Canon 6d

[travis4567]

Did an experiment on cropping with my new full frame Canon 6d to see the sharpness loss in a major crop. Here are the results of todays shoot. Pretty damn good. Canon 6d, Tamron 70-300 vsd, 400iso

[Colin Southern]

Hi Travis,

Looks good.

I think people often forget that when we down-sample for internet display we typically throw away over 95% of the pixels anyway. In this case the distribution is different, but none-the-less most images usually cope just fine.

Just remember though that the heavier the crop the more significant capture sharpening is.

Here's a good case-in-point I shot ...



from ...

[dje]

Looks good to me too Travis. Very good quality image.

Just out of interest, what sharpening settings did you use in Lightroom ?

Dave

[DanK]

Colin's point is the key. Web-based images are so low in resolution that you can throw out a huge amount of data without much if any visible effect. Cropping will matter more when you print at moderate or large sizes, although even there, with modern software you can get away with a lot of data loss.

[AB26]

Travis,

Now go shoot that 6D in low light and see the results of that.
It might not beat Colin's 1Dx but form what I understand you will be pleasantly surprised.

[RustBeltRaw]

There's one downside to pre-downsizing an image for web display. You're giving the site to which you post it less data to work with. Many resize photos, and can really bork your careful sharpening work. CiC's Tinypix uploader is very good, but Facebook can really mess with shots that aren't 960px or 2048px (maximum dimension). Uploading full-size can reduce the degradation.

The biggest problem with my 10MP 1D mkIII is that it doesn't have that much cropping latitude. Low-light performance is pretty darn good, dynamic range is excellent, but sometimes I'm just not left with enough pixels for a usable image. Downsides of shooting action at variable ranges with primes.

[Glenn NK]

Travis,

Now go shoot that 6D in low light and see the results of that.
It might not beat Colin's 1Dx but form what I understand you will be pleasantly surprised.

I think you're right - my son bought his 6D just after Christmas and the light levels he shot in last Saturday w/o flash shocked me a bit. My 5DII wouldn't be able to keep up - I didn't even try.

Glenn

[travis4567]

Looks good to me too Travis. Very good quality image.

Just out of interest, what sharpening settings did you use in Lightroom ?

Dave

Thanks Dave. I use the contrast, sharpening and clarity sliders to get the look I want. For this one I lowered the contrast to about 20, middle range sharpening about 50 and gave it a 3x overlay of maximum clarity. The downside to this much clarity is a little loss of highlight like in the doggies white hair on her face and under her chin. And if you take clarity too far you can end up with an HDR effect.

[loosecanon]

This post also illustrates how factors other than sensor resolution are important to image quality. I have yet to see a need in my photography to more resolution that the 22MP I get. More dynamic range and better high ISO performance are what is needed now, as well as the camera's ability to handle the files produced rapidly.
A 2MP image fills a HD television screen with a sharp image at normal viewing distances - why are we obsessed with detail that can only be discerned with a magnifying glass.

[Colin Southern]

why are we obsessed with detail that can only be discerned with a magnifying glass.

Because viewing distance depends on whether you're a photographer or not. With regular folks, viewing distance is dictated by the distance needed to view the entire image comfortably. With photographers, the minimum viewing distance is dictated only by the length of their noses!

[FootLoose]

With photographers, the minimum viewing distance is dictated only by the length of their noses!

Poor old Pinochio...

[Colin Southern]

Poor old Pinochio...

It's OK, he told me he wasn't a photographer; unless he was lying to me ...

[jcuknz]

I don't see why resizing should upset things if the final stage is sharpening at whatever size you are sending.

Of course if you sharpen and then resize you are asking for problems.