Zeiss Otus 85/1.4 mounted a the a7R

[andyfromboston]

Max, I believe you've missed the point. If I understand correctly, you've been asked to validate yourself as a photographer, which is different from a tester-of-pixels, by posting links to your work.

[Guest all8]

Would be more interesting to have a copy of the RAW file. Thanks.

 

And let us know what app you used to process the RAW files. Since that is also important as you know.

[Guest PenGun]

I posted 2 photos taken with Sony cameras that illustrate the problems with Sony images.  Neither of the images were highly processed, nor ETTR (which make things worse for Sony's cRAW) and yet they both have banding, posterization and noise at base ISO issues.  You should be able to view them in full resolution and without any Google 'enhancements'. 

 

https://plus.google.com/u/0/108086133375344739535/posts/H8gi8NiSRHZ?pid=6128738040482052514&oid=108086133375344739535

 

https://plus.google.com/u/0/108086133375344739535/posts/6yDxt5eUW6R?pid=6128737374666201090&oid=108086133375344739535

 

These are unacceptable images with 100% of that fault as a result of Sony's lossy compression and astigmatism.  Lens used was Zeiss 21 Distagon 2.8 @ 5,6 for both.   

 

After a few months with the Nikon, I can not find an accpetable use or reason for keeping the Sony.      Documented further here -  https://sonyvnikon.wordpress.com/

 Looks like HDR. What cameras are we talking about?

[Max the Dog]

Answering to above - I don't share RAW files.  These are not HDR.  Straight RAW some mild exposure and color enhancements (which is all Sony can handle) in C1.  

 

See link to see screenshot of these RAW files in C1.  NEX7 - Novoflex and Zeiss Distagon 21mm 2,8 @5.6 ISO 100

 

https://plus.google.com/u/0/108086133375344739535/posts/13vCASzFHnD?pid=6128798642959111842&oid=108086133375344739535

[Guest PenGun]

Answering to above - I don't share RAW files.  These are not HDR.  Straight RAW some mild exposure and color enhancements (which is all Sony can handle) in C1.  

 

See link to see screenshot of these RAW files in C1.  NEX7 - Novoflex and Zeiss Distagon 21mm 2,8 @5.6 ISO 100

 

https://plus.google.com/u/0/108086133375344739535/posts/13vCASzFHnD?pid=6128798642959111842&oid=108086133375344739535

I have C1 myself. So you don't have anything but older APS-C shots, to show us why the FF Sony is no good?

[Max the Dog]

I only had to look for a few seconds to find this stellar example of how Sony's cRAW destroys images with the A7r.  Here's one of the 2014 Frankfurt Christmas Market.  The sky to the left of the tree is typical of the way 11+7 lossy compression destroys gradients with banding, posterization and the insertion of false value (magenta) pixels which seem to be the Sony algorithm way of preventing even worse banding.

 

https://plus.google.com/u/0/108086133375344739535/posts/NbCY4bVk9Dh?pid=6128866573003584770&oid=108086133375344739535

 

By the way I just looked at your XE1 photos and a number of the IR shots are very good.  Sincere apologies, I didn't see those earlier. 

[andyfromboston]

That's all this is about? Some banding in extreme darks is causing you to write your grievances all over forums and even set up an insane fanboy web site to make Sonys look worse than Nikons?

 

Max, are you a photographer or a pixel inspector? If you spent half the time actually working on your photography that you do examining pixels, griping about them and insulting people who don't get as mad at cameras as you do you'd see that you're just wasting time. Where do you put your good photos?

[Guest PenGun]

I only had to look for a few seconds to find this stellar example of how Sony's cRAW destroys images with the A7r.  Here's one of the 2014 Frankfurt Christmas Market.  The sky to the left of the tree is typical of the way 11+7 lossy compression destroys gradients with banding, posterization and the insertion of false value (magenta) pixels which seem to be the Sony algorithm way of preventing even worse banding.

