Problems getting sharp images by 60MP

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If you downscale the 60mp image to say, 40mp, does the image still look shaky compared to a Leica 10-r image?

[Tailwagger]

53 minutes ago, lct said:

Nothing scientific but just to check if a pic somewhat blurry at 60 MP may become somewhat sharper at 18MP all things equal more or less. I mean at same shutter speed as focal length for reference. Sorry to bother you but i feel hard to believe that low res doesn't bring anything useful but saving space on SD cards. 

Fair enough, but again as with all this shutter shock, camera shake stuff, we're truly talking about the number of angels dancing; nothing to be worried about. Here's a side by side of two shots, the reference was shot at L-DNG, the active at S-DNG (didnt try M-DNG). 

I went back and shot a series of shots with the 50mm lux. Methodology was I focused (EVF) on the left side of the O in Dodge at wide open, spun the aperture dial 3 clicks, shot again. No long pauses, breadth holding, just shoot. I reset the camera to S-DNG and repeated that procedure. The comparo is between the 4th shot of the series. In either instance the 5th shot, at F11 and 1/6" was unusable. I exported the 60 MPX version to PS, then down sized it 18MPx, brought it back into LR and did the side by side. Top shot is reported as 1/25" at F5.6, whereas the bottom is reported at 1/20" at f8, but close enough, particularly so as there's so little between the shot. 

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Hopefully this puts a few things to rest. I've done several of these sorts of low speed test demos in the past few days and I'm utterly confident that I can reliably shoot down to 1/2 of focal length, though clearly that's not necessarily true for others. Below that is possible but it requires a lot of effort. File size does not seem to effect things much, at least when everything else is essentially equal. From the above, some might come away thinking shooting at full res is the best option... BUT AGAIN I'm not a robot; there's certainly more than enough variance in my stability while shooting that the only reasonable conclusion is that file size has little effect. Equally the lower shot is at 1/20 rather than 1/25, which I expect has a greater impact than the file size.  In the end, it's on the photographer to determine the low range of shutter speeds their comfortable with and go from there. 

Edited February 16, 2022 by Tailwagger

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[TrickyMrT]

But i had never had any issues with my M10 getting sharp shots and  I used always lower shutterspeed.

My 35mm at 1/30 was never an issue. Now i can get a sharp shot with my 35mm@1/250! I tested as well lower resolution, but the new sensor does not forgive anything.

Handheld shooting without IBIS @ 60 MP is a nightmare! 

 

I like all improvements on the M11, but the higher Megapixel reduces the result in total!

 

 

 

[lct]

Thank you much. Bottom shot looks softer on the branch but i would not expect motion blur at works there. My own tests on different gear (12 MP vs 42 MP Sony) are more significant but i suspect my so-called steady hands are more shaky than yours . Congrats to you any way .

[fsprow]

I would just mention that in using my Hasselblad H6D-100c (100 MP) I have found that for the best results (even with a heavy camera), hand held  shutter speeds need to be at least double the lens focal length. For a lighter camera IBIS is essential I'd say if one wants to use slow shutter speeds.

Edited February 16, 2022 by fsprow

[SrMi]

8 minutes ago, TrickyMrT said:

But i had never had any issues with my M10 getting sharp shots and  I used always lower shutterspeed.

My 35mm at 1/30 was never an issue. Now i can get a sharp shot with my 35mm@1/250! I tested as well lower resolution, but the new sensor does not forgive anything.

Handheld shooting without IBIS @ 60 MP is a nightmare! 

 

I like all improvements on the M11, but the higher Megapixel reduces the result in total!

Is that your experience with the M11, or your assumption?

I am getting sharp shots with M11 at 1/(2f)s. I use the same rule for M10-P but I could likely go lower.

[mboerma]

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Hmmm, I have a different theory. Emphasis on theory. I have been photographing handheld, in various circumstances with different focal lengths with the M11. I did notice as well that I got more blurry shot then I had seen before with my M10-p and the various models I have had before. 
 

What I noticed was that the camera vibrated more when pressing the shutter. I can feel it far more than with my M10-p. The shutter has to do a lot more: close, open, close, open. I haven’t tried the electronic shutter. That should be the counter proof of my theory. I’m not as methodical as other here, so I just wanted to put this out here as an untested theory. 

[Tailwagger]

1 hour ago, lct said:

Thank you much. Bottom shot looks softer on the branch but i would not expect motion blur at works there. My own tests on different gear (12 MP vs 42 MP Sony) are more significant but i suspect my so-called steady hands are more shaky than yours . Congrats to you any way .

To my eye there are elements in each shot that look sharper than in the other. Slight difference in positioning or focus plane, perhaps, but in the end it's all in the noise and splitting hairs, AFAIC.

Sorry about my showing off my super skill 😉... more likely that I'm so close to the grave that movement is more challenging than staying put... but on the other hand you seem to be one of the very few that actually recognizes that there's personal culpability involved when shots are not sharp. For everyone not in that camp, all this camera is doing is demonstrating one's own personal limitations. Stick with 24 Mpx if you cant hack it.

