S3 vs S006 vs SL resolution

[helged]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

9 hours ago, Jon Warwick said:

Thanks for posting. I personally see a clear difference on my 27" iMac screen, in favour of S3 > S006 > SL.

But i'm not clear quite how you've done the test -- have the crops from the lower resolution cameras (S006 and SL) been resampled larger in post production in order to match the S3 crop? If so, that's presumably why i see the difference in favour of the S3 given it's the only one that is shown at "native resolution"? 

Hello! Similar regions from the three images were exctracted (cropped) from the native files in LR, followed by generating the jpg-files (so resampling took place - behind the 'curtins' - in the last step). No change was done with the DNG-files, except +1/3 stop for the SL-file. Various pp steps can be made, 

[Advertisement]

The Leica Q3 is available for pre-order at B&H Photo Video and Adorama

[mgrayson3]

The moral of the story is that lenses out-resolve sensors. All these images are about as detailed as they can be given their MP. Only you can decide which level of detail is right for you, given the other factors of size, weight, expense, pleasure of use, etc. Note that this crop size corresponds to a huge print. Not a criticism! But important to know.

This perfectly matches my own tests comparing a Leica TL2 with 35/1.4, SL with M50/2, and S(007) with S70/2.5 on the one hand, and S(007) vs S3, both with S120/2.5 on the other.

For every system and user, there is an edge - places that the system could usefully improve. These are almost never what actually gets improved with each new model, but sometimes a new feature is helpful. For me, DR is vastly overrated. I like my shadows dark because they ARE dark. OTOH, higher clean ISO is always useful so that people aren't blurred in cityscapes. Resolution is way past my needs. IBIS or stabilized lenses and a tiltable screen would make the S my perfect camera. I love the OVF, but there are camera positions where I can't get my eye up to it, and the live view is hard to see.

BTW, the most important edge for amateurs is anything that will get us away from the computer and out taking pictures. If that's higher MP or a new lens, then it's worth it. 

Repeating myself,

Matt

[Jeff S]

2 hours ago, mgrayson3 said:

The moral of the story is that lenses out-resolve sensors. 

Roger has an interesting take on the whole lens/sensor resolution discussion...

https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2019/10/more-ultra-high-resolution-mtf-experiments/

From the Addendum...

Appendix: Why Perceptual Megapixels are Stupid

I get asked several times a week if this lens or that is ‘capable of resolving’ this number of megapixels. Some people seem to think a lens should be ‘certified’ for a certain number of pixels or something. That’s not how it works. That’s not how any of it works.

How it does work is this. Any image you capture is not as sharp as reality. Take a picture of a bush and enlarge it to 100%. You probably can’t see if there are ants on the leaves. But in reality, you could walk over to the bush (enlarge it if you will) and see if there are ants by looking at a couple of leaves.

What if I got a better camera and a better lens? Well, theoretically, things would be so good I could see the ants if I enlarged the image enough. MTF is somewhat of a measurement of how sharp that image would be and how much detail it contains. (The detail part would be the higher frequency MTF.) That would, of course, be the MTF of the entire system, camera, and lens.

Lots of people think that will be ‘whichever is less of the camera and lens.’ For example, my camera can resolve 61 megapixels, but my lens can only resolve 30 megapixels, so all I can see is 30 megapixels.

That’s not how it works. How it does work is very simple math: System MTF = Camera MTF x Lens MTF. MTF maxes at 1.0 because 1.0 is perfect. So let’s say my camera MTF is 0.7, and my lens MTF is 0.7, then my system MTF is 0.49 (Lens MTF x Camera MTF). This is actually a pretty reasonable system.

Now, let’s say I get a much better camera with much higher resolution; the camera MTF is 0.9. The system MTF with the same lens also increases: 0.7 X 0.9 = 0.63. On the other hand, I could do the same thing if I bought a much better lens and kept it on the same camera. The camera basically never ‘out resolves the lens.’

