. If you remember, once digital came out of it's growing pains, it actually put a huge dent in the medium format market. Why go into a market you helped to mostly annihilate after you annihilated it?

The only aspect I miss from the medium and large format days is the leaf shutter and syncing at any shutter speed. That's it.


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## phoenix7 (Feb 11, 2014)

lenses? yes, Canon already makes lens that will work with the smaller sized medium digital format sensors out there.
Now of course before people hollar they aren't ment for that and there aren't many, the easiest to use are the wider angle TS lens, and from what I've read you can still get a fair bit of T and S out of them before they vigenette heavily. With the not quite really medium format (6cm x 4.5cm or greater) of around 4.xcm x 3.xcm sensors we aren't talking about nearly as large a jump up in size. From what I've read it's around 1.5x or 1.6x so I always think of of digital MF as being the APC of the medium format world right now. When they can give me a full frame MF sensor (6x4.5) for about the price of a 1DX I'll start saving for one.  (yeah, fat chance, I know)


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## dolina (Feb 12, 2014)

Buying a current MF brand is more feasible than Canon doing it from scratch. There is more money in Cinema EOS than MF.


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## Ellen Schmidtee (Feb 12, 2014)

100 said:


> But if the price drops the market for medium format could grow substantially and Canon might be interested.
> Current full frame 35mm format might become the new APS-C and medium format the new full frame.
> I don’t see that happening in the next 2 or 3 years, but in long term…



I see electronics' price dropping, but lenses?


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## jeffa4444 (Feb 12, 2014)

I agree with other MF is not Canon goal they are happy growing in Cinema EOS and they have hade a huge dent in documentory camera usage with the C300. They are not quite a Hollywood camera but they will be one day.


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## StudentOfLight (Feb 12, 2014)

Cameraphones are encroaching more and more on the consumer digital stills market, where many potential buyers would rather opt for convenience and portability over outright IQ. I don't know how close we are to the IQ ceiling on full-frame digital, perhaps others could comment...

A larger format could offer better low light capability, better background blur and a smaller diffraction limited aperture. For landscape and and portrait work these could all be put to good use. In terms of ergonomics sure you'd need to use longer focal lengths on a larger format but perhaps "DO" lens designs (which offer reduced size and weight) could be employed? Anyway, since this is supposedly "The Year of the Lens" maybe all Canon's new lenses will be forwards-compatible to a larger sensor size... perhaps an "XL" line of lenses. 

On a theoretical 48x36mm (0.7x Crop) sensor: (Doubled FF sensor size)
1) SNR could be 41% better than equivalent full frame tech.
2) Angle of view - TS-E 24mm would be similar to 17mm on full frame
3) Background rendering - 135mm f/1.8 would be similar to 85mm f/1.2 on full-frame. 
4) Diffraction limit would be extended by 1 stop. (e.g. f/14 vs f/11)

On a theoretical 5x7cm (0.5x Crop) sensor: (Quadrupled FF sensor size)
1) SNR could be 100% better than equivalent FF tech.
2) Angle of view - 30mm "XL" would be similar to 15mm on FF
3) Background rendering - 200mm f/2.8 would be similar to 85mm f/1.2 on FF. 
4) Diffraction limit would be extended by 2 stops. (e.g. f/22 vs f/11)

http://howmuchblur.com/#compare-1x-85mm-f1.2-and-0.7x-135mm-f1.8-and-0.5x-200mm-f2.8-on-a-0.9m-wide-subject

How significant these advantages are is up to debate...


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## phoenix7 (Feb 13, 2014)

StudentOfLight said:


> A larger format could offer better low light capability, better background blur and a smaller diffraction limited aperture. For landscape and and portrait work these could all be put to good use. In terms of ergonomics sure you'd need to use longer focal lengths on a larger format but perhaps "DO" lens designs (which offer reduced size and weight) could be employed? Anyway, since this is supposedly "The Year of the Lens" maybe all Canon's new lenses will be forwards-compatible to a larger sensor size... perhaps an "XL" line of lenses.



I'm curious. How does digital MF have better low light capability? From what I've read on Luminous Landscape and other sites many (most?) MF backs don't even do above 800ISO and if they do it's not very good, also I've read they have issues with long exposure heat build up? Have I missed something lately that they are getting good 4 and 5 digit ISOs on digital MF backs now?

DO XL lenses sounds good. That would be a place Canon could really pioneer.

Also just as an aside, why so much comparison to Canons Cinema line? Did medium format film get used that much? Other than 70mm that is.


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## StudentOfLight (Feb 13, 2014)

phoenix7 said:


> I'm curious. How does digital MF have better low light capability? From what I've read on Luminous Landscape and other sites many (most?) MF backs don't even do above 800ISO and if they do it's not very good, also I've read they have issues with long exposure heat build up? Have I missed something lately that they are getting good 4 and 5 digit ISOs on digital MF backs now?



Most MF digital backs use CCD-based sensors and most smaller format cameras these days tend to use CMOS sensors so there is a difference in technology. The SNR numbers I put down are based on calculations where equivalent technology is employed, the only difference being the size of the sensor.



StudentOfLight said:


> A larger format *could* offer better low light capability...
> 
> On a *theoretical* 48x36mm (0.7x Crop) sensor: (Doubled FF sensor size)
> 1) SNR could be 41% better than *equivalent full frame tech*.



I did these calculations out of interest to see how much of an advantage a larger format could offer, and to see whether I would be interested in moving up to MFD at some point in the future. Looking at the benefits I could gauge at what price point I might be seeing a significant enough cost-benefit advantage.



phoenix7 said:


> Also just as an aside, why so much comparison to Canons Cinema line? Did medium format film get used that much? Other than 70mm that is.



I didn't make any comparisons to Canon's cinema line, so I'm a bit confused. Was that question meant for someone else?


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## Drizzt321 (Feb 13, 2014)

StudentOfLight said:


> phoenix7 said:
> 
> 
> > I'm curious. How does digital MF have better low light capability? From what I've read on Luminous Landscape and other sites many (most?) MF backs don't even do above 800ISO and if they do it's not very good, also I've read they have issues with long exposure heat build up? Have I missed something lately that they are getting good 4 and 5 digit ISOs on digital MF backs now?
> ...



I think most new MF backs are actually CMOS these days. I remember reading that somewhere...although I could be wrong. But for quite some time, yea, CCD. However, most still don't have the super-high ISOs that 35mm CMOS has been getting lately.



> phoenix7 said:
> 
> 
> > Also just as an aside, why so much comparison to Canons Cinema line? Did medium format film get used that much? Other than 70mm that is.
> ...



MF film (120 roll) used to be used constantly, and actually has experienced somewhat of a slight resurgence thanks to the whole Holga type movement/experimentation, and the fact that hobbyists like myself have discovered MF and a rather low price for the older (but still great) film gear.

Also, the comparison is partly due to the rather high price of MF Digital. Most especially for the digital backs, and the lenses since they tend to be much larger (e.g. bigger pieces of glass, which is more expensive) than the 35mm lenses. Especially some of the bigger formats, such as 6x9, where the lens had to project a significantly larger image circle.


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## unfocused (Feb 13, 2014)

phoenix7 said:


> Also just as an aside, why so much comparison to Canons Cinema line? Did medium format film get used that much? Other than 70mm that is.



I believe most people are comparing the two markets and suggesting that Canon is better off investing in its cinema line, rather than a medium format line. 

Cinema = growth; Medium Format = shrinking.


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## phoenix7 (Feb 14, 2014)

unfocused said:


> phoenix7 said:
> 
> 
> > Also just as an aside, why so much comparison to Canons Cinema line? Did medium format film get used that much? Other than 70mm that is.
> ...



Thanks, Unfocused. That's a logical analysis.
S.O.L. - I ment that as a general question as some had added a comment about Cinema. And thanks for clarifing. I just went and read about the new IQ250 P1 back on LL last night as I realized after commenting that it had been a couple months, before the holidays, since I'd checked that site. It seems CMOS has finally come to the (APC sized version) of MF backs. And the 4 digit ISO numbers appear to give really clean images, just wish it wasn't a $40k luxury car price.


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## StudentOfLight (Feb 14, 2014)

Drizzt321 said:


> I think most new MF backs are actually CMOS these days. I remember reading that somewhere...although I could be wrong. But for quite some time, yea, CCD. However, most still don't have the super-high ISOs that 35mm CMOS has been getting lately.



http://petapixel.com/2014/01/21/hasselblad-launch-worlds-first-cmos-sensor-medium-format-camera-march/


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## Neutral (Feb 14, 2014)

phoenix7 said:


> When they can give me a full frame MF sensor (6x4.5) for about the price of a 1DX I'll start saving for one.  (yeah, fat chance, I know)


There is an option there - new Pentax 645D 2014 which will become available probably by mid 2014. Pricewise should be not big difference from 1DX system


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## Drizzt321 (Feb 14, 2014)

Neutral said:


> phoenix7 said:
> 
> 
> > When they can give me a full frame MF sensor (6x4.5) for about the price of a 1DX I'll start saving for one.  (yeah, fat chance, I know)
> ...



With the back? Cause that's be really impressive actually.


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## phoenix7 (Feb 15, 2014)

Drizzt321 said:


> Neutral said:
> 
> 
> > phoenix7 said:
> ...



Even if it were _only_ 25 or 30 "megapickles" that would be pretty awesome for around 8grand.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Feb 15, 2014)

Don Haines said:


> Everyone seems obsessed with a bigger sensor, but forgets about bigger lenses and bigger price tag. 35mm does so well because it hits the sweet spot for ergonomics...


Right ON, as with other cameras, its about the cost of the glass, not the cost of the body. MF glass costs at least 5X the price of a equivalent EF lens. If you want a f/2.8 Medium Format lens equivalent to the Canon 200mm f/2.8, its going to cost you.


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## scottburgess (Feb 15, 2014)

In reading this and thinking about it, Canon need not make a full play into MF. They could, for example, produce high-resolution backs for the 'Blad. Or perhaps just some lenses. In that way, they could make money off of MF cameras with minimal risk to themselves, much as Sony today smiles when certain Sony-sensored Nikon cameras sell well. Canon previously demonstrated a 100Mp sensor which could be the basis for such a position. They also have some great lens technology, notably the TS-E series.

Years ago the same relationship existed between IBM and Apple in the 80's. Apple was presented to the public as the antidote to an IBM PC. IBM manufactured most of the hard drives and often other components, deriving a small profit from every Apple sold.

It all depends on whether there is enough profit to be made to justify an investment. At this point, I don't see anything in MF that looks very profitable, but I don't have access to Canon's spreadsheets. A MF 17mm TS-E _might_ sell enough and might be built from a reworking of the current 35mm design, but Canon's fab and lens manufacturing facilities are busy so I don't see a pressing need to use up slack. 

There is, of course, the possibility that all of the MF players are struggling financially and looking to merge with larger entities, but I'll leave that thought open to further data gathering and discussion. I'm sure someone else here can better analyze the prospecti. It would indeed be startling if Canon bought multiple MF players and essentially cornered the whole MF market. 

Fun to think about. All in all, business can be a strange business!


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## dickgrafixstop (Mar 11, 2014)

Well it's certainly feasible to pack a square sensor within the 35mm full frame image circle and that would yield about 20 % or so more pixels at the same density. As the pixel size decreases it would be reasonable to expect
a 50-60 megapixel image size within the same form factor that is currently available and would use existing full format lenses. How about coupling that with an interchangeable back (think the old 35mm date/time backs) as a seating for the sensor and you could have multiple backs for depending on your shoot requirements. Be good for photographers but bad for suppliers if you could just switch the back for an upgrade. Ricoh's experiment with sensor embedded backs didn't work out to well but users loved the camera.


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## privatebydesign (Mar 11, 2014)

dickgrafixstop said:


> Well it's certainly feasible to pack a square sensor within the 35mm full frame image circle and that would yield about 20 % or so more pixels at the same density. As the pixel size decreases it would be reasonable to expect
> a 50-60 megapixel image size within the same form factor that is currently available and would use existing full format lenses. How about coupling that with an interchangeable back (think the old 35mm date/time backs) as a seating for the sensor and you could have multiple backs for depending on your shoot requirements. Be good for photographers but bad for suppliers if you could just switch the back for an upgrade. Ricoh's experiment with sensor embedded backs didn't work out to well but users loved the camera.



Dick, they could only do that if they dropped the mirror in favourite of an EVF, so far there is no sign they like that idea.


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## phoenix7 (Mar 12, 2014)

privatebydesign said:


> ...
> 
> Dick, they could only do that if they dropped the mirror in favourite of an EVF, so far there is no sign they like that idea.



Didn't Canon have some sort of semi-tranparent mirror sort of like Sony's? Pellical or something wasn't it called?
Would that even be useable with a larger than 35mm sensor?


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## privatebydesign (Mar 12, 2014)

Pellicle mirrors, but there are loads of practical problems with their use that has never satisfactorily been overcome for SLR use, so swap one unsolved so of engineering issues for another.

I am pretty certain Canon will never make a different format to go behind the EF lenses than the 135 format, and APS-C for the EF-S and EF-M. Some EF lenses would even need baffles removed so you'd have a compatibility list of those that would work, those that wouldn't and those that needed adjustments, I just don't see that ever happening. Canon have always confidently put forward one of the basic points of the EF system, every EF lens made should work on every EF camera made.


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## Hillsilly (Mar 12, 2014)

dickgrafixstop said:


> Well it's certainly feasible to pack a square sensor within the 35mm full frame image circle and that would yield about 20 % or so more pixels at the same density....


Interesting idea, but only a limited number of lenses might currently work with this. Most lenses are optimised to cover the existing rectangular sensor shape with image quality falling dramatically outside of this area.

I think Canon will get into MF at some point. Now that everybody has a DSLR, there must be an ever increasing number of wealthy people who feel the need to raise above the mainstream. Turning up to the next family gathering with a 500+mp Canon MF camera is the logical way. Canon can even develop a new projector system for the new camera that can display the image across an entire wall. And 500mp could be enough to ensure the image doesn't look pixelated. It would be just like being there. (especially if you buy the 3D add-on camera for three times the price). Hasselblad have already recognised this trend of people not caring how much things cost (hence the Lunar and Stellar). Canon won't be far behind.


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## Orangutan (Mar 12, 2014)

dickgrafixstop said:


> Well it's certainly feasible to pack a square sensor within the 35mm full frame image circle and that would yield about 20 % or so more pixels at the same density.



My pet dream is not a square sensor inside the image circle, but a square that covers the entire image circle (or maybe all but the very marginal margin). You could then crop it in post to set the orientation, so there'd be no need to rotate the camera, or for a portrait grip. It would waste a few pixels, though it need not be the expected ~22% if the sensor is made appropriately. Others have pointed out, though, that this would require a mirrorless body since conventional mirror configurations wouldn't work for this size sensor. It also requires lenses to be usable all the way around the edge (or nearly so). But a guy can dream, no?


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## moreorless (Mar 12, 2014)

Honestly I think a mirrorless body makes more sense for MF than it does for 35mm.

You look at a modern 35mm sized SLR(either in the latter days or film or digital) and honestly does the mirror really make it much bigger than it needs to be? the need for controls and a good sized grip do IMHO mean that most users aren't going to want something tiny.You look at MF SLR's on the other hand and to me size seems to increase beyond the ideal as the mirror box starts to become much larger than the grip and theres more space than it really needed for controls. I don't think its a coincidence that in the days of film rangefinder designs were a larger part of the MF market than they were the 35mm market.

The user expectations likely differ as well if you ask me, your typical 35mm/FF user is going to want fast zooms and fast AF, your typical MF user is more likely to put up with slower zooms or primes and not demand as much from his AF.


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## Tugela (Mar 12, 2014)

Orangutan said:


> dickgrafixstop said:
> 
> 
> > Well it's certainly feasible to pack a square sensor within the 35mm full frame image circle and that would yield about 20 % or so more pixels at the same density.
> ...



It would waste more than a few pixels, it would waste a crap load of pixels and add significantly to the cost of the camera, not just for the extra silicon and circuitry, but also in terms of heat generation and processor overhead. If you are not going to use that part of the image anyway, why would you need pixels there?


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## funkboy (Mar 12, 2014)

phoenix7 said:


> Didn't Canon have some sort of semi-tranparent mirror sort of like Sony's? Pellical or something wasn't it called?



Yeah, I think they made a Pelican mirror at some point:







Sorry, couldn't resist <grin>


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## Old Sarge (Mar 12, 2014)

I have to confess that when Canon introduced their first pellicle mirror camera back in the sixties the first thought that came to my mind would match your picture. Thanks for the smile this morning.




funkboy said:


> phoenix7 said:
> 
> 
> > Didn't Canon have some sort of semi-tranparent mirror sort of like Sony's? Pellical or something wasn't it called?
> ...


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## jeffa4444 (Mar 12, 2014)

Leica tried and its been of limited success, now with Hasselblad and Phase One utilising a new Sony 50MP CMOS sensor I doubt Canon will bother there more interested in Digital Cinema.


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## 100 (Mar 13, 2014)

dickgrafixstop said:


> Well it's certainly feasible to pack a square sensor within the 35mm full frame image circle and that would yield about 20 % or so more pixels at the same density.



How do you get 20% more? 

A 36*24mm sensor has surface area of 864mm^2
The diagonal (= diameter of image circle) is 43,27mm
The largest square to fit in that image circle has sides of 30.6mm so the surface area is 936mm^2 which is less than 10% more than the current 24x36mm sensor.


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## CarlTN (Mar 13, 2014)

Does anyone not think that, perhaps 10 years from now, Canon will be into Medium Format in a big way? It just seems everybody thinks small cameras will go extinct because of smartphones, so the only thing left to do will be to go bigger. Is the Leica S2 system so much bigger than 35mm format?


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## hgraf (Mar 13, 2014)

CarlTN said:


> Does anyone not think that, perhaps 10 years from now, Canon will be into Medium Format in a big way? It just seems everybody thinks small cameras will go extinct because of smartphones, so the only thing left to do will be to go bigger. Is the Leica S2 system so much bigger than 35mm format?



But is the answer "big cameras"? There is a very simple fact with big cameras: they are physically big!! 

The question should be: 10 years from now, will the market and consumer interest for Medium Format be any bigger then today? Will it be big enough to warrant Canon's entry?

Without a question, medium format sensors will come down in price. but price isn't everything. Consider the average buyer of say a 5D MKIII today: would they choose a medium format camera if the price were the same?

Perhaps, but enough to sustain the market? Perhaps not.

Here's a question: in the film days, why wasn't there a mad rush to formats bigger then 35mm? In fact I'd say there was a mad rush AWAY from medium format once 35mm came into being.

There is no way around the physical size issues of anything bigger then 35mm. The bodies are bigger, the lenses are longer/heavier/bigger.

It seems the market has choose 35mm as the perfect compromise between quality and size. This has been the case for MUCH longer then digital cameras have been on the scene.

I'll check back in 10 years...


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## unfocused (Mar 13, 2014)

CarlTN said:


> Does anyone not think that, perhaps 10 years from now, Canon will be into Medium Format in a big way?



I think not.



> It just seems everybody thinks small cameras will go extinct because of smartphones...



No. Simple, all purpose, fixed lens cameras with short zoom ranges may go extinct but small cameras will not. In fact, smart phones *are* small cameras. Small cameras that can fill a niche that a smart phone can't – Superzooms, waterproof and high-quality fixed lens – are likely to survive.

The truth is, Canon already makes medium (or possibly large) format cameras. They are called 1D, 5D and 6D. The standard format (by sales volume and use) is APS-C. 

For the past 70 years or so, Canon and Nikon have been destroying the medium and large format (by film standards) market. Why would they invest in that money pit?


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## StudentOfLight (Mar 13, 2014)

unfocused said:


> ...The truth is, Canon already makes medium (or possibly large) format cameras. They are called 1D, 5D and 6D. The standard format (by sales volume and use) is APS-C.



Wooohoo! I have 3 medium format cameras


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## eml58 (Mar 14, 2014)

CarlTN said:


> Does anyone not think that, perhaps 10 years from now, Canon will be into Medium Format in a big way?



I tend to agree, I can't not see Canon delving into Medium Format dslr, how much so I honestly couldn't guess.

