Pixel Peeper Anomalies - They're Totally Missing the Big Picture

On Mon, 24 Aug 2009 12:23:20 +0100, Elliott Roper
wrote:


Crossposts trimmed

In article , RPD
wrote:

On Sun, 23 Aug 2009 21:24:15 +0200, "OldBoy" wrote:

"Chris Malcolm" wrote in message
...
In rec.photo.digital.slr-systems John Navas
wrote:
On Sat, 22 Aug 2009 13:11:52 -0400, Alan Browne
snip
And you're missing a much more important point.

Anyone serious about anything wants to understand it more profoundly for
both the understanding and to both eek out maximum performance or
establish generous margins.

If all you want is to print at 8x10, then pixel peeping a 10+ MP image
is a total waste of time.

Unless you happen to be cropping a lot, or working out the best noise
reduction strategy for a high ISO image. One of the advantages of a
10+ MP image is being able to shoot fast action opportunistically,
often with no time to compose or adjust settings, and then use
cropping and noise reduction to end up with well composed clean 8x10
prints.
Well said!

See "Contrary to conventional wisdom, higher resolution actually compensates
for noise":
http://www.dxomark.com/index.php/eng/Insights

This was proposed by someone in these forums about 10 months ago. Nobody
wanted to believe him but it made perfect sense to everyone with a mind
capable of thinking on their own. The amount of image quality gain is even
more apparent when you compare vastly different sensor sizes and photosite
sizes with the number of them. DXO is only comparing large sensors with
meager photosite size and quantity differences--to find out the very same
benefit that P&S camera owners have been enjoying for many years. So much
for those who mindlessly repeat their tech-head worshippers' mantra of
"larger photosites always equals better images".

Then again, throw in the printer and the ink's dpi factors and all this
noise about "noise" is meaningless. Pixel-peepers who love to mentally
masturbate over numbers and theoretical equations rather than finding
anything worth photographing. Images where the composition and impact of
the subject won't care at all how many "quality" pixels are representing
them.

CONTENT TRUMPS QUALITY EVERY TIME.

It bears repeating whenever some fool goes on and on about resolution,
noise, and image quality. Some of the most famous images in the world were
shot with low-resolution drugstore cameras on noisy, high-ASA, B&W films.
The resolution and sharpness no greater than needed to print in newspapers
around the world with a 3"x3" image size, with a coarse half-tone dithering
thrown in on top of it to boot. Highlights and shadows blown to hell, but
still they are the most famous images in the world, winning many Pulitzer
prizes. All due to CONTENT.

Think they'll ever figure this out? No, not at all. They're brain-dead
hardware worshippers, and desperate beginner snapshooters who listen to
those brain-dead hardware worshippers. They are not photographers nor will
they ever be.
snip

Leaving aside your colourful, if clichéd, use of metaphor your ¨CONTENT
TRUMPS QUALITY EVERY TIME¨ is true enough. It is *so* obviously true
that one wonders why you find time to repeat it.

However, while getting the content, surely it helps to know what you
can get away with. If you know what your camera can do, are you in a
worse or better position as a photographer?

Similarly, if you can do the maths, are you better or worse off having
read and understood the fairly poor and outdated
http://www.dxomark.com/index.php/eng/Insights ?
Or would you have preferred, as I did
http://www.clarkvision.com/imagedeta...ormance.summar
y/
OK, the sums are harder, but it is worth the effort. Indeed, it is a
fun read in its own right.
Are you going to be a better photographer, and get better pictures when
you know how far you can push it and why?

Suppose you are in a public place, with low light, in the middle of a
jostling mob and there is a stunning picture opportunity in the middle
distance. If you know that your camera has the resolution and noise
performance, you can choose the right settings, hold the damn thing
over your head, aim in the general direction, and blaze away on
continuous. Plenty of paps make good money doing that don't they? Back
at your computer you have the chance to turn an accident into a good
picture. Are you a poor photographer for being able to see the
opportunity, operate your equipment properly and realise the art back
in Photoshop?