You could kind of get that ‘perceptual megapixel’ thing if either the lens (or the camera) really sucks. Let say we were using a crappy kit zoom lens with an MTF of 0.3. With the old camera; 0.3 X 0.7 =.21. Let’s spend a fortune on the newer, better camera, and we get 0.3 X 0.9 = 0.27. So our overall system MTF only went up a bit (0.07) because the lens really sucked. But if it had been just an average lens or a better lens (let say the MTF was 0.6 or 0.8), we’d have gotten a pretty similar improvement.

If you have a reasonably good lens and/or a reasonably good camera, upgrading either one upgrades your images. If you ask something like ‘is my camera going to out resolve this lens’ you sound silly.

Roger’s rule: If you have either a crappy lens or crappy camera, improve the crappy part first; you get more bang for your $. I just saw a thread for someone wanting to upgrade to the newest 60-megapixel camera, and all of his lenses were average zooms. I got nauseous.  (FROM ROGER CICALA)

Jeff

 

[xiaubauu2009]

I think the question of how well a lens will be able to resolve a sensor is more to do with its optical performance at gathering lights without fringing it, making it having whatever aberration to the image at any given pixel point. If the real scene is green and the resolved image pixel turn out to be light blue... then it look out of place in the image... then you will start to notice that the image is not that sharp/weird etc etc. 

In the old days, this is less light to happen cause the medium is an analogue/chemical reaction on a sheet of resins... now, it's going through some kind of a polymer glass with depth that will further bend the light, hence it has to be corrected to take into consideration. Leica's solution is to create a lens design that is great, and then mate it with a thin sensor well to minimize bending more light, to make the combo even greater. 

But I think every manufacturer has their own technique in creating what they think is a good combo.

I think most modern lens post 2015 starting to be very digital sensor friendly. You hardly can find one that is not able to 'resolve' the sensor.

[Jeff S]

35 minutes ago, xiaubauu2009 said:

You hardly can find one that is not able to 'resolve' the sensor.

That’s not how it works, as Roger discusses just above.

Jeff

[xiaubauu2009]

54 minutes ago, Jeff S said:

That’s not how it works, as Roger discusses just above.

Jeff

I mean newer lens. But I get the point.

[Hans-Dieter Gülicher]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

vor 7 Stunden schrieb xiaubauu2009:

But I think every manufacturer has their own technique in creating what they think is a good combo.

I think most modern lens post 2015 starting to be very digital sensor friendly. You hardly can find one that is not able to 'resolve' the sensor.

You have forgotten to mention the general philosophy of manufacturers, the materials they normally use, the specific production processes and the quality control. As an example Leica.

[Stuart Richardson]

I think it is an issue of semantics. You certainly can cause some issues by having a lens that performs exceptionally highly...for example, moire. It is not really outresolving the sensor, as he said, but it is laying down more resolution than the sensor can handle. At least in the case of high resolution detail. Anti-aliasing too. Not saying that we should dumb down the sensors, but only saying that, like anything else, these things are rather complicated. I agree with his general premise though!

[paulsydaus]

What I saw is that the overall increase in quality by the S3 was not as much as I expected when compared to the S007.  Not that the results aren't better or are not pleasing, but I had the impression the difference would be greater.

I'd be really curious to see a comparison with the SL2 as it looks like that that SL lens has so much more to offer.

 

[Hans-Dieter Gülicher]

I can`t accept this claim or finding. I have checked a second hand 007 (I got from Leica) over about 4 weeks. But it was not mine. Than I swiched over to the new S3, one of the first and fully handmade according to the Leica people. As I have noticed it`s a complete new firmware and a lot more. Look at the data sheets of 007 and S3, compare and than judge. Might be not in all details the S3 should be on highest level but it`s a important step in the right way.

I have got the S3 at the 13th of February. It had last a curtain time to handle it after my R9-DMR or Q2. But in the meantime I think the big shipp is okay as aspected.

Greatings Hans

[mgrayson3]

On 4/8/2020 at 8:45 PM, Jeff S said:

That’s not how it works, as Roger discusses just above.

Jeff

That's the problem with appeal to authority. Quoting is not the same as understanding. While it's true that "out-resolving" is undefined, that's simply because Roger doesn't define it. He defines resolving for each component as MTF = 0.3. Other definitions are possible (as he admits), but he picks one. Well, we can pick one, too.