The fact that Nikon have for the past 2 years had a 36MP body available to the Market & now Sony with the a7r, I feel ensures Canon will release a +/- 40MP Sensor dslr Body, and I would Guess, sometime this year. This is a Market, not huge, although both the D800 & a7r seem to be selling quite well, I just can't not see canon wanting some of this Market going forward.

Wether or not Canon get into the true MF Market of the Phase One style of Studio Bodies I'm less sure of, this is a highly specialised and quite small Market.

I'de like them to produce something like this though, not sure what I'de do with it with 1.5 fps, but it sure is a thing of Beauty. Sony 50MP Sensor as well.


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## scottburgess (Mar 14, 2014)

I'm curious if anyone who likes the idea of a MF Canon would like the idea of a fixed lens camera in MF--something like a giant G1X but with 40Mp and great low light capability? Would you be interested if it had a wide-to-normal zoom lens, and cost under $3k?


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## privatebydesign (Mar 14, 2014)

scottburgess said:


> I'm curious if anyone who likes the idea of a MF Canon would like the idea of a fixed lens camera in MF--something like a giant G1X but with 40Mp and great low light capability? Would you be interested if it had a wide-to-normal zoom lens, and cost under $3k?



No, but at this point a 40MP medium format sensor probably costs over $3,000 alone.


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## Hillsilly (Mar 14, 2014)

scottburgess said:


> I'm curious if anyone who likes the idea of a MF Canon would like the idea of a fixed lens camera in MF--something like a giant G1X but with 40Mp and great low light capability? Would you be interested if it had a wide-to-normal zoom lens, and cost under $3k?


Adjusted for inflation, many fixed lens MF cameras sold for more than $3k. Given that there was interest in the past, I'd be surprised if there wasn't some interest now. Still, I'd do it differently. People buying MF are after two things - the "look" and the improved image quality. Drop the zoom and put the best, widest aperture lens you could build for that price range. Rather than one camera, release an ultra wide, wide and normal lens versions.


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## CarlTN (Mar 14, 2014)

scottburgess said:


> I'm curious if anyone who likes the idea of a MF Canon would like the idea of a fixed lens camera in MF--something like a giant G1X but with 40Mp and great low light capability? Would you be interested if it had a wide-to-normal zoom lens, and cost under $3k?



Why yes, yes I would. Are you going to build one and then let me test it?


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## CarlTN (Mar 14, 2014)

hgraf said:


> CarlTN said:
> 
> 
> > Does anyone not think that, perhaps 10 years from now, Canon will be into Medium Format in a big way? It just seems everybody thinks small cameras will go extinct because of smartphones, so the only thing left to do will be to go bigger. Is the Leica S2 system so much bigger than 35mm format?
> ...



So I guess what you're saying is, the Leica S2 was like an 800lb gorilla next to the 1DX? Except, it's not...not at all. So I think I asked the right question!!


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## CarlTN (Mar 14, 2014)

unfocused said:


> CarlTN said:
> 
> 
> > Does anyone not think that, perhaps 10 years from now, Canon will be into Medium Format in a big way?
> ...



Um, you're missing the point entirely. Why would Canon do it? Because they'd help CREATE the market for it, by building it in the first place. You speak of film...I'm talking about a sensor that is similar in size to the Leica S2. Google it, and get back to me. It's a whopping what, 8 to 10 millimeters larger sensor on the wide dimension? It's much smaller than 120 roll film or something. And even lenses for that format, are not only NOT very large or heavy...but they're actually not any bulkier than EF lenses (I'm currently selling a Pentax 67 300mm f/4 lens. It is old tech, made from brass and painted...and it is barely heavier than my 70-300L !!) 

I certainly was not talking about what the consumer wants. I was talking about WHAT THE PROFESSIONAL wants.

And, if Canon made a larger sensor in a very slightly larger body than the 5D3 or 1DX, with huge dynamic range (20 stops or more), huge signal to noise ratio, and as many MP as you could ask for (different sensor choices for the same body)...and an autofocus system that exceeds anything in existence today...along with the ability to shoot 8k video...and if they made a full line of lenses (including supertelephoto) that would work with this system...well I would definitely buy into it if I could both afford to and needed it for pro or high quality work.

10 years from now, just see if something like this isn't in widespread use...by PROFESSIONALS...not people taking selfies while driving drunk. Who the hell cares what they want?? Not me. They won't survive the next 10 years anyway!


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## unfocused (Mar 14, 2014)

CarlTN said:


> Um, you're missing the point entirely. Why would Canon do it? Because they'd help CREATE the market for it, by building it in the first place. You speak of film...I'm talking about a sensor that is similar in size to the Leica S2. Google it, and get back to me...
> 
> I certainly was not talking about what the consumer wants. I was talking about WHAT THE PROFESSIONAL wants.
> 
> ...



Okay. I'll play along. 

I did Google the Leica you are referring to. It is $22,000 body only. For the sake of argument, let's say Canon could produce a similar product for half the cost, that's still $11,000, before lenses.

How would you propose Canon "CREATE" a market for this camera? You say "I was talking about WHAT THE PROFESSIONAL wants."

But what professionals are you referring to? Have you surveyed professionals and found this need? They don't seem to be beating down the door for the Leica, so what would create sudden demand for a Canon version? 

About the only professional market that remains today is wedding and event photography and that is very price sensitive and competitive. I don't see most wedding photographers moving to this. 

It's not suitable for photojournalists or wildlife photographers. There are almost no professional landscape photographers. High-end commercial studio photographers maybe, but that's a very small market. So again, how would you suggest Canon "create" this market.

Nothing personal, I just don't agree with your original premise. I think Canon is better off concentrating on improvements in their existing formats.


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## privatebydesign (Mar 14, 2014)

The big market for high end gear is not pro photographers, it is wealthy enthusiasts, just look at the "limited edition" Leica market.

Not that I think a Canon MF speculation has legs, I don't believe it does, whereas the Cinema range has an expanding market and they can have leveraged the EF lens tech very well , I was just pointing out the faulty logic of linking gear price to pro use.


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## unfocused (Mar 14, 2014)

privatebydesign said:


> The big market for high end gear is not pro photographers, it is wealthy enthusiasts, just look at the "limited edition" Leica market.
> 
> Not that I think a Canon MF speculation has legs, I don't believe it does, whereas the Cinema range has an expanding market and they can have leveraged the EF lens tech very well , I was just pointing out the faulty logic of linking gear price to pro use.



Exactly right.


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## darktiger (Mar 14, 2014)

I would be happy with 16bit color and the AA filter/screen removed....


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## Halfrack (Mar 14, 2014)

The 'pro' mini-medium format already exists - it's the Pentax 645D or a D800/e/A7r setup. The Leica S2/S3 system isn't what I would call a pro setup - there are a few pros shooting S2/S3, but they're not common, and they tend to shoot Hasselblad HC lenses with the adapter.

Wealthy enthusiasts have high expectations on the post-sales service. You're not selling these cameras at Ritz or Best Buy. This is what the Hasselblad Lunar, Stellar and HV are targeted at, but it's a mixed bag - re-branded Sony gear and all.

Canon can't create a market that doesn't leverage existing wares. Or better put, they work conservatively and refuse to push the edge. They 'could' purchase the Sony chip like Nikon and put it into a body, but they don't. Ditto the 33mmx44mm chip, it's 'possible' but they'd be grilled if it didn't perform as folks expected, didn't work with their existing wares, etc. There's always a problem.

Canon has an issue it hasn't figured out how to manage. It has a small percentage of customers who demand that their needs be serviced at a cheap price point. This small percentage is common among all camera makers - people bitch about the Hasselblad and Phase stuff all the time - though it comes down to 'can I see a difference for the price'. Enjoy what you have, if it doesn't do what you need it to, change to what will. Don't have enough money to do it? Figure out a way to make it work - that is what professional photographers are paid to do - troubleshoot and solve problems.


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## klickflip (Mar 14, 2014)

I know many here are very versed in MF but a just as many or more are not and see that many are missing the point. 
Simple if you can't see the point in MF then your not aware or it, simples. let it lie it's not for you don't pipe up with unsubstantsiated thoughts. 

Basically canon rocks for day to day professional shoots and up to fairly hi-end but the MF optics and especially phase one backs offer another league up in terms of image quality and MP, but in lowish light is you thing then probably best with canon FF- though the new 50mp CMOS sony phase one and hassy will be awesome for a more rounded use. The game has changed right now. And Canon will have to do a shedload to win in this market now. 
If we got a MF 5D III similar with autofocus to boot and something like the 50MP sony sensor them many pros may change system. 

If you use hi-end strobes / studio work on controlled shoots all the time on decent budget shoots say $2-5000 per day then MF is perfectly viable either to buy or hire. But the the crus is many MF users are seriously bought into hassy or phase glass already so canon would be a bit late in the day. Some retailers will offer decent money for swapping systems espc from hassy to phase one. So this may well continue if Canon got into the game. 

Every one I know who has a phase or hassy also has a 5D III pus much L glass , most prefer using the canon but when in an controlled environment the hassy or phase shines . Its horses for courses completely. 

16bit smoothness plus better optics will win every time especially when making images for billboards and pushing files in retouching , if its for magazine adverts or 6 sheet then canon is quite capable . And if you bitch about the difference its not for you. yes you can make a canon in controlled environments very nearly as good as as 30MP MF file and only a few would notice the difference, but art directors and clients often do .. don't underestimate them.

I did think Canon had a good chance of entering the MF market until last month when Phase and hassy announced the noes 50MP CMOS sony sensors into their line up.. I think Canon will be gutted about this as anything they have been developing is too late at this time. 

Unless they are going to come out with a super sized DSLR or camera / back system in the next year that out shines phase one espc , it would have to be as responsive as 5D III with all the same DR and noiseless of the sony but there's also the leaf shutter sync (i.e. up to 1/1600s which adds so much versatility to shooting outside with flash) to add into the mix that I don't think they'll do without a huge investment in lenses . 

Phase one , leaf, mamiya etc are so well thought of by customers and the owners that I doubt an interjection buyout/ merger from canon would be feesable . Its like thinking audi, lamborgini although make super cars could try to merge in with ferrari its not going to happen ever. 

if canon were to enter MF it would probably be very similar to leica's or pentax's MF effort which is good but not hassy or phase territory. 
They would have to come out with a completely new system better than phase ones, at a simlar price point which would take many years to out sell them. 

I think best we can hope for is the 40+ MP FF sensor camera with equal to sony sensor DR and noise. All dev so far points to lens being upgraded first which is logical and sigma following suit and possibly beating canon in quality to date. 

As much as I'd love Canon to come out with a 1D / 5D AF based camera but 40+ MP sensor with great DR and no noise in shadows & banding etc many of the lenses would not handle it properly but seems to me sigma are ahead of the game , the 35 1.4 is outstanding as good as the 85 1.2 II in my experience, the new 50 art will be stunning i'm sure and canon had better wake up to this. 

One thing for sure in terms of photographers is still image quality. is this being developed in secret or simply put to the side to exploit video to make money for the corporation. 1Dx pro press base will always be high but seems that its been many years since the 1D3s that ruled the pro high end FF user base and has been forgotten about for many years which many are getting restless of that I speak with.

Can't wait to see canons next move to regain this market this year.. if it's not till next year then it will prob be too late.....but i they make as much or more from the 4K video market then Canon will be doing well in business terms even if they loose a previous core customer base. And business change and diversify all the time, but it would be big shame to current uses.


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## klickflip (Mar 15, 2014)

CarlTN said:


> About the only professional market that remains today is wedding and event photography and that is very price sensitive and competitive. I don't see most wedding photographers moving to this.
> 
> It's not suitable for photojournalists or wildlife photographers. There are almost no professional landscape photographers. High-end commercial studio photographers maybe, but that's a very small market. So again, how would you suggest Canon "create" this market.



Bollocks , you don't know you're markets or simply not aware of a huge sector that is advertising- studio is a big section in this and design and corporate that i consider the bulk decent photographers. yes wedding and event is a huge market but only a very small proportion would consider MF as a viable option there. Event and social portraiture / wedding photography is ruled by Nikon D7000's from my experience and would put most of them in the pro hacks category or semi pros straight from college thats why it's very price sensitive and competitive, higher up the ladder it's less so when dealing with agencies and corporations that want quality opposed to the majority of the public purchasing photography services that care more how their hair is looking than image quality or overall scene / light quality. 
Some wedding . social and event photographers are really talented but many are just trying to make money from that market with little regard for pushing quality. If this offends some then so.. but any offended would not put themselves in this bracket I'd imagine they would put themselves in the social art photographers bracket which is a different league. 

Why did the 1Dx go down to 18mp simply press doesn't need the quality - 1fps 50MP vs 10fs 18MP or so thats what counts there as with wildlife which is a big sector too. landscape is also a big sector but many are hobbyists which will still buy the best equipment because they can and their audience can tell the difference. Also fine art and museum reproduction require the highest quality and there's money there to pay for it. 
Wise up there's still many different hi-end niches that command a lot of money within the industry that use MF and would welcome another option.


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## Bishop80 (Mar 16, 2014)

klickflip said:


> Bollocks , you don't know you're markets or simply not aware of a huge sector that is advertising- studio is a big section in this and design and corporate that i consider the bulk decent photographers. yes wedding and event is a huge market but only a very small proportion would consider MF as a viable option there. Event and social portraiture / wedding photography is ruled by Nikon D7000's from my experience and would put most of them in the pro hacks category or semi pros straight from college thats why it's very price sensitive and competitive, higher up the ladder it's less so when dealing with agencies and corporations that want quality opposed to the majority of the public purchasing photography services that care more how their hair is looking than image quality or overall scene / light quality.
> Some wedding . social and event photographers are really talented but many are just trying to make money from that market with little regard for pushing quality. If this offends some then so.. but any offended would not put themselves in this bracket I'd imagine they would put themselves in the social art photographers bracket which is a different league.
> 
> Why did the 1Dx go down to 18mp simply press doesn't need the quality - 1fps 50MP vs 10fs 18MP or so thats what counts there as with wildlife which is a big sector too. landscape is also a big sector but many are hobbyists which will still buy the best equipment because they can and their audience can tell the difference. Also fine art and museum reproduction require the highest quality and there's money there to pay for it.
> Wise up there's still many different hi-end niches that command a lot of money within the industry that use MF and would welcome another option.



Here's another target MF market example... for the fellow photog Walking Dead fans 







Shot with a Hasselblad H4D-40. That is the shot before editing. The final shot was given some mood, and the bits of orange tape were cloned out:

http://collider.com/wp-content/uploads/the-walking-dead-cast-season-two1.jpg

If your response is that the scene could have just as easily been shot with a Canon 5D3, while true, that misses the point.


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## Tugela (Mar 16, 2014)

Bishop80 said:


> klickflip said:
> 
> 
> > Bollocks , you don't know you're markets or simply not aware of a huge sector that is advertising- studio is a big section in this and design and corporate that i consider the bulk decent photographers. yes wedding and event is a huge market but only a very small proportion would consider MF as a viable option there. Event and social portraiture / wedding photography is ruled by Nikon D7000's from my experience and would put most of them in the pro hacks category or semi pros straight from college thats why it's very price sensitive and competitive, higher up the ladder it's less so when dealing with agencies and corporations that want quality opposed to the majority of the public purchasing photography services that care more how their hair is looking than image quality or overall scene / light quality.
> ...



There is some other point? At the end of the day any picture taken is going to go into a print of some sort of a video screen, and they will all look exactly the same. Have a camera with 50MB or odd perspective is not going to change that.


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## moreorless (Mar 17, 2014)

privatebydesign said:


> The big market for high end gear is not pro photographers, it is wealthy enthusiasts, just look at the "limited edition" Leica market.
> 
> Not that I think a Canon MF speculation has legs, I don't believe it does, whereas the Cinema range has an expanding market and they can have leveraged the EF lens tech very well , I was just pointing out the faulty logic of linking gear price to pro use.



Which would be an argument in favour of mirrorless I'd say, the problem Hassleblad have had and the reason for the Sony rebadging is I'd say that there cameras are simply too large to have much appeal to rich amateurs.


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## hgraf (Mar 17, 2014)

Bishop80 said:


> Shot with a Hasselblad H4D-40. That is the shot before editing. The final shot was given some mood, and the bits of orange tape were cloned out:
> 
> http://collider.com/wp-content/uploads/the-walking-dead-cast-season-two1.jpg
> 
> If your response is that the scene could have just as easily been shot with a Canon 5D3, while true, that misses the point.



What is the point? I don't really see anything in that shot which couldn't have been captured with a full frame or even APS-C sensor? Is the "look" the point?


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## Sporgon (Mar 17, 2014)

hgraf said:


> Bishop80 said:
> 
> 
> > Shot with a Hasselblad H4D-40. That is the shot before editing. The final shot was given some mood, and the bits of orange tape were cloned out:
> ...



Yea I'm a little confused by this comment too. There's clearly a fair bit of perspective distortion going on: look at the relative sizes of the sheriff in front on the two women (one with teddy) at the back. Normally the larger the format the less exaggeration there is, so this was quite a wide lens for MF, looking up. I don't see why you couldn't have produced the identical image using the afore mentioned 5D and a wide shift lens such as the 24 or 17 mil.


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## unfocused (Mar 17, 2014)

Sporgon said:


> hgraf said:
> 
> 
> > Bishop80 said:
> ...



The "point" might be that in a city where 10,000 photographers could have shot exactly the same scene, it makes it easier for the ad agency's art director to simply weed out everyone who doesn't use a Hasselblad. 

"Oooh, this guy uses a really big camera, so he must be good." Never mind that most views of the image will be on the IMDB app on iPhones at a maximum size of maybe three inches.


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## CarlTN (Mar 19, 2014)

unfocused said:


> CarlTN said:
> 
> 
> > Um, you're missing the point entirely. Why would Canon do it? Because they'd help CREATE the market for it, by building it in the first place. You speak of film...I'm talking about a sensor that is similar in size to the Leica S2. Google it, and get back to me...
> ...



Well, I disagree. Your assumption is that costs would remain high, even at half what the S2 costs. I'm saying that 10 years from now, it's entirely possible that costs will not be any higher than what it costs to build full frame sensors today. Surely you're not suggesting that the main cost of the camera is the body, or the raw material, are you? I had thought you would delve into the physics of being able to make a reflex mirror that is a bit larger, yet still able to fire at 14 fps or more. If you had done that, you would have a better argument against mine. But you can't just assume that costs to produce the image sensor, are going to remain high. Why would they? I'm asserting that if Canon actually starts producing MF in a big way, people will indeed buy into it...especially if the cost is not any higher than what their 1 series and 5 series are today. I'm saying that 10 years from now, full frame 35mm sensors, will be like what aps-c is today. 

Now, you could say that the world economy will collapse before then, and thus would put off such innovation and lowering of production and research costs by a generation...and I might be inclined to agree with you. But you can't just speculate how things will be in the future, based only on the past. That's how you're looking at it.

Think of it like stocks and companies...you can't base future earnings on past performance. 

Again, if the point of this whole thread is, that Canon must produce MF cameras and lenses today, or else never do it...then I guess I would say they will never do it. But, since they are the world's largest camera company, they don't need to be in a hurry to delve into medium format...they can wait out the demise of the smaller companies. By then they will be ready.


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## CarlTN (Mar 19, 2014)

Halfrack said:


> The 'pro' mini-medium format already exists - it's the Pentax 645D or a D800/e/A7r setup. The Leica S2/S3 system isn't what I would call a pro setup - there are a few pros shooting S2/S3, but they're not common, and they tend to shoot Hasselblad HC lenses with the adapter.
> 
> Wealthy enthusiasts have high expectations on the post-sales service. You're not selling these cameras at Ritz or Best Buy. This is what the Hasselblad Lunar, Stellar and HV are targeted at, but it's a mixed bag - re-branded Sony gear and all.
> 
> ...



Thanks for the info and thoughts, but still, you're thinking in the present day, not in 10 years, which was my premise. In the here and now, I agree with you. And I do enjoy what I have, a lot...


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## CarlTN (Mar 19, 2014)

klickflip said:


> CarlTN said:
> 
> 
> > About the only professional market that remains today is wedding and event photography and that is very price sensitive and competitive. I don't see most wedding photographers moving to this.
> ...



