It's all about Pixels.

[Dave in Wales]

As most are aware, for my Diamond Wedding my wile presented me with a Leica Q2....47MP.

"It's all about Pixels".....if I've learnt one thing it's that.

Well as soon as the first image popped up in 'replay' I realised it.

What follows is MY opinion, no doubt there are some, we know who he is , who can shoot me down in flames with a single sentence.

In simple terms to me IQ = sharpness/noise, if it looks mind-blowing then it is mind-blowing.....in my eyes.

I'd never seen an image before from a FF 47MP sensor up till about a month ago.

MIND-BLOWING 😳

The image below is a 6.15MP crop, slightly tighter than the 'in-camera' 75mm crop (7 MP) of the fixed 28mm lens.

A complete image at 47MP is just awesome.

If you click the image three times it should get bigger...it does for me.

Daylight from window, ISO 400, 1/80 @ f8 hand held.

DNG file, my usual processing in PSE22, (no De Noise) and converted to JPG.

[Ian]

Dave, you may see this quality when pixel-peeoing on your monitor, but once resized for publication on the Web for us to see, I can't honestly say I'm specially wowed by what I'm seeing. Perhaps it's the wrong subject material. Your image doesn't really test dynamic range or resolution.

Ian

[Graham_of_Rainham]

For me IQ was almost always objective as we had dedicated labs that could measure a lot of the “performance” aspects of the systems. One such lab is https://www.imatest.com/solutions/iqfactors/

Later I considered IQ to be far more subjective in my assessment. Now I consider the systems available to us far exceeds most of my needs and IQ has become something in which the picture conveys far more the things that I simply enjoyed seeing and was doing at the time I took it.

Having a camera that I enjoy using is a very big part of producing high IQ pictures and that includes my iPhone. I produced some excellent IQ from my Leica, but I never really got completely comfortable with it, much like the PEN-F it was the ergonomics that simply didn’t work out for me.

I hope you will soon have one of those moments when your camera is completely irrelevant to the picture you capture. I look forward to seeing it.

[pdk42]

OK - one of these was taken with an EM10.2 and the other with a Nikon Z7 (47Mp FF). Can you tell which is which?

[Ian]

That's not fair! The E-M10 is 5 years older and only has a third of the pixels!

[pdk42]

That's exactly my point Ian

[Miketoll]

Going on detail in the tower I would guess the second one is the Nikon Z7.
Different lenses mind so that could have an effect.

[pdk42]

The EM10.2 had the Panasonic 25mm f1.7 lens on it (a £95 lens). The Z7 the 24-70 f4 (several hundred pounds). The zoom was set at 50mm, so the same perspective.

[Ian]

No contest, then, Paul That' a prime versus the zoom - the Oly has an unfair advantage!

[Phill D]

I'd say that the first one is the Nikon one....?

[Ian]

The top one has a bit more shadow detail, but I see more 'Olympus' colour in that one as well. Solely based on there being more blue in the sky and the grass, I think the second is the Nikon one. But, frankly - there is nothing in it at on-screen resolution.

Ian

[DerekC]

I don't think it is all about the Pixels.
Owned a Nikon D800 for a while, 36MP soon found it wasn't the camera for me. I didn't need all the extra MP. Sold it and bought a D4 12MP. I mainly shoot aviation and motorsport so speed was more important.
When I did use the D800 the biggest pain in the neck, was the amount time it took to down load the files.

So for me it isn't all about the pixels.

[Ian]

Yup - earlier I said that it's much more, these days, about the ease by which you get to your result. I can get amazing results with my phone, but I will get a better average of results that I'm happy with and I have more control and it's a much better experience, with the proper camera.

[DerekC]

Wouldn't want to put money on it but I think the first one is Olympus.

[Ian]

Paul - are these out of the camera, or post-processed? I'd expect an Oly image to be a little darker without any adjustment. So I now have several reasons to think each image is from the other camera!

There is a bit more contrast and detail in the first one - so that could mean it's the Nikon. But it could be it's the Oly because of the prime lens advantage. I think the second is not Olympus colour, but it's darker (so more Olympus-esque), and it has less shadow detail, so that could mean it's also the E-M10.

Most of this could be reversed in PP!

Ian

[pdk42]

Both processed from raw Ian. I hardly ever do SOOC JPEGs. But the processing on them is reasonably light. WB correction, cropping and slight exposure adjustments. Very little.

[MikeOxon]

For me, the most remarkable thing about the two images is the similarity in the colour rendering. Ken Rockwell used to like to write about the 'secret sauce' that enabled some cameras to achieve their characteristic colour rendering but here are two different manufacturers with different size sensors producing almost identical results. No ...692 appears to have slightly less exposure, which has given a little more contrast in the stonework on the tower but that's nothing to do with the number of pixels in the original images.

My first digital camera had a 2MP sensor producing 1600x1200 images and the results look much the same as your examples!

[pdk42]

The thing is Mike that if you’re processing from raw (as these are), the colour rendering is as much about the PP tool as the camera. I personally find a lot of what’s written about colour science and cameras (esp about mono profiles) is just nonsense. If I hear another post waving lyrical about the Fuji Acros profile I’ll scream!

[pdk42]

I’ll put you all out of your misery..

The top one is…









The Nikon.

[Ian]

I’ll put you all out of your misery..

The top one is…









The Nikon.

Hahaha - well done

Ian

[Phill D]

Hey I got it right..........

[pdk42]

I think it’s pretty clear that a good photo actually has very little to do with the pixels!