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Phase One IQ4 Update and Webinar (with a surprise!)
- Thread starter dougpeterson
- Start date
Thanks Doug! Nice to see the return of Sensor+. With a CMOS back that already has very usable higher ISOs I am excited to see the low light possibilities for certain situations. It will be nice to see how noise at ISO 3200, 6400, etc compared to the D8_0 and A7r__ series.
I have never owned a back with Sensor+... are the results similar to downresing to a smaller file in post production, or are they much better?
faberryman
Member
I am new to Phase One. I was hoping this would be a good introduction, but I'm ten minutes into the video and the guy hasn't said anything. He just keeps repeating "infinity platform is robust". I think I'll rely on the written materials.
dougpeterson
Workshop Member
Sensor+ on the Dalsa CCD sensors was done via pixel pinning at the time of readout.
Sensor+ on the IQ4 series is done at the sensor level, but after readout.
This means the ISO range of the Dalsa sensor jumped two stops (good if you wanted high ISO, bad if you wanted to keep the same low ISO for shooting with wide apertures in bright light, or because you want a longer exposure to blur moving objects like waterfalls or star trails).
Notably the ISO range on the IQ4 (max 25,600 on the IQ4 150mp color, max 102,400 on the IQ4mp achromatic) is already quite generous for most kinds of shooting that medium format is well suited to anyway.
Pixel quality should be very similar to downrezing in post. Primary advantage is workflow: you are shooting ~40 megapixel (37.75) raws instead of ~150 megapixel raws (151 to be exact). That means faster editing, faster processing, and lower storage requirements.
Since I use medium format for everything from weddings, to sweeping landscapes, to pictures of my nieces and nephews, to photos of my exotic-food-club dinners, I'll be pretty glad to be able to set the resolution according to need.
Needless to say when the job calls for high res (big prints, cropping flexibility, etc) we'd suggest leaving it at 150mp.
dougpeterson
Workshop Member
Or come see the IQ4 in a private 1:1 demo where you won't have to hear about things that aren't relevant to your needs/wants/interests
. We have offices in NYC and LA and are traveling with the IQ4 quite a bit in the coming weeks including LA, San Diego, Seattle, San Fran, Portland, Denver, and Phoenix. Info for Denver and Phoenix will be posted later today, but the rest are live now: Events & Training | Digital TransitionsOur mini site also has a huge amount of written materials: Phase One IQ4 150MP
Duplicate post, but sure would like to see some of this sooner than later.
I think the Tech camera crowd is pleased, if they can justify either new purchase price or upgrade at 22K from a 3100.
However, after watching the latest webinar, I do have to wonder about other things.
1. Focus peaking, so far haven't seen anything on that, and it's something that is a huge miss from the 3100 being CMOS and most other
CMOS cameras even iPhones have it. It would be nice to see how it's implemented, colors, amount etc.
2. Low light push, I haven't seen anything on this yet. Maybe it's just not a big need for most. But being able to shoot at ISO 400 and push
the file 1.5 to 2 is important to me. Just yesterday, out in the field, shooting a scene that needed 1 to 5 seconds for water, had to be
reshot at ISO 400 to stop thein motion due to the wind. The 3100 at 400 IMO pushed 1 stop is pretty much at the max and that's for
areas in good light not shadows.
3. The Video talks about the different raw settings and mentions the 16 bit Low ISO setting, but then says it's only available at ISO base
ISO, again, sure be nice to see a similar intelligence in the ISO 200 up 800 range.
4. Diffraction, issues, nothing yet posted on this that I can find. Considering the best aperture range on the current 3100 is around F8 to
maybe F11 (I often to get to F14 and F16 and pay a slight price with diffraction softness, what will the penalty be for F14 on the IQ4
150MP. It's a trade off between diffraction and DOF, as MF already has a considerably shallower DOF than 35mm.
5. Sensor Plus? really, I was greatly surprised that this was considered a "plus". Back the day of the IQ180, and sensor plus, the 20MP
output was better thanif not all CMOS and or CCD 35mm cameras. Amazing details, up to around ISO 2K sometimes 3200. But now with
approaching 50MP and past, not sure if a great selling point on a 22K camera back is the ability to shoot at 37.75 MP. Even if it is 16 bit.
Instead again, had hoped to see a vastly improved full frame CMOS noise clinic due to the BSI chip. P1 has made a huge point on the
infinity platform being only percent utilized at launch, hopefully sometime in the future something may come out.
6. No dark frame subtraction, again, would love to see if by turning this off, you are losing any amount of either DR. or shadow noise loss.
The 3100 with the that it can't do this (unless you are on a tech camera, go figure), has a huge gap in development from any other 4 year
old or newer CMOS camera all of them allow you to turn off dark frame noise reduction. With the 3100, if you are out shooting in a 10
second or 30 second shot situation, it really become problematic as both the light and scene may change during the added 30 seconds of
black out needed, and if you press it to 45 seconds, becomes a really big issue, not to mention extra drain on the battery.
Hopefully P1 is working on showing some example of some of these points in the future? or maybe they have, and I have not found the webinar that talks about it.
Paul
I think the Tech camera crowd is pleased, if they can justify either new purchase price or upgrade at 22K from a 3100.
However, after watching the latest webinar, I do have to wonder about other things.
1. Focus peaking, so far haven't seen anything on that, and it's something that is a huge miss from the 3100 being CMOS and most other
CMOS cameras even iPhones have it. It would be nice to see how it's implemented, colors, amount etc.