You are quoting "unfocused", and not me...those are his words you are disagreeing with. It's nice to see, thank you!


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## CarlTN (Mar 19, 2014)

Regarding leaf shutters, sorry if this is an idiotic question...but why can't leaf shutters be designed into the 135 system? Does the physics work against it because of the smaller format and image circle?


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## Sporgon (Mar 19, 2014)

CarlTN said:


> Regarding leaf shutters, sorry if this is an idiotic question...but why can't leaf shutters be designed into the 135 system? Does the physics work against it because of the smaller format and image circle?



Not at all, many smaller formats have had leaf shutters. The fact that the slrs have focal plane shutters isn't a problem either: the Pentax 6x7 was a '35mm' slr on steroids with a normal focal plane shutter, but you could get a standard focal length lens for it with a leaf shutter for high speed flash. The focal plane shutter was just locked open. 

Perhaps the biggest issue might be the 'light leak'; is the mating surfaces of the interchangeable lenses good enough to keep light out, though with digital if the sensor isnt charged all the time I guess it would be OK.


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## Eldar (Mar 19, 2014)

An alternative from Canon, where they made a body with a 36x36 size sensor, would be interesting. 

That would give a number of advantages:
- 50% area increase 
- 27MP with the same pixle size as the 1DX sensor (or 54MP with the same pixle size as the a7r/800)
- All EF lenses would work 

If I could get a 40MP-ish sensor, with proper high ISO performance, a fair fps and Canon user interface in a reasonably sized body ... It would put a abrupt stop to my Phase One ambitions ...

I know some will oppose a square image format, but that would be OK with me. Thoughts?


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## privatebydesign (Mar 20, 2014)

Eldar said:


> An alternative from Canon, where they made a body with a 36x36 size sensor, would be interesting.
> 
> That would give a number of advantages:
> - 50% area increase
> ...



There would be absolutely zero point to a 36x36 sensor, you get a 50% increase but have to have new lenses and bodies to do it. EF lenses will not cover a 36mm square sensor, EF lenses don't have the flange distance to cover a 36mm sensor on the vertical side if you use a reflex design.

The idea is a non starter.


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## Eldar (Mar 20, 2014)

privatebydesign said:


> There would be absolutely zero point to a 36x36 sensor, you get a 50% increase but have to have new lenses and bodies to do it. EF lenses will not cover a 36mm square sensor, EF lenses don't have the flange distance to cover a 36mm sensor on the vertical side if you use a reflex design.
> 
> The idea is a non starter.


I must admit I don´t understand that. Can you please explain why vertical is more of a problem than horizontal, considering that the optical opening of a lens is perfectly round?


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## unfocused (Mar 20, 2014)

Eldar said:


> privatebydesign said:
> 
> 
> > There would be absolutely zero point to a 36x36 sensor, you get a 50% increase but have to have new lenses and bodies to do it. EF lenses will not cover a 36mm square sensor, EF lenses don't have the flange distance to cover a 36mm sensor on the vertical side if you use a reflex design.
> ...



I pretty much flunked geometry, but take a circle and draw a perfect square inside of it and then take that same circle and draw a rectangle inside of it. A rectangle will actually be able to be wider at the long end than the square before it touches the edges of the circle. A lens circle that accommodates a 36mm rectangle cannot at the same time, accommodate a 36mm square.


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## Old Sarge (Mar 20, 2014)

unfocused said:


> Eldar said:
> 
> 
> > privatebydesign said:
> ...



I read this and said to myself, "No way!" And then my brain kicked in and I realized you are 100% right.


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## Eldar (Mar 20, 2014)

Old Sarge said:


> unfocused said:
> 
> 
> > Eldar said:
> ...


That makes perfect sense and should have been pretty obvious  (What´s worse is that my math grades were actually quite good :)


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## CarlTN (Mar 21, 2014)

Sporgon said:


> CarlTN said:
> 
> 
> > Regarding leaf shutters, sorry if this is an idiotic question...but why can't leaf shutters be designed into the 135 system? Does the physics work against it because of the smaller format and image circle?
> ...



Very interesting. I've sold some of my Mom's 67 lenses, never noticed a leaf shutter. But then she didn't use flash anyway, I guess it was an option or something. I'm trying to sell the last working 67 body now on ebay, wanna buy it? Also have one remaining 300mm f/4...it might sell soon, haven't checked in the past couple of hours. Started bidding at only $105 for this last auction.


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## CarlTN (Mar 21, 2014)

Eldar said:


> An alternative from Canon, where they made a body with a 36x36 size sensor, would be interesting.
> 
> That would give a number of advantages:
> - 50% area increase
> ...



I don't see why that would be any better than just going up a centimeter in each dimension, and making a whole new line of lenses. It's not as if many couldn't afford to buy new lenses. And like I said, 10 years from now, it's quite possible they would be making super telephoto lenses to go along with the new mount and larger image circle. Weight need not be an issue, the physical size of everything would not be much bigger.


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## Don Haines (Mar 21, 2014)

CarlTN said:


> Eldar said:
> 
> 
> > An alternative from Canon, where they made a body with a 36x36 size sensor, would be interesting.
> ...


Double the sensor and you cube the weight of the lens to get the same field of view.... That's twice as long, twice as high, twice as wide.... Eight times the weight...

These two lenses have the same field of view and F-stop. The small one is from an Olympus 4/3 system and the big one fits Canon FF....a lot of the width of the small one are the focus motors, just look at the lens caps to get an idea of the difference in the weight of the glass....

I, for one, will not be paying for a lens that dwarfs the Canon "big whites"


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## privatebydesign (Mar 22, 2014)

Eldar said:


> privatebydesign said:
> 
> 
> > There would be absolutely zero point to a 36x36 sensor, you get a 50% increase but have to have new lenses and bodies to do it. EF lenses will not cover a 36mm square sensor, EF lenses don't have the flange distance to cover a 36mm sensor on the vertical side if you use a reflex design.
> ...



Hi Eldar, as has been pointed out, and you have acknowledged, the EF image circle won't cover a 36mm square sensor. That is the first picture, the orange circle is a 43mm circle, the same as EF lenses projection circle, the purple rectangle 36mm x 24mm, the green square is 36mm x 36mm.

But I made two points, and you asked why vertical is more problematic. Again it is to do with geometry, I have put some figures on a diagram I took from the net. The Flange Focal Distance (the distance from the outer face of the lens mount to the sensor) for EF lenses is 44mm, for a 24mm height image you need a mirror 34mm high at 45º and there is clearly room for it to swing out of the way. If you needed 36mm coverage on the vertical side the mirror would have to be 51mm tall at 45º, obviously that can't fit if it is to swing out of the way. In theory you'd have 8mm to put your shutter, sensor and lens mount if it was a fixed pelical mirror, but that still couldn't deal with the image circle.

Hope this helps.


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## privatebydesign (Mar 22, 2014)

P.S. If my shaky maths is correct the biggest square you can get out of a 43mm diameter circle is just over 30mm, for a total area of 924mm², which is a bigger area than the current 36x24 at 864mm², but I doubt if it would be popular. Though even that would require a 42mm mirror!


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## Eldar (Mar 22, 2014)

privatebydesign said:


> P.S. If my shaky maths is correct the biggest square you can get out of a 43mm diameter circle is just over 30mm, for a total area of 924mm², which is a bigger area than the current 36x24 at 864mm², but I doubt if it would be popular. Though even that would require a 42mm mirror!


Thanks Ptrivate. I got the lens area issue sorted, as soon as I turned on my brain : The other explanation was less obvious. Thanks for that. I also agree regarding the max square format you could get. That would not fly.


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## jrista (Mar 22, 2014)

Don Haines said:


> CarlTN said:
> 
> 
> > Eldar said:
> ...



I agree, I wouldn't want to be using lenses that much larger than the Canon great whites. That said, if Canon ever did enter the medium format market, I suspect they would be serving the same customers as the current offerings in that market: Studio photographers, and possibly landscape and the rare wedding photographer. That's really what medium format services. 

Those cameras usually don't even have frame rates much above 3fps, and nothing anywhere close to 10-12fps. Achieving that kind of readout rate would be rather difficult as well. Canon achieved it once with the 120mp APS-H, but as far as I know that was with a special test bench, not an actual camera with existing data storage devices. 

If we figured on 4µm pixels, a 44x33mm sensor (the "crop" sensor of the medium format world) would be 90mp. If we figured on a 54x40mm sensor (the size of an IQ180), that would be 135mp. If we also assume 16 bit data, rather than 14 bit, were talking a LOT of data to move around for each frame, 180 to 270 megabytes per raw image. You could get 0.9fps with a single DIGIC5+ (which has 250mbps throughput), and less than 2fps with dual DIGIC5+. You would need something like a DIGIC7+ with some 7x the performance of a single DIGIC5+ to get 5fps at those image sizes, and there is no question you would need MUCH faster memory cards to handle that kind of throughput for a useful continuous buffer depth. Even then, I still don't see such a camera being used for action photography...it would just be too big and unwieldy. Even if it was mirrorless, it's the body and lens size that really kills you at longer focal lengths.


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## Don Haines (Mar 22, 2014)

jrista said:


> Don Haines said:
> 
> 
> > CarlTN said:
> ...


As someone who has hauled around a 4x5 and sherpa'd a 8x10 and even used the kodak disc camera (the iPhone of the film world), I have always thought that 35mm was the sweet spot for ergonomics... Big enough for quality but small enough for portability. In the studio, portability isn't much of a concern so medium format was the hot technology.... And when doing landscapes or architectural nothing touched large format, particularly when you could tilt and angle both the film plane and lens plane to straighten out buildings or warp the focus plane... Sort of like a tilt/shift lens on steroids.....

There is definitely a place for everything, but going to a larger format really makes the size and cost of everything skyrocket... It isn't as simple (or inexpensive) as slapping in a bigger sensor. Your point about file sizes and read speeds hammers in the point.... EVERYTHING is affected.


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## jrista (Mar 22, 2014)

Don Haines said:


> jrista said:
> 
> 
> > I agree, I wouldn't want to be using lenses that much larger than the Canon great whites. That said, if Canon ever did enter the medium format market, I suspect they would be serving the same customers as the current offerings in that market: Studio photographers, and possibly landscape and the rare wedding photographer. That's really what medium format services.
> ...



Aye, it's a global scale factor. 

I agree that fully functional lenses with all movements (bellows, tilt, shift, rotation, focus) are awesome for landscape and architecture. I think those kinds of features are also useful for macro. It's too bad that such lenses aren't more common. Without them, it feels like you just don't have the full functionality of a "proper" camera. ;P

The cost of existing modern medium format and large format film cameras should be an indication of the fact that it isn't just the sensor that gets larger. Linhof, Takahashi, Ebony, Graflex, Wista, Cambo, etc. all sell for anywhere from $2500 to $8000 just for the LF camera itself (and some of the higher quality wood cameras that have gold plated knobs and the like sell for over $10,000 new). The lenses all sell for anywhere from $4000 to $25,000. For new stuff manufactured today. And the longest lenses available for these cameras are around 900-1200mm, which when you figure 4x5 or 8x10, is not even as narrow a field of view as a 600mm lens on 35mm! The smallest lenses are around 160mm, and those are ULTRA WIDE field of view for such a large image plane. 

So I totally agree. Going larger than 35mm scales everything up, and just takes it out of the realm of practicality for most forms of photography. I think it is indeed useful for certain things, like landscapes, architecture, studio. I think FILM large format actually still has the edge over digital options in many respects. A high resolution drum scan of a single 4x5 slide results in a file that is about 500mb in size, and which gets close to 200 megapixels. I think there are even interpolation algorithms in modern drum scanners that can push that number higher, making 4x5 film LF cameras the best way to pack in the pixels...way more pixels than even MFD cameras do (with the possible exception of the Hasselblad 200mp sensor shifting mosaic feature).


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## CarlTN (Mar 23, 2014)

jrista said:


> Don Haines said:
> 
> 
> > CarlTN said:
> ...



I was saying that the same focal length lenses are really not that much larger or heavier. My mom's 300mm f/4 lens for the 67 format, is 3.4 pounds, and its made of heavy brass. Yet its image circle allows an almost square sensor dimension that is 70mm wide! That's hardly cubing the weight of Canon's lighter and more modern designed 300mm f/4 EF lens. I really don't see this math adding up, to be honest, because you're forgetting that you wouldn't need to match the FOV... 

If a medium format sensor say 40 to 45mm wide, has 100 megapixels, then you really wouldn't need to be cubing the weight of a 600mm lens, to get similar magnification at the pixel level, to what you get with the 5D3 with a 600mm lens. If you don't need the full 100 MP, they could simply adopt Nikon's approach and allow you to shoot in crop mode. (That would be the common sense approach). Who cares if the actual focal length is shorter if the pixel size is similar to begin with?

My point of view is sound, here, I believe. Nobody expects a 3000mm f/4 supertelephoto lens to be used on a future medium format camera whose sensor is 100 MP, and have it be portable. That was not what I was saying at all. To argue that is rather silly.

As for lugging 4x5 film cameras around...that's also missing the point entirely. I'm calling anything from around 40mm wide and larger, as "medium format"...4x5 inches is a sensor 127mm wide. In my assertion about what pros might be using in 10 years, I was not speculating at all that a sensor would be anywhere near that large. Frankly that's just stupid...nobody thinks that would ever be in widespread use. Even 10 years from now with lowered manufacturing costs and improved processes, a digital sensor that size would still cost $1 million, if not several.


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## jrista (Mar 23, 2014)

CarlTN said:


> I was saying that the same focal length lenses are really not that much larger or heavier. My mom's 300mm f/4 lens for the 67 format, is 3.4 pounds, and its made of heavy brass. Yet its image circle allows an almost square sensor dimension that is 70mm wide! That's hardly cubing the weight of Canon's lighter and more modern designed 300mm f/4 EF lens. I really don't see this math adding up, to be honest, because you're forgetting that you wouldn't need to match the FOV...



I'm not sure why you say you wouldn't need to match FoV. A 300mm f/4 lens for medium format is not the same as a 300mm f/4 lens for 35mm. Those are two radically different lenses, by FoV. The entire point is to match FoV, that's why were constantly referring to APS-C crop factors and multiplying lens focal lengths by them...FoV is everything. Assuming a 55x44mm sensor, your crop factor is once again 1.63x compared to FF/35mm. So a 300mm lens for medium format is a 184mm lens in 35mm format. 

Going in the inverse, if you are interested in an EQUIVALENT medium format lens to a 35mm 300mm f/4, then you actually need a 490mm f/4 lens for medium format. Now, assuming we use all the same technology that Canon has for their 35mm format lenses, were basically talking about the EF 500mm f/4, albeit with a larger back barrel to support the larger image circle. In this case, a 500mm f/4 lens for medium format is probably going to weigh 7.3-7.5 pounds, vs. the 2.6 pounds for a 300mm f/4. That, as it turns out, is a 2.85x weight difference. 

But it doesn't stop there. You have to consider minimum focus distances. A 500mm f/4 lens on MFD is a SHORT telephoto lens, not a long telephoto lens. Minimum focus distance of a 300mm lens on 35mm format is around 55 inches. The minimum focus distance of Canon's 500mm f/4 II lens is 150 inches. You would need a greater optical power to allow a closer focusing distance to actually achieve total parity, which means a greater curvature in the lens elements, which is going to increase the material in each lens element. That will further increase weight.

It's doubtful that the weight of such a lens would literally reach 17.5 pounds (which would be the actual cube of 2.6lb), but it will certainly be much larger and heavier in order to achieve parity with the 300mm f/4 lens for 35mm format. You can't compare 300mm f/4 lenses in both formats...you have to account for the crop factor.




CarlTN said:


> If a medium format sensor say 40 to 45mm wide, has 100 megapixels, then you really wouldn't need to be cubing the weight of a 600mm lens, to get similar magnification at the pixel level, to what you get with the 5D3 with a 600mm lens. If you don't need the full 100 MP, they could simply adopt Nikon's approach and allow you to shoot in crop mode. (That would be the common sense approach). Who cares if the actual focal length is shorter if the pixel size is similar to begin with?



Take a look at the average size and shape of modern medium format digital bodies. They are not only larger in width and height, but they are also considerably thicker, two to three times thicker depending on which sensor back you have installed. The weight of the body itself would be considerably greater than a 35mm format DSLR body. Ergonomically they are not as easy to hold.

And, again, you cannot compare a 600mm lens for 35mm format to a 600mm lens for MFD. Your completely ignoring the crop factor of the 35mm relative to the medium format. You would need ~1000mm lens for MFD to compare to a 600mm.

Additionally, by "just doing what Nikon did", by digitally cropping, you then just have a 35mm frame, so what's the point of having medium format in the first place? The entire point of using MFD is to get the larger FULL frame, not a higher density cropped frame. You want both larger pixels AND more pixels AND a larger sensor diagonal.

These are the reasons that pros, who already use medium format (it isn't something they "will" be using 10 years from now...they HAVE been using it, for decades), use it for studio, portraiture, landscapes, and architecture. These cameras ARE big and relatively heavy compared to 35mm or APS-C format cameras. Comparable lenses ARE larger and heavier, especially those that achieve similar IQ...it's a lot harder, requiring even more precise optics and manufacturing tolerances, to produce bigger lenses that achieve the same level of IQ as smaller lenses. The larger the optical elements, the more difficult it is to eliminate optical aberrations. That's WHY Canon's big white lenses are so expensive...they require much higher grade optical glass, and much tighter manufacturing tolerances, to produce the level of IQ they do. Imagine ALL of your MFD lenses costing that much...


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## Don Haines (Mar 24, 2014)

jrista said:


> CarlTN said:
> 
> 
> > I was saying that the same focal length lenses are really not that much larger or heavier. My mom's 300mm f/4 lens for the 67 format, is 3.4 pounds, and its made of heavy brass. Yet its image circle allows an almost square sensor dimension that is 70mm wide! That's hardly cubing the weight of Canon's lighter and more modern designed 300mm f/4 EF lens. I really don't see this math adding up, to be honest, because you're forgetting that you wouldn't need to match the FOV...
> ...


Also, there are scanning backs for 4x5 cameras... They range in price from $10,000 to over $40,000... depending on the resolution... an interesting way to do super high res studio work....


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## 100 (Mar 24, 2014)

CarlTN said:


> In my assertion about what pros might be using in 10 years, I was not speculating at all that a sensor would be anywhere near that large. Frankly that's just stupid...nobody thinks that would ever be in widespread use. Even 10 years from now with lowered manufacturing costs and improved processes, a digital sensor that size would still cost $1 million, if not several.



In 2010 Mitchell Feinberg had two 8 by 10 inch digital back made (maxback), the cost were in "the low six figures". http://www.aphotoeditor.com/2011/08/23/mitchell-feinbergs-8x10-digital-capture-back/ 
So it can be done for a lot less than a million.


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## jrista (Mar 24, 2014)

100 said:


> CarlTN said:
> 
> 
> > In my assertion about what pros might be using in 10 years, I was not speculating at all that a sensor would be anywhere near that large. Frankly that's just stupid...nobody thinks that would ever be in widespread use. Even 10 years from now with lowered manufacturing costs and improved processes, a digital sensor that size would still cost $1 million, if not several.
> ...



Wow, that guy must be makin BANK off his photography work to take out a mortgage to build a couple 8x10 digital backs. Crazy!

What blows my mind is it is NOT a scanning back...it creates photos in 30 seconds, which I assume means that the readout rate for the entire sensor (which must have gigapixels) is generally 30 seconds, allowing for shorter exposure times. I wonder how he uses it...tethered directly to a PC? I guess USB 2.0 speed, which isn't all that fast.

EDIT:

Actually, it probably has really huge pixels. There are Kodak astro CCDs that have 9µm and 24µm square pixels. If we figure that the pixel sizes for this 8x10 sensor are somewhere around there, the guy has ~640mp @ 9µm, and ~90mp @ 24µm. I figure, just from a space and processing standpoint, the pixels would have to be garganguan. I think 24µm pixels sounds more reasonable, and I guess it's possible they were larger than that. So this guy is taking maybe 70-90 megapixel photos with a giant 8x10 sensor with pixels that probably have about 12 times the sensitivity as the 1D X sensor. That would make full well capacity per pixel around 1.1me- to 1.5me-...WOW. Dynamic range on that sucker must be like, 150dB!