 

https://plus.google.com/u/0/108086133375344739535/posts/NbCY4bVk9Dh?pid=6128866573003584770&oid=108086133375344739535

 

By the way I just looked at your XE1 photos and a number of the IR shots are very good.  Sincere apologies, I didn't see those earlier. 

 I had it set up for my mom. She's 92 now and I make it easy for her to just click to my family snaps.

 

 It's not my portfolio although I do print from some of em'. I just like taking pictures and was once a webmaster.

[Guest all8]

Answering to above - I don't share RAW files.  These are not HDR.  Straight RAW some mild exposure and color enhancements (which is all Sony can handle) in C1.  

 

See link to see screenshot of these RAW files in C1.  NEX7 - Novoflex and Zeiss Distagon 21mm 2,8 @5.6 ISO 100

 

https://plus.google.com/u/0/108086133375344739535/posts/13vCASzFHnD?pid=6128798642959111842&oid=108086133375344739535

 

Then its an evaluation of your ability to produce a JPEG and not of Sony RAW format, which is not really that interesting. The picture (the river shot) is nothing special so sharing the RAW file should not be a problem. Mind you, I don't have high expectations of the RAW to JPEG conversation ... just that you can't complain about RAW and not share your files for critique and expect your complaints to have any credibility.

[Max the Dog]

Do you read and comprehend English ? 

 

Using a Sony mirrorless means you lose 20% of resolution (even with an Otus) and up to 90% of the discrete color values are missing.  On a large wide gamut monitor at full sizes the differences between the Sony and the Nikon files are astounding.   

 

 

 

 

That's all this is about? Some banding in extreme darks is causing you to write your grievances all over forums and even set up an insane fanboy web site to make Sonys look worse than Nikons?

 

Max, are you a photographer or a pixel inspector? If you spent half the time actually working on your photography that you do examining pixels, griping about them and insulting people who don't get as mad at cameras as you do you'd see that you're just wasting time. Where do you put your good photos?

[Max the Dog]

First of all there is identifying information in RAW files, 2ndly the end result is what matters.  I can't share or sell RAW files to my clients, they want prints and JPEGs and Sony can't live up to that.  Some of Sony's worst problems occur with portraits where they often fall apart on the first conversion.

If I run a Nikon file through 3-4 conversions (it happens sometimes) I see the file start to fall apart (copy of a copy problem) Because of 11+7 compression, this sometimes happens with Sony files on the 1st and many times the 2nd conversion.  The file most recently posted is the best that can be done in 1 conversion.  Go duplicate it yourself - it's easy enough.  I am not doing all of the work for you. 

 

You want to keep shooting crap photos that won't stand up today yet alone the monitors we'll have in next 5-7 years ?  Be my guest - but you'll regret it. 

 

 

Then its an evaluation of your ability to produce a JPEG and not of Sony RAW format, which is not really that interesting. The picture (the river shot) is nothing special so sharing the RAW file should not be a problem. Mind you, I don't have high expectations of the RAW to JPEG conversation ... just that you can't complain about RAW and not share your files for critique and expect your complaints to have any credibility.

[andyfromboston]

Do you read and comprehend English ? 

 

Using a Sony mirrorless means you lose 20% of resolution (even with an Otus) and up to 90% of the discrete color values are missing.  On a large wide gamut monitor at full sizes the differences between the Sony and the Nikon files are astounding.

 

Typical troll. Can't respond to the actual question, resorts to insults instead. The challenge is simple: if you are a photographer, show some of your work so that we can see whether you're worth our time. If you cannot, you are not a photographer, just a measurebator. This means that you will be ignored and the rest of us can go about our business.

