Sigma versus Kodak DCS Pron SLR/n - interesting
David Kilpatrick
SLR/n (the 14 replacement) full frame 14 (sic) mpixel SLR, and for
comparison's sake also shot it on the Sigma SD10.
There is no doubt at all that the Kodak resolved much finer detail than a 2X
sized up Sigma output, which pretty well matches Kodak's file size, and
indeed it has some of the best pixel level clean sharpness I've seen.
But the Sigma does not lose by a massive margin; it's just a little softer,
and very fine lettering remains legible. That is much what would be
expected. You can double the Kodak file by scaling up, and it will remain
pretty clean in the same way.
Now for the other stuff.
The Kodak even at ISO 160 has a considerable level of coloured noise is the
shadow areas, and also suffers from loss of detail in darker tones. Its
'resolution' is only superior in midtones to highlights, and it also has a
tendency to lose highlights for exposure reasons.
The Sigma at ISO 100 (both cameras on their lowest standard setting) has
superior shadow neutrality and noise freedom.
The Kodak has a higher colour saturation, which at first sight looks
appealing. My test included some difficult colours, such as ripe tomatoes
next to an orange pepper. In the Kodak shot, the tomatoes and pepper are
hardly distinguishable; they appear to be the same colour, which they were
not. In the Sigma shot, the two colours are well and accurately separated
and totally natural.
Throughout the picture, the Kodak colours prove to be very inaccurate; they
look bright and the image has more eye-candy appeal, but in fact the Sigma
shot is far, far more accurate and neutral, rendering both very subtle and
quite saturated colours precisely.
The Kodak camera does have a Studio Flash setting (5200K) which gave ideal
colours under Elinchrom 600 and 300 heads with softboxes. The Sigma's
'Flash' white balance resulted in much too warm a rendering from this set
up, and it clearly is indeed for camera-top direct flash; 'Sunlight' proved
a much more accurate setting for studio flash work.
The Kodak was set to 'Product' look, which I have found is identical to
'Wedding' in practice and apparently very neutral (the 'Portrait' and
'Event' settings being very un-natural indeed).
Unfortunately identical lenses could not be used, but I tested the Kodak on
both the Sigma 24-135mm zoom and a Nikon 28-80mm; it performed well with
both. The Sigma 18-50mm for the SD10 seemed an inferior lens to either of
these. The Nikon 28-80mm needed to be set to 56mm, the Sigma to 62mm, and
the SD10 small Sigma to 34mm, to get the same framing - so much for accuracy
of data embedded in files! Also, there was a half stop discrepancy between
the Sigma and Nikon lenses in speed, at the same nominal f-stops. The actual
shooting aperture was f19 (full frame ISO 160) and f14 (SD10 ISO 100), which
should mean that the lenses were close to diffraction limits on sharpness
and all aberrations related to wider aperture use were probably absent.
Both cameras have evidence of dust on sensor, even the 'sealed' Sigma.
Either image would be commercially acceptable.
The clean sharpness of the Kodak image would probably lead to it being
preferred at native full resolution. So would its colour palette, despite
then big colour shifts present in many hues and its poor discrimination
between close shades of red/orange. Sigma lose out by being true to life.
Life is really quite drab compared to the TV screen and the Kodak pix look
more like a TV screen!
The Sigma was, overall, a much faster and more pleasant camera to use and
the software was faster by a factor of no-idea-what - probably TEN times as
fast in practice (both were just set to extract and save files without any
adjustment). If Kodak's new SLR/c Canon mount cam is really built on a Sigma
body, it can only be better than the bloated and clumsy DCS Pro/n Nikon
body!
RAW import to PS7 from the Kodak files did not significantly improve the
colour disrimination or shadow noise detail of the DCS Pro SLR/n.
Earlier landscape tests show one thing for sure - the Sigma with a 12-24mm
wipes the floor with the Kodak and 17mm (or even 24mm). There are really
peculiar colour shifts present in the Kodak files, and the only solution is
probably a high end 17-35mm f2.8 - but maybe not even that, as the effects
seem related to having such a large sensor with acute incident angles
towards the edge.
David
John Navas
In <BC825E23.15B35%icon...@btconnect.com> on Sat, 20 Mar 2004 20:46:36 +0000
(UTC), David Kilpatrick <icon...@btconnect.com> wrote:
>This afternoon I shot a studio still life for a forthcoming Kodak DCS Pro
>SLR/n (the 14 replacement) full frame 14 (sic) mpixel SLR, and for
>comparison's sake also shot it on the Sigma SD10.