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## Don Haines (Mar 24, 2014)

jrista said:


> 100 said:
> 
> 
> > CarlTN said:
> ...


I wonder if anyone is ever going to come out with a 4x5 back with a non-scanning sensor? When you compare the flexibility of a 4x5... with the adjustable film and lens planes and bellows, you get versatility and manipulation that makes a Hasselblad seem like a kid's toy. If they did, that would be the end of any medium format battle for supremacy...


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## jrista (Mar 24, 2014)

Don Haines said:


> jrista said:
> 
> 
> > 100 said:
> ...



I agree. If anyone was to try, it would probably be Sony. Sony is a sensor manufacturer first, and a camera manufacturer second. As much as I like Canon, I think Sony is the one to keep an eye on there. Scanning back technology is pretty old, and I think these days the technology is more than capable of reading out a 4x5 digital back with a rolling shutter at a rate of around half a frame per second, even faster if you again use really BIG pixels.


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## CarlTN (Mar 24, 2014)

jrista said:


> CarlTN said:
> 
> 
> > I was saying that the same focal length lenses are really not that much larger or heavier. My mom's 300mm f/4 lens for the 67 format, is 3.4 pounds, and its made of heavy brass. Yet its image circle allows an almost square sensor dimension that is 70mm wide! That's hardly cubing the weight of Canon's lighter and more modern designed 300mm f/4 EF lens. I really don't see this math adding up, to be honest, because you're forgetting that you wouldn't need to match the FOV...
> ...



Well, I guess I just am all wrong, huh? You're not sure why I'm saying you wouldn't need to match the FOV? I thought I already explained it. It's not complicated. If you have a 100 MEGAPIXEL sensor, you don't need that many megapixels with a very long telephoto lens, in my opinion.

A 45mm wide sensor that has 100 Megapixels, would not need a 3000mm f/4 lens, to get adequate pixels on subject of things like distant birds, sports, or anything.

You're completely ignoring the fact that the larger medium format sensor has vastly more, as in 5 times more megapixels...THAT'S WHY you don't need to match field of view.

Like I said, it's a stupid argument, you're nitpicking, and it's lame. There's no reason to pile on me just because you're bored. If your point of view is correct, then all of the people who use a 5D3 or 1DX with a 600mm lens, are fools...because they could do better with a 7D or 70D. But that's just not right...and frankly I'm not going to waste time arguing about it.


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## CarlTN (Mar 24, 2014)

100 said:


> CarlTN said:
> 
> 
> > In my assertion about what pros might be using in 10 years, I was not speculating at all that a sensor would be anywhere near that large. Frankly that's just stupid...nobody thinks that would ever be in widespread use. Even 10 years from now with lowered manufacturing costs and improved processes, a digital sensor that size would still cost $1 million, if not several.
> ...



Ok then, but that has nothing to do with just wanting an image sensor that is slightly larger than 24x36mm.


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## Don Haines (Mar 24, 2014)

CarlTN said:


> 100 said:
> 
> 
> > CarlTN said:
> ...


I just wonder why nobody has gone the 4x5 route for medium format... Not necessaraly the huge sensor size, but more the tilt/swivel lens plane, film (sensor) plane, and bellows/rail system? To my mind, the manipulation of the image was the real reason for going large format... you could correct distortions and you could either increase or decrease the in-focus flane of your image.


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## jeffa4444 (Mar 24, 2014)

Sony is already in the medium format sensor business with both Hasselblad and Phase One both annoucing a new camera & new back using a 50MP CMOS sensor from Sony earlier this year.


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## Hannes (Mar 24, 2014)

jrista said:


> Actually, it probably has really huge pixels. There are Kodak astro CCDs that have 9µm and 24µm square pixels. If we figure that the pixel sizes for this 8x10 sensor are somewhere around there, the guy has ~640mp @ 9µm, and ~90mp @ 24µm. I figure, just from a space and processing standpoint, the pixels would have to be garganguan. I think 24µm pixels sounds more reasonable, and I guess it's possible they were larger than that. So this guy is taking maybe 70-90 megapixel photos with a giant 8x10 sensor with pixels that probably have about 12 times the sensitivity as the 1D X sensor. That would make full well capacity per pixel around 1.1me- to 1.5me-...WOW. Dynamic range on that sucker must be like, 150dB!



In the comments he says it takes photos of about 10 mpix. Yup, *ten* megapixels.


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## jrista (Mar 24, 2014)

Hannes said:


> jrista said:
> 
> 
> > Actually, it probably has really huge pixels. There are Kodak astro CCDs that have 9µm and 24µm square pixels. If we figure that the pixel sizes for this 8x10 sensor are somewhere around there, the guy has ~640mp @ 9µm, and ~90mp @ 24µm. I figure, just from a space and processing standpoint, the pixels would have to be garganguan. I think 24µm pixels sounds more reasonable, and I guess it's possible they were larger than that. So this guy is taking maybe 70-90 megapixel photos with a giant 8x10 sensor with pixels that probably have about 12 times the sensitivity as the 1D X sensor. That would make full well capacity per pixel around 1.1me- to 1.5me-...WOW. Dynamic range on that sucker must be like, 150dB!
> ...



In that case, I think the guy got ripped off.  That means the pixels are 20mm in size. That's just a waste of space and fabrication power.


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## jrista (Mar 24, 2014)

CarlTN said:


> Well, I guess I just am all wrong, huh?



You really need to grow a thicker skin, dude.



CarlTN said:


> You're not sure why I'm saying you wouldn't need to match the FOV? I thought I already explained it. It's not complicated. If you have a 100 MEGAPIXEL sensor, you don't need that many megapixels with a very long telephoto lens, in my opinion.
> 
> A 45mm wide sensor that has 100 Megapixels, would not need a 3000mm f/4 lens, to get adequate pixels on subject of things like distant birds, sports, or anything.
> 
> ...



No, I fully understood your argument. I think your argument is fallacious. Why spend all the extra money...and, were not talking like an extra few hundred bucks, were talking an extra tens of thousands of dollars...on a BIG sensor, if all you care about using is the center region of pixels? It's a monstrous, utter waste of money. 

You've basically made my argument for me...no one *needs *that big of a sensor if they are doing work that _requires _a telephoto lens and considerable reach. As for those using a 5D III or 1D X for telephoto work, they aren't fools, however they ARE spending a LOT more money to get the reach they need than someone who might be using a 70D + 100-400 or 150-600. The latter combo won't get you the same IQ, but it is vastly more cost effective, at around maybe $3500. The point is, it might cost you $17,000 to get the necessary lens quality and reach with 35mm format and still be able to take *FULL *advantage of the *full frame* sensor and larger pixels. If you can never take advantage of the full sensor, then yes, you wasted your money by buying a bigger camera setup. As much as the IQ on a 1D X trounces that of a 7D/70D when you fill the frame, if all you ever use is the center 1/4 of the frame, then the 7D/70D is always going to resolve more detail. It'll also always be a little noisier, but noise can be dealt with fairly well in post, and sometimes all that matters is detail.

However, that PALES in contrast to someone who spends $40,000 on an MDF body, and another...what, $35,000 on a lens capable of similar reach that would still allow full use of a 55x44mm sensor? You don't buy a camera like that to use the center 1/4 of the sensor. It would just be an utter waste of money. You buy a camera like that to use the whole sensor, that's the entire point. So it's either spend $17,000 on a 1D X and 600/4 II, or spend $75,000 on an MDF and comparable lens (and a couple thousand more for a tripod and head capable of holding the gimongous rig, because you aren't going to be hand-holding it.)


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## 100 (Mar 24, 2014)

jrista said:


> Hannes said:
> 
> 
> > jrista said:
> ...



He just needed something to replace his large format polaroid. He shot 7 or 8 large format polaroid’s before taking the "real" pictures, for him that’s about $ 50,000 a year in polaroid’s alone... 

By the way, 8 by 10 inch is 203 by 254mm which is about 50,000mm^2 
Divide that by 10mp (10,000,000 pixels) and you get 0.005mm^2 per pixel. 

Anyway, Canon also made a large (202 x 205mm) CMOS sensor back in 2010 that can do 60fps
http://www.canon.com/news/2010/aug31e.html

The technology for large format digital sensors has been there for years, but there is no real market.


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## jrista (Mar 25, 2014)

100 said:


> jrista said:
> 
> 
> > Hannes said:
> ...



I think you've got your math wrong somewhere. If we convert the sensor size into millimeters, it is as you say 203.2x254mm. We can then figure out how many pixels per row, and how many rows, assuming a 5µm pixel:

203.2/0.005 = 40,640
254/0.005 = 50,800

That is over 40 THOUSAND pixels per row, and over 50 THOUSAND rows. That's a LOT of pixels! Multiply the rows by columns to get the actual megapixel count:

40,640 * 50,800 = 2,064,512,000

That would be TWO GIGAPIXELS. You said it was 10 MEGAPIXELS. There is no way in hell that guy has 5 micron pixels on his sensor. If he did, that would be kick ass. I actually made an error in my math for the last answer, and I wrote the wrong units anyway. I said the pixels were 20 millimeters, that was supposed to be 20 microns, however correcting my math, its 72 microns:

203.2/0.072 = ~2823
254/0.072 = ~3528

2823 * 3528 = 9,959,544

That's a little more reasonable. I still think he could have easily gotten away with pixels ~15x smaller (about 20 microns square) and had more than enough signal to noise ratio and dynamic range, and had about 130 megapixels instead of 10.  That wouldn't have required any special fabrication techniques or anything either, 20 micron pixels are monsters, and have more than enough room for very large, easy to fabricate wiring. I think the most difficult aspect of building a sensor that large is that you cannot fabricate it on a single wafer. You would have to fabricate a number of pieces of the sensor on multiple wafers, then assemble them together. There would certainly be additional cost there...but it isn't a new technique, it's been done before (Canon did it for that very same 202x205mm sensor you mentioned), however if you cut corners on readout rate (i.e. you went for one frame every 30 seconds, rather than 60 frames every one second), the task would be easier (Canon used a hyperparallel on-die readout and ADC system for that ultra large sensor.)


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## 100 (Mar 25, 2014)

jrista said:


> 100 said:
> 
> 
> > jrista said:
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I wrote 0.005mm^2 
the ^2 means square
1mm^2 = 1 mm² = 1 000 000 μm²

http://www.aqua-calc.com/what-is/area/square-millimeter


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## CarlTN (Mar 25, 2014)

Don Haines said:


> CarlTN said:
> 
> 
> > 100 said:
> ...



You would know more than I would about why...but it does seem like it's cost. I suppose it's likely to get done eventually.


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## CarlTN (Mar 25, 2014)

jrista said:


> CarlTN said:
> 
> 
> > Well, I guess I just am all wrong, huh?
> ...



Well, no you did not, because you said you didn't. And it's not remotely fallacious, and it's quite amusing that you would think I need to develop a thicker skin, and refer to me as "dude". I recall a while back when you didn't have such a thick skin...get over yourself. Your opinion does not matter to me on this subject. You are just wanting to argue, period.


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## jrista (Mar 25, 2014)

100 said:


> I wrote 0.005mm^2
> the ^2 means square
> 1mm^2 = 1 mm² = 1 000 000 μm²
> 
> http://www.aqua-calc.com/what-is/area/square-millimeter



Ah, yes, I do understand what ^2 means. ;P I've been spitting out this kind of math on these forums for years now.

BTW, 0.005mm^2 is 5µm^2. Same thing, it's just a scale factor of 1000. 

So, you said in your previous answer that this photographer's 8x10 sensor had five micron pixels. *That is incorrect* (assuming the sensor does indeed have _only_ 10 megapixels). If the sensor had five micron pixels, that would mean the number of rows and columns of pixels is calculated by the width and height of the sensor, in millimeters, divided by 0.005mm. Based on my math in my prior post, 0.005mm pixels would mean the sensor had *TWO GIGAPIXELS*, or 40640x50800 pixels, a far cry from _10 megapixels_. 

Keep in mind, 0.005mm pixels are SMALLER than the 1D X (which has 0.00695mm pixels) and the 5D III (which has 0.00625mm pixels). Based on my math, this guy has a sensor with 0.072mm pixels, which is 72 microns...not 7.2, but 72. It's highly unlikely this guy's sensor has pixels that are smaller than the 1D X, let alone the 5D III. Hell, at 5µm, they would be a mere 0.1µm bigger than the D800 pixels! Imagine the D800 sensor scaled to 8x10...thats how many pixels this guy's sensor would have if he really had a 0.005mm/5µm pixel pitch. 

They have to be 0.072mm/72µm pixels...its the only size that fits a 10mp total pixel count. Those are VERY big pixels. I'd really love to have that kind of sensor for my astrophotography.



To demonstrate the error in your math another way. You took the squared area of the 8x10 sensor, and divided it by the LINEAR megapixel count:

203.2mm*254mm / 10000000px = ~0.005mm^2/px

We can use a know quantity to check this math. The 7D, for example, has a 22.3x14.9mm sensor, with a full output image size of 5184x3456, which comes out to 17,915,904 pixels. We also know that the 7D has a very well known 4.3 micron pixel pitch, the same size of pixel for ALL of Canon's 18mp APS-C sensors. If we run these numbers through your formula:

22.3mm*14.9mm / 17915904px = ~0.0000185mm^2/px

By your squared over linear formula, the 7D should have 0.0185 micron pixels, or 18.5 NANOmeter pixels!!! We know for sure that is not correct, as 18nm is smaller than the wavelengths of all infrared, visible, and ultraviolet light.


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## Don Haines (Mar 25, 2014)

CarlTN said:


> Don Haines said:
> 
> 
> > CarlTN said:
> ...


 And at the risk of shooting myself in the foot.... it's amazing what you can do with post processing and image/focus stacking... A lot of the advantages that come from the variable planes and bellows systems can be duplicated through software.. In the "good old days of film" we had to capture images properly in-camera. The added flexibility of digital post-processing really changes the work-flow... Even Lightroom allows you to adjust perspective, where with film, what you captured was what you got.


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## 100 (Mar 25, 2014)

jrista said:


> 100 said:
> 
> 
> > I wrote 0.005mm^2
> ...


After all these years of spitting out math on these forums, one would think you understood the basics…. 



jrista said:


> BTW, 0.005mm^2 is 5µm^2. Same thing, it's just a scale factor of 1000.


It seems to me you don’t understand the basics, so let me explain. 

A square with sides of 1 millimeter has a surface area of 1mm * 1mm = 1mm² 
Agreed? 
1mm = 1,000μm (no ^2 in this, that’s important)

A square with sides of 1,000μm (=1mm) has a surface area of…
1,000μm * 1,000μm = 1,000,000μm² (here we do have the ^2)

So 1mm² = 1,000,000μm² (a factor of a million, not a thousand due to the ^2)
Once you understand this basic concept you know that 0.005mm² = 5000μm² (and not 5μm²)

One side of a square of 5000μm² is equal to the de square root of 5000μm² which is just over 70μm.
you reached that conclusion already yourself in a very complex way in your previous post, but failed to see the relation with the 0.005mm² surface area.


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## CarlTN (Mar 25, 2014)

100 said:


> jrista said:
> 
> 
> > 100 said:
> ...



Thanks for pointing this out!


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## CarlTN (Mar 25, 2014)

Don Haines said:


> CarlTN said:
> 
> 
> > Don Haines said:
> ...



But didn't a lot of people scan negatives and edit with Photoshop, at least like all through the 1990's? I recall photoshop being around in the late '80's...if I remember right. It didn't do much, but it did something...lol.


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## jeffa4444 (Mar 25, 2014)

Camyx today:

Sony medium format camera is in the works and coming soon 

Sony has been supplying 50-megapixel CMOS image sensors to both Hasselblad and Phase One for their new medium format cameras. Furthermore, the Pentax 645D II will employ the same sensor. Enough is enough, says the rumor mill, as a Sony medium format camera is allegedly in the works and could be announced soon.


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## CarlTN (Mar 25, 2014)

jeffa4444 said:


> Camyx today:
> 
> Sony medium format camera is in the works and coming soon
> 
> Sony has been supplying 50-megapixel CMOS image sensors to both Hasselblad and Phase One for their new medium format cameras. Furthermore, the Pentax 645D II will employ the same sensor. Enough is enough, says the rumor mill, as a Sony medium format camera is allegedly in the works and could be announced soon.



Like I said, it just seems to me, that professional cameras, will all move to even larger sensors in the future. Because not enough consumer level cameras will sell...because those people use smartphones and tablets (or whatever the fad will be at the time) to take pictures. Again I'm not saying Canon will replace 35mm format sensors, with something 50 to 60mm, or larger in width. I'm saying it seems like it would be between 36mm and 50mm...like 40 to 45mm. And it won't be in widespread use...for quite a while...8 to 10 years is my prediction. But I'm not predicting the demise of Sony in the meantime...Nikon might be another story, though!


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## Sporgon (Mar 25, 2014)

jeffa4444 said:


> Camyx today:
> Sony medium format camera is in the works and coming soon
> Sony has been supplying 50-megapixel CMOS image sensors to both Hasselblad and Phase One for their new medium format cameras. Furthermore, the Pentax 645D II will employ the same sensor. Enough is enough, says the rumor mill, as a Sony medium format camera is allegedly in the works and could be announced soon.


I'd be amazed if this was true. Sony need a MF system like a hole in the head. MF is shrinking fast and becoming more niche based on the sales volume of MF units. They may have the sensor tech but to date have been unable to meet Nikon & Canon head on with the volume gear, in fact generally not accepted yet at that level, so I can't see where they intend to be with MF. 

Larger sensors also create their own issues from a user point of view; 35mm proved itself to be by far the best balance between IQ and flexibility, that has now been given a massive IQ boost with digital, so I personally don't see a trend in sensors larger than 'FF'.


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## unfocused (Mar 25, 2014)

CarlTN said:


> Like I said, it just seems to me, that professional cameras, will all move to even larger sensors in the future.



Why?



CarlTN said:


> Because not enough consumer level cameras will sell...because those people use smartphones and tablets (or whatever the fad will be at the time) to take pictures. Again I'm not saying Canon will replace 35mm format sensors, with something 50 to 60mm, or larger in width. I'm saying it seems like it would be between 36mm and 50mm...like 40 to 45mm. And it won't be in widespread use...for quite a while...8 to 10 years is my prediction. But I'm not predicting the demise of Sony in the meantime...Nikon might be another story, though!



You keep repeating this assertion. People keep saying they disagree. They give their reasons...which are well thought out and logical. You consistently reject their views, but don't offer any evidence to support your position.

You say if Canon offers this amazing super camera at a fraction of the cost of its competitors it will create the market and suddenly everyone will want this imaginary camera. What makes you so sure Canon could offer such a camera at a fraction of the cost of its competitors? And, what makes you so sure moving to a larger sensor would suddenly become the end-all and be-all of all photographers, when so many people on this forum are saying "no thanks." 

If anything, the trend has been toward smaller sensors. Full frame sells only a small fraction of APS-C and even then, one of the main reasons why full frame is popular is because it is consistent with the traditional size of 35mm film cameras. It's a size that has been tested and proven in the marketplace. Why would the world suddenly want a new size with all the compromises and additional costs it would entail?

It's fun to debate these sort of esoteric issues for entertainment purposes, but really, just repeating the same assertion time and time again without anything to back it up gets a little tedious.


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## jrista (Mar 26, 2014)

100 said:


> jrista said:
> 
> 
> > 100 said:
> ...



Oh, sorry, you are correct. I pretty much always work with just linear pixel pitch. I guess I implicitly dropped the square when running the math.


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## RGF (Mar 26, 2014)

unfocused said:


> CarlTN said:
> 
> 
> > Like I said, it just seems to me, that professional cameras, will all move to even larger sensors in the future.
> ...



FF and crop sell for different reasons. Crop sensor camera are generally less expensive. FF have better signal to noise.

It would be interesting if there were comparable FF and crop sensor cameras with the only difference the sensory size (and related factors such as S/N). Frame rate, build, controls, features would otherwise be identical. Which would sell better? Better S/N or a reduction in angle of view (effectively increasing focal length)?


