Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2014/03/22

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Subject: [Leica] Random observations on resolution (long and irrelevant to the craft of being a good photographer)
From: kcarney1 at cox.net (Ken Carney)
Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2014 18:38:52 -0500
References: <CA150CA4-2613-43B4-9ACB-A56C38EDA41D@bex.net> <glzK1n00n0AFV7C01lzLmq>

Bob,

There must be a wrong setting somewhere.  I don't have a Leica M but I 
imagine the file size is larger than 3352 px.  My 5D II files are 5616 
px.  Jeff Schewe says that upsizing to 200% is usually no problem and 
that has been my experience with "preserve details" in Photoshop.  The 
5616 px files are 18.7" at 300 ppi, so I could have some cropping room 
with modest upsizing in PS.  Lord only knows what we are talking about 
with your MF gear :) or whatever the emoticon is for envious.

Ken

On 3/22/2014 4:59 PM, Bob Adler wrote:
> Hi Howard,
> Trying to wrap my layman's brain around this.
> When I bring an M240 file into CC from LR with no resolution change, it is 
> 2,682 x 3352 px at 360dpi. It is 7.45 x 9.311 inches in size.
> So if I use bicubic smoother and upsize the number of pixels to 2x(2,682 x 
> 3,352) or 5,364 x 6,704 at 360dpi I should get the effects you are 
> predicting: sharper looking images with smoother gradients BUT is now a 
> 14.9 x 18.622 inch size.
> What needs to be done then if I want my print size to be at the original 
> dimensions: 7.45 x 9.311 inches? Or a larger size than the now 14.9 x 
> 18.622 inches?
> Thanks,
> Bob
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
>> On Mar 21, 2014, at 7:40 PM, Howard Ritter <hlritter at bex.net> wrote:
>>
>> Poking around with huge degrees of enlargement and up-sampling (but 
>> perhaps not irrelevantly so for making large prints of landscapes, etc) 
>> in PS with files from M9, M240, NEX-7,and D800 (not E), I found:
>>
>> 1. The D800?s 36MP FF sensor with the current Nikkor 35/1.4 at f/5.6 
>> produces conspicuously better detail near the limit than the M240?s 24MP 
>> FF sensor with the Summilux 35 ASPH at 5.6 does, and the NEX?s 24MP APS-C 
>> sensor (same pixel size as a 54MP FF sensor) with the kit 18-55 zoom set 
>> to produce the equivalent of FF 35mm FL produces about the same image 
>> resolution as the M. This is not the end-all of important sensor 
>> characteristics, but it can be an important one under some circumstances. 
>> What this tells me is not only that a 24MP FF sensor does not put modern 
>> premium prime glass to the test, but also that even inexpensive modern 
>> kit-zoom glass would not be outclassed by a 54MP FF sensor with regard to 
>> resolution. This would seem exactly analogous to the role of fine-grain 
>> film back in the day (anyone remember that stuff?). One wonders what 
>> Leica AG (and every other manufacturer?s) engineers make of this fact, 
>> and whether there is a 54MP camera (M540?) or beyond in their minds. Of 
>> course, as with Microfile film, the part of the "need spectrum? such 
>> capability occupies would be very small. Still, Microfile had its 
>> enthusiasts beyond microfilming documents for efficient filing. I?d like 
>> to know what pixel count (disregarding tradeoffs in noise etc) 
>> corresponds to the innate resolving power of the best modern glass at 
>> center and optimum aperture. Given the improvement produced by the ~25% 
>> linear increase from 24MP to 36MP and the 50% increase to (an effective) 
>> 54MP, it?s clearly at least 1.5 times, and maybe twice, the linear count 
>> of a 24MP sensor (i.e., ~50 to 100MP). And what pixel count corresponds 
>> to the best general-use emulsions from the Age of Film (K64, Plus-X, etc) 
>> in terms of lp/mm? Anyone have a reference? These results also make me 
>> wonder about the actual utility of the new superpremium normal lenses, 
>> the 50mm Summicron ASPH and Nikon?s 58mm 1.4, with current sensors. Maybe 
>> they extend the envelope in which they are not outmatched by the sensor 
>> further from the center and from the optimal aperture beyond what lesser 
>> lenses do.
>>
>> 2. Doubling the linear number of pixels H and W in PS produces a clearly 
>> smoother image, with what appears to be better resolution, near the 
>> limit. I know that in theory this is illusory, as creating new pixels 
>> from the averages of their parent and neighboring pixels cannot add new 
>> information. But the appearance of doing so is strong, and I think this 
>> is a result of the fact that for the most part, natural subjects are not 
>> wholly random but have fractal dimensions and high degrees of internal 
>> correlation: for example, linear or continuous features are common, such 
>> as areas, edges and boundaries, and so on. Such features are not likely 
>> to be confined to a few pixels but to extend over many. Multiplying 
>> pixels as is done in PS can create a powerful illusion of making a linear 
>> feature seem better defined and sharper. If you took a picture of a wall 
>> of tiny square, randomly colored tiles such that the image of 4 tiles in 
>> a square exactly occupied an entire pixel, the original file would make 
>> the 4 look like 1, with a color representing their average (this is a 
>> thought experiment, ignoring the fact that we deal, Foveon aside, with 
>> single-color pixels and Bayer patterns). Pixel-doubling would then 
>> produce not a faithful depiction of the actual 4 tiles making up the 
>> square, but an illusion of 4 tiles and an artificial average color for 
>> each of the virtual tiles. But this is a very unnatural situation, and in 
>> real life, with natural subjects, what appears at any given point in an 
>> image is likely to closely resemble what appears at the points that 
>> correspond to the adjacent pixels, so that pixel-doubling does, in at 
>> least a semi-real sense, have the effect of increasing the visual 
>> resolution of the image. I think of up-sampling the original file to 
>> increase the pixel count as ?unmasking? information that was implicitly 
>> there as a result of the innate characteristics of the physical world.
>>
>> ?howard
>>
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Replies: Reply from rgacpa at gmail.com (Bob Adler) ([Leica] Random observations on resolution (long and irrelevant to the craft of being a good photographer))
In reply to: Message from hlritter at bex.net (Howard Ritter) ([Leica] Random observations on resolution (long and irrelevant to the craft of being a good photographer))