Phase 4150 double exposure vs. Fuji 100s single exposure shadow recovery

[SrMphoto]

I'm in agreement with Paul regarding the limitations of FA. But then stoppers also have limitations which would be very similar to FA. I am very much aware of the ability of FA to decrease noise but for my shooting requirements this feature/benefit is of little use.

I'll be shooting the Oregon Coast with both my 4150 and 100s and will have the time to compare FA vs. Stoppers to see if there is any pronounced visual difference. As far as shooting a single exposure vs. two shot for shadow recovery that will simply depend on which camera I am using. If I am shooting with my 4150 then it's simple to shoot with the dual shot feature but so far I am convinced that any differences are subtle. I'll try to shoot examples of both while on the Coast.

Victor B.

Looking forward to your report.
None of my MF cameras support FA, but my m43 camera does. Of course, the noise in the shadows is much more prominent with the smaller sensor than with an MF sensor. 16 shots FA makes a huge difference on m43 but may not help much the already excellent Phase One shadow noise.
I do not know how Phase One handles noise during long exposures (sensor heating). Some cameras require LENR for long exposures, but with FA, LENR is not needed.

 

[vjbelle]

Oddly enough I'm actually bringing the 4150 as a backup!!! I intend to shoot mostly with my 100s and its native lenses along with my Actus and LF lenses. I almost always use rise but maybe it's unneeded in this environment. I'm more interested in how the 100s will handle water with focus stacking which may have an effect similar to FA.

Victor B.

 

[SrMphoto]

Oddly enough I'm actually bringing the 4150 as a backup!!! I intend to shoot mostly with my 100s and its native lenses along with my Actus and LF lenses. I almost always use rise but maybe it's unneeded in this environment. I'm more interested in how the 100s will handle water with focus stacking which may have an effect similar to FA.

Victor B.

Water movement (or any movement) typically looks weird with focus stacking. Movements should look ‘natural’ ( long exposure look) with frame averaging.

 

[onasj]

I've been pretty balanced (I think) in my opinions about the Phase One IQ4-150, good and bad. But if you want to compare dynamic range and shadow recovery, you have to pull wayyyy more than 1.7 stops. Almost any modern pro-level camera can pull 1.7 stops of shadows without breaking a sweat. Try 3-5 stops. No need to mess with experimental fram averaging tricks. Just do a single shot in the IQ4's 16-bit EX mode and in the GFX100(s)'s best raw mode, pull up both images 3-5 stops in post, and compare shadow detail and noise. Physics says the 54x40 mm sensor of the IQ4 will have more DR overall than the 44x33 mm sensor of the GFX100(s) simply on size alone, assuming (as Sony suggests) that the sensor in the GFX is a crop of the same sensor tech in the IQ4.

 

[Camel]

Question - why wouldn't you just shoot one image at the appropriate shutter speed to freeze the movement then another using frame averaging then blend to the effect you like in PS? It seems it would be much easier than using ND filters. It likely doesn't solve all issues but ND filters have a bunch of issues.

 

[med]

Question - why wouldn't you just shoot one image at the appropriate shutter speed to freeze the movement then another using frame averaging then blend to the effect you like in PS? It seems it would be much easier than using ND filters. It likely doesn't solve all issues but ND filters have a bunch of issues.

This is what I was going to suggest for anyone struggling with parts of the scene like Paul’s branches/leaves blowing in the wind.

In my (albeit limited) time experimenting with Frame Averaging with the IQ4-150, I have also had issues with light wind softening parts of the image undesirably, although they would have been soft with an ND as well. I usually will shoot a non-FA shot of a scene anyway to judge the exposure, so I have that to blend in post to remove any unwanted smoothing.

For me anyway, FA is for when I want to smooth water or remove people from a scene (I.e ND replacement), and DualExposure+ is when I want to absolutely maximize shadow recovery in a scene, or minimize noise in general.

 

[Paul2660]

You can do this at times. But trees against the sky can be very hard to blend back in. Especially if there was a lot of motion.

I have done several focus stacks in the field with water and it can create issues with Helicon. It’s not as big a problem if the water is blurred at slower exposures which is what I tend to shoot.

I played around with some stacking the other day and was surprised to see the latest version of Helicon did a better job with motion artifacts something that had been a big problem in the past.

Paul

 

[vieri]

In my experience, frame averaging and ND filters behave equally as far as the final image's look, with the advantage that frame averaging results in cleaner files, no need for LENR on the IQ4, and more flexibility in the choice of the shutter speed compared to the "go by full stops" approach of ND filters.

If there is wind and you don't want to have branches / leaves and the like showing motion in your photographs, then neither FA nor ND filters would work, and a different solution is needed (e.g. compositing frames, as others have suggested).

Hope this helps, best regards

Vieri

 

[Boinger]

The point of frame averaging is to act like an ND-filter, i.e., the movement gets blurred. The blurred parts should look the same as if applying a long exposure. Is that not the case with Phase One?
The only problem that I can imagine is that the time between exposures is too long compared to one shot's exposure time. In that case, the blur may not look nice. That is probably why Olympus allows 1/30 sec as the fastest shutter speed to be used in frame averaging.

The exposure in the phase is seemless. It just continues exposing at that pixel in the exposure intervals for your set overall exposure time.

FA obviously will not work at high shutter speeds where you are trying to freeze action.

At low shutter speeds 1/4s and slower it will have the same effects as those shutter speeds give averaged or not.