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## CarlTN (Mar 27, 2014)

unfocused said:


> CarlTN said:
> 
> 
> > Like I said, it just seems to me, that professional cameras, will all move to even larger sensors in the future.
> ...



You're putting words in my mouth, and you like to argue for no good reason. What evidence do you offer that 8 or 10 years from now, things will remain as they are? Because that's how things have always been? Except, that they haven't. 10 years ago film was still in widespread use.

I guess you're saying you will never buy a Sony medium format camera, because it's going to be too expensive? According to the latest rumors, it probably won't be too expensive (as compared to Phase One and Hasselblad). And that is NOW, 2014. I was talking about 2022.

Or are you arguing that Canon will be bought by Sony, or otherwise be put out of business by them? It seems you are ignoring many of the current rumors of this website. I am simply interpreting them and speculating about the future.

In the future, I'm sorry but professional photographers will not be shooting weddings with smartphones...There will still be a market for professional photography, and they will use the best equipment they can get. They don't even use Rebels all that much, even now. Most pro Canon shooters seem to use the 5D3, or 1DX. Are you saying these will be going away because Canon doesn't sell enough of them? Get real...


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## wickidwombat (Mar 27, 2014)

maybe canon are just gonna skip FF mirrorless and go straight for Full Medium format Mirrorless ;D
that should give everyone a hardon


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## Don Haines (Mar 28, 2014)

CarlTN said:


> unfocused said:
> 
> 
> > CarlTN said:
> ...



The great FF/APS-C debate is very emotional and logic has no place in it....

FF will always be superior in image quality to APS-C because the sensor is bigger.....
APS-C will always be more popular than FF because it is smaller/lighter/less expensive....
Where you sit in the debate depends on your needs...

MF... same thing as going from APS-C to FF.... better sensor, more expensive glass, not as portable.
Cell phones cameras... drop the image quality down but the convenience factor goes way up....

This is a debate without answers, as it depends on your needs at the moment. If I am shooting a wedding I am NOT going to whip out my ipad for the trip down the isle... but if I am scouting a location I am going to use it to take a quick snapshot, draw in some arrows, and include the picture in a chat about "is this where you were thinking of taking the bridal party pictures"... 

As to sizes.... It has not been that long that FF has been affordable.... It once was as esoteric as MF is now. My bet is that MF will increase in popularity, particularly for studio work, that FF will remain the dominant seller in the quality DSLR world, and that APS-C and micro 4/3 will outsell all other DSLR's combined, because in the mass marketplace low cost and portability beats image quality and expensive for the vast majority of buyers.


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## CarlTN (Mar 28, 2014)

I can't disagree with either of you there, well except for what causes hardons...


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## StudentOfLight (Mar 28, 2014)

CarlTN said:


> I can't disagree with either of you there, well except for what causes hardons...



Yeah, different strokes for different folks :-[


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## Chuck Alaimo (Mar 28, 2014)

I'll bite on this...

MF is only a niche market now because of the cost and design. Most reputable systems cost well over 10K, and, they are much bigger than an slr and the range of use is fairly limited. If your shooting MF now your either in the upper 5% of photographers, and your working mostly in a studio, or on location with a team of assistants and a lot of lights. Or your shooting epic landscapes (but come on now, how many landscape photogs are making 300K+ a year, not many. Most using MF are working with large scale ad agencies.

Limited function - most MF rigs max their ISO at like 1600, and I have never read anything from a MF shooter that promotes using an ISO over 400. I don't think there is an MF rig that has a burst mode. You aren't busting out the MF body to shoot a wedding reception. Your not busting out the MF to go shoot live music. Your not busting out the MF rig to shoot sports. Wedding, Event, portrait, and art shooters fill out that remaining 95% of pro photogs. 

Last I checked the average yearly salary for a working photographer in the US is $29,000 a year (of course this is an average). MF is way out of the range for any of us at or near that average. 

MF will continue to be a niche product as long as both the cost and design of MF is what it is. Now with that said, I'd think that canon/nikon/sony would differentiate from the current MF offerings - which may mean compromises - less IQ than current MF but better AF, burst modes and increased ISO also offered a a substantially lower cost. Again, there are only so many working photogs that can afford even making the leap into something like a 1dx. So even if it's priced at 1dx levels there will still be many who say no because the investment doesn't make sense financially 

From a wedding photographers perspective - a MF rig would probably only be seeing use for the formal portraits of the bride and groom (or,yes, the first dance but you're only if your in the upper crust where you have more advanced lighting and multiple assistants with monopods so you can keep that ISO low). And you better be selling Large prints - or catering to a clientele that either would notice the difference or shooting for the extremely rich. Mind you, even if sony/nikon/canon did enter the MF market and offered cheaper ---let's say 6K - that's just the body! Lenses will be costly. this narrows the potential market down a lot when you consider that many of us would have to devote a a good portion of your yearly salary to the investment! 

As I see it, those are the bottlenecks to MF becoming more than a niche. It's just too costly to be a reality for the bulk of the market. 

In 10 years though.... Yeah, I can see the future phasing out APS-C in all DSL bodies, all FF. By that point the cost to make FF sensors will have been streamlined to a point to make that happen - and if that research is added to MF sensors, you could see a cost reduction and I could see some amazing things happening...

But ---- there is one other factor that adds or subtracts time from any of the above - the global economy needs to turn around. More costly systems can't fly when disposable income is low. Less on hand money for the average person means less purchases of things like...photography. People aren't buying all over the place so it's a ripple effect. If the economy turns around then I think we'll see another boom in tech offerings. Without that companies are bound to be more pragmatic.


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## unfocused (Mar 28, 2014)

Chuck Alaimo said:


> I'll bite on this...



I think you make some very valid points. 

Of course, only time will tell. But I have a hard time imagining that even with the presumed cost reductions in sensors (which folks more knowledgeable than I am have said are unlikely to be significant in the foreseeable future), that Medium Format will overcome the other limitations you reference, particularly because some of the limits result from the basic physics of the size.

I'm also not quite so anxious to presume the death of APS-C. I think it is always risky to bet against "good enough" in favor of "better." There are junkyards full of products that were better that lost out to good enough. 

It's hard to look at the current quality of APS-C sensors, the relative sales and the 100-year plus march towards ever smaller and more efficient electronics and believe that the long-term trend will be towards larger, rather than smaller. 

I think we may be better able to see the future of the crop format when the 7DII finally surfaces.

Looking at the medium format market today, it takes quite a leap of faith to think it will break out of the narrow niche that it lives in currently. 

Still, I think your observations are valid and I certainly appreciate the way you have articulated them in a fair and unemotional manner.

Good job.


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## Chuck Alaimo (Mar 28, 2014)

unfocused said:


> Chuck Alaimo said:
> 
> 
> > I'll bite on this...
> ...



Oddly enough, i think that the transition is more likely because of the very advancements you speak of. sensors smaller than APS-C are getting better and better, as are the optics in cell phone cameras. So APS-C is going to have to get a whole lot better, or, be phased out ---this is within a decade mind you. I'm not one of the physics masters here, but how much more can the APS-C be pushed?


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## Hannes (Mar 29, 2014)

Chuck Alaimo said:


> unfocused said:
> 
> 
> > Chuck Alaimo said:
> ...



Does aps-c really need to get any better though? I would like to think that in 2008 with the introduction of the 40D, aps-c reached the level it needed to be at for the vast majority of customers . The addition of video and some better circuitry for higher max iso could have been done for that sensor and it would have been good enough even today, at least if you could convince people 10mpix is enough. 

If we can get smaller and lighter FF cameras selling at the x0D price point with matching lenses I think more people will buy into FF. My old eos 300v for example is the same size as an x00D with the lens only being marginally bigger than the kit lens of a crop camera. Given that the electronics is getting getting smaller by the day it is about time someone built a camera like that.

MF however is less likely to catch on simply because of the portability issues, never mind the cost. There is no way to get around the fact that bigger chips have an exponentially lower yield in production and that the bigger the chip the fewer you can fit on a wafer which also drives up cost. The first problem you can get around if they can work out how to build the sensor from smaller subsensors without loss of image quality. This would also increase the number of assembled chips per wafer as smaller chips are easier to fill the round wafer with. There's still no good way to sort out the lens size though if you want a slr construction. The mirror box is also going to be bigger which means a deeper body and longer flange distances for the lenses which obviously brings problems of its own. 35mm format or better still aps-c is going to be difficult to beat for the sweet spot of portability vs IQ that most people buying a DSLR are looking for. 

If someone builds a relatively compact MF rangefinder type camera with a good EVF and the sensor is assembled from smaller sections and it is sold for under $1000 it may get mass market appeal. For less than $3k the enthusiasts will flock. Less than $5k you'd probably attract some pros. I just don't think that the cost will drop enough for this to happen in the near future.


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## jrista (Mar 29, 2014)

The costs of larger sensors are unlikely to come down significantly. When 450mm wafers become common place, that might help, but overall, the problem with larger sensors isn't just how many you can fit on a wafer. With the increased area comes a similar exponential increase of devastating defects that render the entire sensor useless. With smaller sensors, you still lose the whole sensor, but you have so may more on the area of the wafer. With FF, one large defect still kills the whole sensor. With MF, same deal, only now your losing something closer to a fifth of the wafer, rather than a 20th or 30th. 

Etching a larger sensor also requires more advanced fabrication technology that can handle larger templates and etch the whole area of that template. Remember, fabrication of CMOS circuitry still uses lenses. They may work in the extreme UV range, but it's still light, and that light is still being bent, so it's still succeptible to aberrations and diffraction effects.

As Don said earlier, it's a global problem. Making things larger doesn't just affect one thing, it affects everything, hence the exponentially higher cost of quality MFD systems.


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## neuroanatomist (Mar 29, 2014)

jrista said:


> Making things larger doesn't just affect one thing, it affects everything, hence the exponentially higher cost of quality MFD systems.



I think the 'exponentially higher cost of quality MFD systems' is primarily an effect of something small, not something large - namely, market size. The MF market size is miniscule compared to the dSLR market. How minuscule? Exact figures aren't available for MF. But…in 2013, there were close to *14,000,000 dSLRs* sold worldwide. Stephen Shulz, head of Leica's photo division, estimated that the annual worldwide market, all brands, is just *6,000 MF cameras*. 14 million vs. 6 thousand. 

Anyone want to argue that a difference in production cost is the reason for the >$5K higher cost of 1D C compared to the 1D X? An MF digital back probably doesn't cost all that much more than a 1-series body to produce, but if you're only going to sell ~1,000 units per year, you need a high price to realize a return on investment.


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## jrista (Mar 29, 2014)

neuroanatomist said:


> jrista said:
> 
> 
> > Making things larger doesn't just affect one thing, it affects everything, hence the exponentially higher cost of quality MFD systems.
> ...



But which is the cause, and which is the effect? Do they only sell 6000 units a year because of the high cost, or is the cost high because they only sell 6000 units a year? I don't think there is necessarily enough data to determine that either way. Kind of a chicken and egg problem. I think we could only tell based on the sales of a much "cheaper" entrant to the MFD market. Not saying Canon will be that entrant...Sony might be...but until it occurs, I don't think anyone can say, definitively, which is the cause and which is the effect here. 

And there is no question that the cost of an MF sensor is (in it's own right) exponentially higher than a FF sensor, which is in turn quite a bit more expensive than an APS-C sensor, which in turn are more expensive than the small form factor sensors found in just about everything else these days. The radically lower yield isn't the only reason for the higher cost of MFD. It's part of the whole ball of wax, though. Larger sensors. Larger lenses. Bigger bodies. The interchangeable back option. Etc. 

Now, most DSLRs cost on average around $1200 (maybe $800-$1500 for low end to lower midrange). A medium format camera that cost $15,000-$18,000 would still be exponentially more expensive. We still cannot say that the reason they cost $40,000 is because the market is small...the market could be small because they cost so much.


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## Sporgon (Mar 29, 2014)

Medium format sales were beginning to decline even before the advent of digital. I've had various companies involved in selling this gear over the years, I can't recall the exact figures just now, but the improvements in film emulsions eventually began to have an effect on larger format sales, and this was a time when medium format cost around twice that of a top end 35mm slr. Of course the advent of the digital FF knocked any amount of film development into a cocked hat and boosted the overall resolution of the 24x36 format enormously. Excluding drum scans I think my 20 odd mp FF is at least equal to my old film 6x7 system and retains the highly versatile nature of the 35mm system. 

Some of the medium format companies were able to respond in digital; note how it's the high end ones who are offering something that is very expensive and exclusive. The Leica S2 is a good example of what it's all about. So regarding price, which is now rather than twice the cost of a high end DSLR, but ten times, the reason is both higher unit cost and greatly reduced unit sales. Then add to this exclusivity.

Non of this fits the bill for Canon, which is why in my opinion they would not be interested in producing a digital MF system. That's not to say larger sensor or format isn't better; at Building Panoramics our pictures are shot on an effective sensor size of either about 36x90 or 60x150 depending on the application, which is larger than most digital MF. Talk about having your cake and eat it.


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## neuroanatomist (Mar 29, 2014)

jrista said:


> neuroanatomist said:
> 
> 
> > jrista said:
> ...



As I stated, take the example of the 1D X vs. 1D C - either the heat sink that is basically the only hardware difference between the two adds thousands of dollars to the production cost, or other factors are determining that price difference. 

At the 'widget' level and in B2B supply chain pricing, production costs are a major factor in determining price. At the consumer end, particularly for 'luxury' goods, market size trumps production costs, since prices must be set to drive ROI. A prime example from my industry is a drug for cystic fibrosis – the pills cost no more to produce than acetaminophen (Tylenol), but the price of the drug is nearly $300,000 per year because of the tiny market size (CF is a niche disease, and the drug works in only ~5% of CF patients).


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## CarlTN (Mar 30, 2014)

Chuck Alaimo said:


> But ---- there is one other factor that adds or subtracts time from any of the above - the global economy needs to turn around. More costly systems can't fly when disposable income is low. Less on hand money for the average person means less purchases of things like...photography. People aren't buying all over the place so it's a ripple effect. If the economy turns around then I think we'll see another boom in tech offerings. Without that companies are bound to be more pragmatic.



Good points. If only the government would raise income taxes to 99% and hire more people to work directly for it, the entire economy would be completely fixed, wouldn't it?


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## 100 (Mar 30, 2014)

neuroanatomist said:


> jrista said:
> 
> 
> > neuroanatomist said:
> ...



It might also work somewhat similar as with perfume. I saw a documentary on television recently about the cost of expensive perfumes like Chanel no 5. The perfume contains less than 3 euros of ingredients and the bottle cost about 5 euros to produce, so you can get it in the shop for less than 10 euros. It sells for about 90 euros. 
The argument they made was that if they lower the price, it would sell less, because it would be less exclusive. 
With camera’s like the Lunar it’s very obvious a company like Hasselblad uses this strategy. With the MF models it’s less obvious, but it makes you think about profit margins on those too.


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## vscd (Mar 30, 2014)

Maybe the answer of canon will be the "Canon FoveOn". If they would bring a better and faster *Fullframe* foveon like the Merrill of Sigma, the Resolution of maybe 24 MPix would be comparable to maybe 60MP of a bayer-sensor. So, they would beat the Nikon D800 easily, with the full power of the EOS-lenseprogram. The patents for this are filed since a few months... I REALLY WOULD LOVE IT. 

If I go out, making pictures with my Sigma Merrill DP3, and forget about all those disadvantages in speed, flexibility or Autofocus I would say the foveon is head and shoulders above anything else. A Nikon D800 is nothing against this small jewel. But I have to admit, mostly my Canon 5D is way more used 

A small example from a "poor" Compact Sigma DP3M, imagine this with FullFrame:
http://tf.weimarnetz.de/downloads/SDIM0175.jpg

Remember, no one said "Mediumformat" from Canon, just the quality and resolution of a medium Format


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## 100 (Mar 30, 2014)

vscd said:


> Maybe the answer of canon will be the "Canon FoveOn". If they would bring a better and faster *Fullframe* foveon like the Merrill of Sigma, the Resolution of maybe 24 MPix would be comparable to maybe 60MP of a bayer-sensor. So, they would beat the Nikon D800 easily, with the full power of the EOS-lenseprogram. The patents for this are filed since a few months... I REALLY WOULD LOVE IT.
> 
> If I go out, making pictures with my Sigma Merrill DP3, and forget about all those disadvantages in speed, flexibility or Autofocus I would say the foveon is head and shoulders above anything else. A Nikon D800 is nothing against this small jewel. But I have to admit, mostly my Canon 5D is way more used
> 
> ...



ISO100 on FoveOn is great, now show us something at ISO3200 and compare that to a 5D.


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## vscd (Mar 30, 2014)

> ISO100 on FoveOn is great, now show us something at ISO3200 and compare that to a 5D.



Please read my text again  Of course you're right, but lacking ISO-Performance is even a problem of the very expensive (CCD-)Medium Format Sensor for >20k$. If you shoot in LowLight, the ISO-Performance is of course a problem of a Sensor where the Light has to dive into the specific Layers, but those are problems which I dare to get solved by canon. At least they could bring it to good ISO1600. The 5D has no real ISO3200, eighter, and I would not use it anyway.

Taking pictures with a FoveOn is really about shooting like a MediumFormat Cam. Use it in a studio (with a flash sync up to 1/2000 (!)) or with a tripod in LowLight. 

Greetings. 

PS By the way, if you want to shoot black/white then you **should really try** a DP3 with ISO3200. It's like real grain and looks damn good! Here 2 examples:

ISO1600: 
http://tf.weimarnetz.de/downloads/SDIM0736.jpg

ISO6400:
http://tf.weimarnetz.de/downloads/SDIM0726.jpg


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## unfocused (Mar 31, 2014)

One thing that has been missing from this discussion is: Why now?

Canon has been making 35mm format cameras since the 1930s. No doubt they have researched the medium format market hundreds of times over the past 80 years and have never decided to make the leap.

It would have made more sense for them to get into medium format probably sometime in the late 1970s - early1980s. The medium format market was much larger (at that time, almost all wedding and portrait photographers used medium format and Pentax actually did get into the market around that time); it would have been much simpler to produce a competitive medium format camera during the film era and the difference in quality was much greater then as well; the market conditions were similar to today (the SLR rage of the 60s and 70s was slowing down, as was the global economy).

Yet, Canon (or Nikon) has never felt compelled to go after the medium format market. Why would they pursue it today, when the required investment would be much greater and the likely return much smaller?


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## jrista (Mar 31, 2014)

vscd said:


> Maybe the answer of canon will be the "Canon FoveOn". If they would bring a better and faster *Fullframe* foveon like the Merrill of Sigma, the Resolution of maybe 24 MPix would be comparable to maybe 60MP of a bayer-sensor. So, they would beat the Nikon D800 easily, with the full power of the EOS-lenseprogram. The patents for this are filed since a few months... I REALLY WOULD LOVE IT.
> 
> If I go out, making pictures with my Sigma Merrill DP3, and forget about all those disadvantages in speed, flexibility or Autofocus I would say the foveon is head and shoulders above anything else. A Nikon D800 is nothing against this small jewel. But I have to admit, mostly my Canon 5D is way more used
> 
> ...



It isn't really fair to say a 24mp Foveon is the same as a 60mp Bayer. The problem with that argument is that Bayer sensors have much higher luminance resolution than chrominance resolution. It might be that a 30mp-35mp Foveon is like a 55-60mp Bayer, it would really depend on the exact design specifics (of both sensors...many bayer sensors come without a low pass filter these days, or with very weak ones.)

Layered sensors have a harder time with high ISO as well, since all three colors are sensed at each pixel, the deeper layers get less light anyway. Throw in less light through the lens, and the problem with the green and red layers is exacerbated.


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## vscd (Mar 31, 2014)

@jrista

Yepp, but one *large* advantage of a foveon is that you don't need a Zeiss Otus to get your 36MP Sensor served. "Normal" sharp lenses, even customer-ones, get 15MP Pixels without problems... so the whole, or at least most better L, Canon Lense Lineup would be able to outperform the D800E. 

Of course the layers constrict the light... until someone invents something new and proves the old wrong.


