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: rgacpa at gmail.com (Bob Adler)
Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2014 16:45:18 -0700
References: <CA150CA4-2613-43B4-9ACB-A56C38EDA41D@bex.net> <glzK1n00n0AFV7C01lzLmq> <532E1F0C.1040408@cox.net>

Hmmm. Lemme check again. Could have been a cropped image I used. 
But my question still stands: if I double the pixels to get smothered, more 
realistic details as Howard stated, how do I then downsize the dimensions to 
retain that effect?
Thanks,
Bob

Sent from my iPad

> On Mar 22, 2014, at 4:38 PM, Ken Carney <kcarney1 at cox.net> wrote:
> 
> 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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>> _______________________________________________
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> 
> 
> 
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Replies: Reply from mark at rabinergroup.com (Mark Rabiner) ([Leica] Random observations on resolution (long and irrelevant to the craft of being a good photographer))
Reply from rgacpa at gmail.com (Robert 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))
Message from kcarney1 at cox.net (Ken Carney) ([Leica] Random observations on resolution (long and irrelevant to the craft of being a good photographer))