Therefore ¨Totally Missing the Big Picture¨ is either a wild
overstatement by an aggressively innumerate wannabe artist or a very
sly irony to amuse those with a good eye AND technical and mathematical
skill. There is often a very good small picture in the big picture you
might have totally missed if you didn't know how to push your camera.

Pixel peeping is pretty much on charter here. RPD, if you don't have
enough Kleenex handy, you can always go and annoy people in some other
group you crosspost to.

Sorry folks. I don't suffer fools gladly before the fourth espresso of
the morning.

Am I getting the hang of standard behaviour here?

Sure. Note, however, that guy's a known troll.
I'd say "see this post" about his MO, but I forget where the heck I
posted it.

Do we have a FAQ?

On Mon, 24 Aug 2009 11:14:01 -0700 (PDT), -hh
wrote:

And insofar as 'pixel peeping' ... it is merely the modern digital
equivalent to the time-honored film loupe. And just like the old
process, the culling starts on the lightbox based on subject,
composition and gross technical shortcomings (which automation has
helped to minimize) but it invariably works its way down to just a few
'best of' which get louped.

That's the premise of the whole problem. At most, all good photographers
only "grain-peeped" their negatives and slides with a 8x or 10x loupe.
Viewing your images on your monitor at a 1:1 (100%) resolution and you're
using a 30x-40x loupe magnification to inspect your photos. The quality of
pro-photographer's photographs didn't need more than 8x or 10x preview to
determine if they were fit to print because they were good photos in the
first place. Just as you stated, they were culled first by looking at them
with the unaided eye on a light-box. To see if subject, composition, and
exposure were correct. Or at least the exposure was still salvageable if
the subject and composition was worth it. Out of those top contenders, only
then was the loupe brought out to see which would sustain the greatest
enlargements. One might be sharply focused but lacked better subject and
composition. It would be passed by for one less sharp but a better
photograph overall. Sharpness, crisp details, shadow-details, and any
retained-highlight "merit badges" were *not* the deciding factor on which
image to use. *None* of the crap constantly argued about in these
newsgroups was ever used as the deciding factor on which image was
print-worthy.

Sharpness for larger printing was just a little extra saffron in the paella
if it also happened to land on the best photo in the bunch. Even if
slightly blurry, but a good photo, they could still be printed to larger
sizes. I recall one 35mm image I took back in the early 70's on 200ASA
slide film that was enlarged to 3x5 feet because someone found the image so
remarkable. I personally wouldn't have dared to print it that large but
they insisted that's how they wanted it. Up close the edges were soft,
details lost, some obvious grain, but that didn't matter to the buyer. They
wanted the image that large because it was so good and they wanted everyone
in their establishment to see it from no matter how far away. It still
hangs to this day over the mantel on their 18 ft.-wide stone fireplace in
their mountain resort. Today's "photographers" (and I use that term very
loosely) are using 3 to 5 times as much loupe magnification on their
"digital grain". Rarely printing any photos larger than 8"x10", which can
be done with any decent 3-megapixel camera on earth. Determining which
print is good by zooming in and never looking at the overall composition
first to see if all that sharpness is even worth it.

They're *all* putting the cart before the horse.

Do you think this image is worth printing?

http://web.mac.com/kamberm/Leica_M8_...Haiti%2006.jpg

Highlights blown to hell, shadows wiped out. B&W only. It's worth printing
at any size.

Why don't these dolts comprehend any of this about photography?

Look at your photos on your monitor at no more than 66% magnification
(that's generously more than needed) to find out if they are print-worthy
or not. If the subject, no matter how blurry it is at higher
magnifications, can't stand up to being printed when only previewed at that
loupe magnification, then it can't stand up to being printed at any
magnification at all. A sharper image is not going to make a bad photograph
any better. A good photograph can be blurry with shadow detail and
highlights blown out and still be completely print-worthy.

