yaya
Active member
"http://www.dxomark.com/index.php/eng/Technologies/Medium-format-ranking"
Professional portrait and landscape photographers often use medium-format cameras because of their superb performance under controlled lighting conditions. However, as these cameras are definitely not designed for so-called “action photography” scenarios, they generally do not perform well with respect to DxO Labs’ Low-Light ISO metric. Because of this inherent low-light limitation, medium-format cameras do not receive top marks on the overall DxOMark Sensor scale, even though they may show outstanding performance with respect to Color Depth or Dynamic Range.
The DxOMark Sensor scale is designed to weight equally three photographic scenarios that, taken together, cover nearly the entire photospace: Portrait, Landscape, and Action Photography. Each scenario represents use cases that stress a specific parameter of the camera—Color Depth, Dynamic Range, and Low-Light ISO, respectively. When looking at cameras with narrow or specialized uses, considering the specific ranking for the right metric or metrics is critically important.
Medium-format cameras are designed to perform best in particular use cases—specifically, they are mostly used in a studio environment where light level is not a problem, and in landscape photography, where they are most often used with tripods to facilitate long exposure times. In light of their specific uses, medium-format cameras are optimized for low ISO performance, and so do not feature a wide “analog” ISO latitude, meaning that they show some limitations at high ISO speed. Consequently, medium-format cameras end up with lower Low-Light ISO rankings compared to DSLRs, and this affects their overall DxOMark Sensor score.
I think there are some inherent conflicts between the purpose of these tests and the way they are being performed and analysed.
Also, between Portrait, action and landscape, they seem to have dropped the still life/ product area, which takes about 70% of all commercial imagery produced today...
I also think that what most people relate to as "better image quality" in MF is coming from greater colour sensitivity and tonal range, which are both actually demonstrated in these tests.
This is not to diss DxO by no means, but perhaps their tests should be re-designed to accommodate new types of cameras and more realistic measures?
Professional portrait and landscape photographers often use medium-format cameras because of their superb performance under controlled lighting conditions. However, as these cameras are definitely not designed for so-called “action photography” scenarios, they generally do not perform well with respect to DxO Labs’ Low-Light ISO metric. Because of this inherent low-light limitation, medium-format cameras do not receive top marks on the overall DxOMark Sensor scale, even though they may show outstanding performance with respect to Color Depth or Dynamic Range.
The DxOMark Sensor scale is designed to weight equally three photographic scenarios that, taken together, cover nearly the entire photospace: Portrait, Landscape, and Action Photography. Each scenario represents use cases that stress a specific parameter of the camera—Color Depth, Dynamic Range, and Low-Light ISO, respectively. When looking at cameras with narrow or specialized uses, considering the specific ranking for the right metric or metrics is critically important.
Medium-format cameras are designed to perform best in particular use cases—specifically, they are mostly used in a studio environment where light level is not a problem, and in landscape photography, where they are most often used with tripods to facilitate long exposure times. In light of their specific uses, medium-format cameras are optimized for low ISO performance, and so do not feature a wide “analog” ISO latitude, meaning that they show some limitations at high ISO speed. Consequently, medium-format cameras end up with lower Low-Light ISO rankings compared to DSLRs, and this affects their overall DxOMark Sensor score.
I think there are some inherent conflicts between the purpose of these tests and the way they are being performed and analysed.
Also, between Portrait, action and landscape, they seem to have dropped the still life/ product area, which takes about 70% of all commercial imagery produced today...
I also think that what most people relate to as "better image quality" in MF is coming from greater colour sensitivity and tonal range, which are both actually demonstrated in these tests.
This is not to diss DxO by no means, but perhaps their tests should be re-designed to accommodate new types of cameras and more realistic measures?