On May 20, 2012, at 9:56 AM, Boris Liberman wrote: >> > > I remember a long time ago, before digital kicked in, an article on the web > that maintained that by shooting hand-held most of alleged advantages of > low-sensitivity high-res film and big MTF rating lenses are negated. > > You appear to support the idea that this thesis is still valid.
It would be interesting to see how much difference hand held versus tripod makes with studio flash, or with speedlight. > >> Final conclusion: for my work, K-5 isn't going to help much, if at >> all. Jury is still out on if D800E would really shake my world either. >> I need to investigate further -- probably rent one. I do have an >> acquaintance with one; maybe I can borrow that. At ISO 100 I'm not sure much anything will make a bid difference. I'm sure that someone good with math could look at the MTF of different lenses, translate that into resolution at APS or 24x36 sensor sizes , and come up with a maximum effective resolution for that lens. One of the things that Kennyboy said that seemed to make sense on his site is that one of the biggest advantage of larger sensor sizes (or larger film) is that the lens doesn't have to be as sharp to have a sharper final image. He didn't mention whether it costs more for a full frame lens with 100 lines per mm resolution than it does for an aps lens with 140 lines per mm (or whatever the typical is). Note that when I'm working in the studio, the ultimate, best, resolution is not my number one goal. I'm concerned with lighting, composition, maybe depth of field as an artistic element, or to make focusing less critical, and I'm just assuming that things will be sharp enough. I didn't even check to see what lens I used for the shots you asked for. However, it's my general feeling that pretty much any lens in the f/10 to f/16 range is working in it's sweet spot, and if you are looking at just sharpness it may be tough to tell a kit lens from an FA77. > > I am thinking that the only true IQ advantage of K-5 above its peers (K20D or > K-7) is that of sensor dynamic range (and 14-bit RAW too). It simply allows > you for more flexibility when you set up your light or when you process your > images afterwards. If this is of little importance to you then indeed from > pure IQ point of view K-5 does not offer anything on top of, say K20D. If you are always going to use flash, and they're going to throw enough photons that you can always use base ISO, the advantages of the K-5 versus the K20 are more along the lines of focus speed, bigger viewfinder, how it fits in your hand, buffer size, ability to use Live View on the tripod for manual focusing on static images, a focus assist light and so forth. If I were an even bigger geek than I am, it would be fun to set up a test, using multiple cameras, lenses, tripods, lights and test the resolving power of different setups and see what it takes to get the ultimate sharpness in the studio. However, since I do have a life outside of photography, I just don't see myself having the time and resources to do such a test. -- Larry Colen [email protected] sent from i4est -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