[theprofessional]

I've been following this thread for a while now. I'm a bit saddened by it. Someone shared his opinion and gave factual evidence, this was useful to someone spending a lot of money and time on the a7 cameras. He has been requested to prove his worth, in some futile appeal to authority response. If the work he shows is good, you're likely to criticize it anyway. Let's be realistic here, the photographs taken by PenGun are atrocious. An example can be found of Lela, a poorly processed, poorly framed (look at the right, it's not even vertical), and poorly posed shot (look how uncomfortable her neck looks). A skilful photographer would not have allowed his subject to stretch their neck in such an unnatural position. There are ways to take photographs where someone's neck can look long without ruining the pose. The same demonstration of a low skill photographer can be seen in a photograph of some flowers, a poorly lit (I don't mean it lacks light, I mean it lacks manipulated light), busy photograph. which flower is the subject? We can't possibly know. For this reason, if we want to adopt the ideology that only skilled photographers should be heard and amateurs should be ignored, then Pengun should, by your own logic, be ignored because as you can see, his work is terrible. 

 

As a child, I couldn't afford a camera. I came from a fairly hard-up family. I went to school every day, even on sick-days and I worked my butt off for good grades. Grades that I knew wouldn't really matter because I wanted to be a photographer. I saved up for the cheapest camera I could find and I spent my evenings sat outside the shops up the city, trying to sell paintings. I walked home because I didn't want to spend the money on a coach ticket. Eventually the good grades, and teacher recommendations helped me get a job. A job I absolutely hated. I saved up, spent most of my money on photography equipment and gambled with my life. I quit working to travel around the country and take photographs. I earned just enough to feed and to pay for film. 

 

Eventually I became good enough and wealthy enough that I could buy a house without needing to consider a mortgage. I became good enough that I could pay for better cameras. Did they help me become a better photographer? Of course. Anyone that says "a good camera doesn't make you a better photographer" is talking rubbish. Just like a good car helps you become a better driver. If your car is spent in the garage, 340 days of the year, you are NOT going to get the practise to improve. If your camera ruins files and forces you to spend hours on bypassing and fixing those problems, then you are NOT going to get the same length of time to practise photography. Digital cameras are not film cameras. They are more closely related to a personal computer with an image sensor. The artists in us and the painters amongst us, must accept this fact. We must accept there's more than the "photographers skill", we must accept certain image sensors produce better quality images. We must accept lossy compression is by definition, lossy. It doesn't matter whether you're living in an 8 bedroom mansion with a $150k+ photography studio like me, and it doesn't matter whether you're the broke kid that had to choose between a roll of film or skipping lunch for a few days (like me). What matters is that you use your brain, and if you do use it, you will see that lossy compression is inferior to lossless compression.

 

From time to time, I have had difficult clients. I have been nice to them (even if I didn't want to be) and it has paid off. If we're to be subjective about this, and we're to resort to appeal to authority nonsense, I can tell that very few of you (if any) make a living from photography. 

 

Max the Dog, as much as I agree with what you're saying, I think you are wasting your time. Let people waste their money if they want to. My advice to you would be to invest in different equipment for professional jobs and to use the sony cameras as hobby cameras (assuming you still own them). They can't really be used for professional tasks. Even if you ignore the crappy raw files. The lack of redundancy makes them a no-go for most jobs. Of course there are professional photographers that use them, just like there's been the odd iphone shoot a wedding. But it's just not worth the hassle. Perhaps this post is also a waste of time. It's a great shame that people are so forgiving of sony's lossy compression. If sony were stuck on a desert island with these people, they wouldn't thank them for it. Lossy compression requires additional processing, it requires the truncation of data prior to the compression stage (this is usually done with an entropy encoder). Uncompressed raw uses far less processor resources but it does require larger pipelines for the data to travel. However, the recent 50% reductions to employees show that sony makes such a large mark up from these cameras, they can afford to put more substantial components in the camera. If they wanted to meet in the middle, they could use lossless compression, thereby lowering the requirement for larger pipelines and still keeping the original raw data. This would mean that additional preprocessing would not be required, therefore, potentially saving battery life. Lossy compression is good for one thing only really, and that's to save space. Hard drives are cheap. If anyone is open minded enough and would care to educate themselves, take a photograph at 100, 200, 800, 3200 iso etc. Watch how the file size doesn't change all that much, but it should because more noise = more data. Lossy compression typically only matters when you push the file for example if you bump the exposure by 3 stops. People tout the sony sensors as being superior to canon but it all seems like it's for nothing if the files are going to be thrashed. 