Why on earth don't any of them comprehend this? Because any of them who
can't comprehend this aren't really photographers. They're just trolls,
bit-heads, gear-heads, and wannabe snapshooters who happen to also have net
access and a keyboard. They prove it with every post they make about
"technical image quality"--what a load of ********.

Sigh ... wrote:


Do you think this image is worth printing?

http://web.mac.com/kamberm/Leica_M8_...Haiti%2006.jpg



No, its utter crap. Why ... did you make it?

Doug McDonald

"Charles" wrote in message
...
Camera enthusiasts are not necessarily photographers.

Whether they are good or bad at it they still take photographs one would
have to assume, therefore indeed they are photographers. You were thinking
they are bus drivers, cow herders, Go Go dancers?

Crossposting trimmed
In article , Sigh ...
wrote:

On Mon, 24 Aug 2009 11:14:01 -0700 (PDT), -hh
wrote:

And insofar as 'pixel peeping' ... it is merely the modern digital
equivalent to the time-honored film loupe. And just like the old
process, the culling starts on the lightbox based on subject,
composition and gross technical shortcomings (which automation has
helped to minimize) but it invariably works its way down to just a few
'best of' which get louped.

That's the premise of the whole problem.
Do you own a dictionary?
At most, all good photographers only "grain-peeped" their negatives
and slides with a 8x or 10x loupe. Viewing your images on your
monitor at a 1:1 (100%) resolution and you're using a 30x-40x loupe
magnification to inspect your photos.
And your problem with that is?
The quality of pro-photographer's photographs didn't need more than
8x or 10x preview to determine if they were fit to print because they
were good photos in the first place.
Now to use "premise" with the correct meaning, your premise is that the
whole captured digital image will be printed on paper or similar. Why
should that be so? If you start with a false premise, you get a false
conclusion, even with impeccable logic.

Just as you stated, they were culled first by looking at them
with the unaided eye on a light-box. To see if subject, composition, and
exposure were correct. Or at least the exposure was still salvageable if
the subject and composition was worth it. Out of those top contenders, only
then was the loupe brought out to see which would sustain the greatest
enlargements. One might be sharply focused but lacked better subject and
composition. It would be passed by for one less sharp but a better
photograph overall. Sharpness, crisp details, shadow-details, and any
retained-highlight "merit badges" were *not* the deciding factor on which
image to use. *None* of the crap constantly argued about in these
newsgroups was ever used as the deciding factor on which image was
print-worthy.
What if a tiny fraction of the image were to be printed or viewed on
the web or television?

Sharpness for larger printing was just a little extra saffron in the paella
if it also happened to land on the best photo in the bunch. Even if
slightly blurry, but a good photo, they could still be printed to larger
sizes. I recall one 35mm image I took back in the early 70's on 200ASA
slide film that was enlarged to 3x5 feet because someone found the image so
remarkable. I personally wouldn't have dared to print it that large but
they insisted that's how they wanted it. Up close the edges were soft,
details lost, some obvious grain, but that didn't matter to the buyer. They
wanted the image that large because it was so good and they wanted everyone
in their establishment to see it from no matter how far away.
Cool! You customer understood similar triangles, even if you didn't.

It still hangs to this day over the mantel on their 18 ft.-wide stone
fireplace in their mountain resort. Today's "photographers" (and I
use that term very loosely) are using 3 to 5 times as much loupe
magnification on their "digital grain". Rarely printing any photos
larger than 8"x10", which can be done with any decent 3-megapixel
camera on earth. Determining which print is good by zooming in and
never looking at the overall composition first to see if all that
sharpness is even worth it.
Who says they never look at composition and content? You are truly
bats!
They're *all* putting the cart before the horse.
So much for "impeccable logic". Still, when you start from a false
premise, you can take a rain check on logic.
Do you think this image is worth printing?
Printing Schminting! *So* last century!
http://web.mac.com/kamberm/Leica_M8_...s/Haiti%2006.j
pg

Highlights blown to hell, shadows wiped out. B&W only. It's worth printing
at any size.
Go look at Reuters pictures of the month. That one would be stone last
in any random month. Unidentified well dressed black people miserably
looking through what might be gates on a railway station at their
departing train? No story. No context. Big fat clichŽ. A bit of
diagonal, a hint of thirds and you get a woody.

