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IQ3 100MP owners/users impressions

GrahamWelland

Subscriber & Workshop Member
Day one with my new IQ3-100 and all I can add to this conversation is, and excuse the profanity, holy s$$t!!!

First shoot tonight and missed the good light so it was horribly in shadow. Blew out my first shot by three stops. Recovered completely in C1 :thumbs:

Not only recovered, but full of detail and contrast too! Next shot in pano was exposed correctly and I was able to stitch as if nothing had happened.

Despite being on ramen noodles until the next month, and then living on Amex bonus points after I pay the the bill, I'm seriously impressed!!

Real DR is beyond what I'd expected btw. Very impressed so far.

pics to follow ...
 
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dchew

Well-known member
Oh, and Ken Doo & Dave Chew, yes you told me so and your predictions were indeed on target. :D
Spending other people's money is one of our favorite things in this forum!

Good news Graham. If the Ramen noodles get boring try peanut butter squares: A piece of toast smothered in peanut butter, cut into four pieces. Yum.

Dave
 

vjbelle

Well-known member
Good move, Graham..... when you use it on your Actus you will be amazed with the ES. I would never be without it. Am in the Dolomites now - my first excursion with the new back and its working like a dream. I have found that a loupe and 2 second delay the best workflow method versus trying to use an Ipad and capture pilot for focus and triggering..... very clumsy and not near as accurate as a loupe.

Victor
 

dougpeterson

Workshop Member
Day one with my new IQ3-100 and all I can add to this conversation is, and excuse the profanity, holy s$$t!!!

First shoot tonight and missed the good light so it was horribly in shadow. Blew out my first shot by three stops. Recovered completely in C1 :thumbs:

Not only recovered, but full of detail and contrast too! Next shot in pano was exposed correctly and I was able to stitch as if nothing had happened.

Despite being on ramen noodles until the next month, and then living on Amex bonus points after I pay the the bill, I'm seriously impressed!!

Real DR is beyond what I'd expected btw. Very impressed so fsr.

pics to follow ...
Glad you're loving it!

We look forward to the images. :)
 

Don Libby

Well-known member
Day one with my new IQ3-100 and all I can add to this conversation is, and excuse the profanity, holy s$$t!!!

First shoot tonight and missed the good light so it was horribly in shadow. Blew out my first shot by three stops. Recovered completely in C1 :thumbs:

Not only recovered, but full of detail and contrast too! Next shot in pano was exposed correctly and I was able to stitch as if nothing had happened.

Despite being on ramen noodles until the next month, and then living on Amex bonus points after I pay the the bill, I'm seriously impressed!!

Real DR is beyond what I'd expected btw. Very impressed so fsr.

pics to follow ...
You always have a place to stay if you're in Tucson!

I've had the cousin to the IQ3-100 the IQ1-100 and can agree with everyone. I would have opted for the IQ3 if I were still using the Cambo however this is perfect for me.
 

GrahamWelland

Subscriber & Workshop Member
These are literally the first two images shot in the wild.

I completely blew exposure as I trusted the XF AE initially but adjusted them for subsequent shots. Both first two images over-exposed, dropped the first one FOUR stops, the second by 2 stops and combined them as a pano. Bear in mind also these were shot in available darkness post sunset in a shady creek. This is just for illustration of the DR that really impressed me. (I don't normally miss exposure by this much :) )

2 min @ ISO 400, 75-150 @ 75mm f/8 & 1 min for second shot.

As Shot:
Untitled 2.jpg

adjusted to match:
Untitled.jpg

As combined in a pano.
[Group-0]-CF012566_CF012567-2-images.jpg
 
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GrahamWelland

Subscriber & Workshop Member
Interesting 'problem' I ran into this weekend when printing on my HP Z3200 24in printer ... the native size of the 100mp files at printer's 300dpi preferred print resolution exceed 24in on the narrowest side!! So for me, every full size print is a down-rez or printer interpolated dpi for the driver. I must admit that this is a nice problem to have.

Oh, and NO Ken Doo/Don Libby that doesn't mean that I need a new & bigger printer!! :ROTFL:
 

MGrayson

Subscriber and Workshop Member
Interesting 'problem' I ran into this weekend when printing on my HP Z3200 24in printer ... the native size of the 100mp files at printer's 300dpi preferred print resolution exceed 24in on the narrowest side!! So for me, every full size print is a down-rez or printer interpolated dpi for the driver. I must admit that this is a nice problem to have.

Oh, and NO Ken Doo/Don Libby that doesn't mean that I need a new & bigger printer!! :ROTFL:
I saw the new 64" Epson (P20000) at PhotoPlus. Very nice!