Perhaps time to stop beating the Kodak horse, and take a look at the real
competition, the Canon 1Ds?
--
Best regards,
John Navas
[PLEASE NOTE: Ads belong *only* in rec.photo.marketplace.digital, as per
<http://bobatkins.photo.net/info/charter.htm> <http://rpdfaq.50megs.com/>]
David Kilpatrick
Navas" <spamf...@navasgroup.com> wrote:
> [POSTED TO rec.photo.digital - REPLY ON USENET PLEASE]
>
> In <BC825E23.15B35%icon...@btconnect.com> on Sat, 20 Mar 2004 20:46:36 +0000
> (UTC), David Kilpatrick <icon...@btconnect.com> wrote:
>
>> This afternoon I shot a studio still life for a forthcoming Kodak DCS Pro
>> SLR/n (the 14 replacement) full frame 14 (sic) mpixel SLR, and for
>> comparison's sake also shot it on the Sigma SD10.
>
> Perhaps time to stop beating the Kodak horse, and take a look at the real
> competition, the Canon 1Ds?
The 1Ds was reviewed a year ago or more, the current camera I'm reviewing is
supposed by Kodak to have resolved many criticisms. Why on earth should
there be a need to review a 1Ds again?
David
John Navas
In <BC84E49B.15F4F%icon...@btconnect.com> on Mon, 22 Mar 2004 18:44:48 +0000
(UTC), f <icon...@btconnect.com> wrote:
I was referring to you personally, not your magazine, and specifically in
regard to your posts to this newsgroup.
George Preddy
> Unfortunately identical lenses could not be used, but I tested the Kodak on
> both the Sigma 24-135mm zoom and a Nikon 28-80mm; it performed well with
> both. The Sigma 18-50mm for the SD10 seemed an inferior lens to either of
> these.
Your Sigma sharpness problem is mostly definitely the non-EX lens.
The one thing I've found with the SDs is that like no other DSLR the
camera is only as good as the lens, because unlike other DSLRs it
outresolves the lens in full color. Try an EX prime and you'll about
double your effective resolution, and it should cleanly outresolve the
14n in all colors except black. Here's a good example of what the
105mm EX can do, the 50mm EX is a lot better still...
George Preddy
outbackphoto.com already showed the $8000 1Ds is no match for the SD9
in 13.7MP mode, the SD10 should be no different...
http://www.outbackphoto.com/artofraw/raw_05/crop_1ds_0000_1328_C1.jpg
http://www.outbackphoto.com/artofraw/raw_05/crop2_sd9_0000_00200.jpg
John Navas
In <e61e09e9.04032...@posting.google.com> on 22 Mar 2004 16:19:04
-0800, george...@yahoo.com (George Preddy) wrote:
>David Kilpatrick <icon...@btconnect.com> wrote in message news:<BC825E23.15B35%icon...@btconnect.com>...
>
>> Unfortunately identical lenses could not be used, but I tested the Kodak on
>> both the Sigma 24-135mm zoom and a Nikon 28-80mm; it performed well with
>> both. The Sigma 18-50mm for the SD10 seemed an inferior lens to either of
>> these.
>
>Your Sigma sharpness problem is mostly definitely the non-EX lens.
>The one thing I've found with the SDs is that like no other DSLR the
>camera is only as good as the lens, because unlike other DSLRs it
>outresolves the lens in full color. Try an EX prime
In other words, avoid non-EX Sigma lenses.
>and you'll about
>double your effective resolution, and it should cleanly outresolve the
>14n in all colors except black. ...
Nope.
David Kilpatrick
Navas" <spamf...@navasgroup.com> wrote:
> [POSTED TO rec.photo.digital - REPLY ON USENET PLEASE]
>
> In <BC84E49B.15F4F%icon...@btconnect.com> on Mon, 22 Mar 2004 18:44:48 +0000
> (UTC), f <icon...@btconnect.com> wrote:
>
>> On 22/3/04 5:30 pm, in article 8pF7c.1172$Fo4....@typhoon.sonic.net, "John
>> Navas" <spamf...@navasgroup.com> wrote:
>>
>>> In <BC825E23.15B35%icon...@btconnect.com> on Sat, 20 Mar 2004 20:46:36
>>> +0000
>>> (UTC), David Kilpatrick <icon...@btconnect.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> This afternoon I shot a studio still life for a forthcoming Kodak DCS Pro
>>>> SLR/n (the 14 replacement) full frame 14 (sic) mpixel SLR, and for
>>>> comparison's sake also shot it on the Sigma SD10.