Why don't these dolts comprehend any of this about photography?

They do comprehend. What they may not comprehend is why *you* feel that
technical ability and artistic ability have to be mutually exclusive.
You never do explain that. Do you lose your ability to compose pictures
if you learn what a discrete cosine transform does and why?
Why can't you use your technical skill to inform your art? Picasso and
Dali were very good draughtstmen. They painted exquisite conventional
drawings as well as the 'distorted' images that rightly made them
famous.
Look at your photos on your monitor at no more than 66% magnification
(that's generously more than needed) to find out if they are print-worthy
or not. If the subject, no matter how blurry it is at higher
magnifications, can't stand up to being printed when only previewed at that
loupe magnification, then it can't stand up to being printed at any
magnification at all. A sharper image is not going to make a bad photograph
any better. A good photograph can be blurry with shadow detail and
highlights blown out and still be completely print-worthy.
Print-worthy? You are so buried in the past.
Why on earth don't any of them comprehend this? Because any of them who
can't comprehend this aren't really photographers. They're just trolls,
bit-heads, gear-heads, and wannabe snapshooters who happen to also have net
access and a keyboard. They prove it with every post they make about
"technical image quality"--what a load of ********.
What makes you think they can't comprehend something as puerile as your
post? Those more sensible than I am would just ignore your pointless
gibbering.

Again, most great photographers understand the medium they are working
in, technically *and* artistically.

The charter of this newsgroup is DSLR *systems* so, why don't you just
ignore people who are posting on topic. And refrain from posting off
topic for good measure?
To anyone else dumb enough to have read this far:-
I shouldn't let these clueless anonymous schmucks wind me up. They make
Prince Charles look intelligent.

--
To de-mung my e-mail address:- fsnospam$elliott$$
PGP Fingerprint: 1A96 3CF7 637F 896B C810 E199 7E5C A9E4 8E59 E248

In article ,
says...

Sharpness for larger printing was just a little extra saffron in the paella
if it also happened to land on the best photo in the bunch. Even if
slightly blurry, but a good photo, they could still be printed to larger
sizes. I recall one 35mm image I took back in the early 70's on 200ASA
slide film that was enlarged to 3x5 feet because someone found the image so
remarkable. I personally wouldn't have dared to print it that large but
they insisted that's how they wanted it. Up close the edges were soft,
details lost, some obvious grain, but that didn't matter to the buyer. They
wanted the image that large because it was so good and they wanted everyone
in their establishment to see it from no matter how far away. It still
hangs to this day over the mantel on their 18 ft.-wide stone fireplace in
their mountain resort.

And that's a great point. These large *printed* images were aimed at an
audience that was going to view them from ten feet away or more.

Here's a good analogy. You buy a 58" HD TV set. You set it up and view
it from your easy chair. It looks *outrageous*! Now sit 20" away from
it. It looks like ******!

Ding. Ding. Ding.

The penny drops.

--
Giftzwerg
***
"It isn't conservative rumors or lies that are stopping healthcare
legislation; it's the justifiable alarm of an electorate that has been
cut out of the loop and is watching its representatives construct a
tangled labyrinth for others but not for themselves. No, the airheads of
Congress will keep their own plush healthcare plan - it's the rest of us
guinea pigs who will be thrown to the wolves."
- Camille Paglia

John Navas wrote:
On Sun, 23 Aug 2009 21:24:15 +0200, "OldBoy" wrote in
:

"Chris Malcolm" wrote in message
...