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## CarlTN (Mar 31, 2014)

vscd said:


> @jrista
> 
> Yepp, but one *large* advantage of a foveon is that you don't need a Zeiss Otus to get your 36MP Sensor served. "Normal" sharp lenses, even customer-ones, get 15MP Pixels without problems... so the whole, or at least most better L, Canon Lense Lineup would be able to outperform the D800E.
> 
> Of course the layers constrict the light... until someone invents something new and proves the old wrong.



Have you seen the new DP2? They claim up to 39 MP...


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## vscd (Apr 1, 2014)

> Have you seen the new DP2? They claim up to 39 MP...



I have and I'm waiting for the reviews, I think I may get one if the results are good. 39 MP are realistic... of course you just have to get rid of the context "pixels" just by x/y Resolution. The Details of a FoveOn (@lowISO) are *outstanding *above a Nikon or even a Pentax 645D!

F.e. (picture from dpreview.com): 






This was the *first *sensor which really catched my attention after buying my 5D back then. Everything else is just "evolution" here and there, half a stop more Dynamic, more resolution, ISO25600. Hooray, you invented the holy grail. Nikon bla, Canon bla... everything no real leap. A 5D is still awesome and able to serve my needs. The sigma is again something worth time spending with.


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## CarlTN (Apr 1, 2014)

vscd said:


> > Have you seen the new DP2? They claim up to 39 MP...
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Their stated pixel dimensions don't make sense, unless the sensor is not a 3:2 aspect. I enjoyed the generation 1 Foveon a lot. Even though it was only 4.6 MP, it easily scaled to 25 MP, still looked sharp at that resolution on prints at 300 ppi. TDP and others reckoned the actual resolution was 14 MP, but I feel like it was a bit more (at least below ISO 200).

In the future I hope Sigma make a full frame DSLR with a foveon sensor, WITH A CANON EF MOUNT...rather than a Sigma mount. That way it could use all lenses, rather than only Sigma's. And if they make another crop sensor DSLR first, with the new DP series sensor, I hope it too comes with an EF mount. More people would buy Sigma's cameras if they at least offered having an EF mount as an option.


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## jrista (Apr 1, 2014)

vscd said:


> @jrista
> 
> Yepp, but one *large* advantage of a foveon is that you don't need a Zeiss Otus to get your 36MP Sensor served. "Normal" sharp lenses, even customer-ones, get 15MP Pixels without problems... so the whole, or at least most better L, Canon Lense Lineup would be able to outperform the D800E.
> 
> Of course the layers constrict the light... until someone invents something new and proves the old wrong.



It's not just the layers or well depth that constricts the light. If you look at the Foveon design (and, for that matter, Canon's own layered sensor patents), they have a LOT more activate and readout wiring per pixel. It's really complicated stuff, which further restricts the actual light-sensitive photodiode area. 

The whole "eqivalent megapixels" deal that Sigma uses is also very misleading. Currently, today, megapixel counts are based on output image widthxheight. A 15mp Sigma Foveon is 15mp, in terms of actual megapixels stored in the output JPED image or a JPEG that you can create from RAW. It may have 45 million photodiodes, but that is not the same as megapixels, and I really wish Sigma would stop being so misleading.

I like the Foveon sensor design, it has SO much potential. It's just in the wrong hands with Sigma...they can't seem to develop it and bring it to bear on the market in a form that would make it a truly viable competitor with higher MP bayer type sensors. I think there are some innovations that have been developed for video sensor technology that could greatly increase the transparency of the silicon that surrounds the layered photodiodes and improve Q.E., reduce noise, improve dynamic range, etc. I've been hoping that Canon was working with some of those technologies on their own layered sensor design.

I would also dispute the whole "need for high resolution lenses" argument. Output resolution, in spatial terms, is the convolution of both sensor and lens resolution...AND, a most important point here, is LIMITED by the LEAST common denominator. The Sigma DP2, for example, is a 4.7 megapixel camera!!! Spatially, that is VERY low resolution. It is not a 15mp camera. It has richer, more complete color information per pixel, however from a luminance standpoint, it's luminance resolution is extremely low. It's pixel pitch is 7.85µm. Those are nice, big pixels, however because of the wiring requirements, the photodiode area is a lot smaller than 7.85µm (I don't know exactly off the top of my head...I would have to find the patents again...but I'd say that at least a third of the area is lost, so maybe around 6.3µm, which is about the same as the 5D III.)

The biggest benefit for the Foveon is the lack of an AA filter. You still experience moire, but because full color information is gathered at each pixel, you only have monochrome moire. Mono moire in most "natural" cases in photography is often not that bad. The lack of an AA filter makes it SHARPER, but it does not really increase the resolution of the sensor. This is very obvious from VCD's comment:



vscd said:


> > Have you seen the new DP2? They claim up to 39 MP...
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I think VCD has radically misinterpreted this comparison. The Sigma SD1 does not have anything even remotely close to the same *resolution* as the D800 or 645D. It isn't even a contest. The Sigma SD1 *appears* to be *sharper*...but that is only in a non-normalized comparison like this, and sharpness alone does not translate into more resolution. If one were to downsample the D800 and 645D images to the same dimensions as the SD1 image, they would likely TROUNCE the SD1. They have significantly more information in total, and while they may seem slightly soft at the pixel level, on a normalized basis, all that extra information gets interpolated into fewer, but much more accurate, sharper, richer and less noisy pixels.

Furthermore, the D800 and 645D both have more information to start with. They are resolving details that are not even present in the SD1 image at all, despite it's sharpness. Even if those details aren't as crisp as the LESSER details of the SD1, it's still more detail. A light sharpening filter can deal with the softness in a few seconds, and then the SD1 is at a real disadvantage. You can sharpen the SD1 image in post to your heart's content...that will never create information that was never there to begin with, and since it's already sharp, your probably doing yourself a disservice by sharpening SD1 images.

So arguing that the DP2, which itself is still just a 4.7mp camera (or even the SD1, which is a much higher resolution Foveon), is potentially equivalent to a 39mp camera, is gravely missing the point of having a truly higher resolution sensor (in luminance terms...luminace is where detail comes from, color CAN be of much lower spatial resolution so long as your luminance information is high...as a matter of fact, this is actually a standard practice in astrophotography, to image at high resolution in luminance, then when you switch to RGB filters, you bin 2x2 or 3x3, which increases your sensitivity, and reduces your resolution by 4x or 9x...and your never the wiser when looking at the final blended result). It buys into the very misleading hype that Sigma spews, which I believe is ultimately, in the long term, going to damage their reputation and hurt Foveon (because as more people try to produce images with a 4.7mp or 15mp Foveon sensor that compare to even the regular old D800, let alone the D800E or the 645D, and realize they simply cannot...they are either going to ditch Foveon and go back to bayer type sensors, or they are going to begin badmouthing Foveon.)


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## CarlTN (Apr 2, 2014)

jrista said:


> So arguing that the DP2, which itself is still just a 4.7mp camera (or even the SD1, which is a much higher resolution Foveon), is potentially equivalent to a 39mp camera, is gravely missing the point of having a truly higher resolution sensor (in luminance terms...luminace is where detail comes from, color CAN be of much lower spatial resolution so long as your luminance information is high...as a matter of fact, this is actually a standard practice in astrophotography, to image at high resolution in luminance, then when you switch to RGB filters, you bin 2x2 or 3x3, which increases your sensitivity, and reduces your resolution by 4x or 9x...and your never the wiser when looking at the final blended result). It buys into the very misleading hype that Sigma spews, which I believe is ultimately, in the long term, going to damage their reputation and hurt Foveon (because as more people try to produce images with a 4.7mp or 15mp Foveon sensor that compare to even the regular old D800, let alone the D800E or the 645D, and realize they simply cannot...they are either going to ditch Foveon and go back to bayer type sensors, or they are going to begin badmouthing Foveon.)



Nobody said the first generation Foveon sensor is equal to 39 MP. Jrista, again you learn about what you're interested in, but this leaves a lot of facts for you to miss. 

When I mentioned the "new DP2", I was referring to this...it's called the Quattro. 

http://www.sigma-global.com/en/cameras/dp-series/

...And it's most definitely more resolution than the SD-1...it's a new sensor with more pixels. Just exactly how many pixels it is, is kind of unclear. I think Sigma don't mind that it is unclear...lol. The actual pixel dimensions of the RAW image, might be 19 MP, or might be more. For some reason it can produce JPEGs that are 7680 x 5120 = 38.3 MP. 

To argue about what outresolves what, on such a new product, is a waste of time in any case.

I try to speak about what I have had experience with. I've owned the original DP2, and it most certainly had more resolution than its native 4.6 MP image. As I said, it could easily scale to about 25 MP, and still look sharp enough to me for a print at 300 ppi. 

So there's no reason to start bashing Sigma, and talking about what "TROUNCES" what. Nobody thinks a crop sensor is ever going to be "better" than a full frame sensor...other than you and your 7D . Everybody knows nothing compares to the mighty 7D!


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## vscd (Apr 2, 2014)

@jrista

Yepp, you mixed some things. The first FoveOns were 5Mpixel on three Layers, which (could) be summed up to 15MPixel. The next generation was the Merrill, where about 15MPixel on 3 Layers can be counted to 45MPixel. The new Quatto Design ist again 3layered, but just the blue one get's 19MPixel, where the other 2 are just about 5 MPixel each. Now happy counting 

At the End, the results are crucial. 



> It may have 45 million photodiodes, but that is not the same as megapixels, and I really wish Sigma would stop being so misleading.



This is of course confusing, but it's not a lie, because... let's define a pixel. You refer to it as a Pixel is the Picture which comes out from the cam. The Pixels from the Sensor are something different... you could also count each layer as a single Pixel, because it has an own wired output and the information is capsulated within this *single* Lighttrap. Remember the Nikon D2X (or was it the D1x?), there the Pixels were halfsized, so what do you count?  It's some kind of definition. The Sigmapeople have the same "problem" as Intel had 10 years ago... recognizing that Megahertz has nothing to do with speed, but the people don't know this. So you have to catch them with Numbers they understand.



> Furthermore, the D800 and 645D both have more information to start with. They are resolving details that are not even present in the SD1 image at all, despite it's sharpness



No, they DON'T, that's what the image should have told you. I could resize the Sigma-Picture 4 Times and have more resolution, but not more information.



> A light sharpening filter can deal with the softness in a few seconds, and then the SD1 is at a real disadvantage.



Please try and proove me wrong, the RAW-Data is available for download @dpreview.com 

By the way, the Size of the photodiodes are of course really important, especially on lowlight, but the technology solves some of the problems. On the paper no one could beat my old 5D with ca. 8.2 Microns, but in reality your 1DX would run circles around it 8)


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## Ellen Schmidtee (Apr 2, 2014)

jrista said:


> The whole "eqivalent megapixels" deal that Sigma uses is also very misleading. Currently, today, megapixel counts are based on output image widthxheight. A 15mp Sigma Foveon is 15mp, in terms of actual megapixels stored in the output JPED image or a JPEG that you can create from RAW. It may have 45 million photodiodes, but that is not the same as megapixels, and I really wish Sigma would stop being so misleading.



No more misleading than stating a sensor has so many megapixels, when each photodiode samples one color, and the other two are interpolated in the JPEG.


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## privatebydesign (Apr 2, 2014)

Ellen Schmidtee said:


> jrista said:
> 
> 
> > The whole "eqivalent megapixels" deal that Sigma uses is also very misleading. Currently, today, megapixel counts are based on output image widthxheight. A 15mp Sigma Foveon is 15mp, in terms of actual megapixels stored in the output JPED image or a JPEG that you can create from RAW. It may have 45 million photodiodes, but that is not the same as megapixels, and I really wish Sigma would stop being so misleading.
> ...



Well not really. Each pixel has its own brightness level, so resolves its own detail, the colour of each pixel is a result of the surounding pixels, but not the brightness. The MP count of a Bayer arrayed sensor is a truthful reflection of the actual individual brightness measurements. 

In essence, the colour might be off but the detail isn't, just look at the Monochrome Leica to realise that.


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## neuroanatomist (Apr 2, 2014)

vscd said:


> ...let's define a pixel. You refer to it as a Pixel is the Picture which comes out from the cam. The Pixels from the Sensor are something different... you could also count each layer as a single Pixel





Ellen Schmidtee said:


> No more misleading than stating a sensor has so many megapixels, when each photodiode samples one color, and the other two are interpolated in the JPEG.



A pixel is best defined as a unit of spatial information. Interpolation of color information does not change the underlying luminance or spatial information. Counting multiple layers of a given spatial element as separate pixels is misleading (intentionally so, on Sigma's part). The Sigma DP2 has a 4.6 MP sensor, not a 14 MP sensor. One could argue that Bayer-type sensors do not deliver their full potential spatial resolution due to the blurring from the OLPF (AA filter). However, with a properly designed OLPF (one that blurs spatial frequencies above the Nyquist limit for the underlying CMOS sensor) and proper application of sharpening in post-processing, there's no significant loss of spatial resolution from the OLPF (as shown by comparisons of D800E images to properly-sharpened D800 images, although technically the D800E does have an OLPF, just one that's designed not to introduce blur).

Some of my Zeiss microscope cameras use an older Sony 1.3 MP CCD sensor with no microlenses. Unlike dSLR sensors, the Bayer mask is physically separate from the CCD. The camera can take a 'standard' image, analogous to a dSLR picture, that delivers a 1.3 MP image with the color values interpolated across neighboring pixels. The camera can also piezoelectrically move the CCD in 1-pixel increments, such that with three successive images each pixel is directly capturing R/G/B and no color interpolation is needed…that means the color is more accurate, but it's still just a 1.3 MP image. Interestingly, the camera can also move the CCD in sub-pixel increments as either a 2x2 or a 3x3 array within the space of a single pixel – that results in an increase in real spatial resolution, producing a 5 MP or a 13 MP image, respectively, from that 1.3 MP sensor. Of course, gapless microlenses would obviate the benefit of moving the sensor, and the process only works with static subjects (fixed specimens), since a 13 MP image without color interpolation means capturing 27 separate images and merging them spatially and chromatically.


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## jrista (Apr 2, 2014)

CarlTN said:


> jrista said:
> 
> 
> > So arguing that the DP2, which itself is still just a 4.7mp camera (or even the SD1, which is a much higher resolution Foveon), is potentially equivalent to a 39mp camera, is gravely missing the point of having a truly higher resolution sensor (in luminance terms...luminace is where detail comes from, color CAN be of much lower spatial resolution so long as your luminance information is high...as a matter of fact, this is actually a standard practice in astrophotography, to image at high resolution in luminance, then when you switch to RGB filters, you bin 2x2 or 3x3, which increases your sensitivity, and reduces your resolution by 4x or 9x...and your never the wiser when looking at the final blended result). It buys into the very misleading hype that Sigma spews, which I believe is ultimately, in the long term, going to damage their reputation and hurt Foveon (because as more people try to produce images with a 4.7mp or 15mp Foveon sensor that compare to even the regular old D800, let alone the D800E or the 645D, and realize they simply cannot...they are either going to ditch Foveon and go back to bayer type sensors, or they are going to begin badmouthing Foveon.)
> ...



I don't know where you guys are getting your info. On your own site, the DP2 is listed as having 29mp effective (non-masked) "photo detectors", which are the same thing as a photodiode. From the dp-series link:

Color Photo Detectors Total Pixels: Approx.33MP, Effective Pixels: Approx.29MP

That is 29 million PHOTODIODES. That means, from a SPATIAL standpoint (actual resolving power), you have 29/3 million PIXELS (actual square areas on the sensor that are light sensitive), or 9.7mp. The DP2 that you are referring to is a TEN MEGAPIXEL sensor. Not only that, it is a 10mp APS-C sized sensor, so were talking pretty small pixels.

I'm sorry, but it doesn't matter how good those pixels are...there is no way, physically, that they could ever compare to the 36.3mp of a D800 nor the 40mp of the 645D. Spatially, from a luminance (detail) perspective, there is no loss of data or resolution in a bayer array. There is only, ONLY, a loss of color data or color spatial resolution. The loss of spatial color detail is a bit of a detractor for bayer type sensors, it hurts their color fidelity a little bit, however it is not enough of a detractor to warrant calling a 9.7mp Foveon as good as a 39mp bayer. The FULL detail luminance from a bayer is more than enough to offset the loss in color detail.

Neuro has explained how a properly designed OLPF (which is usually the case these days, even leaning towards the slightly weak side more often than not), despite blurring high frequency data, is not a huge detractor for bayer sensors as OLPF's blur predictably and consistently across the area of the sensor, meaning a light sharpening filter in post usually reverses the softening impact of an OLPF. 



Ellen Schmidtee said:


> jrista said:
> 
> 
> > The whole "eqivalent megapixels" deal that Sigma uses is also very misleading. Currently, today, megapixel counts are based on output image widthxheight. A 15mp Sigma Foveon is 15mp, in terms of actual megapixels stored in the output JPED image or a JPEG that you can create from RAW. It may have 45 million photodiodes, but that is not the same as megapixels, and I really wish Sigma would stop being so misleading.
> ...



Your misunderstanding. Every bayer pixel may have only one color, but regardless of color, every pixel receives "light". This is why the *spatial resolution* of a bayer sensor is so high, and why a D800 is capable of resolving so much detail. If you convert a bayer sensor's data to monochrome, you effectively have just the full detail luminance. Advanced demosaicing algorithms like AHDD are explicitly designed to preserve as much luminance detail as possible, while effectively distributing color data to avoid mazing artifacts and other demosiacing quirks. A bayer sensor needs no interpolation from a luminance standpoint, they only need interpolation from a color standpoint. Bayer sensors have nearly their full resolution in terms of luminance, and since luminance is really what carries your fine detail, they DO have FAR more resolution than any Foveon on the market today, including the SD1. 

This isn't missleading, it's how the physics and mathematics of interpolation work. Interpolation algorithms like AHDD are actually capable of producing crisper, smoother, sharper results with a bayer than your standard, basic demosaicing algorithm, and AHDD is pretty ubiquitous these days (LR/ACR use it, Adobe Aperture uses it, and it's a demosaicing option in most Linux RAW editors like RawThearapy and Darktable.) AHDD is even used in lower level tools, often used for astrophotography, like DeepSpaceStacker, Iris, and PixInsight.

The only loss with a bayer type sensor is in terms of color spatial resolution and color fidelity. The most obvious of those is really color fidelity, as when chrominance is blended with luminance, our eyes can't really tell the difference, or at least the difference is small enough that it isn't an issue unless you are directly comparing, side-by-side, a Foveon and Bayer image *with the same image dimensions* (in other words, if you had a 10mp bayer and a 10mp Foveon, then you would be able to tell that the Foveon had slightly better color microcontrast and better color fidelity...however when comparing a 35 or 40mp bayer to a 10mp Foveon, the only visible difference MIGHT be sharpness...that would depend on the strength or presence of an AA filter.)


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## Sporgon (Apr 2, 2014)

jrista said:


> If you convert a bayer sensor's data to monochrome, you effectively have just the full detail luminance.



If you can just expand on that a little Jon. When you say 'you' are you referring to the manufacturers setting it up this way ( like the Leica monochrome), or the user converting the RAW to B&W ?


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## jrista (Apr 2, 2014)

vscd said:


> @jrista
> 
> Yepp, you mixed some things. The first FoveOns were 5Mpixel on three Layers, which (could) be summed up to 15MPixel. The next generation was the Merrill, where about 15MPixel on 3 Layers can be counted to 45MPixel. The new Quatto Design ist again 3layered, but just the blue one get's 19MPixel, where the other 2 are just about 5 MPixel each. Now happy counting
> 
> At the End, the results are crucial.



Actually, the results aren't all that crucial. You don't have a 19mp sensor just because the blues are higher resolution. You get something around the average of the spatial resolutions of all three colors. Red has the lowest weight, green actually has the highest weight because it is where the bulk of light entering a camera usually comes from. Blue has the second highest weight. You can increase luminance detail in blue, but since blue is inherently a lesser component of visible light, and since our eyes are less sensitive to blues, green dominates. The bulk of the luminance detail is going to come from green, and since that is a lower resolution than the blues, you don't have a 20mp sensor. If you just take the averages, you have 9.7mp. You might have somewhere between 10-15mp, depending on exactly how the Foveon color information is processed and, for lack of a better word, interpolated, to produce a final image. Either way, you still aren't getting any more spatial resolution than the SD1 had years ago, and honestly I'd prefer the SD1 design, rather than the quattro design (becase at least with the SD1, your spatial resolution was exact, not some blend of higher and lower frequency pixel spacing.) 

