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You are here: Home / The Last Word / Camera resolution and 4K viewing — real world images 2

Camera resolution and 4K viewing — real world images 2

October 16, 2019 JimK 1 Comment

This is the fourth in a series of posts on the effect of camera resolution on the quality of downsampled images. The series starts here.

In the first post in this series, I used Lightroom to process images of a Siemens Star, in an attempt to find out how well the superior image quality of a high resolution camera translated to images viewed on a 4k monitor. In the previous post, I did a similar test with a real-world scene. Now I will show you two more captures. As before, I used the Sony a7S and a7RIV. In this test the lens was the Sony/Zeiss 35 mm f/1.4 Distagon FE.

Other details:

  • EFCS
  • f/5.6
  • 1/1000 second
  • ISO 100
  • AF-S
  • Flexible spot
  • Focus priority
  • Medium spot size
  • Three shots with each setup, with the best picked for this presentation
  • Developed in Lightroom, PV 5
  • Adobe Color profile
  • White balanced to gray surround on target
  • Sharpening set to: amount 30, radius 1, detail 0
  • 4K downsampling done with the Lightroom export function, sharpening set to 0

Here’s the first shot:

Here are some tight crops from an area in the image with both high-contrast, high-spatial-frequency detail (the pine needles) and low-contrast, low-spatial-frequency information (the bird house). Be sure to look at these images with your browser set to 100%, or else you’ll be looking at your browser’s resampling.

a7RIV sharpening strength 30, radius 1, detail 0

 

a7s sharpening strength 30, radius 1, detail 0

 

Of course, the 12-megapixel capture from the a7S is blurrier than in the camera with more than 5 times as many pixels. In the previous shots, there was a lot more chroma aliasing in the a7S. That’s not the case here.

Now we’ll look at some crops from the above image exported from Lightroom resized to 4K (because of the aspect ratio of the image, the vertical dimension was 2160 pixels, but the horizontal size was less than 3840 pixels).

a7RIV sharpening strength 30, radius 1, detail 0, crop from Lightroom export as 4K

 

 

a7s sharpening strength 30, radius 1, detail 0, crop from Lightroom export as 4K

The a7RIV image looks better, but not much better. The difference is most apparent in the needles.

Here’s another capture:

 

We’ll look at some low-contrast detail:

a7RIV sharpening amount 30, radius 1, detail 0

 

a7S sharpening amount 30, radius 1, detail 0

If you discount the color differences, the difference is almost entirely the blur of the a7S image.

The 4K exports:

a7RIV sharpening amount 30, radius 1, detail 0, crop from Lightroom export as 4K

 

 

a7S sharpening amount 30, radius 1, detail 0, crop from Lightroom export as 4K

These images are very similar.

 

The Last Word

← Camera resolution and 4K viewing — real world images 1 Camera resolution and 4K viewing — downsampling algorithms →

Comments

  1. tube says

    November 5, 2019 at 11:07 am

    Usability and reliability of the camera is one of the major concerns for operators especially in tough or time critical filming conditions. With a user-friendly design, clear and simple menu navigation, and a highly durable, reliable construction, using VENICE you can simply concentrate on filming, and not the camera.

    Reply

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