--Matt
 

DougDolde

Well-known member
Interesting 'problem' I ran into this weekend when printing on my HP Z3200 24in printer ... the native size of the 100mp files at printer's 300dpi preferred print resolution exceed 24in on the narrowest side!! So for me, every full size print is a down-rez or printer interpolated dpi for the driver. I must admit that this is a nice problem to have.

Oh, and NO Ken Doo/Don Libby that doesn't mean that I need a new & bigger printer!! :ROTFL:
Slightly off topic of your issue, but I regularly print 36x48 from my IQ180 files at about 209 dpi on my Z5200. And they look fantastic with almost a 3D look and super fine detail. And that's on canvas.

I don't believe the 300 dpi hype. I think it'a a creation of sellers of more megapixels.
 

etrump

Well-known member
Awesome shot, as usual the color is perfect!

Used my new back for the first time on a shoot a couple of days ago. Took my arca swiss system. As one who was pretty adept at using Live View focusing on the IQ180 and 380, I think focusing on the back works fine, but it is dependent on your eyes. Mine are pretty good for a 62 year old, but I always carry a strong pair of cheap reading glasses and and it's pretty helpful being able to get really close to the screen when focusing. Live View focusing on this back is a real game changer for me. I also like having the useable option of ISO's more than 35, after testing I feel up to 200 won't be an issue at all, 400 is still good and even 800 might be useable depending on the scene.

Live View focusing on this back is quick and accurate, I don't think the batteries will be an issue because you aren't in live view for long. ON the tech camera I also use live view for composition, and I also have WiFi turned on. In the two hours I was shooting I used the equivalent of about 1 battery worth of power. Granted I'm not a prolific shooter, but on the image below I was waiting for about 45 minutes capturing various frames to try and get enough data to stack and get rid of the people coming down the ladder. So the back and wifi were on for all of that time.

Regarding the surface pro, I think with this back there are better alternatives. In my case I used capture pilot on my iPhone 6s+. Screen plenty big enough, easy to zoom into 100% and focus the camera. I also like that even though the camera was about 18" off the ground, I was standing next to it composing and focusing. Since I was in the middle of a stream it was nice not to have to kneel down in the water to see the back.


Arca Swiss rm3di, Rodenstock 40mm lens, 4 seconds at f/11.5, iso 50
 

etrump

Well-known member
Totally agree! It used to make a difference maybe 6-8 years ago with inkjet dithering but now (even with a loupe) they approach the look of constant tone printers IMHO.

I don't believe the 300 dpi hype. I think it'a a creation of sellers of more megapixels.
 

kdphotography

Well-known member
Doug,

It isn't all hype. Not at all. Though depending on its use and context, mere claims of megapixels can indeed be rather simplistic and not the entire story.

There is also a difference in the quality of those megapixels---where they originated from. And as you've found the IQ180 produces really great images in print. I get to see and print a lot of different images for photographers/artists using many different types of cameras, and there is definitely a difference in the quality of the megapixels, whether that be in resolution, color, or simply character of the file. And, of course, there are many other factors involved here that impact the quality of the file. But all things held constant, not all megapixels are created equally. :)

I simply love working with and printing medium format digital files. I didn't find much of a difference jumping from the P65+ to the IQ180---but the difference is much more noticeable coming from the IQ180 (80 megapixels) to the IQ3 100MP. And I'm sure it's not all about the change in megapixels. That being said, having that extra information in the file simply makes printing easier, particularly when setting files for 360dpi for Epson wide format printers. When you have a MFDB, it just makes printing easier!

Ken
 

GrahamWelland

Subscriber & Workshop Member
I've just always gone with the flow and used a set of print parameters recommended by the printer manufacturer for dpi. For HP that's always been 300dpi. Couple that with the printing actions from my Charles Cramer fine art printing workshop and I've always been happy. The only time I've ignored the resize to print res/local contrast etc on final file was when I used to use my Epson with Imageprint - I could just drop the full res file and it just did a magnificent job, well so long as the damned Epson wasn't clogged!

Tried out the electronic shutter with my Cambo Actus DB yesterday. It works great but there are some usability bugs (both me and camera).

I managed to get the dark frame correction out of sync producing a couple of very weird looking files. Since it doesn't require a new dark frame for a sequence of images at the same exposure I ended up having to power off to reset although I guess if I'd changed exposure it might also have fixed it.

The other observation was with ES and artifacts. I was shooting in low light a scenic outlook with tourists and traffic and so was looking for rolling shutter type artifacts. I had a couple of shots with white floating orbs of light that I assume were flashes captured by the electronic shutter scan. Quite weird ...