 

To go back on topic. I'd say use the otus with a DSLR only, and get a split prism focus screen. It's much faster to focus with one of them than it is to use the sony's method of "while you focus you cannot compose".

 

 

 

the stabilizer goes quite some distance to making up the gap in practice: if I need 1/100s and ISO 1600 on a D750, the A7II can still produce a critically sharp image at 1/25s and ISO 400, and with a bit of care, 1/12 and ISO 200

 

Ignoring the obvious that the stabilizer does not mitigate the problem of lossy raw compression, IBIS is useless in a few circumstances, for example if I need 1/2000sec for a moving subject. You're better to think of it as a tripod. A tripod keeps the camera steady but it doesn't keep the subject steady.

 

P.S I'm not interested in the "show your work to prove your worth to unskilled, incapable photographers". You disgust me and you wouldn't know a good photograph if it hit you in the head.

P.P.S Excuse the long post

[andyfromboston]

He's a troll with a chip on his shoulder and an irrational malice toward a camera that apparently arises from an issue so minor that he can only show us these tiny glimpses of it. He uses words like "fanboy" and "bullsh*t" on his web site, where he shows test results for said camera he dislikes that are much worse than the numbers that show up on less biased web sites and rants against another site (DXOMark) in a way that makes it evident that he hasn't read the description of the thing he's ranting against, while insulting others who point this out to him.

 

I think it's entirely appropriate that Max demonstrate that he is writing from a position of knowledge in the field

[theprofessional]

He's a troll with a chip on his shoulder and an irrational malice toward a camera that apparently arises from an issue so minor that he can only show us these tiny glimpses of it. He uses words like "fanboy" and "bullsh*t" on his web site, where he shows test results for said camera he dislikes that are much worse than the numbers that show up on less biased web sites and rants against another site (DXOMark) in a way that makes it evident that he hasn't read the description of the thing he's ranting against, while insulting others who point this out to him.

 

I think it's entirely appropriate that Max demonstrate that he is writing from a position of knowledge in the field

 

"He's a troll"

"with a chip on his shoulder"

"an irrational malice toward a camera"

"apparently arises from an issue so minor"

 

Assumptions, insults, etc

 

"he can only show us these tiny glimpses of it"

 

Fiction

 

"He uses words like "fanboy" and "bullsh*t" on his web site"

 

Poisoning the well

 

"show up on less biased web sites"

 

Conjecture

 

"while insulting others who point this out to him"

 

Hypocritical; you labelled him a troll and did an offensive psyche evaluation at the start of your post 

 

"I think it's entirely appropriate"

 

You've already demonstrated you can't think; you've misrepresented his argument and tried to persuade the audience that he shouldn't be heard simply because he made a few errors. By your own logic, we should completely discard anything you say. For your information, you don't have to be a photographer to judge digital data 

[andyfromboston]

Have you read his web site?

 

This is a troll who's been telling others they can't read just because they disagree with him long before I said anything about it. The way to deal with trolls is to first call them out, then ignore them. There is nothing wrong with insulting a troll. They use insulting and dismissive language, they deserve to get it tossed back at them.

[Guest all8]

Have you read his web site?

 

I might suggest he wrote it     Just kidding   

[theprofessional]

Have you read his web site?

 

Yes. I've also tested the cameras myself and have found that some of the problems are only present in large prints, high quality 10bit displays, etc. Nonetheless, these problems shouldn't be existent at all, and when they are present, they completely ruin the photograph. You can spend time fixing the problems, but time is money, and I'd rather not have to deal with them in the first place. Or second guess the photograph and check for the problems. 

 

 Remind me, did you say dxomark is unbiased or less biased than him?