24 minutes ago, mboerma said:

What I noticed was that the camera vibrated more when pressing the shutter. I can feel it far more than with my M10-p.

It's in your head... or at least your ears. As I demonstrated over in this thread, the difference between the e-shutter and the mechanical one at 1/6" on a tripod, there virtually nothing between them. With the e-shutter there is no close-open-close-etc. The mech shutter's contribution to blur is minimal.

[mboerma]

2 minutes ago, Tailwagger said:

It's in your head... or at least your ears. As I demonstrated over in this thread, the difference between the e-shutter and the mechanical one at 1/6" on a tripod, there virtually nothing between them.

In my nose  That is where I feel the vibration which I don’t feel with the M10-p. But I don’t know if that is the reason why I get less sharp images. 

[tashley]

8 hours ago, jplomley said:

60MP for street! Absolutely ludicrous and unnecessary. Creates far more problems then it solves. This is a stills camera meant for a tripod at that resolution. Why do you think the grip has an integrated Area Swiss design....Leica has absolutely lost the plot for which the M camera was designed. 

I have to say that out of the approximately 1,500 M11 shots I have taken so far, I noticed motion blur on about ten or fifteen, and that was before I routinely set the Auto ISO to 1/4f.

It's a real boon shooting with a WATE because 4 x 16 = 1/60th or 1/80th and the shots are literally always sharp. It just takes good shot and breathing discipline. 

I also shoot an a 150mp Phase One back on an XF body and trust me, you don't do that hand-held....

[aristotle]

5 hours ago, lct said:

Nothing scientific but just to check if a pic somewhat blurry at 60 MP may become somewhat sharper at 18MP all things equal more or less. I mean at same shutter speed as focal length for reference. Sorry to bother you but i feel hard to believe that low res doesn't bring anything useful but saving space on SD cards. 

What will you be doing with the "pic"?  The resolution of the 60mp sensor will support a roughly 3'x2' print.  If you generate the same print size from an 18mp capture, whatever camera shake is there may be less noticeable, but that's because your print will be more pixelated when viewed at the same distance, and detail in general is less noticeable.  That's a bad thing typically, not a good thing.  You can always change your technique, use a tripod or whatever to reduce camera shake if your goal is to generate a huge print for close viewing using a low shutter speed for whatever reason with the higher resolution sensor, and you'll always be less limited in terms of final output size.

The reason to get a camera with 60MP vs 36 or 24 or 18 or whatever would be to either generate larger prints or to crop farther into an image for the same sized print.  But if offered camera with a sensor with higher resolution at the same cost as a camera with a lower resolution sensor, there is no reason not to choose the higher resolution camera.  Camera shake results in the same physical phenomenon regardless of sensor size.  If you don't notice camera shake with a Leica M with a 24mp sensor, you won't notice it with the M11 if you view your image at the same size, and from the same distance.  It's a geometry thing, not a sensor thing. 

[lct]

16 minutes ago, aristotle said:

What will you be doing with the "pic"?  The resolution of the 60mp sensor will support a roughly 3'x2' print.  If you generate the same print size from an 18mp capture, whatever camera shake is there may be less noticeable, but that's because your print will be more pixelated when viewed at the same distance, and detail in general is less noticeable.  That's a bad thing typically, not a good thing.  You can always change your technique, use a tripod or whatever to reduce camera shake if your goal is to generate a huge print for close viewing using a low shutter speed for whatever reason with the higher resolution sensor, and you'll always be less limited in terms of final output size.

The reason to get a camera with 60MP vs 36 or 24 or 18 or whatever would be to either generate larger prints or to crop farther into an image for the same sized print.  But if offered camera with a sensor with higher resolution at the same cost as a camera with a lower resolution sensor, there is no reason not to choose the higher resolution camera.  Camera shake results in the same physical phenomenon regardless of sensor size.  If you don't notice camera shake with a Leica M with a 24mp sensor, you won't notice it with the M11 if you view your image at the same size, and from the same distance.  It's a geometry thing, not a sensor thing. 

My concern is not printing but motion blur that is more visible on screen at high than low resolution in my experience. I wanted to know if the M11 at low MP behaves the same way as my low MP cameras i.e. showing less motion bur than my high MP ones. To the point that i need IBIS on the latter but not on the former ones. Sounded logical but some colleagues here say that they don't see significant differences. Do you have any idea? I mean a practical one sorry but i'm not good at theories at all.

 

[aristotle]

1 hour ago, lct said:

My concern is not printing but motion blur that is more visible on screen at high than low resolution in my experience. I wanted to know if the M11 at low MP behaves the same way as my low MP cameras i.e. showing less motion bur than my high MP ones. To the point that i need IBIS on the latter but not on the former ones. Sounded logical but some colleagues here say that they don't see significant differences. Do you have any idea? I mean a practical one sorry but i'm not good at theories at all.

