Pixel shift vs no shift example

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Macrero
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Re: Pixel shift vs no shift example

Post by Macrero »

Lou Jost wrote:
Fri Apr 09, 2021 2:02 pm
I don't believe there is such thing as "medium format look" though. Not to mention how difficult (and expensive) it would be to work in a wide magnification range with a MF camera.


I agree that some aspects of the alleged "medium format look" don't exist. But other aspects (DR and smoothness of color gradations) are as real as the corresponding difference between a full frame photo and an MFT photo. Of course you are right that medium format would be an expensive solution for macro work, but that's exactly why it is so exciting to be able to get that degree of DR and subtlety of color gradations, without any additional investment, from our existing cameras.

I may be biased as I used to do 4x5 large-format landscapes and macro, and those photos just blew away 35mm film. I love immersing myself in a photo's details. I definitely don't buy the common claim that there is a standard print-observing distance which makes fine detail unnecessary in large prints.
Lou.

nothing wrong with looking for the highest possible quality/resolution. But IMO, in reality there are very few scenarios where the difference is actually appreciable and worth it. If we talked traditional, single shot photography, it would be no-brainer, but pixel-shift stacking implies quite a lot of time, storage and processing power. I actually built a new, pretty decent PC because of the pixel-shift stacking (5900X, 2080-Ti, Samsung B-die RAM @3733. 14-14-14-28, NVMe drives, etc..), which I will most likely end up selling losing money, since I don't really need it anymore.

Again, single-shot photography is not quite comparable to stacking. MF cameras have their "magic" and their advantages, but they are far from being he most suitable cameras for photomacrography stacking. Pixel-shift is pretty good alternative to MF, but there are very few scenarios where the difference is actually appreciable and worthwhile.

That being said, I change cameras every time I get bored and I get bored quite often so please don't judge me if my next camera has piexl-shift :( :mrgreen:
https://500px.com/macrero - Amateurs worry about equipment, Pros worry about money, Masters worry about Light

Beatsy
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Re: Pixel shift vs no shift example

Post by Beatsy »

Macrero wrote:
Fri Apr 09, 2021 3:05 pm
...
That being said, I change cameras every time I get bored and I get bored quite often so please don't judge me if my next camera has piexl-shift :( :mrgreen:
Perhaps even a medium format camera with pixel shift 😁

Macrero
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Re: Pixel shift vs no shift example

Post by Macrero »

Beatsy wrote:
Fri Apr 09, 2021 3:19 pm
Perhaps even a medium format camera with pixel shift 😁
Well, that would be the biggest fail in my whole life :cry: :mrgreen:

Edit: boredom is very hard, please don't judge me if at some point I end up using a MF camera with pixel-shift.
https://500px.com/macrero - Amateurs worry about equipment, Pros worry about money, Masters worry about Light

RobertOToole
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Re: Pixel shift vs no shift example

Post by RobertOToole »

There are some good points from everyone in this thread one more thing I can add, and that is viewing images!

Don't fool yourself into thinking the image you see in a browser is the accurately rendered. I found this out when sharing some Pixel-Shift 100% crops via email and when I embedding the images in the message, they were soft, unlike the originals.

So I ran a quick experiment and opened the same image in Brave (browser app), Chrome, Gmail, Safari, Photomechanic, Photoshop, Mac Preview app, and rated them in sharpness, all at 100% view.

Mac Preview and PM where by far the best, and of course Photoshop, maybe the sharpest. Chrome was the worst offender.