MTF is a function of frequency (and distance from the axis, but we'll talk about resolution on axis). Roger picks an MTF of 0.3 as his definition of "resolved". That means "at what frequency (lines/mm, say) does the MTF of the system drop below 0.3. The sensor has a maximum frequency given by its pixel pitch (Nyquist). It has a lower frequency f_sensor, where its MTF = 0.3. So here's a definition. A lens out-resolves a sensor if its MTF value at the frequency f_sensor greater than 0.3. That means that SOME sensor could cause that lens to resolve at that frequency, just not the sensor in question. We could use the Nyquist frequency of the sensor instead. It's a choice.

Similarly, if the lens MTF at f_sensor is less than 0.3, then no higher density sensor could cause the system to resolve that frequency, and so we can say that the sensor already out-resolves the lens.

In practice, though, the lens out-resolves the sensor if no possible increase in lens quality would improve the detail "much", where "much" is some parameter chosen by the observer. Just because a parameter hasn't been chosen does not make the definition silly. Similarly, if an increase in sensor resolution improves the detail by "close" to the theoretical maximum, we could also say that the lens out-resolve the sensor. Again, "close" needs specification.

These are all possible (perhaps even reasonable) models for determining which part of a system out-resolves another. Someone has to make up new models. They were all new, once.

Or we can skip the thinking part, quote Roger or Jim Kasson, or some other expert, and call it a day.

Matt

 

Edited April 12, 2020 by mgrayson3

[djmay]

22 minutes ago, mgrayson3 said:

 

Or we can skip the thinking part, quote Roger or Jim Kasson, or some other expert, and call it a day.

Matt

 

Thank you Matt.

 I prefer the outlook “if you (or the viewer) cannot see it, it does not matter” for photography gear. For music gear “if you (or the audience) cannot hear it, it does not matter.” Both have worked very well for me.

Conclusion: specs do not matter, but the performance of the system does matter.

[Jeff S]

24 minutes ago, djmay said:

I prefer the outlook “if you (or the viewer) cannot see it, it does not matter” for photography gear. For music gear “if you (or the audience) cannot hear it, it does not matter.” Both have worked very well for me.

Conclusion: specs do not matter, but the performance of the system does matter.

I agree, and so does Roger, whose article I quoted. From the very outset, he writes...

GEEK ALERT!!

Let’s be absolutely clear; this is not a practical or useful article. It won’t help your photography or cinematography become better. It won’t help you choose equipment any time in the next couple of years. It won’t provide any fodder for your next Forum War. It’s just a geek article that may interest some people. It may give a little peek into what may come in the future, and some insight into the kind of work we’re actually doing behind the scenes at Olaf. So if you’re interested in that kind of stuff, read along. 

He got everything right except the ‘fodder for your next forum war” part.  So much for attempting to clarify some oft used terminology; not to create a controversy.  I understood Roger just fine.  He’s a practical guy, as anyone who follows his writings, podcasts or his company’s  (Lensrentals) practices knows.

Jeff

Edited April 12, 2020 by Jeff S

[BernardC]

25 minutes ago, djmay said:

I prefer the outlook “if you (or the viewer) cannot see it, it does not matter” for photography gear. For music gear “if you (or the audience) cannot hear it, it does not matter.” Both have worked very well for me.

For musical instruments, the "playability" is also important. Most musicians I know have favourite instruments, partly because of their sound, but mostly because they are agreeable to play. The same is true of camera systems, usability is equally important to "image quality," and maybe more so. It's not something that can be heard directly by the audience, but it certainly contributes to the overall performance.

 

[mgrayson3]

2 minutes ago, BernardC said:

For musical instruments, the "playability" is also important. Most musicians I know have favourite instruments, partly because of their sound, but mostly because they are agreeable to play. The same is true of camera systems, usability is equally important to "image quality," and maybe more so. It's not something that can be heard directly by the audience, but it certainly contributes to the overall performance.