In rec.photo.digital.slr-systems John Navas
wrote:

If all you want is to print at 8x10, then pixel peeping a 10+ MP image
is a total waste of time.
Unless you happen to be cropping a lot, or working out the best noise
reduction strategy for a high ISO image. One of the advantages of a
10+ MP image is being able to shoot fast action opportunistically,
often with no time to compose or adjust settings, and then use
cropping and noise reduction to end up with well composed clean 8x10
prints.
See "Contrary to conventional wisdom, higher resolution actually compensates
for noise":
http://www.dxomark.com/index.php/eng/Insights

The data is right but the conclusion is wrong -- correlation does not
cause and effect make. What's actually going on is that there's much
more to image quality than photosite size (sensor, support electronics,
in camera processing, etc).

And even then that's only the sensor characteristics, ignoring the lens,
the means to get the image focused, and exposed properly. I never
recall throwing away an image from my old "noise box" D70 because of
sensor characteristics.
I blame Canon for what seems to be neurotic fixation on sensor
characteristics. For a few years, that was a real advantage that they
had and pushed hard to the faithful via white papers etc.
Now it seems people need to rely on sites like DXO to prove points
really not worth proving.

On Mon, 24 Aug 2009 21:54:32 +0100, Elliott Roper wrote:

Crossposting trimmed
In article , Sigh ...
wrote:

On Mon, 24 Aug 2009 11:14:01 -0700 (PDT), -hh
wrote:

And insofar as 'pixel peeping' ... it is merely the modern digital
equivalent to the time-honored film loupe. And just like the old
process, the culling starts on the lightbox based on subject,
composition and gross technical shortcomings (which automation has
helped to minimize) but it invariably works its way down to just a few
'best of' which get louped.

That's the premise of the whole problem.
Do you own a dictionary?

Do you own a newsreader? The premise of the problem posted by the OP.

**** are you ever daft. No sense even reading the rest of your drivel after
you've already revealed how stupid you are.

In article , Sigh ...
wrote:

On Mon, 24 Aug 2009 21:54:32 +0100, Elliott Roper wrote:

Crossposting trimmed
In article , Sigh ...
wrote:

On Mon, 24 Aug 2009 11:14:01 -0700 (PDT), -hh
wrote:

And insofar as 'pixel peeping' ... it is merely the modern digital
equivalent to the time-honored film loupe. And just like the old
process, the culling starts on the lightbox based on subject,
composition and gross technical shortcomings (which automation has
helped to minimize) but it invariably works its way down to just a few
'best of' which get louped.

That's the premise of the whole problem.
Do you own a dictionary?

Do you own a newsreader? The premise of the problem posted by the OP.

Yes, It showed that you were the first in this thread to use "premise"
at all. However wrongly.

Problems do not have premises. Logical arguments have premises.

Do you know how to *use* a dictionary?

Now you know I'm not daft, you might try the rest of the drivel...

If you try *really* hard at reading comprehension, you will see that
you have yet to explain why pixel-peeping and artistic talent are
mutually exclusive properties of *all* photographers.

--
To de-mung my e-mail address:- fsnospam$elliott$$
PGP Fingerprint: 1A96 3CF7 637F 896B C810 E199 7E5C A9E4 8E59 E248

On Mon, 24 Aug 2009 19:57:04 -0400, John A. wrote:

On Mon, 24 Aug 2009 23:39:55 +0100, Elliott Roper
wrote:



Now you know I'm not daft, you might try the rest of the drivel...

If you try *really* hard at reading comprehension, you will see that
you have yet to explain why pixel-peeping and artistic talent are
mutually exclusive properties of *all* photographers.

But he won't. Since he's a troll it does not suit his purposes.

Funny. That's the exact kind of manipulative reasoning that some troll
would use to perpetuate a pointless argument for his own basement-living
free-entertainment.

Got a mirror handy? Know how to use one?