All the other apps did not display the image accurately in terms of sharpness! {-X

Something to think about! :-k

Best,

Robert

Lou Jost
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Re: Pixel shift vs no shift example

Post by Lou Jost »

That's a great point. It is nice to have empirical data on it! I hope most of us are opening our images in Photoshop.

chris_ma
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Re: Pixel shift vs no shift example

Post by chris_ma »

in my experience the difference between different applications got worse with retina screens.

with conventional pixel densities (around 72 to 100ppi) pretty much all browsers showed 100% as 1 pixel on 1 screen RGB triplet.

with retina displays that doesn't work anymore because the images would become small like thumbnails, so the browsers start to upsample the images, with various (and usually poor) results.

for web, one solution is to provide a source set, like:

Code: Select all

<img srcset="../images/examples-880px.jpg 1x,
             ../images/examples-1760px.jpg 2x"
     src="../images/examples-880px.jpg"
     alt="imagetext">
this will load the convential image on old screens (usually displayed at 100%) and a higher resolution on devices with high ppi pitch (with various magnification math), which looks much better.
chris

ChrisR
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Re: Pixel shift vs no shift example

Post by ChrisR »

There's something of a parallel with stitched images. We all know it works to give hi res images not just panoramas, and it's fun. How often do we use it?
Chris R

Lou Jost
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Re: Pixel shift vs no shift example

Post by Lou Jost »

I actually do use a "light" version of stitching for my scientific work. It is convenient because it doesn't need a separate set-up. I use medium format tube lenses with a shift adapter to a Nikon camera mount. I just do two or sometimes three tiles to catch some protruding tail-like features that would otherwise force me to use a much lower magnification in order to get everything in the picture.

Beatsy
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Re: Pixel shift vs no shift example

Post by Beatsy »

Lou Jost wrote:
Sat Apr 10, 2021 7:43 pm
I actually do use a "light" version of stitching for my scientific work. It is convenient because it doesn't need a separate set-up. I use medium format tube lenses with a shift adapter to a Nikon camera mount. I just do two or sometimes three tiles to catch some protruding tail-like features that would otherwise force me to use a much lower magnification in order to get everything in the picture.
I don't recall ever doing a macro stack and stitch. Close-up maybe, in the context of a pano but that's all. I use (short) stack and stitch a lot on the microscope though. If I want prints, or to increase resolution in general. And (as you do Lou), to get an extra sticky-out bit in the frame without compromising resolution of the main details. Doing deep stacks, insects and the like, without telecentric lenses, just seems doomed to parallax hell in my view. Even the idea of rotating around the "no parallax" point that we discussed recently looks umm, "difficult" from a practical angle too. Perhaps I've already reached peak stack and stitch... :D

Macrero
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Re: Pixel shift vs no shift example

Post by Macrero »

RobertOToole wrote:
Sat Apr 10, 2021 11:20 am
Don't fool yourself into thinking the image you see in a browser is the accurately rendered. I found this out when sharing some Pixel-Shift 100% crops via email and when I embedding the images in the message, they were soft, unlike the originals.

So I ran a quick experiment and opened the same image in Brave (browser app), Chrome, Gmail, Safari, Photomechanic, Photoshop, Mac Preview app, and rated them in sharpness, all at 100% view.

Mac Preview and PM where by far the best, and of course Photoshop, maybe the sharpest. Chrome was the worst offender.

All the other apps did not display the image accurately in terms of sharpness! {-X

Something to think about! :-k

Best,

Robert
Fair point, Robert. But for the purpose of comparing, If you are viewing and comparing two images, both would look equally bad or good, so the difference would be the same, regardless of the browser :P

I mean it makes a difference in assessing quality/sharpness/resolution, but not much so in comparing. The browser won't make one image to look better and the other to look worse...

Best,

Macrero
https://500px.com/macrero - Amateurs worry about equipment, Pros worry about money, Masters worry about Light

Lou Jost
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Re: Pixel shift vs no shift example

Post by Lou Jost »

Doing deep stacks, insects and the like, without telecentric lenses, just seems doomed to parallax hell in my view.
When I need to do this, I usually work with telecentric lenses and objectives. Much of my work is in liquid at 1.5-8x, and in that range a lens combo using a reversed MFT lens in front is telecentric. For higher m I use the excellent Nikon and Mitutoyo measuring/toolmaking objectives, which are telecentric.

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