Blur filter on sensor
Moderators: Chris S., Pau, Beatsy, rjlittlefield, ChrisR
Blur filter on sensor
There is a rumor that Nikon will launch a D800 camera next month that will be available with/without an AA filter. Anyone have any experiences with sensors lacking such a filter, especially for high magnification imaging - say, in the 3x-100x range? I suspect a sensor lacking an AA filter will really 'screw up' bug eyes.
NU.
student of entomology
Quote – Holmes on ‘Entomology’
” I suppose you are an entomologist ? “
” Not quite so ambitious as that, sir. I should like to put my eyes on the individual entitled to that name.
No man can be truly called an entomologist,
sir; the subject is too vast for any single human intelligence to grasp.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr
The Poet at the Breakfast Table.
Nikon camera, lenses and objectives
Olympus microscope and objectives
student of entomology
Quote – Holmes on ‘Entomology’
” I suppose you are an entomologist ? “
” Not quite so ambitious as that, sir. I should like to put my eyes on the individual entitled to that name.
No man can be truly called an entomologist,
sir; the subject is too vast for any single human intelligence to grasp.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr
The Poet at the Breakfast Table.
Nikon camera, lenses and objectives
Olympus microscope and objectives
The AA filter function is to supress moiré effect. Geometric repetitive textures like compound eyes are prone to generate moiré....
I don't know about this rumor source, this kind of rumors are usually propagated by resolution fans in photo fora and the makers do not follow them, but who knows...
I don't know about this rumor source, this kind of rumors are usually propagated by resolution fans in photo fora and the makers do not follow them, but who knows...
Pau
D800 announced, available with/without AA filter
http://en.nikon.ca/Nikon-Products/Produ ... /D800.html
http://en.nikon.ca/Nikon-Products/Produ ... /D800.html
NU.
student of entomology
Quote – Holmes on ‘Entomology’
” I suppose you are an entomologist ? “
” Not quite so ambitious as that, sir. I should like to put my eyes on the individual entitled to that name.
No man can be truly called an entomologist,
sir; the subject is too vast for any single human intelligence to grasp.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr
The Poet at the Breakfast Table.
Nikon camera, lenses and objectives
Olympus microscope and objectives
student of entomology
Quote – Holmes on ‘Entomology’
” I suppose you are an entomologist ? “
” Not quite so ambitious as that, sir. I should like to put my eyes on the individual entitled to that name.
No man can be truly called an entomologist,
sir; the subject is too vast for any single human intelligence to grasp.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr
The Poet at the Breakfast Table.
Nikon camera, lenses and objectives
Olympus microscope and objectives
From dpreview:
"We haven't had the opportunity to examine any samples in detail, but the comparisons that we've been shown certainly suggest that the D800E will deliver a significant boost in pixel-level detail compared to the 'stock' D800."
The new version of the Nikon software will include an anti-moire tool.
I think this is pretty exciting. MFBs have long not used AA filters and instead have dealt with it in their RAW processing software.
"We haven't had the opportunity to examine any samples in detail, but the comparisons that we've been shown certainly suggest that the D800E will deliver a significant boost in pixel-level detail compared to the 'stock' D800."
The new version of the Nikon software will include an anti-moire tool.
I think this is pretty exciting. MFBs have long not used AA filters and instead have dealt with it in their RAW processing software.
With or without the AA filter?ChrisR wrote: Put me down for one then.
NU.
student of entomology
Quote – Holmes on ‘Entomology’
” I suppose you are an entomologist ? “
” Not quite so ambitious as that, sir. I should like to put my eyes on the individual entitled to that name.
No man can be truly called an entomologist,
sir; the subject is too vast for any single human intelligence to grasp.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr
The Poet at the Breakfast Table.
Nikon camera, lenses and objectives
Olympus microscope and objectives
student of entomology
Quote – Holmes on ‘Entomology’
” I suppose you are an entomologist ? “
” Not quite so ambitious as that, sir. I should like to put my eyes on the individual entitled to that name.
No man can be truly called an entomologist,
sir; the subject is too vast for any single human intelligence to grasp.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr
The Poet at the Breakfast Table.
Nikon camera, lenses and objectives
Olympus microscope and objectives
From the odd websites which show (even with bias) the benefis of removing the filter, I'd go without.
IF the same filtering can be applied in software, then I'd prefer to do that. The relatively little I know about software filtering doesn't suggest any advantage doing it in hardware, but that may be due to my ignorance.
It would need to be a filter with a rather special "characteristic" in terms of the shape of the bandpass, but I expect we have the processing power to put that in the workflow without a big problem. Perhaps it's rather like the "sharpening" (in reverse) which we can set in our cameras - it makes a little difference to maximum frame rate, but not much.
