Hey all,
I’ve been working with a Fuji Xt3 and an old Nikkor 90mm for a while now. I get good but mixed results, so I have some questions advising some gear/software upgrades.
Firstly the gear: Debating between upgrading to an Xt5 and better macro, or…switching over to Sony and getting an A7R iv. One is a lot more expensive than the other but offers more resolution, and the fun of building a new system. I’m also a sucker for anything Zeiss–usually what I use shooting film.
That being said, I love the Fuji feel and colors and have very little experience handling the Sony A world.
So, is that extra 20mp worth anything? They both have pixel shift, so scanning MF should be a lot better than the stitching and whatnot that I do now.
I am planning on doing more printing on a larger scale so I’m feeling greedy about resolution.
Also, what is everyone’s experience with DxO? Seems like a great way around Lightrooms awful handling of RAF files, but is Pure Raw enough or would I need the full Photolab?
That’s a couple different questions, but any advice all around is appreciated.
It’s an interesting choice, in my opinion I think that you need to be sure that you are comparing like with like based just on megapixels alone.
40MP from APS-C is not the same as 40MP from full frame, let alone 60MP, it is a very high pixel pitch, equivalent to 94MP from full frame.
Pixel-shift on a 6x6 array X-Trans sensor camera is not the same as pixel-shift from a 2x2 Bayer sensor camera.
It might be useful to compare results from the X-T5 with that from the 42MP Sony A7RIII and you can do that using the DPReview Studio Scene comparison, then maybe compare the X-T5 with the A7RIV. The X-T5 doesn’t compare well with either, why I don’t know. Perhaps it is just because DPReview use Adobe Camera Raw to process the images and it doesn’t handle the Fuji files very well, perhaps it is the difference in the lenses used, both high quality though, or perhaps there are other technical factors.
That’s all really interesting. I always forget about pixel density. Can you expand on the differences of pixel shift between the two sensors? I know little about that process, it just sounds so ideal for scanning.
I think a big part of my problems is adobe and Fuji, tho there seem to be a lot of new options out there nowadays. Haven’t tweaked my system in a long while.
This kind of response is why I love this forum. Thanks!
All I can do is explain why I think that there might theoretically be a problem, I don’t have the knowledge to say whether it is real or not so hopefully someone else can explain it to me as well.
This shows the difference between the X-Trans and Bayer sensor in terms of the RGB pixel pattern repeated across the sensor.
With the 2x2 Bayer sensor you can see that the sensor could be moved in just 4 directions by 1 pixel so that each of the 4 pixels, G x 2, R & B, ‘sees’ the same part of the scene so in theory that cancels out the de-mosaicing necessary when processing Bayer sensor images. For 16-shot mode the sensor moves by half a pixel intervals and so increases the resolution as well as the colour quality.
With the 6x6 pixel grid of the X-Trans sensor and the 20-shot high-res mode it’s not at all clear how Fuji process the image, and the X-T5 and X-H2 are obviously the only X-Trans cameras that pixel-shift has ever been offered on, at least I haven’t seen it explained.
To be honest I wouldn’t really care if the X-T5 results were better on DPReview, I may be guilty of putting too much store on that.