 

My God, yes! My teacher's piano is incredibly friendly. It WANT'S you to play well. Some pianos make you work, but reward that work (some don't). My current piano is not as friendly as my teacher's, but it yields infinite reward to better and better playing. (It's a 9' concert grand from 1898, rebuilt in 2005, and it sounds like Rachmaninoff could have recorded on it. Ok, now I'm bragging. Sorry.) But isn't that why many of us use the S system? It's handling is friendly and it's performance excellent.

[djmay]

With instruments, playability and sound quality typically go together. If the owner of a good instrument is a good musician, he/she will usually have the setup personalized. This enables the production of a wide spectrum of tone, just like photography. This could also mean that a less accomplished player could have difficulty playing that instrument. I bought a new bow last year; bigger and more subtle tone as a result. I also will replace the bridge. If it were a camera it would be changing lenses (a good bow costs just as much as a good lens).

If a camera is difficult to handle, not much chance of me getting good images. Hence, I use cameras with optical viewfinders and few buttons.

On topic, I see better results with the S3. No huge; because the S 006 is that good.

Edited April 12, 2020 by djmay

[Jeff S]

10 hours ago, mgrayson3 said:

He defines resolving for each component as MTF = 0.3. Other definitions are possible (as he admits), but he picks one. Well, we can pick one, too.

 

 

As Roger said...

” (Our standard for ‘resolve’ was an MTF 0f 0.3; an MTF of 0.2 was borderline. There’s some evidence to support those cut-offs, but someone could argue them. Wait, this is the internet. Someone WILL argue them; it’s what someone lives for.)”

Jeff

[LeicaR10]

Djmay,  I agree with your comments in your post #32.   One can have the best and most expensive camera gear like the S3, Phase One, Hasselblad etc., and easily take ordinary, boring photos.  Photographers seem to forget the camera and lenses are merely tools to capture a moment in time.  There is a huge difference between a mere photo and one that is created to make the viewer; Stop, Look, Think and if possible Feel something about the moment in time.  All the discussions about resolution and performance are in the grand scheme of photography are mute...it is the Content of the photograph that really matters and separates mere photos from those that are superb photographs.  Every photographer has a reason for buying camera gear with most never mastering photography through content.  Last, my corporate and private collectors rarely ask me what camera or lens I used to create a photograph. They buy and collect for the visionary impression the photograph renders at that moment in time, not for the resolution of the camera sensor or lens.  r/ Mark

[Advertisement]

Hallo,

Look here: Interesting Leica gear

[tom0511]

I have run comparisons between several cameras so often, and in many cases I find it very hard to do propper comparison. Minor focus difference, minor exposure difference, different profiles and processing, etc. etc.

Some months ago I also tried to prove myself the MF-look of larger sensors in comparisons between FF and Leica S. Without much success.

Also ran direct comparisons between CCD and CMOS (S006-S007) and same problem here, difficult to compare. Since I like handheld shooting thr S007 works better for me than the S006.

Also had the chance to check out a S3, I agree and believe , that color is (slightly) improved, and noise behaviour is quite good. But I did not find the difference compared to my S007 big enough to spend the money at the moment. I would if I was a pro, had unlimited funds, or if I can maybe find a used S3 deal one day.

 

For me personally  longterm experience do count more than tests. And yes, nearly each time I use the S-system I find the results show that powerful, natural, "real" look.

The SL2 ist fast, with reliable S-AF, and very good image quality. It is flexible with zooms, fast lenses, tele, uwa etc. So if I want to be quick, if I want to mak sure to get the shot, if I want to switch between photo and video, the SL2 is my first choice.

While the SL-lenses might be more perfect in a technical way (are they?), I think the S-lenses are still very (more) special. So for special moments, if I have time I enjoy shooting the S-System a lot. The ergonomics of the S-bodies are also very very good, and the viewfinder is fun to use. 

 

 

 

[davidmknoble]

3 hours ago, tom0511 said:

I think the S-lenses are still very (more) special. So for special moments, if I have time I enjoy shooting the S-System a lot. The ergonomics of the S-bodies are also very very good, and the viewfinder is fun to use. 

I couldn't agree more.  The lenses just draw so well....nice thoughts.