Sigma is still being very misleading by saying that you get 39mp. They are working some quirky imaginary mathematical magic as well, because assuming you just added up the resolutions of each pixel, you get 19.6+4.9+4.9, which is 29.4mp. How they get to 39mp is beyond me, however I suspect they are using some arbitrary means of measuring an upscaled image in relation to bayer images like they have done in the past. Simple fact of the matter is, upscaling and bayer interpolation (especially with AHDD) are NOT the same thing, and do NOT produce the same results. Sigma is probably comparing images demosaiced with your standard 2x2 intersection-based demosaicing to upscaled Foveon images, which is intentionally putting bayer at a significant disadvantage that ignores the most common and effective means of demosaicing. 



vscd said:


> > It may have 45 million photodiodes, but that is not the same as megapixels, and I really wish Sigma would stop being so misleading.
> 
> 
> 
> This is of course confusing, but it's not a lie, because... let's define a pixel. You refer to it as a Pixel is the Picture which comes out from the cam. The Pixels from the Sensor are something different... you could also count each layer as a single Pixel, because it has an own wired output and the information is capsulated within this *single* Lighttrap. Remember the Nikon D2X (or was it the D1x?), there the Pixels were halfsized, so what do you count?  It's some kind of definition. The Sigmapeople have the same "problem" as Intel had 10 years ago... recognizing that Megahertz has nothing to do with speed, but the people don't know this. So you have to catch them with Numbers they understand.



A pixel is a spatial measure, two dimensional, not three dimensional. You can define pixels in many ways, however as far as bayer is concerned, it's all the same. You can measure the individual r, g, and b pixels in a sensor. Assuming you ignore the masked pixels, you will usually get one extra row and column at the edges of the RAW image data as compared to the interpolated image. So, if you have a camera with 5184x3456 (i.e. 1D X) pixels, that is the EXACT pixel count as far as exported TIFF or JPEG images go. The actual RAW pixel count, ignoring the masked border pixels, would be 5186x3458, as you need that extra set of rows and columns on the outer edge in order to perform interpolation. The actual true RAW pixel dimensions are greater, around 5212x3466 when you do include the masked border pixels (which are used for sensor black and white point calibration).

Regardless of how you slice it, a "pixel" in bayer is a direct unit of two-dimensional SPATIAL measure. A "pixel" in Foveon, the way Sigma defines it, is a three-dimensional measure of both spatial detail and color depth. If you want to compare Foveon to Bayer, you have to remove that third color depth dimension, otherwise you are comparing apples to oranges. Spatially, Foveon sensors have, historically, been significantly lower resolution than bayer sensors. This is no myth, no trickery, there isn't even any anti-Foveon here. As I've said, I love the Foveon concept, I just think that Foveon in the hands of Sigma is in the wrong hands, and I think the way Sigma markets Foveon is so misleading that it ramps up prospective buyers hopes to levels that simply cannot be met. (Either that, or you get gullible saps who buy so fully into Sigma's misleading concept that they are missing the forest for the trees, and therefor missing out on the kind of raw, unmitigated resolving power you can get with some current bayer sensors...which actually includes both the 5D III and D800, probably also the 6D, and for sure all current medium format sensors on the market without question.)



vscd said:


> > Furthermore, the D800 and 645D both have more information to start with. They are resolving details that are not even present in the SD1 image at all, despite it's sharpness
> 
> 
> 
> No, they DON'T, that's what the image should have told you. I could resize the Sigma-Picture 4 Times and have more resolution, but not more information.



Your conflating two separate concepts. Resolution is an overloaded word, and some of it's "overloads" are invalid. I try to be very specific when I use words like resolution. When I say resolution in this context, I try to always make it very clear that I am talking about _resolving power_ and _spatial resolution_. These terms refer to very well understood concepts in the world of imaging, and describe a very specific process where by something with a given area is divided into certain discrete elements...such as a real image projected onto a sensor by a lens being "resolved" by each pixel. 

What you are referring to is one of the invalid uses of resolution, which refers to image dimensions. Simply upscaling an image does not give you more resolution...it gives you more pixels, but your resolution has not actually increased. By upscaling, you enlarge everything, including the smallest discernible element of detail, such that those smallest elements are also larger. That is not increasing resolution...it is simply increasing the total number of pixels and enlarging your images dimensionally. I rarely ever use the word "resolution" to refer to changes in image dimensions. I usually use the term "image dimensions", or refer to concepts like upscaling or downsampling, to refer to changes in image dimensions.

The *resolution *I am talking about is not the _"resolution"_ your are talking about. Upscaling an image does not give you more resolution...it simply gives you more pixels, and changes the ratio of pixels to detail. Luminance detail, I might add...when you upscale a Foveon image, you aren't just blurring chrominance information (as is the case with bayer interpolation)...you are ALSO blurring luminance information (which is NOT the case with bayer interpolation...you keep your full luminance information at each pixel.)

So you are correct about not having more information after upscaling. 



vscd said:


> > A light sharpening filter can deal with the softness in a few seconds, and then the SD1 is at a real disadvantage.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Your argument is a classic fallacy...to claim that technological improvements will only benefit one type of technology. Technological improvements can indeed help Foveon, but at the same time, MASSIVE strides have been and will continue to be made for bayer type sensors as well. Foveon isn't going to be gaining technological advancements in leaps and bounds and suddenly end up well ahead of bayer...it just isn't going to happen. 

In this case, the reason the 1D X would run circles around the 5D does not actually have anything to do with pixel size. The 5DC is actually still an excellent performer. I know a few wedding photographers who LOVE their 5DCs, they still produce wonderful images. Technologically, they have high read noise (actually quite high), so the images from a 5DC cannot be pushed around like those from a 1D X or even a 5D III or 6D. The CDS technology used in the 5DC isn't as good as it is today. The individual color filters in the bayer CFA are stronger in the 5DC, which improves native color fidelity, but reduces total sensor Q.E.

So yes, technology does solve some problems. If the Foveon was in the hands of Canon or Sony, I believe it could rapidly become a major contender in the sensor market. I do not believe it would ever offer as much spatial resolution (i.e. true resolving power) as any bayer...as Foveon improves, so too will bayer sensors, and bayer will always have the lead in terms of spatial resolution, assuming your aim is to keep Foveon noise levels as low as bayer levels. Spatially, Foveon could compete directly with bayer if you simply ignored noise levels, however because the red layer is at the bottom, despite silicon's greater transparency to red, your still losing a lot of light by the time the red photodiode senses anything. A spatially-equivalent Foveon is going to be a very noisy sensor.

I think the only way your going to get a true "full color fidelity per pixel" sensor that is actually better than bayer would be if something like TriCCD came along again. Three separate sensors with single-color color filters on them, which receive light from a special prism where each sensor gets a FULL compliment of light of it's given color. You then have full sensitivity, full spatial resolution, in three (or, as should be possible, more) full colors. You would then simply need to convert each RAW color layer into R,G, and B pixels in an output image, no interpolation required (like Foveon, but without the sensitivity and noise issues.) Such a system would be rather bulky, but I do think it would be ideal for those who want everything to be the absolute best. Foveon is just another compromise....spatial resolution for color fidelity, just like bayer is a compromise: color fidelity for spatial resolution.


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## jrista (Apr 2, 2014)

Sporgon said:


> jrista said:
> 
> 
> > If you convert a bayer sensor's data to monochrome, you effectively have just the full detail luminance.
> ...



I mean you as in the "you" who is reading my words. 

You can use astrophotography editors to read RAW images directly. If you used something like LR or ACR, if you convert to grayscale that is post-demosaicing, so you really wouldn't gain the same benefit. With something like Iris, you can simply read out a RAW image as monochrome data. You might get slight artifacting this way...silicon really is not very sensitive to blue at all, so depending on the exact camera you are using, the blue pixels might end up a bit darker. I recently purchased a tool called PixInsight, an astrophotography processing tool (exceptionally powerful). PixInsight has something called PixelMath, which allows you to run just about any algorithm you can imagine on your images. If you have a blue darkening problem when converting a RAW image directly to luminance, you could easily apply some pixel math to reweight some luminance information, stealing a little bit from green and adding it to blue. Or you could artificially apply some digital amplification to just the blue pixels, which would make them a little noisier, but normalize the brightness. 

Regardless of how you correct any blue deficiencies (which, BTW, would also be present in a Foveon sensor, as silicon is silicon), Bayer sensors generally gather roughly the same average amount of light at every sensor pixel. Absent any color, that is your full resolution DETAIL...and it really doesn't need any interpolation, all it might need is some massaging to normalize luminance levels in post. Blue is just a noisy channel because of lower natural sensitivity levels...we've all been living with that fact ever since we started using digital cameras. Everyone knows about it from the noise in their blue skies or the blue paint on that car or the blue dye in that girls hair.


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## neuroanatomist (Apr 2, 2014)

jrista said:


> ...or the blue dye in that girls hair.



Does it have to be a girl? 




EOS 5D Mark II, EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM @ 70mm, 1/400 s, f/2.8, ISO 100
Taken on Shamian Island in Guangzhou, China.


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## jrista (Apr 3, 2014)

neuroanatomist said:


> jrista said:
> 
> 
> > ...or the blue dye in that girls hair.
> ...



Clearly not!  That is some badass blue hair, too! Strait out of an anime into real life kind of blue hair.


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## PVS (Apr 3, 2014)

My girlfriend bought 5Dc couple of years ago and I bought 5Dmk3 couple of months ago. We print mostly on fuji machines on fuji luster paper. We have bunch of Lenses. Shitloads of MF& 135 cameras too. 2 MF/Lf scanners and one dedicated 35mm scanner. Both of us make our living from photography and live photography everyday. On assignments both of us shoot nikons, canons. We love every camera which shuffles in our hands, be it fuji, sony, olympus or canikon. 
In our bedroom we never discuss the issues posted on previous page of this thread. In our kitchen we never discuss the very same issues. When we have drinks with our colleagues we never discuss these same issues. 
What have this world come to?

Haven't seen much girls around this forum.


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## CarlTN (Apr 3, 2014)

PVS said:


> My girlfriend bought 5Dc couple of years ago and I bought 5Dmk3 couple of months ago. We print mostly on fuji machines on fuji luster paper. We have bunch of Lenses. Shitloads of MF& 135 cameras too. 2 MF/Lf scanners and one dedicated 35mm scanner. Both of us make our living from photography and live photography everyday. On assignments both of us shoot nikons, canons. We love every camera which shuffles in our hands, be it fuji, sony, olympus or canikon.
> In our bedroom we never discuss the issues posted on previous page of this thread. In our kitchen we never discuss the very same issues. When we have drinks with our colleagues we never discuss these same issues.
> What have this world come to?
> 
> Haven't seen much girls around this forum.



True, there aren't many "girls" on this forum. But what does that have to do with anything? And I'm not surprised you wouldn't discuss the science behind the hardware of the cameras you use every day. It's because you aren't curious about it, it doesn't fascinate you. Or at least not both of you.


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## CarlTN (Apr 3, 2014)

jrista said:


> CarlTN said:
> 
> 
> > jrista said:
> ...



It's not "my own" website. If you calculate the RAW image dimensions, it is 5424 x 3616 = 19.61 MP. Obviously there is some processing and/or interpolation involved to arrive at this image size, but there it is.

I never claimed it would outresolve a D800 "spatially", I just asked if he had seen it, and that it looked interesting...especially considering it's a crop sensor. The fair comparison would be, what is the resolving power of this camera, compared to the 70D and the Exmor 24 MP 1.5x crop sensor's best output, with its best lens mounted. To compare it to a full frame, is not a fair comparison, for various obvious reasons.

You're claiming that this new Sigma camera and sensor, could not resolve more than 10 MP worth of (equivalent "bayer"?) spatial information. I submit that you are jumping to conclusions, and they are quite possibly in error. Let's wait and see how it does when tested, rather than approaching a new product with a closed mind, and conclusions drawn...because of an unapologetic bias against the design, and the manufacturer.

It's not as if Canon have not explored their own foveon-type sensor ideas, all mockery aside.


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## jrista (Apr 3, 2014)

CarlTN said:


> It's not "my own" website.



I know it wasn't your own...but it was the one "you" linked.



CarlTN said:


> If you calculate the RAW image dimensions, it is 5424 x 3616 = 19.61 MP. Obviously there is some processing and/or interpolation involved to arrive at this image size, but there it is.



That would only be the dimensions of the blue channel. The red and green channels are 4.9mp. When you actually render the RAW to screen, your effective resolution is going to be much closer to the average of those three channels, which is ~10mp. 



CarlTN said:


> I never claimed it would outresolve a D800 "spatially", I just asked if he had seen it, and that it looked interesting...especially considering it's a crop sensor. The fair comparison would be, what is the resolving power of this camera, compared to the 70D and the Exmor 24 MP 1.5x crop sensor's best output, with its best lens mounted. To compare it to a full frame, is not a fair comparison, for various obvious reasons.



True, you personally did not. I was kind of trying to respond to the whole group of you stating that the DP2 had an effective resolution of "39mp" and that the DPR sample images somehow proved that. I wasn't exactly trying to single you out like that. That said, I do think the "evidence" that has been put forward so far by everyone defending Foveon is grossly misinterpreting the information they have at their fingertips, especially the DPR sample images. One need not up or down sample anything to know, from those same images, that the D800 and 645D TROUNCE the DP2 when it comes to spatial resolution. UTTERLY TROUNCE. Splat! 



CarlTN said:


> You're claiming that this new Sigma camera and sensor, could not resolve more than 10 MP worth of (equivalent "bayer"?) spatial information. I submit that you are jumping to conclusions, and they are quite possibly in error. Let's wait and see how it does when tested, rather than approaching a new product with a closed mind, and conclusions drawn...because of an unapologetic bias against the design, and the manufacturer.



It isn't closed minded, it's just how the math and the theory works out. Same as the fact that the D800 gets more DR than the 5D III at ISO 100, but that the differences are negligible above ISO 400, and meaningless (either way) above ISO 800. You don't need to compare results to know that, because it's all based on the concrete, theoretical LIMITS imposed by physics. 



CarlTN said:


> It's not as if Canon have not explored their own foveon-type sensor ideas, all mockery aside.



Sure. As I've said, I have nothing against the concept, at all. I've said as much in several of my prior posts. I've loved the general idea of Foveon since I first read about it in one of the first couple of books I purchased on photography...years and years ago, I think before I even purchased a DSLR. My problem is really less with Foveon and the whole concept of layered photodiodes, and more with Sigma's execution and missleading statements about resolution. I understand WHY Sigma has taken the advertising route they have taken, they think it's the only way to compete with the high megapixel counts of bayer sensors, so they count each photodiode as a "pixel" (which is arguably a mendacious), in order to jack up their "megapixel" counts to comparable numeric levels. 

I truly, honestly believe that does Foveon a disservice. Not everything is about megapixel count. That has clearly been demonstrated by the 1D X, which produces STELLAR results with a "mere" 18 megapixels. I really think Foveon, if marketed properly, could stand on it's own despite it's lower spatial resolution. The color fidelity benefit is nothing to shake a stick at, it's really Foveon's greatest strength, and Sigma's current advertising hardly does it justice. High resolution photography isn't even what everyone wants these days. Too many pros came out of the woodwork during the 1D III/5D II days to COMPLAIN about "too many megapixels", which is the very reason why the 1D X has a reduction in megapixel count compared to the 1Ds III. 

Sigma should be marketing their DP series of cameras on the STRENGTHS of Foveon, instead of fabricating fanciful "megapixel equivalency" numbers and the like. They are undermining Foveon that way, when it IS such amazing technology. It doesn't matter that it can't produce the same kind of spatial resolution as a D800 or 645D, or even a 5D III. It has color fidelity and native sharpness our the ass, and strait out of the camera, Foveon images are better than any DSLRs with similar megapixel counts. On a same-megapixels basis, Foveon wins, and THAT is what I think is the important fact. All this trying to make it sound like Foveon is "as good as" much higher resolution bayer cameras is glossing over those strengths. 

IF, someday, a Foveon with 35 real megapixels (spatially) does hit the streets, it would produce better images than a D800. Granted, by the time that day arrives, we'll probably all be using 70 megapixel bayer sensors, so Foveon still wouldn't be winning the resolution contest. But by that time, it wouldn't matter, either, as 70mp is really getting up there, and fewer people actually need that kind of resolution (maybe landscape and architectural photographers).


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## vscd (Apr 3, 2014)

@jrista
I really like to interchange information with you on this objective way, but I think you're to bent to think on your decisions, you once made. I know what you're talking about and I mostly agree, but there is more than just theory... there is practice use. Even if we get out the AA-Filter of the formula, which we always did (because we choosed the D800E to compare) and we think of an optimal lense (which are rarely seen!) to serve a D800E... the result is something you have to explain after all. So I took the time, went to http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/sigmasd1/19 and got both RAW-Files, from the Nikon D800E (http://movies.dpreview.com.s3.amazonaws.com/nikon_d800e/DSC_0087.NEF.zip) and from the SD1M (http://movies.dpreview.com.s3.amazonaws.com/sigma_sd1m/SDIM6084.X3F.zip). 



> Your misunderstanding. Every bayer pixel may have only one color, but regardless of color, every pixel receives "light". This is why the spatial resolution of a bayer sensor is so high, and why a D800 is capable of resolving so much detail. If you convert a bayer sensor's data to monochrome, you effectively have just the full detail luminance.



I take you literally, ok? I converted the NikonFile with CaptureOne7 to a stock b/w TIFF and the SigmaFile with SigmaPhotoPro5.5 to a b/w TIFF, too. So, here are the results (as png, to loose no pixelinformation):

NikonD800E:






Sigma SD1:





Sigma SD1, (normal) resized to fit the Nikonsize:





There are no tricks, no JPG Artefacts, no Color, no catch. You can repeat this by your own. Now, if you speak scientifically (as you apparently like), your theory has to get prooved. *One counter evidence prooves a theory wrong*, you know... this is my try. Explain the results as we speak from a 15MP against a 38MP. In my humble opinion the Sigma *clearly *outperforms the Nikon, and this is not just a pixelpeeping Testchart, this is my daily experience. I don't speak about the disadvantages (AF, HighISO, Accu...), they are all clear and bespoken.


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## CarlTN (Apr 3, 2014)

jrista said:


> Sure. As I've said, I have nothing against the concept, at all.
> 
> I truly, honestly believe that does Foveon a disservice. Not everything is about megapixel count.
> 
> Sigma should be marketing their DP series of cameras on the STRENGTHS of Foveon, instead of fabricating fanciful "megapixel equivalency" numbers and the like. They are undermining Foveon that way, when it IS such amazing technology.



If you were being honest here, you would own one yourself. You obviously are trying to have it both ways, trying to appear unbiased. You frankly have everything against this concept, when it comes to this manufacturer. Admit it, you don't like Sigma as a company, you would not buy any of their lenses or cameras. But The difference between you and me is, I've owned a foveon camera, the one with the sensor you deride most (and I currently own 2 Sigma lenses at the moment). It simply had more resolution than its native 4.6 MP dimensions...I'm sorry but it just did. You can rely on math all you like, but the proof is in the using, and viewing. To say that it only had 4.6 MP of resolution is utter nonsense. Plenty of reviews have backed me up on this.

As for the Quattro sensor, I have no idea why it has fewer photodiodes for the other color channels...but frankly, if they are making the camera produce a 39 MP jpeg, then logic would dictate that it is resolving at least somewhat more than 10 MP.

With a bayer array, you don't have 18 MP of all three colors of photodiode in your 7D. You have far less than that. And yet you're happy with the results you get. 

Again, the proof is in the using, and the images, and less so the math. Math can be used to predict things like a rise of 10 feet in sea level over the next 20 years due to that nasty old capitalism, but how accurate, honest, and complete is _that _math?


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## Sporgon (Apr 3, 2014)

CarlTN said:


> jrista said:
> 
> 
> > Sure. As I've said, I have nothing against the concept, at all.
> ...