Done in post processing there's surely more flexibility, in being able to apply different processing to different images or parts of an image - depending on the local contrast for example? Adobe fodder.
The camera has "face recognition" AF. Slightly surprising for a serious camera maybe, but I imagine wedding/social photographers woud use it. They would also be likely to have issues with moire patterns on clothing perhaps, so not want the software overhead on every shot.
One of the well known pundits (Ken Rockwell?) wrote an article showing how hard it was to get a better picture out of a Nikon D3x (24MP) than a D3 (12MP) due to real-world constraints in lenses, movements, lighting and so on. Hasselblad said they would bring out a new range of lenses for their highest resolution sensors. What a joy for the marketing men.
IF the same filtering can be applied in software, then I'd prefer to do that. The relatively little I know about software filtering doesn't suggest any advantage doing it in hardware, but that may be due to my ignorance.
It would need to be a filter with a rather special "characteristic" in terms of the shape of the bandpass, but I expect we have the processing power to put that in the workflow without a big problem. Perhaps it's rather like the "sharpening" (in reverse) which we can set in our cameras - it makes a little difference to maximum frame rate, but not much.
Done in post processing there's surely more flexibility, in being able to apply different processing to different images or parts of an image - depending on the local contrast for example? Adobe fodder.
The camera has "face recognition" AF. Slightly surprising for a serious camera maybe, but I imagine wedding/social photographers woud use it. They would also be likely to have issues with moire patterns on clothing perhaps, so not want the software overhead on every shot.
One of the well known pundits (Ken Rockwell?) wrote an article showing how hard it was to get a better picture out of a Nikon D3x (24MP) than a D3 (12MP) due to real-world constraints in lenses, movements, lighting and so on. Hasselblad said they would bring out a new range of lenses for their highest resolution sensors. What a joy for the marketing men.
Would the absence of an AA filter make it harder or impossible to clean the "sensor"? Perhaps there is some sort of new protective, cleanable coating on the sensor?
In principle, one cannot eliminate aliasing (one of whose effects is Moire) in post-processing. Once you've undersampled the analog image, the aliasing is baked in. Still, one may be able to reduce the harmful effects to the point where one doesn't care re one's primary photographic subjects.
Having said this, I personally believe that anti-aliasing filters do more harm than good for most of what I enjoy photographing.
In principle, one cannot eliminate aliasing (one of whose effects is Moire) in post-processing. Once you've undersampled the analog image, the aliasing is baked in. Still, one may be able to reduce the harmful effects to the point where one doesn't care re one's primary photographic subjects.
Having said this, I personally believe that anti-aliasing filters do more harm than good for most of what I enjoy photographing.
-Phil
"Diffraction never sleeps"
"Diffraction never sleeps"
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Peter De Smidt
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The Nikon page says that "D800E incorporates an optical low pass filter (OLPF) without anti-aliasing properties".
On the surface this statement sounds paradoxical, because low pass and anti-aliasing go hand-in-hand. Best I can figure is that they're using "optical low pass filter (OLPF)" as a label and in this case not a completely accurate description, referring to the chunk of stuff that goes in front of the sensor.
I'm thinking they have two chunks of stuff with the same optical path thickness and wavelength filtering properties, but one of them does anti-aliasing as usual and the other one doesn't. It's probably a lot like the retrofits that have long been offered by camera tweakers, but provided and supported by Nikon when you buy the "E". It's also possible that the "E" filter does do some amount of low pass filtering, but not the same and not as strong as what their standard AA filters do.
--Rik
On the surface this statement sounds paradoxical, because low pass and anti-aliasing go hand-in-hand. Best I can figure is that they're using "optical low pass filter (OLPF)" as a label and in this case not a completely accurate description, referring to the chunk of stuff that goes in front of the sensor.
I'm thinking they have two chunks of stuff with the same optical path thickness and wavelength filtering properties, but one of them does anti-aliasing as usual and the other one doesn't. It's probably a lot like the retrofits that have long been offered by camera tweakers, but provided and supported by Nikon when you buy the "E". It's also possible that the "E" filter does do some amount of low pass filtering, but not the same and not as strong as what their standard AA filters do.
--Rik
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Joseph S. Wisniewski
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- Location: Detroit, Michigan
It's sort of the opposite.
A normal AA filter operates like a DIC microscope, it uses a birefringent LiNbO3 slab to break apart polarized light and offset it based on polarization. Just a flat slab, though, not wedges, because they want parallel bundles, not diverging.
That gets you a spread along one axis.
Then there's a retarder plate to turn the two polarized images back into a non-polarized one, so a second slab will do the same thing on the opposite axis.
To cut the thickness of the pile of slabs, sensor makers started replacing the plain glass sensor cover with one of the birefringent slabs. So, now the second slab is part of the sensor package and cannot be removed without having to run a separate batch of sensors.