 

Practically speaking, an M11 at the 18MP setting will behave the same as any other camera that has resolution similar to 18MP.  Having tested the M11, it is no more difficult to handhold the camera than any other M.  And the M11 60MP output will behave the same as your lower resolution camera so long as you view the images from each at the same display size.  You'll be zooming in to the M11 image less than you will on the image from your existing camera to create that same size image, but on-screen, assuming that you held both cameras just as steady, you will see just as much (or just as little) blur from camera motion from either image.  The 60MP sensor isn't creating the motion blur.  It's the fact that photographers are deciding to view M11 images at a larger magnification (in comparison with the 35mm frame size) than they view images from other cameras.

[Jeff S]

14 hours ago, TrickyMrT said:

Hi,
Who else has also had issues getting sharp images handheld @ 60MP? 
I'm only to get sharp images at a Shutterspeed of 1/250!

So is 60MP too much for an M system. With my M10 24MP, i can shoot by much lower Shutterspeed 1/30 and get sharp images.

I also tried to reduce it to 18MP, but no difference. 

Is anyone here with the same experience?

 

 

 

 

Have you magnified your M10 pics (via screen or print), equivalent to M11, to see if there's more blur there than you thought?

Jeff

[lct]

32 minutes ago, aristotle said:

Practically speaking, an M11 at the 18MP setting will behave the same as any other camera that has resolution similar to 18MP. 

May i ask if you have any personal experience of this with the M11? No disrespect from my part but I am always a little wary of theories sorry .

[aristotle]

2 minutes ago, lct said:

May i ask if you have any personal experience of this with the M11? No disrespect from my part but I am always a little wary of theories sorry .

As I said in that post, I tested the M11 for a day and took a variety of images under a variety of circumstances and treated shutter speed as I would with any other camera with a full-frame 35mm sensor with respect to focal length and shutter speed.   I did not specifically perform a test trying to show the equivalency of camera shake from the 60MP output vs 18MP output, but there really isn't any reason to do so.  During the image editing process, I often initially view the image at 1:1 (display pixel per image pixel) or higher as part of an initial light unsharp mask prior to an intermediate resolution reduction, and would never expect that to look pleasing.  While it can be useful as part of evaluating the unsharp mask and other initial edits, it is of no value in evaluating the aesthetics of the final image.

You stated before that your concern was with what the image looks like when viewing the higher resolution M11 output on-screen in comparison with viewing the lower resolution output from your existing camera on-screen.  By that, I assumed that you meant that you were concerned with how the images will compare when viewing both at 1 display pixel per 1 image pixel.  I was just pointing out that I'm not sure that's a useful way to look at things because when you do that, the M11 image is magnified more (in comparison with the size of the 35mm sensor) than is the image from your lower resolution camera.  You will notice this if you put them side-by-side on your screen.  

[Tailwagger]

21 minutes ago, lct said:

May i ask if you have any personal experience of this with the M11? No disrespect from my part but I am always a little wary of theories sorry .

IMO, I think it behaves a bit better in general, though I can't make any direct comparisons.  Going by my recollection of cameras now long gone, the 18 Mpx M11 files I've come away with have more flexibility, both in terms of scaling up more convincingly, as well as providing greater DR as well. One has a bit of the sense of the monchrom vs standard camera in that the pixel count fails to do the level of acuity of the former justice.  I.e. just as the loss of the filter array boosted the MM's performance, my impression is that the 60Mpx -> 18Mpx conversion winds up improving the result lower res result above any conventional 18Mpx sensor.

[harmen]

It's difficult to shake consistently and then make photos to compare.  I was wondering if I could put the camera on a turn-table to get more consistent shake.  Then I figured that it doesn't matter if I shake the camera or the object on the photo, as long as it's consistent.  Hence I resolved to take a few photos of my helicopter.  The blades rotate consistently. What's more, you can see the impact of high speed near the outer edge, while the speed is lower near the center.  ISO 400, 1/500s, 28lux at f/1.4, focused on the lower blades.  Due to upload limits, I will post across a few posts.

First, let's observe that the photos at full size look the same.  Here is the 60MP shot, downsized for uploading.  The next post will be the 18MP shot.  After that I'll show some bits at 100%.

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[harmen]

And the 18MP full photo

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Hallo,

Look here: Interesting Leica gear

[aristotle]

10 minutes ago, Tailwagger said:

IMO, I think it behaves a bit better in general, though I can't make any direct comparisons.  Going by my recollection of cameras now long gone, the 18 Mpx M11 files I've come away with have more flexibility, both in terms of scaling up more convincingly, as well as providing greater DR as well. One has a bit of the sense of the monchrom vs standard camera in that the pixel count fails to do the level of acuity of the former justice.  I.e. just as the loss of the filter array boosted the MM's performance, my impression is that the 60Mpx -> 18Mpx conversion winds up improving the result lower res result above any conventional 18Mpx sensor.

I read his concern as specifically related to camera shake induced motion blur.  I entirely agree that the quality of the output for similar resolutions is at least as good as other Ms for other quality metrics.