EX1 vs. EX1R sharpness test

[Marty Welk]

Originally Posted by Markus Klatt

After the first shock in this thread ...

no kidding, if it looked that bad i would have sent mine back.

[Robert Bale]

So how do i get me ex3 to look sharp as my Canon 7D, i have to say, that with the sharpness turned all the way down on the 7D shooting video it still looks so good, so instead of tying to get the 7D to look like the Ex3 (as i have read in the 7D area) - i would like to make a Ex3 setting sharp , any one got a good PP, or setting.
Rob.

[Leonard Levy]

Robert in my side by side tests the EX-1 ate the Canon's lunch when it came to resolution. No contest whatsoever.

[David C. Williams]

Originally Posted by Leonard Levy

Robert in my side by side tests the EX-1 ate the Canon's lunch when it came to resolution. No contest whatsoever.

Indeed, I think he might need to clean the lens. An EX resolves @ 1000 lines, and the 7D @ 600. I wonder what he's viewing the image on?

[Alister Chapman]

Probably mistaking aliasing for resolution. The Canons are actually very soft compared to an EX, in reality they have little more resolution than a good SD camera but aliasing can make the pictures deceptively sharp.

[Tom Hardwick]

To look at this from another angle. what's interesting is to see how two modern cameras (the EX1 and EX1R) made a few years apart can be so very close in performance. In film days (and I mean movies and stills) lens technology (design, manufacture, coating, assembly and inspection) meant two cameras with consecutive serial numbers could exhibit pretty startling resolution differences on screen.

Generally our modern camcorders are designed to be used at full aperture, as the tiny chips we employ dissuade us from stopping down into diffraction. In film days we learnt never to shoot till we'd stopped down at least two stops in an effort to hide some of the losses caused by element miss-centering and zoom lens mechanical failings.

I'm constantly amazed at how cheap 1080 domestic camcorders happily fill 50" screens and even when obviously used wide open, remain sharp right into the corners. This says a huge amount about component and production tolerances. Aspherical surfaces have helped in this respect, but even so, a 10x zoom today uses the same number of elements that a 10x zoom used 40 years ago.

tom.

[Alister Chapman]

Below are some frame grabs from an EX and a Canon 550D/T2i. the difference is pretty clear.

[Alister Chapman]

Originally Posted by Tom Hardwick

but even so, a 10x zoom today uses the same number of elements that a 10x zoom used 40 years ago.

tom.

That's not always true. Cameras like the EX use a much simpler varifocal zoom design with fewer elements than the parfocal lenses that were essential 40 years ago. Parfocal Zoom lenses used to have to stay in focus throughout the zoom range and this needs some very fancy design. Many modern video cameras now use lenses that don't track focus, but use an electronic look up table to adjust the focus as you zoom. This make the lens much cheaper to produce as it needs fewer elements.

[Docea Marius]

5D Mark II 24-105 vs. EX1R

Ex1R has a very good idea, we used identical diaphragm 8 and 1 / 100 exposure

[Leonard Levy]

you shouldn't use f8 to test anything on an EX-1 as it will have already started losing sharpness due to the small f stop- sad but true . Best to test at 5.6 or more open. EX-1 looks terrible at small f stops.

[Docea Marius]

I honestly do not see visible differences, we shot with the EX1 and diaphragm 8 .. probleme.Am had no major problems from the diaphragm 10 up :-) but only once.
usually use maximum aperture until 8, but now I EX1R that lens is not so good.are quite large differences in image corners,1.10 software does bring something new to the improvement of focus? may be a mistake by Sony technicians, should I try a new calibration to target?

[Leonard Levy]

Docea,
Don't know how you tested or what kind of monitor your using . If you wish to maintain that the EX-1 or Ex1r resolution doesn't deteriorate after f8 then be my guest, but it has been tested by many.

[David C. Williams]

The EX is one of the sharpest prosumer cameras about, most people turn off or reduce Detail setting to at least -20. It might help if you posted a screen shot of your EX and Canon side by side to illustrate the problem.

At a guess, your using very high f-stops, causing diffraction limiting. Any 1/2" sensor over F5.6 will begin to soften, worse as your stop down. The larger the sensor, like your 7D, the further you can stop down before limiting.

[Alister Chapman]

As well as agreeing that an EX needs to be kept more open than f8 to avoid diffraction effects from softening the picture I would again add that you really need to be sure about what you are looking at.

The Canon DSLRs don't have an effective anti alias filter and the way the sensor is read means that the image is seriously under sampled, as a result the pictures are full of alias artifacts which can be mistaken for detail. For example, what should be a smooth edge may appear to be a very sharp, instant light to dark edge as the sensor sampling isn't high enough to resolve the smoothness of the edge. This isn't real detail, it's fake detail. It can look OK, but any camera movement will make the edge flicker as it jumps from one pixel to the next and straight lines take on a stair stepped appearance. This is aliasing and most cameras normally have a filter to soften the image a little so that stair stepping etc doesn't occur (that's why an EX only resolves 1000 TVL despite having 1920 sensors). The best way to see the difference in resolution between an EX and Canon DSLR (other than a chart) is to look at how they both handle subtle textures and things like wide shots of grass or foliage. In the frame grabs I posted earlier look at difference between the texture of the in focus flower blooms, it's a night and day difference. The other thing to take into account is contrast, a high contrast image will appear to be sharper than a low contrast image, so unless exposure and contrast are the same making a subjective assessment is difficult.

Sharpness and resolution are too different things. The resolution is the amount of fine detail that can be resolved or seen. Sharpness is how quickly the image goes from light to dark or how pronounced edges are. You can increase the sharpness of an EX (by turning up the detail level) and create a very sharp image with high contrast edges but this will not increase the resolution of the image, all it does is make the small details more pronounced, perhaps un-naturally so. Taken to extremes it will introduce aliasing.

[Robert Bale]

alister-chapman, its a personl taste i likr the look of the 7d, so i am going to play with the detail,
Ta,