But, just like a DIC microscope, if you reorient the first slab to the same direction as the second one, and skip the phase retarder, you can take the parallel paths and put them back together.
All the retrofitters do is remove the first pack, which, in older cameras, had everything: IR reflecting dichroic coating, IR and UV absorbing glass, LiNbO3 slab, retarder, LiNbO3 slab, glass and replace it with a simple slab of glass, so ##### not to perturb the optical path length.
That's why there's warnings on cameras like 5D II and D7000 that the AA removal will only be half effective, because they can't remove the slab that's permanently part of the sensor package. You can negate the remaining half with a linear polarizer, LOL...
A normal AA filter operates like a DIC microscope, it uses a birefringent LiNbO3 slab to break apart polarized light and offset it based on polarization. Just a flat slab, though, not wedges, because they want parallel bundles, not diverging.
That gets you a spread along one axis.
Then there's a retarder plate to turn the two polarized images back into a non-polarized one, so a second slab will do the same thing on the opposite axis.
To cut the thickness of the pile of slabs, sensor makers started replacing the plain glass sensor cover with one of the birefringent slabs. So, now the second slab is part of the sensor package and cannot be removed without having to run a separate batch of sensors.
But, just like a DIC microscope, if you reorient the first slab to the same direction as the second one, and skip the phase retarder, you can take the parallel paths and put them back together.
All the retrofitters do is remove the first pack, which, in older cameras, had everything: IR reflecting dichroic coating, IR and UV absorbing glass, LiNbO3 slab, retarder, LiNbO3 slab, glass and replace it with a simple slab of glass, so ##### not to perturb the optical path length.
That's why there's warnings on cameras like 5D II and D7000 that the AA removal will only be half effective, because they can't remove the slab that's permanently part of the sensor package. You can negate the remaining half with a linear polarizer, LOL...
Last edited by Joseph S. Wisniewski on Wed Feb 08, 2012 8:37 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Joseph S. Wisniewski
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Wow. I've done that before, and it's not easy. Just breeching the sensor cover glass to get at the Bayer filter is complex. Dissolving the organics is complex, too.stevekale wrote:Probably right. I know a lot of B&W guys who'd love to see the Bayer filter go as well. In fact, some have had these etched off their sensors.
Was Iliah Borg one of the people involved?
I see that the new D800 has 36.3 megapixels in its full-frame sensor. Also, 15.3MP DX-format capture is provided for those who prefer a crop-sensor for some purposes.
http://www.dpreview.com/previews/nikonD800/
Is there any credible use for so many megapixels for macro-related photography? Perhaps with the AA filter absent in one model of this camera, the extra pixels could more easily find something useful to do? I would like to see some high-quality landscape photography comparisons, side-by-side, with varying pixel count, at ISO 100, using a max quality prime lens.
Perhaps 36 megapixels provides some benefit for intentionally cropping one's macro photos so as to use the central portion of the image, sometimes sharper than the edges and corners? Just a thought, not a recommendation.
I assume that the pending Canon DSLR updates will have something like this boost in megapixels, too (5D Mark II, 1DS-3 replacement). It's curious that the new Canon 1D-X camera has 18 megapixels but a higher frame rate for burst mode shooting (e.g., sports photography). Chuck Westfall, a US Canon spokesman, is quoted by dpreview.com: 'It's clear the time has come for the 1DX to replace the whole 1D series,' says Westfall." I personally see the 1D-X as more of a replacement for the action-photography oriented 1D-Mk4, although the Mk4 has a crop sensor.
Sounds like we need to buy bigger hard drives and camera memory cards?!?!
http://www.dpreview.com/previews/nikonD800/
Is there any credible use for so many megapixels for macro-related photography? Perhaps with the AA filter absent in one model of this camera, the extra pixels could more easily find something useful to do? I would like to see some high-quality landscape photography comparisons, side-by-side, with varying pixel count, at ISO 100, using a max quality prime lens.
Perhaps 36 megapixels provides some benefit for intentionally cropping one's macro photos so as to use the central portion of the image, sometimes sharper than the edges and corners? Just a thought, not a recommendation.
I assume that the pending Canon DSLR updates will have something like this boost in megapixels, too (5D Mark II, 1DS-3 replacement). It's curious that the new Canon 1D-X camera has 18 megapixels but a higher frame rate for burst mode shooting (e.g., sports photography). Chuck Westfall, a US Canon spokesman, is quoted by dpreview.com: 'It's clear the time has come for the 1DX to replace the whole 1D series,' says Westfall." I personally see the 1D-X as more of a replacement for the action-photography oriented 1D-Mk4, although the Mk4 has a crop sensor.
Sounds like we need to buy bigger hard drives and camera memory cards?!?!
-Phil
"Diffraction never sleeps"
"Diffraction never sleeps"