Carl: shouldn't you be in bed at this time ?


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## CarlTN (Apr 3, 2014)

Sporgon said:


> CarlTN said:
> 
> 
> > jrista said:
> ...



I'm a night owl, I stay up late to take long exposure pictures of owls farting, hoping to see a rainbow by starlight... !! I actually need to move my hours a bit earlier, but I will still be awake until about this time, for the immediate future anyway.

What time is it in the world? Where you are? I assume you're in...ahh yes Yorkshire, how could I forget? Do you know the Top Gear lads? I'd love to watch them film someday!


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## Sporgon (Apr 3, 2014)

;D

You seem to have been posting throughout the night ! I'm in England, it's 10 am here, a much more civilised time for posting


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## CarlTN (Apr 3, 2014)

Sporgon said:


> ;D
> 
> You seem to have been posting throughout the night ! I'm in England, it's 10 am here, a much more civilised time for posting



Lol, how dare you accuse me of being uncivilized??? I'm gonna gather up 300 of my lads, we're gonna take our shirts off, don swords and armor, and meet you on the field of battle in Greece or somewhere! But halfway through we'll both fall in love with some brunette britt chick with a crackly voice, and she'll kill us both!


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## jrista (Apr 3, 2014)

vscd said:


> @jrista
> I really like to interchange information with you on this objective way, but I think you're to bent to think on your decisions, you once made. I know what you're talking about and I mostly agree, but there is more than just theory... there is practice use. Even if we get out the AA-Filter of the formula, which we always did (because we choosed the D800E to compare) and we think of an optimal lense (which are rarely seen!) to serve a D800E... the result is something you have to explain after all. So I took the time, went to http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/sigmasd1/19 and got both RAW-Files, from the Nikon D800E (http://movies.dpreview.com.s3.amazonaws.com/nikon_d800e/DSC_0087.NEF.zip) and from the SD1M (http://movies.dpreview.com.s3.amazonaws.com/sigma_sd1m/SDIM6084.X3F.zip).
> 
> 
> ...



You and I clearly see different things. You seem to be seeing the LARGE SCALE contrast between certain threads in the upscaled sigma image as an indication that it has more detail. That is not resolution, that is just a form of contrast. Probably due to the way the Foveon deals with color, or possibly the exact nature of the illumination used. I'll use your own sample data to demonstrate the difference in SPATIAL RESOLUTION, for which the advantage clearly goes to the D800E:






I've enlarged your samples by 200% using nearest neighbor filtering, so as to preserve the exact details on a per-pixel basis (Bilinear or Bicubic filtering would have changed the pixels). I've aligned the two images to be as close to exactly on top of each other as possible. I've highlighted the most obvious regions where very fine detail can be seen with orange arrows. You can clearly see that the D800E has at least twice the real-world "resolution" (read that as spatial resolution or resolving power, not width and height image dimensions) as the SD1. 

Your looking at the wrong bits of "detail". Your seeing the bright higher contrast threads in the red swatch as an indication of "more detail". That's not more detail, it's just a difference in contrast. That could be caused by the lighting that was used when the SD1 image samples were taken, it could be due to nuances in the way the Foveon sensor works and deals with color, it could be any number of things. But that's the wrong thing to look at. The best example of the D800's spatial resolution advantage is seen in the very fine dark strands of threads in the upper right corner...in the D800 they are VERY fine and VERY crisp, however in the SD1 upscaled image they are quite soft. Where at their finest those strands are about 1 1/4 pixels thick in the D800, they are at least 2-4 pixels thick in the SD1. That would roughly equate to a FACTOR OF TWO difference in real-world resolution between these two cameras, probably more than that.

I'm not trying to dash anyones hopes and dreams, here, honestly. I'm not trying to bring up math and theory just to be "more complicated" and confuse you guys. I'm just trying to be objective and accurate. Foveon's advantage is not, has never been, and will never be in terms of resolving power. It just plain and simply does not and can not resolve as much detail as a bayer sensor. The facts are staring you in the face right up there in that little animated GIF. 

Foveon's advantages lie elsewhere...in native sharpness and native color fidelity.


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## jrista (Apr 3, 2014)

CarlTN said:


> jrista said:
> 
> 
> > Sure. As I've said, I have nothing against the concept, at all.
> ...



If a camera with a Foveon sensor was available in late 2008/early 2009, I very probably would. However, Foveon was a mythical beast back then...the sensor was designed, but Sigma did not own it at the time. There WAS no Foveon camera. So I ended up with Canon. I'm now bought into the Canon system. I own tens of thousands of dollars worth of Canon lenses. Canon cameras are better for astrophotography. I have no reason to switch now.



CarlTN said:


> You obviously are trying to have it both ways, trying to appear unbiased. You frankly have everything against this concept, when it comes to this manufacturer. Admit it, you don't like Sigma as a company, you would not buy any of their lenses or cameras.



I have absolutely no qualms about admitting I am biased against Sigma's handling of Foveon. I think they are doing it an injustice. I haven't NOT admitted that, as a matter of fact, I've been pretty up front about it! Beyond that, please don't try and put words or opinions in my mouth. As I've told you many times in the past, you really do not know me, Carl. You are a small, weak man who has to poke and jab from the sidelines, because you are too afraid to just stand up and be strait with anyone. So you poke and to prod and you bait, just like your doing here now. I'll be strait up and honest again: I find that to be pathetic and distasteful. Especially on a public forum like this. 

So here's the truth. I'm not against Sigma in general, I think their recent lenses are EXCELLENT, and I applaud them for providing some competition on that front for Canon and Nikon. I GREATLY appreciate the fact that Sigma exists and is continuing to produce quality lenses, especially for short focal lengths/wide angles. I've had my eye on the Sigms 35mm for a while, and I may buy one of their wide angle zooms. I'm not against buying Sigma, so long at it meets my own personal quality standards. I hope they stick around, too, for the long run. I truly do not care for their cameras. I have absolutely no problem admitting that. It's my opinion. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and I have no reason to hide mine. I think they have potential, but Sigma just doesn't put the right kind of effort into their cameras. I've found their firmware to be very lacking, to be more specific, and I am definitely not the only one. They have made strides over the years, but their progress on the ergonomics, functionality, and firmware front is too slow. They would have to rival Canon's ergonomics and firmware for me to take much interest in them. I'll be quite frank here, it wouldn't matter if Sigma used a bayer type sensor or the Foveon in their cameras...that isn't the reason I wouldn't buy one. 




CarlTN said:


> But The difference between you and me is, I've owned a foveon camera, the one with the sensor you deride most (and I currently own 2 Sigma lenses at the moment). It simply had more resolution than its native 4.6 MP dimensions...I'm sorry but it just did. You can rely on math all you like, but the proof is in the using, and viewing. To say that it only had 4.6 MP of resolution is utter nonsense. Plenty of reviews have backed me up on this.



Take a look at my recent reply to VSCD. I used his own sample images to prove, visually, the difference in resolution between the SD1 and the D800. The difference is very obvious. If there was a tiny difference, it wouldn't be obvious. From a pixel size standpoint, the SD1, which has no AA filter AND requires no interpolation, has at least 2.5 pixels for the fiber widths of the finest strands of thread in the upper right corner (in some cases it seems to be close to 3px). The D800 has about 1.25 pixels for the fiber widths of the finest strands of thread in the upper right corner. That is a spatial resolution difference of at least 200%!! That sounds about right...15mp vs. 36.3mp. From a SPATIAL resolution standpoint, Foveon sensors cannot be measured by their photodiode count. They have to be measured from their literal pixel count on the sensor (each Foveon pixel has three photodiodes). So yes, your camera has 4.6mp of "resolution"...spatial resolution, or resolving power. There is nothing you can do about it.



CarlTN said:


> As for the Quattro sensor, I have no idea why it has fewer photodiodes for the other color channels...but frankly, if they are making the camera produce a 39 MP jpeg, then logic would dictate that it is resolving at least somewhat more than 10 MP.



You can create a 39mp JPEG simply by upscaling. However again, I have provided a demonstration of how upscaling does not increase resolution by using VSCD's own images. Go see for yourself. Sigma can upscale to their hearts content, it doesn't change the fundamental laws of physics that govern how much real resolution you have. 



CarlTN said:


> With a bayer array, you don't have 18 MP of all three colors of photodiode in your 7D. You have far less than that. And yet you're happy with the results you get.



Your right in that I don't get 18mp of "colors". I get 18mp of "luminance", I get less than 18mp of "chrominance". Again, I haven't been trying to hide that fact. I've been very explicit in my answers as to the terms I use. Again, refer to the SD1 vs. D800 GIF I posted. LUMINANCE resolution in a bayer sensor is "full"...you get 18mp, or 20mp, or 22.3mp or 36.3mp, whatever it is. Your CHROMINANCE (color) resolution is LESS than full, because of the interpolation. That causes a loss in color fidelity (color accuracy, natural vibrancy, color contrast), but it does NOT cause a loss of spatial resolution. 

I really don't know how many times I'll have to say that before it sinks in. I'm not obfuscating the facts here, I'm trying to expose them. I guess you guys will have to remove the scales from your eyes first, though, because the message really doesn't seem to be sinking in.



CarlTN said:


> Again, the proof is in the using, and the images, and less so the math. Math can be used to predict things like a rise of 10 feet in sea level over the next 20 years due to that nasty old capitalism, but how accurate, honest, and complete is _that _math?



Sure, the proof is in the images. I think I proved with the little GIF I posted that the D800 has about twice the spatial resolution as the upscaled SD1 image. Math and theory simply model reality, physics. Use and sample images cannot violate the laws of physics here, there is no magic bullet that will somehow make a 15mp Foveon have the same spatial resolution as a 36.3mp D800E, or even a 36.3mp D800 with AA filter. It just can't happen. 

I'm not exactly sure how the bit about rising sea levels has anything to do with the debate here. That is less based on math and more based on speculation and assumption...the prediction about how much sea levels might rise is indeed mathematical, based on the volume and density of ice found at the poles, however whether the prediction comes true or not is not based on math, it's based on the (probably mistaken) assumption that global temperatures will continue to rise. Since August 2013, global temperatures have taken a deep dive...when Arctic sea ice was supposed to disappear entirely in August, instead it was at it's greatest extent in decades. Where the winter this year was supposed to be mild, it's been record-breaking cold. 

Don't conflate speculation with math. I'm not speculating about Foveon...Foveon is no longer some mythical sensor that is predicted to materialize at some future date. Foveon is a concrete thing that actually exists, has explicit specifications, and HAS BEEN measured with enough accuracy to prove that math and reality, a far as it pertains to Foveon, DO correlate.


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## vscd (Apr 3, 2014)

> You can clearly see that the D800E has at least twice the real-world "resolution" (read that as spatial resolution or resolving power, not width and height image dimensions) as the SD1.



The only thing I clearly see, are the both corners you mentioned. Yepp, the line is smaller and more accurate, but that's the only sweet spots for the Nikon, the 98% percent of the (for me) important picture is in the center, where the D800E just compounds every wire with each other into a heap-meshup . Try to find the one diagonal wire in the lower center. It's not visible and it's not visible in the Pentax 645D (!) eighter. The Sigma shows it clearly... for me the results are *by far *better than the Nikon. Maybe we talk at cross-purposes, but if that's not resolution or sharpness or spatial whatever than may it be. Whatever it is, I like it. I want it. I want it THAT way. The only thing I could admit is that the lense of the nikon was limited, as not even the Zeiss OTUS is able to serve the Nikon to the fullest (29MP was counted @DXO). I think you don't want to see, what I see (or vice versa) : But let me say, those Sigma FoveOn Pictures are available with my Pocket DP3M, too. You just don't need the ultra-highpriced lenses, you can do this with the Kitzoom (17-55 2.8) of a SD1 or with a 50mm 2.8 @DP3M.

I rarely use my DP3M, I'm mostly a Canon 5D kind of guy (yes, the first one, on purpose)... and the other time I often use my Zenza Bronica ETRSi (645 mediumformat, analoque). But if I decide to go out with a tripod and shoot landscapes, nothing came close to the foveon. And I borrow sometimes a Nikon D800 (sadly without "E") from a friend of mine. They can't match the pictures and the tests were with the Sigma 35mm 1.4 ART. So this shouldn't be the weak point of the system.


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## jrista (Apr 3, 2014)

vscd said:


> > You can clearly see that the D800E has at least twice the real-world "resolution" (read that as spatial resolution or resolving power, not width and height image dimensions) as the SD1.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



You CAN see the diagonal threads in the D800 image. I can see them fine, it's just that those threads are dark, rather than light...but at the same time, they are dark and much more finely delineated than the SD1 image. I'm not sure if you guys just don't have that great of eyesight, or if you are just subconsiously not seeing what you don't want to see here, but those "diagonal wires" (it's thread, btw, since were talking about a fabric swatch) are MOST DEFINITELY visible on both the D800 and 645D images. They are far sharper and clearer in both the D800 and 645D as well...the only difference is their contrast with the rest of the threads. 

Again, that could EASILY be due to how they illuminated the scene when taking the SD1 sample shots. I've seen plenty of other samples of that same scene for other cameras where those diagonal threads were more or less visible, and the vast majority of them are from bayer sensors. Because of that, I'm suspecting even more that how well those diagonal threads show up is due to lighting, and possibly color balance (the color balance of the SD1 image is quite different than the D800 and 645D images...that affects color contrast, and if one was to change the color balance of the D800 and 645D images, they could probably enhance those diagonal red threads of the foreground mesh vs. the background blue fabric). DPR doesn't maintain that sample scene to perfection...there are LOTs of little changes that occur from camera review to camera review...slight changes in the orientation of the feathers, slight changes in lighting or light angle, etc. 

I truly think you are latching onto a facet of those images that really has nothing to do with the sensor, and more to do with the scene. That's the danger with custom test setups, especially ones that have the potential to change or that aren't performed with the utmost care with EXACTITUDE in all the details (like lighting). You don't get directly comparable results, or at least results that can lead to the kind of confusion you guys are having now. 



vscd said:


> The only thing I could admit is that the lense of the nikon was limited, as not even the Zeiss OTUS is able to serve the Nikon to the fullest (29MP was counted @DXO). I think you don't want to see, what I see (or vice versa) : But let me say, those Sigma FoveOn Pictures are available with my Pocket DP3M, too. You just don't need the ultra-highpriced lenses, you can do this with the Kitzoom (17-55 2.8) of a SD1 or with a 50mm 2.8 @DP3M.



It's nothing to do with me no wanting to see something. I'm talking about something very specific and measurable: spatial resolution. You are talking about something more ephemeral, more subjective: aesthetics. It's different things, but your conflating a particular aesthetic result (from the SD1) with a technical fact (spatial resolution or resolving power). The Foveon sensors that exist today have considerably less "resolution" (spatial resolution/resolving power) than bayer sensors that exist today. The math, the science, the physics, the facts, even visual examples all confirm that. 

You and Carl are talking about the much more subjective qualities of the Foveon. You, personally, like the color contrast, color balance, color tone, whatever it is that the SD1 produces. Thats perfectly fine, everyone has their personal preferences for OOC color and sharpness. The SD1 certainly has a unique color, given it's design, and is definitely sharper as far as OOC results go. Subjectively, as far as personal preferences go, the SD1 has a lot going for it, obviously, as it definitely has it's fans. 

My problem with Foveon (and rather, not so much Foveon as with how Sigma sells Foveon) is the way they use very missleading marketing that clearly seems to be brainwashing potential customers into thinking they are getting more than just better color fidelity and better OOC sharpness. Foveon is what it is, it has it's strengths, but it has it's weaknesses as well. Foveon's weakness is spatial resolution. Bayer has it's strengths, and it has it's weaknesses. Bayer definitely has far higher resolution these days, but suffers a bit in terms of color fidelity and color noise and color moire (unless an OLPF is used, which eats away a tiny bit at maximum resolving power.) 



vscd said:


> I rarely use my DP3M, I'm mostly a Canon 5D kind of guy (yes, the first one, on purpose)... and the other time I often use my Zenza Bronica ETRSi (645 mediumformat, analoque). But if I decide to go out with a tripod and shoot landscapes, nothing came close to the foveon. They can't match the pictures and the tests were with the Sigma 35mm 1.4 ART. So this shouldn't be the weak point of the system.



Well, we'll just have to agree to disagree here. I've had my Foveon phase, and I've seen all the wonderful images those cameras can take. That said, I'd take a D800E or, for that matter, even a Sony A7r, over a Foveon for landscapes _*these days*_. I am not a resolution junkie myself...most of my work is action, and I appreciate different attributes of DSLRs more than resolution...namely AF system and performance, frame rate, buffer depth, and high ISO noise and high ISO DR. In the past, I think Foveon was a great choice for landscapes, given its sharpness and blues. However...that was then...today, things have changed.

When it comes to landscapes, that is the one area where I'll take all the resolution you can possibly give me. I think that is the general consensus among landscape photographers as well. Resolution, and even more importantly dynamic range, are truly KING when it comes to landscapes. In that respect, the D800E trounces all, hands down, no question, even the SD1 Merrill doesn't hold a stick to what the D800 can do. I'd also offer that, among DSLRs with bayer sensors, the D800 offers the best color fidelity around, and can rival the Foveon itself at ISO 100 (which is mostly thanks to it's dynamic range...Foveon just doesn't have the kind of DR that the D800E does, and despite it's superior design for color, it's noisier, and that hurts it at ISO 100 vs. the D800E (which has the cleanest color and lowest noise of any camera I've ever seen to date...I don't think even the A7r is better, although it might be more convenient)).

I'd be happy to produce a demonstration of this fact, if I could find a place to rent the SD1 Merrill (I honestly don't know of any rental places that offer Sigma cameras.) There really is no contest here, the D800E will pretty much stomp all over any other camera from a landscape perspective, with the possible exception of the A7r, in terms of resolution, dynamic range, color fidelity, sharpness, etc. Since it's twice the megapixel count of the SD1, I could also downsample, and the gap between the two would only increase. If anyone is willing to let me borrow their SD1, if anyone has one, I'll rend a D800E, because I have absolutely no question in my mind that I can prove this case beyond any shadow of a doubt. ;-) Sorry to be so forceful about it, but I really want to debunk the notion that for landscapes especially, the Foveon is in any way "the best" or "unbeatable".


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## CarlTN (Apr 4, 2014)

jrista said:


> If a camera with a Foveon sensor was available in late 2008/early 2009, I very probably would. However, Foveon was a mythical beast back then...the sensor was designed, but Sigma did not own it at the time. There WAS no Foveon camera. So I ended up with Canon. I'm now bought into the Canon system. I own tens of thousands of dollars worth of Canon lenses. Canon cameras are better for astrophotography. I have no reason to switch now.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



The first generation foveon sensor was available in the early or mid 2000's, it was before 2008.

Your post is insulting and I'm reporting it for abuse. I am not a small, weak man. You are the small weak man, who attempts to compensate for your shortcomings by posting lengthy forum posts.


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## jrista (Apr 4, 2014)

CarlTN said:


> The first generation foveon sensor was available in the early or mid 2000's, it was before 2008.
> 
> Your post is insulting and I'm reporting it for abuse. I am not a small, weak man. You are the small weak man, who attempts to compensate for your shortcomings by posting lengthy forum posts.



Please, report away. There is a very healthy trail on these forums that clearly demonstrates who the antagonist is, in EVERY case. You, Carl, are a very antagonistic individual. It isn't just me you antagonize, you poke and prod and insult otherwise antagonize anyone who seems to disagree with you, the only difference between me and them is I'm tired of letting you get away with it. 

So PLEASE, REPORT ME. 

Let's see if we can get to the bottom of your mental disorder, and figure out a way to help you LEAVE IT BEHIND when you decide to come onto these forums and participate in a public community. I'm tired of having you insult and berate everyone you dislike because they have disagreed with you, or proven you wrong, or called you out. I'm HAPPY to be friendly and cordial with you on these forums. There is evidence all over these forums that clearly demonstrate you as being the instigator, and me regularly ignoring your antagonism, and in every case I've always only ever RESPONDED to your insults, never instigated them myself. So go ahead, report away.


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## jrista (Apr 4, 2014)

Sorry, everyone! Did not mean to kill this thread. 

Regularly scheduled medium format discussion should continue from here.


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