 

http://www.dxomark.com/Cameras/Nikon/D800E

http://www.dxomark.com/Cameras/Sony/A7R

 

What about dpreview?

 

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/sony-alpha-7-s/15

 

Are they only unbiased when you want them to be?

 

"Sony's Raw compression scheme can lead to posterization at high contrast edges"

 

I am confused by your replies. The evidence is there, you just choose to ignore it and spend time on deflection. Hopefully sony fix the problem, at this point it is irrefutable 

[andyfromboston]

I referred to photozone.de and their test of the 70-200 lens. Max got numbers way lower than they did at the same settings. My suggestion is that Max is fudging numbers because he has an irrational dislike of a camera. It doesn't make sense to me to have a grudge against a camera - that's necessarily irrational. A camera can't wrong you. It's just an object.

[andyfromboston]

Why are you providing the DXOMark links? They show that the D800E and the A7R are almost exactly the same.

[theprofessional]

Why are you providing the DXOMark links? They show that the D800E and the A7R are almost exactly the same.

 

Deflection

 

I referred to photozone.de and their test of the 70-200 lens. Max got numbers way lower than they did at the same settings. My suggestion is that Max is fudging numbers because he has an irrational dislike of a camera. It doesn't make sense to me to have a grudge against a camera - that's necessarily irrational. A camera can't wrong you. It's just an object.

 

Lossy compressed raw, lenses, unicorns, whatever you want to change the subject to, I find it cute how you avoid most of the points I make and simply start a new subject closely related to max. It seems like you have an irrational dislike of max at this point, rather than the information he provided. You're wrong and poisoning the well as a means to prove him wrong. It's pedantic. You've started double posting too. You must be angry and emotional 

[andyfromboston]

If you prefer all points be made in a single message, I have no problem with that.

 

Re DXO: the two cameras have nearly identical score numbers. I'm not going to data mine for your point. What number am I supposed to be looking at?

 

Re photozone: the connect was a reply to a comment that Max made about his Imatest comparison of Nikon and Sony 70-200 lenses as used on the D8xx and the A7R. He was using the test as spring evidence in one of his anti-Sony posts. Photozone also tests the Sony 70-200 FE on the A7R using Imatest. Compare Max's test to Photozone. The numbers are much different.

[theprofessional]

I'm not interested in your irrational hatred of max. I've written a lengthy post about raw and photography. You either choose to educate yourself or you do not. It doesn't bother me. It also doesn't bother me if you can only read certain bits of a page; something max was criticized for. No doubt your most witty response to this will be to accuse me of trolling, bla bla. Peace

[andyfromboston]

No, I'm not going to accuse you of trolling. You do seem to be interested in the subject matter, but I file the complaint under "not a big deal".

[Guest all8]

First of all there is identifying information in RAW files, 2ndly the end result is what matters.  I can't share or sell RAW files to my clients, they want prints and JPEGs and Sony can't live up to that.  Some of Sony's worst problems occur with portraits where they often fall apart on the first conversion.

If I run a Nikon file through 3-4 conversions (it happens sometimes) I see the file start to fall apart (copy of a copy problem) Because of 11+7 compression, this sometimes happens with Sony files on the 1st and many times the 2nd conversion.  The file most recently posted is the best that can be done in 1 conversion.  Go duplicate it yourself - it's easy enough.  I am not doing all of the work for you. 

 

You want to keep shooting crap photos that won't stand up today yet alone the monitors we'll have in next 5-7 years ?  Be my guest - but you'll regret it. 

 

I did download your Jpeg, and even spent some time with Capture 1 ... enough time to be curious of what the RAW file looked like. But, I see that no one else bothered to download the file ... so perhaps it would have been interesting for me but obviously no body else cares.

 

Never the less, I don't really have the problems that you do with Sony stuff. The photos I get are sufficient to my needs. Thanks. I liked the photo in Istanbul, I'm visiting there in a month and will be using a Film camera!