Q image quality at 50mm and 35mm settings ??? Tests?

[SonomaBear]

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With a great deal of luck, I have printed 13"x19" from an image shot by the Q at the 50mm focal length crop.  Not perfect, but a very happy client.

 

The DNG files are always 28mm/24mp which allows me to recrop in Lightroom.  50mm crops, saved as JPEG, have not been as good.

 

I am about to try shooting the same image with two cameras:  Q at 50mm & Canon 6D at 50mm 1.8 -- then compare the two.  The Q image should be about 8mp, this Canon 6D sensor is about 22mp.  I'll then print them unaltered, then print again with the Q image "upsized" in PhotoZoom or Photoshop.

 

Has anyone done this?  How were your results?

[mike3996]

Well I think Q is a sensor-lens combination that is extremely croppable. I could take a very casual snapshot of my garden the lens wide open, and then sit down at the computer to look at the file. I could find a 1200x1200 composition in the image, 1.44 megapixels, which could perfectly compete in social media setting with a bigger, better framing.

 

I haven't tried a crop-50 vs "real 50" but I have tried a crop-70 vs Micro-4/3s 70 (focal length 35 mm). Pixel peeped, the m4/3 is a clear winner. In 0.8 megapixels, you couldn't really tell the difference.

 

I think Canon 6D with the sharp 50/1.8 will be a clear winner of course, at that resolution. But what if you scale down the Canon file down to 7.5 megapixels... Could be interesting.

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[tgdinamo]

I'm very interested to see the results of your tests. I have canon 5Dmk2 (FF) and canon 35mm L lens which has been my best/favorite setup (in terms of IQ) before I purchased the Q. My unscientific observation so far is that when the Q images are not heavily cropped (I crop what I need in postprocessing without worrying about 35 and 50 framing but probably most of my croped images are somewhere in that range) they look at least as good as my canon output. Uncropped, Q wins hands down and it's not even close - that sensor/lens combo is simply stunning (both sharpnes and color).

[SonomaBear]

After much delay, I tested "PhotoZoom" (PZ) with a Q image.  PZ claims to restore IQ when enlarging images.

 

Took a known good image and saved a virtual copy -- imported it into PZ.

In PZ, I cropped it to about ¼ the image.  Told PZ that my target size was 13x19' and let it do its thing.

When done (about 2 minutes rendering time), I exported the result to add it into LR.

In LR I printed it at 13"x19".

Then I opened the original image again, created a virtual copy, cropped it to match the previous photo zoom crop, then printed it 13x19'

 

Yes. PZ works well — but not all that much beyond my low expectations, but it certainly renders better IQ than merely cropping RAW files.

 

​The PZ rendered ¼ crop looks better than the ¼ crop done only in LR.  But not better enough to do it every time.

 

In Summary; if I have the need for a larger delivery to a client from a cropped image, I will take the time to PZ it.