CF012633 3.jpg
 
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Shashin

Well-known member
I don't believe the 300 dpi hype.
The relevance of the 300dpi number is under specific criteria: an 8x10 print viewed at 12". A 16x20 print would simply need to be 150dpi if viewed at 24". You notice, the pixel resolution of the image does not change in both cases. Or, to put it a different way, pixel resolution is not the limit to print size because three conditions are always needed. Print quality turns out to be an angular problem, not a linear one. dpi is a linear measurement and has little meaning by itself.

Yes, camera manufactures know this (I worked for one and pointed it out), but viewing conditions confuse customers and so they use this weird spec of how big the file would print if it were printed at 300dpi. Customers don't know any better and so they leap to conclusions that prints need to be 300dpi regardless of size.
 

ErikKaffehr

Well-known member
Hi,

I have read and seen at several places that it is regarded that 180 PPI is needed for an excellent print. That figure is probably based on 20/20 vision and 50cm or 20" viewing distance. It essentially corresponds to normal vision at that distance.

Jeff Schewe discusses that a bit in the second edition of "Image Sharpening" uses the figure 172 PPI at 20" on page 77 and suggests 180 PPI for large prints on page 83.

But, we need to keep in mind that those figures are for resolution, not for fine detail contrast. Fine detail contrast is the amount of contrast a system can transfer for a given size of detail. A more technical version is called MTF. There are many nice properties of MTF, and one is that it is multiplicative. So you can take the MTF of the lens, the MTF of the diffraction at shooting aperture, the MTF of the OLP filter (if present) and the MTF of the sensor. Oddly enough, the MTF of sensor depends only on the size of the pixel aperture.

The other interesting thing with MTF is that it is low and medium frequency modulation that affects apparent sharpness and not high frequency detail. So, it may be argued that sharpening for print should be oriented towards low frequencies, instead of focusing sharpening actual pixel view on screen.

Now, there are more things than resolution and MTF. DR has gotten famous as it often was stated that some sensors have a great advantage over others, but DR essentially just says how much you can lift the darks, sometimes it is very relevant but mostly not very so. Just check how many great images were shot on Canons.

Another factor is noise. At normal exposures that is dominated by "shot noise", which is just natural variation of photons hitting the pixels. A larger sensor can detect more photons than a small sensor, so all things equal it will have less noise. Lower noise is good because it gives more liberty for math.

The ability of pixels to collect photons is normally measured in FWC, and the usual measure is number of electron charges. A sensor with larger FWC will have lower native ISO, as it takes more photons to fill it up and will have less noise and better DR. It is feasible that the new CMOS sensors have FWC a bit on the large size.

To that comes CFA design, some designs may be optimised for low ISO work and some may be more permissive.

The final and perhaps dominant part is raw conversion and processing. Modern gapless microlenses may help the demosaicer by offering less of point sampling and more of areas sampling. Colour is mostly decided by camera profiles.

So, there are a lot of parameters. It is feasible that the new sensors can deliver even better image quality than the old ones. But you can say that the old ones were "good enough". And you can also say that the new ones "do not improve the quality of my work".

Best regards
Erik


Slightly off topic of your issue, but I regularly print 36x48 from my IQ180 files at about 209 dpi on my Z5200. And they look fantastic with almost a 3D look and super fine detail. And that's on canvas.

I don't believe the 300 dpi hype. I think it'a a creation of sellers of more megapixels.
 

ErikKaffehr

Well-known member
Hi,

I would agree, just add that 300 or 360 PPI (and that is PPI not DPI) corresponds to the native resolution of Canon resp Epson printers. Those resolutions are intended to match human vision at a certain distance. The 360 PPI that Epson uses is a very good match 20/20 vision at 25 cm.

Another figure is LPI, corresponding Lines Per Inch in screens used for printing. You would prepare the image to work optimally with the screen used.

Best regards
Erik

The relevance of the 300dpi number is under specific criteria: an 8x10 print viewed at 12". A 16x20 print would simply need to be 150dpi if viewed at 24". You notice, the pixel resolution of the image does not change in both cases. Or, to put it a different way, pixel resolution is not the limit to print size because three conditions are always needed. Print quality turns out to be an angular problem, not a linear one. dpi is a linear measurement and has little meaning by itself.

Yes, camera manufactures know this (I worked for one and pointed it out), but viewing conditions confuse customers and so they use this weird spec of how big the file would print if it were printed at 300dpi. Customers don't know any better and so they leap to conclusions that prints need to be 300dpi regardless of size.
 
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