>>>
>>> Perhaps time to stop beating the Kodak horse, and take a look at the real
>>> competition, the Canon 1Ds?
>>
>> The 1Ds was reviewed a year ago or more, the current camera I'm reviewing is
>> supposed by Kodak to have resolved many criticisms. Why on earth should
>> there be a need to review a 1Ds again?
>
> I was referring to you personally, not your magazine, and specifically in
> regard to your posts to this newsgroup.
But the 1Ds was reviewed by the entire world a year or more ago. You can
continue to suggest it's a benchmark, which I think it is as it happens, but
the Kodak is setting up to be that now. Will it succeed?
I am sitting here being not all that happy with my Minolta A2 images and not
as happy as I wanted to be with DCS Pro/n images. I'm disappointed and I
thought things would be better.
David
John Navas
In <BC853ACD.1624C%icon...@btconnect.com> on Tue, 23 Mar 2004 00:52:32 +0000
(UTC), David Kilpatrick <icon...@btconnect.com> wrote:
>On 22/3/04 6:50 pm, in article dAG7c.1196$Fo4....@typhoon.sonic.net, "John
>Navas" <spamf...@navasgroup.com> wrote:
>> I was referring to you personally, not your magazine, and specifically in
>> regard to your posts to this newsgroup.
>
>But the 1Ds was reviewed by the entire world a year or more ago. You can
>continue to suggest it's a benchmark, which I think it is as it happens, but
>the Kodak is setting up to be that now.
I don't think so -- I think it's clearly positioned below the 1Ds.
>Will it succeed?
Hard to say -- the competition is already fierce, getting fiercer, and Kodak
still has some issues, as you have noted.
>I am sitting here being not all that happy with my Minolta A2 images and not
>as happy as I wanted to be with DCS Pro/n images. I'm disappointed and I
>thought things would be better.
All the more reason to give the 1Ds a try. Or get in line for the 1D Mark II.
;-)
John Navas
In <e61e09e9.04032...@posting.google.com> on 22 Mar 2004 16:22:43
-0800, george...@yahoo.com (George Preddy) wrote:
>outbackphoto.com already showed the $8000 1Ds is no match for the SD9
>in 13.7MP mode, ...
Here's what that site (Digital Outback Photo) actually has to say about the
1Ds:
12/03/2002 Digital Outback Photo goes 1Ds
We liked the Canon EOS 1Ds so much that we got our own today. This is
a major step as we were shooting Nikon (The D1x will be our second
body for now) for nearly 30 years.
Here is our motivation:
* We very much like the Canon IS lenses
* The Canon EOS 1Ds is an exceptional body
* 11MPs are nice to have
* We like the Capture One RAW converter for the 1Ds
...
Dave Etchells from Imaging Resource and Rob Galbraith raved about the 1Ds
sharpness and detail. We must say the detail is really amazing. The EOS 1Ds
is in terms of detail in a league of its own. This is the level of detail
all landscape photographers long for (us of course included).
...
We have never had before such a high rate of keepers.
...
1Ds (defining digital state of the art)
You can't have it both ways. Since you keep citing Digital Outback Photo as
an authority, that would seem to put the matter to rest. ;-)
--
Best regards,
John Navas <http://navasgrp.home.att.net/>
"A little learning is a dangerous thing." [Alexander Pope]
"It is better to sit in silence and appear ignorant,
than to open your mouth and remove all doubt." [Mark Twain]
Bart van der Wolf
"George Preddy" <george...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:e61e09e9.04032...@posting.google.com...
SNIP
> outbackphoto.com already showed the $8000 1Ds is no match for the SD9
> in 13.7MP mode, the SD10 should be no different...
In a specifically fabricated worst case (for Bayer CFAs) simulation of
something that will never exist in real life. No luminance resolution, only
color resolution, opposite ends of the spectrum, in a bitonal pattern not
suited for discrete sampling systems, and different fields of view, one with
and the other without anti-aliasing filter, and the Sigma image at a 26%
larger size than the 1Ds image, so the numbers don't mean a thing...
Another piece of misinformation spread by Steve/George.
Bart