2. Low light push, I haven't seen anything on this yet. Maybe it's just not a big need for most. But being able to shoot at ISO 400 and push
the file 1.5 to 2 is important to me. Just yesterday, out in the field, shooting a scene that needed 1 to 5 seconds for water, had to be
reshot at ISO 400 to stop thein motion due to the wind. The 3100 at 400 IMO pushed 1 stop is pretty much at the max and that's for
areas in good light not shadows.
3. The Video talks about the different raw settings and mentions the 16 bit Low ISO setting, but then says it's only available at ISO base
ISO, again, sure be nice to see a similar intelligence in the ISO 200 up 800 range.
4. Diffraction, issues, nothing yet posted on this that I can find. Considering the best aperture range on the current 3100 is around F8 to
maybe F11 (I often to get to F14 and F16 and pay a slight price with diffraction softness, what will the penalty be for F14 on the IQ4
150MP. It's a trade off between diffraction and DOF, as MF already has a considerably shallower DOF than 35mm.
5. Sensor Plus? really, I was greatly surprised that this was considered a "plus". Back the day of the IQ180, and sensor plus, the 20MP
output was better thanif not all CMOS and or CCD 35mm cameras. Amazing details, up to around ISO 2K sometimes 3200. But now with
approaching 50MP and past, not sure if a great selling point on a 22K camera back is the ability to shoot at 37.75 MP. Even if it is 16 bit.
Instead again, had hoped to see a vastly improved full frame CMOS noise clinic due to the BSI chip. P1 has made a huge point on the
infinity platform being only percent utilized at launch, hopefully sometime in the future something may come out.
6. No dark frame subtraction, again, would love to see if by turning this off, you are losing any amount of either DR. or shadow noise loss.
The 3100 with the that it can't do this (unless you are on a tech camera, go figure), has a huge gap in development from any other 4 year
old or newer CMOS camera all of them allow you to turn off dark frame noise reduction. With the 3100, if you are out shooting in a 10
second or 30 second shot situation, it really become problematic as both the light and scene may change during the added 30 seconds of
black out needed, and if you press it to 45 seconds, becomes a really big issue, not to mention extra drain on the battery.
Hopefully P1 is working on showing some example of some of these points in the future? or maybe they have, and I have not found the webinar that talks about it.
Paul
Bill Caulfeild-Browne
Well-known member
Paul, as I understand it, Focus Peaking (or Focus Mask) is now available in Live View.
dougpeterson
Workshop Member
Duplicate reply
.Noted. We'll see if we can get a brief video demonstrating that feature up in the next week or two.
It works in live view on the screen, live view in Capture One when tethered, and via HDMI to a monitor. It works at zoom-to-fit and works at 100% (or anything inbetween). There is a threshold setting.
Otherwise works like other focus peaking I've seen.
Of course the only fully valid test of focus peaking is for a particular user to try it in their particular use-case.
ISO and dynamic range tests have not yet been possible. The prototype units that I've seen come through the country did not yet have final power management firmware and therefore had higher noise than the shipping unit will.
We expect the units arriving to our LA office Monday, which will travel to
San Diego, LA, San Fran, Seattle, Portland, Phoenix, and Denver to be ready for such ISO/DR testing.
An IQ3 100mp and IQ4 150mp will capture roughly the same amount of subject detail at f/16. That is, they will both be diffracted and the additional pixel count of the IQ4 150mp will neither help nor hurt the final rendered amount of detail.
It's like having two cars, one of which can go faster on a straight away (e.g. at f/11) but slow down to the same speed as the slower car around the corners (e.g. at f/16).
We've done diffraction testing in house, but would prefer to release raws when we have a real-world test rather than test targets and dollar bills (unless your style of photography is to shoot test targets and dollar bills, I find those tests less compelling for something like diffraction).
For what you shoot (landscapes for fine art prints) I see very little value in Sensor+.
Of course many kinds of people use Phase One, and I'm quite confident there will be some minority of users who find this a huge-freaking-deal. It was definitely in the top 10 requested features for the IQ3 100mp, and is even more salient on a 150mp camera. Sensor+ means faster tethering (whether via usb-c, ethernet, and wifi), faster processing, and less storage required, all while still keeping the same full-frame 645 sensor, p1 color, native best-in-class tethering to C1, schenider LS blue ring lenses that sync at 1/1600th etc etc.
If you were expecting "vastly improved" ISO performance I think it's likely you'll be disappointed. I'm hopeful for ~1 stop of improvement at 100% pixel
view and ~1.5 stops of improvement when printed at the same size (down rez'ing the 150mp to 100mp), but couldn't say until we've tested. Using frame-averaging (in scenes where it's applicable; i.e. static subject and static camera) I might expect even better.
The IQ4 doesn't disable dark frame, but rather it does something much smarter.
At the factory a long and extensive test of the sensor is run, which builds a database of sensor-specific dark frames for a huge range of temperatures, ISO, and shutter speed. You can then opt to capture an exposure-specific darkframe at the time of capture or use the built-in database. From a user point of view the effect is the same (the user can use a mode wherein they are never asked to capture a dark frame) but this method means much better image quality compared to the IQ3 100mp used in Aerial mode (the trick to disable the creation of new dark frames).
We did a one minute exposure with both modes (using the database and capturing an exposure-specific dark frame) and I saw no meaningful difference.
That is extremely promising to me.
We hope to have testing on that public in the next couple weeks.
Phase One traditionally relies on its partners (aka dealers) to provide this kind of detailed technical testing. We (DT) provide our own extensive testing and, more importantly, strive to provide any serious inquirer with options to do their own testing. Our current road trip does not include Arkansas, but if you have a handful of interested people down there together we're glad to arrange it. Alternatively in a couple months when customer orders are filled and our rental safe is full of IQ4 150mp we can arrange for you to test in your own back yard (proverbial or literal). We're very interested in what you think!